A couple mornings ago I finally finished reading 11/22/63, the new Stephen King novel. I’m going to try and avoid spoilers, but I’m sorry if I slip. Reader beware.

The basic premise of the book is, “If you could go back in history and change one pivotal event, would you?” In this case, that event is the assassination of John Kennedy.

I have always had a sort of fascination with time travel, parallel universes, and the like. I’m not sure why, but I think the fundamental question of “what if” occurs to us all from time to time. How would my life be different if I was a better student as a child? in college? If I had told my Mom the truth? I’m not saying I regret my choices, but sometimes I wonder.

But there’s the butterfly effect to consider. If I had never done x, would y have happened? If I hadn’t been in the place I was at in 2007 would I have met the Midget? Would we have met at a different time and place and still found each other? Does the smallest change fundamentally alter everything to come? Could I really be my own grandpa? This is only considering a unified timestream. I haven’t even begun to talk about the multiverse (and I’m not going to, cuz my brain hurts already).

The protagonist of the book struggles with all these issues, and many others, including whether to go back from whence he came, and the book throws several curveballs along the way, such as introducing the concept that time doesn’t want to be altered and that the amount of resistance offered by time is proportional to the impact the change will have on the future.

It’s a good read and I highly recommend it to anyone who might want a book that’ll keep you engaged and give you a few abstract things to consider, not to mention yanking you around from time to time.

Shamelessly stolen from Emma because she said I could.

Lately I’ve been fixating on the idea of a hard spanking. It’s been a long time since I got one, if I really ever did, and I want to know if it’ll be as good as it is in my head, and even if I can take it. The recent discussions on twitter haven’t exactly helped get it out of my head either. Thanks, friends.

She tells me I’m about to get a hard spanking (because I was surly, because I procrastinated, because I forgot about the computer project I was supposed to get done for the volunteer gig, it really doesn’t matter) and she wants me in the corner to wait for her to be ready. I nervously walk to the corner, place my nose against the wall, and wait for her. I try to stay still, but I squirm a little with anticipation of what is to come.

After several minutes, she tells me it is time and orders me to come to her. I slowly move to stand before her, apologizing and telling her I’m sorry for displeasing her. She informs me that she knows, but I need to learn a lesson and she has decided a long hard spanking over her lap is what I need and that it will hopefully help me remember the next time.

After positioning me across her knees, she slowly raises my skirt and exposes my panties, wrapping an arm around my waist to hold me in position. Her hand rubs gently over the material as she scolds me for being a fully grown adult who apparently needs to be reminded like a little girl how to behave. She says that she intends to warm my bottom thoroughly and will do this as often as it takes.

Her hand begins raining swats down over my panty covered bottom. Alternating cheeks, occasionally continuing the scolding. After several minutes, her fingers hook in my waistband and, despite my protests to not have my bottom bared, my panties are soon at my knees. She raises her hand to her shoulder and peppers my bottom with hard rapid swats. Moving between my cheeks and the junction where my thighs meet my bottom. She makes sure to spend time concentrating on that area so I will feel this spanking after it’s over.

After many minutes, she slows her spanking, and I wonder if she’s done. Feeling me relax, she quickly divests me of that notion, “oh, little girl, don’t think I’m done yet.”

Her hand lifts from my bottom and I soon feel a cool hard surface lightly caressing my cheeks. I wiggle slightly and she taps the object. “mmm, you’re gonna find out what this hairbrush feels like tonight. We’ll see if it helps your behavior.”

“Please, Midget. I’m sorry. Don’t…”

She’s obviously not in the mood to debate the issue, as I feel the hard wood crack against my bottom before I can finish my sentence. Gasping at the impact of the sturdy brush, I don’t have much time to think about it as she quickly covers my bottom with more swats. “Oh– Ahhh, Midget. I. OWWW. P-p-please.”

“shhh, little one. It’s supposed to hurt.”

I wiggle and squirm across her lap as she continues to spank me. She is being incredibly thorough, making sure my cheeks are both flaming hot, and my sit spot is well covered.

Eventually, the spanking slows, and is more drawn out and sensual, but she continues to cover me with hard strokes, reminding me that I’m loved, and well cared for. After I’m warn out, and exhausted, she sets the brush aside and pulls me into her arms. I melt against her and relax into her love.

Soon after, she strips me, puts me in my nightgown, and tucks me into bed beside her, where I fall asleep contentedly, in her arms.

The Midget and I have been compiling a list of the best places to find hot chocolate this time of year. Sticking to regional/national chains, here is our preliminary list:

1. Dunkin Doughnuts. What’s not to like? Not only is the hot chocolate smooth and creamy, but you can get a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles too. We were very disappointed when we found out the Dunkin Express at the train station doesn’t stock this.
2. 7-11. Kind of envious of Sheek for having one right in her building.
3. Panera. Closely tied with 7-11 actually. Goes great with a sausage, egg and cheese bagel.
4. McDonald’s. Peppermint only (the plain is blah).
5. Starbucks. Acceptable, but has a strange after taste.

This is by no means a scientific study and is purely based on our taste buds.

Thoughts? Other places we need to check out to add to the list? Discuss in the comments.

Marie‘s comment on Twitter this morning reminded me I use a lot of pseudonyms here and many of you may have no idea who I’m talking about. This is eventually going to be more fleshed out, as a collaboratoin between me and HTe Midget, but for now, here’s a brief rundown of the people I deal with who I can’t link to :

The Midget (often simply TM): My friend for almost five years. Best friend since I can’t remember. Partner. Someday will be my wife. Incredible woman who encourages me, cares for me, gives me strength, and lets me do the same for her. Met through mutual friend who we both can no longer very much stand because of his philandering ways. Saying we met through the Internet, while technically true, sounds creepy and wrong to her. Admits to being geek adjacent; massively in denial about her true level of geekness. My anima gemella.

The church of JM: The organization I work for, and The Midget and I are both members of. Named for the God-like worship of senior management exhibited by many members.

Gamer: Zelda’s husband. Plays, makes, devours board games. Often deals with depression. I currently live wih him and Zelda.

jerkwad: Another team member. Possesses worse social skills than most five year olds. Awkward to be around, even more awkward to get rid of. He once spent half an hour in my office while The Midget and I were trying to sneak some alone time and didn’t take, “we should make that phone call now,” as a clue to get out.

Scarlet: The Midget’s boss for the past couple summers. So named because she is directionally, technologically, psychologically, and sometimes functionally impaired, knows it, and wields her southern accent like a flare gun. Her Kryptonite is having her hair played with. I once spent new years eve cleaning glass out of her car after someone stole her GPS.

Sheek: Friend of TM’s for several years. Joined my team in September. Unsure if The Midget has yet forgiven me for recruiting her. Starts every question with, “I’m gonna ask a stupid question,” smarter than she thinks, but needs to recognize she’s still a newbe and won’t know everything yet.

Tribble: One of my team members. Smart, funny, snarky. Her zombi apocalypse plan consists solely of, “be where [Tiger] is.” Nerdgasmed when a vendor showed up to an event on Halloween dressed as the Tenth Doctor. Named for the Tribble she gave me. frequently stops by my office on crap days to play with it.

Zelda: Friend for 10 years. The best thing to come out of my relationship with my batshit narcissistic college girlfriend. Harbors dominatrixical tendencies. Deals with Gamer’s depression by yelling at him and telling him she hates him. Got excited when I referred to our household as a “family”, “because dysfunctional triad of carbon based lifeforms took too long to say.”

With apologies to “Oh Happy Day”, it just sort of popped into my head as I was typing the title.

One would think that any day beginning with chick-filet fries and hot chocolate would not end with a bad mood, but one would be close to mistaken.

The day started out like many others. Zelda was leaving town, so Gamer drove us into work. As is tradition we stopped at chick-filet. Remembering what The Midget said, I figured I’d give their hot chocolate a try (we are compiling a ranked list of the best places to get it). It definitely is up there.

My team, with the exception of Jerkwad (having the social skills of a Rhinoceros and inability to somehow not figure out we do), almost always has an informal meeting first thing. This morning my boss decided Sheek would be taking her place at the big conference in January. I will admit to a mild amount of miftitude, but mostly because it took me three years to get to go and she’s been there three months. It is a good opportunity and hopefully she’ll learn something. I also got her to agree to float an idea I’m trying to shore up support for in the industry, so hopefully something will come of that. What really flipped my switch was the boss saying, “you’ll have to do a follow up [project], don’t pull a [Tiger].” To be truthful, I’m not sure if she was annoyed or just poking at me, because sometimes it’s hard to tell, but calling me out in front of another team member when you haven’t discussed the issue with me in months is probably a way to set me off. I also feel the project didn’t happen because she routinely rearranges my priorities to handle immediate projects at the cost of long-term goals slipping behind the back burner (a conversation we’ve had before). So I thought I’d offer Sheek a little advice, “don’t let your boss rearrange your priorities to the point where you don’t get it done.” Needless to say, the boss disagreed with that assessment. Before we could go any further with it, her meeting showed up and I went back to work. She seemed fine later, but I was feeling a little burned. I often feel like she gets annoyed at me for projects not being complete when I feel like I’m told to push them until later. Tribble told me I have to be more firm and call it out when it’s happening, and she’s probably right. TM listened to me rant on IM for a couple minutes. That all pretty much blew over, but the day still made an attempt at slapping me, quite literally.

I was putting a piece of equipment back into our lab, lying under the table running the power cable between the power strip and the drop hole. I’ve started setting the power bricks on top of the cable runners mounted under the tables and stashing the excess cord inside to keep it off the floor. Well, this time I didn’t have enough cord and the brick decided to fall… on my face. About 10 seconds after i stopped cursing, the boss walks in with, an as yet unbeknownst to me, meeting that I was to assist with. Two and a half hours later, I finished that up and went to lunch. I came back and finished putting the equipment back. Sliding my way out from under the table, I misjudged how far I was, popped up, and whacked the back of my head on the side. At this point I’ve pretty much figured Karma is telling me to go back to bed, so I do the next best thing and hide in my office for the rest of the day. We’ll just forget the fact that it was raining miserably and the bus took forever getting home, because, it’s December and that crap happens.

Gamer had tossed frozen pizza in the oven and run out to, “save my marriage,” (he had forgotten to take care of something Zelda needed done today) and asked me to take the pizza out of the oven. The appointed time came, and I dug around for the oven mitts. I found them, but realized they were of the thumbless variety, utterly confusing me. reaching into the oven expecting to find a pizza pan or a cookie sheet, I encounter the pizza directly on the rack. Okay, weird, but whatever. I’ll just slide it onto the cardboard… Good plan, but the pizza had other ideas. Somehow, it folded back on itself, and ended up in a shapeless pile of pizza gooh. for whatever reason, I got the other one off the bottom rack with little difficulty (clearly the mangled one now had my name on it). I took a bite and realized the thing was a bit doughy, not bad, but doughy. At this point, I’m kind of over the day and pretty much set off by all kinds of stupid things. I’m either annoyed or wanting to cry. It just was all hitting me wrong. I ranted at TM on IM about some pretty petty crap until she basically said I could rant all I wanted but she was going to read her book. At which point I switched into, “oh, okay, I’ve annoyed her. I should probably fix that” mode instead of the more appropriate “you’re being an irrational idiot, calm down and cuddle” mode. Thankfully she’s wonderful to me and talked me past the insecurities so I was able to get over the rest of it too, chalking it up to a stupid day that should just go far far away. Oh, and gamer said the pizzas were way undercooked. Ugh.

Later, after I finished cleaning the oven, I told TM I’m craving a spanking. I told her that had we been together and I been her I probably would have had me over her knee as soon as I started getting whiny and ranty. She said she actually would have done it this morning and been done with it. I was a bit surprised, but I’m guessing because of the snark factor with the boss. Also, guess that’s why it’s a good thing she is the one who gets to decide when I get one, not me. I’ve actually never had that, a spanking because of behavior. I’m curious if it would work. I have no real basis to know. She said I’ll find out some day though.

I’m very lucky. I’ve found a woman who is willing to explore with me, and figure out the things that make me tick, and make me me. I’m glad I get to do that for her too. I’m also wondering if all of the Adventbloggers are going to have a rant worthy day to help provide us material.

Often, when we’re apart, The Midget and I plan things we want to do when I’m back home. Go on a date, have a date night in where she cooks, clean the apartment, whatever. What really happens is these activities get pushed aside in favor of cuddling and just being with each other. One of the things that couldn’t get put off was getting TM a new phone. She’s been wanting a new shiny toy for a while, but it pretty much needed to be done Wednesday. Partly because her old phone was suffering from can’t-get-a-call-itis in the apartment, and mostly because the supply of this particular phone is in such short stock that they literally didn’t have one in town since the day I bought the last one in October. After stalking the store, we geared up and headed off for the trek to the butt-end of the middle of nowhere.

Now, I’m gonna be clear. Most of the time I don’t give a rat’s backside about being blind, but sometimes it’s a royal pain. Say, hypothetically, if neither of you has eaten because what was supposed to be precooked hamburger patties were questionably not and you didn’t expect you’d wander around the shopping center for forty-five minutes because people are unable to give directions and the place is more confusing than the ancient catacambs, but we’re only talking theory here people. It never happened

We did make it to the store, and several hundred gold coins later TM had a new Shiny. We also had one of the best sales reps I’ve ever dealt with. The guy was awesome. This was also the night we learned why our GPS is named after my abusive ex girlfriend. She sent us all over the place trying to find the burger oint we were going to have dinner at. Seriously, how is it possible, while walking in a continuous straight line, to be walking along 29th street, cross 29th street, then be coming up on 29th street? Unless a temporal vortex was hanging around, I don’t believe it is.

Speaking of food. Class, raise your hands if you’ve ever left thanksgiving dinner hungry.

Yes, honey, I know you did, I was there too.

We spent Thanksgiving with TM’s dad’s wife’s family. Their Thanksgiving and Christmas, actually. On the awkward scale, I’ve been through worse, they were at least welcoming and friendly. We were both quite perplexed though. Either they took more food than we did the first time around or they don’t eat. About the time we contemplated going back for seconds, it was time for dessert. Dessert which TM’s father messed up by not paying attention to her one request for a pie she would eat, “I was trying to decide which pies to get and decided the people who like apple could just deal.” Punk.

When we finally left, several hours after we were both past our comfort zone (the baby pictures of people we’d never met having been passed around) we decided an almost midnight trip to the Golden corinary was in order. When we walked over the Best Buy line was long, when we came back it was around the store. There may possibly have been some poking at an unnamed one of us for considering going to try and get a plazma TV for cheap, but we’re not going to talk about that temporary loss of higher brain power.

Instead, we went to the mall at 7AM. 7. A. M. On vacation! Crazy.

Actually it didn’t totally suck. We went with a friend and all got some good deals on things.

I spent the afternoon adding another thousand plus words, citations, and other crap to my final report for my writing class; TM spent it passed out on the couch next to me. I do love having her close. I miss it so when we’re apart. We’re both incredibly tactile, and just feeling her next to me while I work is incredible.

I also learned I’m apparently allowed to tell her to get in the kitchen and cook. Apparently it’s preferable to my blood sugar dropping to the point of being dizzy (I hadn’t eaten since the mall that morning and it was about 22:00). We both have a tendancy, her because she has weird hunger cycles and me because I zone into something else and don’t think about it, to forget to eat from time to time. I’d suggest disciplining each other for it, but I don’t really think it’ll work since we’re equally crappy about it.

Saturday we decided to have a friend over and do something we’d never done before… cook a turkey. We bought a small turkey, who we named Fred, and I said I’d call my grandma and ask her how to cook it. Her advice, “You’re a geek, google it.” Thanks Grandma.

The turkey turned out well, though carving it is not my strong point, I kind of just went caveman on poor Fred, but boy was he tasty.

Other lessons learned that night: One bottle of Moscado will fill two juice tumblers and a coffee cup; if I time it right, I can poke TM awake to answer a question before our friend notices she is asleep; and messing with the DVD player to get better sound will get you made fun of when it doesn’t work even if it’s not your fault.

When Sunday rolled around, I couldn’t believe how fast it had come. I didn’t want to leave, but my boss pretty much threatened to kill me if I extended another trip. I also noticed that we snapped at each other a little more. I don’t know if it was really because of what was happening, I had a little work to finish for school that hadn’t gotten done earlier and I think she was a bit perturbed about that, or if we were just both tense and sad because I was leaving, but it was definitely happening. One of these days, I’m going to go home for good. Sure, there’s gonna be snappage and skirmishes from time to time, but there won’t frequently be the tearing apart, realizing you’re going to not be waking up with the other one in your arms for a while. I wish that day to come soon please.

Anyone need a geek-of-all-trades for telework?

I’m a huge fan of aa cappella music, and the following Straight No Chaser videos are two of my favorite earworms this time of year. Part of the Christmas Can-Can is my default ringtone for the season. Enjoy.

I’m finally winding down from catching up after a week and a half of running around.

The week before Thanksgiving I was in Denver attending a conference for work at which I had to give a presentation. I knew it was a bad sign when my co presenter suggested a three to four hour conference call to plan a one hour presentation. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m usually for logical planning of things, but when I’ve given my part of the presentation at least a dozen times and, according to my boss could give it in my sleep (good thing she doesn’t know I often do), three hours is about two hours and fifty-five minutes of overkill. Fortunately for my sanity we only spent half an hour planning. So, how many people came to our session? If you had 2 in the pool, you just won yourself a lifetime supply of my snark. Despite that, the conference was quite good. I learned a few things, had a great mexican (yes, I say this even though I’m nearing burnout as Zelda and Gamer subject me to it with insane regularity) meal with colleagues, and the best Italian meal I have ever had with a company who is trying to recruit me by sending me to another.

Thanks to an incredibly good flight deal I was able to make plans to go home¹ to see The Midget for Thanksgiving. I got there around 6:30 in the evening. At one point we had talked about going out to get her an iPhone, but we realized that was unlikely, unless we refused to hug, kiss, or really in any way acknowledge the other’s presence in any way when I dropped off my gear. considering that was a stupid and unlikely option, we stayed in .

The next day we had to go to a meeting. Which, other than finding about a possible upcoming job (which I didn’t actually realize was something I was interested in until the next day because I wasn’t paying that much attention) provided us with a fare amount of boredom. We skipped out at lunch and went to Five Guys. Mmm, Five Guys. Then, we froze.

The temperature, which was supposed to be in the fifties, was actually hovering around 30. Neither of us was prepared for it and because our driver dropped us off at the wrong complex, we had to walk a fare amount to get home. We got home, cuddled, and crashed out.

However, someone had, because she decided to listen to a football game during the meeting, earned herself a spanking. I followed up on my promise to give her a long hand spanking, and gave her the choice of having it end with my belt or her hairbrush². She chose the belt, and after several minutes of hand spanking over her panties, and her bare bottom, I gave her 17strokes as she lay over my lap. Man, her bottom was warm after all that. I’m still not sure how she felt about it all, I think she wasn’t entirely sure either, but she did say she didn’t hate it. I know she’s enjoyed hand spankings before, and quite honestly I’m still pretty inexperienced, so we’re doing a lot of figuring out together. Thank goodness, cuz there’s no one I’d rather figure it out with.

Sunday was mostly spent hanging around, cuddling, and just being with each other. We did run out at one point to retrieve a piece of recording equipment, so TM and her sister could work on a project, and pick up groceries, but it was a pretty relaxing day.

TM’s not the only one who earned herself a spanking. Her sister was over Monday, and was exhibiting the classic definition of Squirrel which caused me to get a bit snarky with her. Though, I would like to point out I was not the only one, and she didn’t even notice. Clearly that mattered not, because that evening I found myself being stripped out of my turtle neck, skirt and tights and going over TM’s lap for my own hand spanking. Not like my panties were covering that much, but hse took them down anyway and finished warming my bottom. mmm.

She had class Tuesday morning which meant that i had time to do more work on my stupid final paper for one of my classes. After that, we spent some time with friends of hers visiting from out of town, and I found out that the voice command in a Dodge Durando actually responds to me.

I’ll wrap up the rest of the week in another post, but you have getting lost, a blended holiday with a blended family, leaving Thanksgiving hungry, black Friday shopping, and me, helping to cook a turkey, to look forward to.