At work, listening to Jane Siberry and marvelling at just how boring testing software is. I'm doing QA for a little while, until we hire some more people and get out of the current development cycle. So far this seems to consist of doing the same tasks over and over and over and over and over and over with minute changes each time, and being interrupted a lot, and occasionally discovering a bug only to realise that I can't test anything until that bug is fixed, and waiting for the bug to be fixed, and going to lots of meetings, and getting out of meetings only to find out that the bug hasn't been fixed yet, and ... I am completely, utterly baffled that people would choose to do this for a living. But grateful, since once we hire one of them I can quit doing it myself.

Other than this absurd frustration with work life is proceeding steadily. I had a lovely New Year's Eve with Jim; he got back from Chicago on the 30th, and we ended up exchanging almost all our presents that night. He passed along gifts from his family -- tea from his mom, tea from Kevin (the brother I've met) and Pam (Kevin's wife). I guess my tea-drinking made a strong impression at Thanksgiving. Then he gave me his presents to me. These were:

• Four of the five extant Matt Groening books, including Akbar and Jeff, which I didn't even know existed. They were always my favourite of the Life in Hell characters; not only were they gay, they were happy in their own bizarre way -- the only happy characters in the series. It was a seriously nifty gift, especially since I'd said to him only days before we both vacationed 'I really miss Matt Groening. I always forget that the Simpsons are him, since I don't watch TV -- so to me it's like he just vanished from the world. And I haven't read his books in ages.'
• Lots of chocolate! Eggnog creams and mint meltaways from Fannie Mae's, which is a store in Chicago I may be spelling wrong. Last year I made serious inroads on his Chicago candy, which is likely the origin of these gifts.
• Prior to leaving for our vacations he bought be thin-sliced bread and a Specialty Root -- which is to say a taro root from the snobby grocery store in Berkeley. I get obsessively hungry for taro root about once a month, so this makes some practical sense, but it was mostly just overwhelmingly cute.

Reading over that list I am struck by how much Jim listens to me. Listens to little things, like me being nostalgic over Matt Groening. Remembers things, like how delighted I was by mint meltaways a year ago. Jim is very good at being present, which is something I'm very bad at. I'm getting better at it these days, but it's amazingly hard work, and wears me out pretty quickly. Around Jim it's easy, but there's lots of other situations (work, parties) where it's close to impossible.

But back to New Year's! I gave Jim various gifts from my mom (candles, a tree ornament, an oversized glow-in-the-dark beachball thing), and my gifts to him -- glow-in-the-dark sealife (to be stuck around the bathroom and bedroom, hopefully keeping the jellyfish that hangs from the ceiling company) and a t-shirt that says 'Power Tools are a Girl's Best Friend'. I sort of doubt he'll ever wear the shirt, but it's the thought that counts, and it's a thought that made us both giggle a lot.

On New Year's Eve itself we went to Harold's Millenium Countdown party. I talked to various people, hugged Jim a lot, and somehow let Brad teach me to play poker. The only stakes were jelly beans, which was unfortunate as I ended up winning massively. Then again, with real money I wouldn't have bet nearly so wildly.

Brad and I joked about his teaching me life skills. So far he's taught me how to use chopsticks, how to change lanes (accelerate!), and now how to play poker. The possibilities for the future are endless. Slow, though; I only see Brad three or four times a year. It's a shame. He claims he's going to come with us to Roseville on 2/5 to see Al&Sheryl (where us is some mass of me, Jim, Marith, Chrisber), but I sort of expect him to flake on it. We'll see.

Work work work. Testing. Frustration. Now, however, it's time to zoom to gaming.