I had dinner at Pizza Antica with my mother last night.    She wanted to spend time with me before she moved down to Cambria.  There was the obligatory nagging about how I don't work hard enough, and how I make excuses for why people don't like me blahblah. 

A waitress who was standing nearby, dropped a plastic cup of salad dressing on the ground.  Ranch dressing flew up and splattered all over my jacket and hair.  A waiter wiped off my jacket with a wet towel.   I told him I was going to wash my jacket when I got home.   The manager offered to give me a free dessert for my inconvenience, but I declined.  She replied that she could pack it in a to-go box but I didn't want a dessert, I just wanted to get out of there.   It wasn't that I was bothered by having ranch in my hair - I had to get out of there so I could go to Berkeley.  Jeff also wanted me to go to dinner with his girlfriend, his mother, and my friend Mike.   So I went over to my mother's house to pick up some more stuff to move to my apartment, then drove to Joshuya Sushi in Berkeley.   The sushi wasn't bad, except for the fly that kept hovering over our table.  I wish I had had a newspaper.   It would have been cool to catch the fly with chopsticks but I don't have THAT much manual dexterity.   I guess I need to play more Super Mario Galaxy to build up my hand-eye coordination.  

I got up for work kinda late today, but I decided to stop and get coffee anyways, so I didn't get to work until 9:30.   I think it's weird when I see people bringing small children to coffee places.  I understand it's probably because they have to take their kids to school, or to the mall etc. but it always seemed to be equivalent to those old Joe Camel ads.  *shrug*   Get your kids addicted to caffeine at a young age, by showing them that it's what cool grownups do.  :P

I wish people would leash their dog at my workplace.  It seems like the people who bring their dogs to work have the "hyperactive run all over the place barking at strangers" type of dog that like to hang out under my feet and eat the crumbs from my lunch/snacks.  It gets even worse when there's multiple dogs at work, because then they combine to form a jumping, yelping mass of teeth and claws.    Since there's only two days left at work,  I'm not going to bother saying anything, and I'll just eat my lunch/snacks in the kitchen instead. 

I think I'm just gonna skip the work party on Friday.  I don't feel any particular desire to socialize with all the former company employees.  Sure, I'm skipping out on a potential networking opportunity, but I just think it'd be totally awkward.  And I need to help my mother clean up her house before she moves to Cambria on Saturday morning. 

I found a blog posting about funny Facebook groups.  http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/9792  

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edit:   Gah!  Co-worker's dog was licking crumbs right off my pants.  

I saw this device mentioned, as a "barking" deterrent:

http://www.bird-x.com/products/bark.html

As someone who lives next door to a neighbor with a very loud dog, this may be worthwhile for me to purchase.

I know there's tons of articles out there that talk about how dogs at work can be therapeutic.    But when people bring their dogs to work, they don't keep their dogs near them.  i.e., their dog ends up hanging out under my desk.  Dogs don't graviate towards me because I have animal magnetism (just ask anyone I've dated).  Dogs hang out under my desk because I eat my lunch while at my desk, and sometimes I drop food bits on the floor, so dogs like to eat the crumbs off my floor.  While normally I wouldn't have problems with dogs running underfoot, dog dander causes my eyes to water up, my nose to get congested, and my throat to get itchy.   I would say something about my allergy, but since people in the office seem really psyched up when they see a coworker's dog around, I don't bother to say anything out of fear of looking like a weirdo or a curmudgeon.  

Oh well, three more hours to go.