Be envious

Thanks to the power of Amazon, I just finished my Christmas shopping. I'm done, it is all being wrapped by them and everyone should have their presents by next week. (Yes I know Amazon is driving out the little independent stores, but honestly if I had to go to a bunch of stores and buy each thing for each person individually and wrap it myself and then box it and take it to the post office I'd kill someone. Plus I'd still have shopped for this stuff at Target or Fred Meyer so I'd still be crushing the little independent stores.)

Comfort food

I'm well aware that one should not self-medicate with food, but after today I really wanted something warm and comforting for dinner so I'm making beef stew and cheddar mashed potatoes.

During lunch time they did a thing up in the IT office (where my friend worked) and I went up at the recommendation of my biggest boss. It was sad and I teared up a little bit. I hate crying in public. (Really I hate crying, but to do it in front of other people makes me crankier.) I was looking at some pictures her husband had sent to one of my coworkers before and they looked so happy and the baby is so cute. It is kind of surreal. I did learn something interesting though... I knew my biggest boss had gone to boarding school, I just hadn't realized he had been to boarding school much of his life and more importantly why he went to boarding school. His mother died due to childbirth, his childbirth. He was telling Isa how it is rather traumatic and you feel guilty all the time. I can't even begin to imagine it.

Sad news all over my office

In other sad news at my employer, the son of one of our accounting techs was shot and killed in LA on Wednesday. She is so sweet and lovely and wonderful and I feel so sad for her. How awful that must be.

Speechless

Someone I knew died today. From complications post child birth. Who dies that way anymore? All I can think about is her brand new baby who is a week old today, the day his mom died and how her husband must be in such a terrible state. I went to her shower on the Friday before Thanksgiving and although she was freaked out, she was excited.

Yay no work today!

Except that I am at work so that is kind of defeating. :) But I'll go home in a few minutes. I'm just waiting on someone who needs my assistance to come in so I can go over his out of country benefits. I think I'm actually going to go over to IHOP and have some breakfast and then go to the grocery store and then go home where I'll hunker down in jammie bottoms and sweater and fuzzy socks. I also want to look for a pattern for a crocheted hat. :)

Whoa! I lucked out!

I was just reading a scrolling bar along the bottom of the TV and apparently SeaTac Airport is not accepting planes in right now. This could explain the delay in trying to fly in earlier today and apparently I'm lucky that I got to come home today. :)

Someone famous?

I was on the plane and in the next row were two very cute kids and their mom. The little girl was 5 and three quarters (as she told me) and very cute. She and I chatted periodically through the flight. We talked about pelicans and the movie Finding Nemo and her brother and where she was on vacation and where she is going in December. She was very chatty. When we were getting off the plane I helped her mom carry down a big bag since the boy had fallen asleep and the mom needed to carry him. At the baggage claim they were met by a guy from a car service. Now I'm totally curious as to whether or not they were someone famous. :)

It is snowing!

Can you believe it?!

I just got back from sunny, warm, California to SNOW. IN November! That doesn't happen.

I arrived in California Tuesday night. We stopped at El Pollo Loco which I love and we don't have in Seattle and then went to Michelle's. It was kind of late when we got in so I think we just watched a little TV and went to bed.

Wednesday we went to brunch. I love brunch! :) We also went to the grocery store and did a few other things I think. I can't remember because clearly I'm old and my mind is going. Mmm... we did eat dinner at Wood Ranch which is a bbq/steak place. I LOVE BBQ/steak places. It was on my list of places to eat. :)

Thursday was Thanksgiving. We slept in and went over to her mom's for dinner. That was nice although a lot of people which usually makes me a bit uncomfortable. This time there were people not usually there too so that added on to it. We spent the evening planning our Friday assault. We ended up with a lot of stores to hit and the need to be up and out and to our destination by 5:00. Surprisingly a lot of our usual shopping spots were not on this year's list. We said no to Kohl's, and KMart. Michelle boycotts Sears and Mervyns so both of them were off the list. We are not masochists so Best Buy was not happening either. I did, however, put in a request to go to Circuit City and JC Penney's so I could get the snow globe and Grey's Anatomy Season 1 on DVD for cheap for my mom.

Friday the alarm went off early EARLY! We were out the door before 5:00 and I was in line at Circuit City by 4:50. Unfortunately, this Circuit City is only capable of holding 150 people so they could only let in a few at a time. By 5:45, I gave up and we headed to Target. The shopping continued and suddenly it was 10:00 AM and we were done. We had been everywhere we wanted to go, including a second Circuit City (which was huge but didn't have any Grey's Anatomy Season 1 left, hello Amazon.) and we were done by 10:00. That's awesome. We also discovered that rather than go south and drive all over, we could've gone north to one big shopping plaza that has almost all the places we wanted to go. Oh well. We know for next time. :) We got back and wrapped presents and then she had more places to shop so I stayed back and took a nap. Naps are lovely and awesome and I love them.

Saturday we went to the movies and saw the one with Will Ferrell. I can't think of the name of it right now and I don't feel like looking it up. :) It was good, although I was a bit sleepy, so somewhere through the middle I felt like I was dozing off. I did enjoy it, though, and liked how it ended. I had been wondering where it would go and I'm glad it went where it did. We also decorated gingerbread houses. This is an activity I will never feel the need to repeat. It was not fun. (Although royal icing is so yummy, I think I made myself sick eating it. :)

Sunday we had brunch. We spent most of the day doing our craft for this year, glass etching. I had a good time with it. It took a lot of work and initially I thought it was far more fidgety than I like a craft to be, but once I got the rhythm down I really liked it. I liked my results. I did a bunch of ornaments for my girls and 4 cups. We also saw Happy Feet. It went somewhere I didn't expect. I liked most of it, but in as much as I wouldn't want to watch a children's movie where the virtues of war were extolled I got a bit peeved by what I considered to be rather liberal propaganda seemingly elbowed in. And I say this as a pretty liberal person.

This morning I was up and out at the butt crack of dawn and to the airport early early early. All in all it was a great trip! I got to relax and sleep late and read. I also watched a bunch of episodes of The Office. I think I may be converted. It is funny as hell. On the one hand I want Jim and Pam to get together, on the other I like the unrequitedness of it. :)

Update from Michelle

I dropped off Joanne at the airport about an hour ago. She is on her way home. Anyone who has been illegally squatting in her apartment better get out now.

A gal can't catch a break.

So I know I've mentioned that I have a crush on V's roommate. He is cute and a volunteer and kind and the kinds of things I'm looking for in a person. Today V was at home and he heard the roommate coming in and out and V thought the roommate was just bringing stuff in from his shopping trip to Wal-Mart. Apparently the roommate was moving his stuff out. He is driving back to his home state today. V had no idea any of this was going on although he finds it more funny than annoying. I didn't realize this but apparently he doesn't need the guy's rent and just likes having a roommate for company. So now I'm back to the drawing board for a new crush. Anyone care to apply? :)

Busy living life

Holy crap what a week this has been. At work I've been busy as hell because it is open enrollment and our student worker is shite. (Soon to be former student worker as he will not be rejoining us next quarter thank goodness!) We actually had to get in a temp to do all the filing I would normally have had student worker do. However.... However (and this is very exciting for me) I got all the first round of data entry into access done yesterday. That's HUGE. I stayed about an hour late to make sure it got done because I'm going on vacay next week! (Yay vacay!)

Monday I feel like I didn't do anything except grocery shop and cook dinner. It was the only night I was poised to get into bed before midnight.

Tuesday I thought I was going to go to an event at the campus. The guy from PostSecret would be there giving a talk and having the travelling display up. Apparently I am too dumb sometimes to write down the proper date because it actually happened on Monday. So I went out with Big R instead and we played darts and watched scaryokey. V joined us partway through the evening to play darts.

Wednesday I went to dinner with Stephen. We sat and talked until midnight, I think. It was good.

Thursday was scouts and then I had a focus group thing later that night. That ended at 10:00 and so I didn't get home until almost 11:00. The focus group was fun and I got money out of going so that was cool. I'm going to register at their website to potentially be able to do another one. :) (Random money is GOOD!)

Last night I went to a concert with Stephen. We saw the Decemberists play. I liked them. I thought they were really good. We got done early like 10:30ish but I ended up staying up until 1:00. (Finally I gave up and went to bed because I was sitting on the sofa falling asleep but it was silly that I was staying up).

Politics

Ugh. GS politics are pissing me off. We need to have a cookie manager for the entire service unit. Nobody has said they are willing and able to do it. Without one, we cannot sell cookies this year. Without selling cookies, we can run no other fund raisers. My answer to that is fine, we won't sell this year and maybe next year one of the 30+ adults who belong to our service unit will figure out the importance. Apparently according to the council office this is not okay. We're the largest SU in the council. At first I couldn't figure out why we couldn't not sell cookies, but then it was explained to me in terms I could understand. If they were to lose our revenue this would be very bad. (We serve like 400 kids and if each of them sold an average of 50 boxes of cookies... you do the math since we only get 45 cents on a $4.00 box of cookies). Although they keep pushing me on the basis of 'don't punish the kids for their parents'. (Oh please. Like the girls LOVE to sell cookies?! The little ones might.) I understand the concept of not punishing the girls for the parents, but at the same time finding an outsider to do it for them just reinforces the leaders' and parents' bad behavior of not volunteering for stuff. And when next year comes around and nobody volunteers will they find us a person again? Pretty soon it becomes expected. 'We don't have to volunteer because someone else will do it for us.' This whole piece is just disgusting me.

So many pits!

The other day at work a very cute little old man who I had been helping with his retirement paperwork (he has retired) came in for some final signatures from me to finish the process. I had actually called for him to get the papers and then called back to get the right papers when the first ones were wrong. English was not his first language. He was so nice and as a thank you he brought me an orange and a persimmon! That was so cool, yet weird. I ate the orange for breakfast this morning and it had so many seeds that I was kind of surprised. There were about 3 per segment. I am slightly afraid of the persimmon because I did a wikipedia search and discovered that when they are good they are good but when bad, very very bad.

I was cooking dinner tonight and discovered that I'm out of water chestnuts. I hate it when that happens - I usually buy several cans at once so I don't have to. I also thought I had purchased more sauce packets than I found in the drawer. I only had hot & spicy. I should go back to menu planning and only shop once a week. I feel like I spent less money when I did that.

I apparently am doomed to have a dog living across the hall from me forever. One of the 3 college girls that lived across the hall moved out and another one moved in. The new one has a dog. (I feel compelled to share with you that when Michelle, her sister, our friend Amynorbie and I all lived together in Little Beirut the toothless man and the other inbreeders would refer to us as "the college girls in the back.") She claims that new little dog does not bark, but we shall see.

Tonight I think I shall bake cupcakes and muffins. Or maybe cookies and scones. Or maybe muffins and cookies. I can't decide. BUT I do have fun star shaped cupcake foil wrappers that I shall use. :)

Oops!

I had a Service Unit meeting today. Unfortunately only 1 person showed up. Sigh. This is getting ridiculous. (Not that Thursday was any better since nobody would show to that one either.) I had picked up some Starbucks coffee and trays of their cranberry something bars and gingerbread loaf. But the one woman that did show up had a lot to chat about so we actually ended up meeting for an hour and a half. We did get a lot of dates decided upon so that's good. We still don't have a service unit cookie manager so that's bad. After the meeting I was waiting on my ride and there was this terrible loud beep happening. Just one note really not a beeping. It was AWFUL. We thought it was an alarm in the building. As we pulled away, the noise kept with us. It turned out that something in my pocket was making that noise. How embarrassing. :)

I watched Anne of Green Gables last night and finished it today. It is so sweet! I love it. I wish Megan Follows had done more with her acting career than just this movie and at least one turn on Law & Order.

Theoretically I'm writing for Nanowrimo this month. In reality, it isn't going so well. I've never actually finished one but I like the thought that I am accomplishing something. :) The former WC found me on there and teased me the other day for not having submitted a word count yet. Since the word count is currently zero it would be hard to submit one. :)

More exhausting than work.

I had today off due to Veteran's Day. One advantage of the university is that we get a lot of random days off. Isa and I took her dog to the vet this morning and picked the dog up this afternoon. Isa doesn't know how to drive so I drove her in the flexcar. All was fine in the morning. We got to the vet and and home in 2 hours which was the time I allotted. At 2:00 we went to pick up the dog. We made the stupid mistake of going up to the evil empire to visit Big R. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time. It took us less than 10 minutes to get from Kirkland to Bellevue (Redmond?). We only stayed about 10 minutes which left us 50 minutes to get back to Seattle. Since it only took 30 minutes to get to Kirkland, I wasn't worried. An hour and a half later we were still stuck in traffic and hadn't even reached the bridge. I had to call and extend the flexcar but couldn't because there was someone scheduled to use it. Luckily they managed to rearrange that other person so we could extend, although the worst part was, I ended up pulling the car into the lot about 5 minutes later than I was supposed to return the car! Crazy.

I also tried donating blood today. I'm still too iron deficient. Sigh. I'll try again in a couple of weeks maybe. They keep calling me. Apparently there is a need for A- blood.

I've had the wickedest headache ever today. I kind of can't wait to go to bed and I'm hoping it will make my headache to go away.

Tomorrow morning I have a meeting at 9:00. I have to leave at about 7:30 in the morning to get there and be ready on time. This will be 2 mornings of my weekend that I got up and out before I usually do for work. Crikey.

Boys are dumb and other tales

So Moral Turpitude IM'd me last night and was talking about a recent trip to a bar. He seemed semi proud of the fact that he wore a shirt that said "Ass is the new vagina." I pointed out the classyness of the comment and then asked how many gay men hit on him. He then claimed he doesn't look gay and I had to point out that really there is no such thing as looking gay. But today I was thinking about the shirt again and I can't help but wonder what on earth he was hoping to accomplish. Like some girl is going to walk right up to him and be so impressed with his wittyness that she has to have him? It doesn't make any sense to me.

I voted today did you? :) AND I got to do an exit poll when I came out of the voting area. How cool is that? Democracy at its finest people. I love it! I think in a few years (maybe next year) King County is going to go to only mail in ballots. While I understand the convenience of it, I kind of like the comraderie of the polling place. The same gay guy has been the guy in charge of the volunteers at the polls every time I've gone to vote. That's kind of cool to me. (Although I swear this year's volunteers may have been retarded. They were a little (lot) slow and not smart.)

Ooh this is all exciting... I got called and surveyed and then invited to a focus group. They'll pay $100. Very nice and exciting. I love random extra money.

Book reviews

(I sometimes wonder if there should be a catagory in the Super Fantastic Readng Group for book reviews for readers beyond the current book. But I digress)

I finished off 4 books in the past couple of weeks.

1 - Girl in the Tangerine Scarf. I loved this book. I thought it was very well written and engaging. I learned a lot about a subject I knew nothing about (devout Muslim religion). Even though I am not at all religious I could definitely feel a kinship with the main character. There's that feeling when you are expected to live or be a certain way and you aren't. That's a hard life to live. In her case it was religious based, in my case it was because I was the "good" one and the "smart" one. The only complaint I had was the back of the book made it seem like they left the small town after her friend's sister died and that was the reason she was afraid to go back to that town, when really it was much more complicated than that. All in all a GREAT book and I can't wait to read more by the author. (Although this is her first book so it could be awhile)

2 - Second Draft of My Life. This one was another one I really enjoyed. I think because the main character was a teacher who suffered through her first year of teaching. I could really relate to just how hard and frustrating that is. The only thing I didn't like was the way her relationship resolved quickly. It was like a 6 months later kind of thing or something. There was little build up that made you think that was possible. This was also by the same author that did The Answer is Yes which I loved.

3 - Buddha Baby. (I think I was checking out the international chick lit section at the library) I liked this one too. It was interesting and I think I especially enjoyed the delving into her family's personal life and history. I come from a long line of people who don't share information so I could understand her desire to know where she comes from but being stymied by her family's reluctance to talk about the past.

4 - A Wedding in December. I did not like this book. I did not finish this book. I'm not even linking to it because I don't want you to read it either. :)

Discoveries!

I discovered a number of things this weekend.

1 - I do not have enough panties to go two weeks without ending up in ones I hate. (I skipped doing laundry last weekend because of so much other stuff going on and I was too lazy during the week to get my ass down to the laundry room.) I did, however fold all my clean clothes and put them all away. That's the first time in a long time. I've been very lazy about that lately and just picked clothes out of the basket every day. I also have to figure out a better sweater system. Currently they are just kind of haphazardly strewn in my closet up high on the shelf but if I pull one, the whole stack falls on my head. I hate that.

2 - Rigby does not like to take her medicine. She has two meds to take that are both liquid form. She takes one morning and night and one only in the AM. Every time I shoot the medicine into her mouth she shakes her head with her mouth open and I end up wearing a good 1/2 of it. Brat. It is her own fault she has to take them.

3 - I hope my period is starting. Otherwise I cannot figure out why on earth I was tearing up watching several episodes of MTV's True Life. The wedding one... I cried when the gay couple had problems with their parents. (Ok I just looked at the list of episodes I watched and I think I must've cried twice during that one epi because I know the others wouldn't have made me do it...) :)

4 - We've got a new book discussion going on at the Super Fantastic Reading Group. Latest book is an Anita Shreve. Check it out!

Saturday adventure!

(Ok unrelated but how sad is it that I'm trying to decide between a show about the KKK on the history channel and Hollywood's 20 horrifying murders on E!?) (I had to choose the E! show. The KKK are just too creepy.)

Big R & I went to the Seattle Asian Art Museum today. The first Saturday and Thursday of the month are free days so that was nice. (Although entrance fee is just $5 so that isn't too big a crisis). The current exhibit is the many faces of Buddha. It was really rather cool. Some of the sculptures we were looking at were from the 3rd and 4th century. How amazing is that to think that some of these intricate sculptures survived almost 2000 years! It was just so cool.

After that we went walking in Volunteer Park. It was raining a lot. We went into the greenhouse which was beautiful. The first room is mostly orchids. I don't know what kind of flowers the 2nd room contained, but the smell was beautiful. And then we checked out the cacti and succulents and finally bromeliads in the 4th room. We also go to walk up the stairs in the water tower. The views all around were very cool. Although it was rather gray outside. All in all it was a really fun day!

Rigby is lucky!

Do you know those little rubber tips that come with shelving units that protect the shelves? She apparently ate one. It plugged her up. She was severely dehydrated. They rehydrated her and x-rayed her and while she was in my lap on a towel she pooped and out popped the little rubber tip. It was still fully shaped. So they x-rayed her a second time and luckily that was all she ate that she shouldn't have and she won't need emergency surgery to unblock her colon. Poor girl. She is spending the day at the vet's office for observation and I'll pick her up after work. How did she know I just got a raise at work??

Had a bad day today...

(Imagine it sung by that Fuel guy)

So far today (and keep in mind it is 9:41 AM) Rigby is very sick. I can't get her in to see the vet until tomorrow. I'm worried about her.

I broke a shoelace on my work danskos. The bookstore only sold black athletic shoe laces in 9 miles long so now I look like a reject from the 80's with my black work shoes and huge black athletic shoe laces. Also I'm wearing white slouchy socks because apparently all my black trouser socks have been eaten by the sock basket.

Now I get to go spend an hour in a meeting with people who will probably be upset about open enrollment stuff. I'm excited about that let me tell you.

De-nied

I went to donate blood yesterday and after undergoing rigorous testing, (ok finger pricking and taking the big whopping drop of blood) my blood didn't sink in that tube of green water. So she gathered up a bunch more and took it and spun it and discovered what I already knew... my hematocrit (iron) was only 34. Strangely I already knew this because at 4:05 my doctor's office called and told me that it was low but for some reason it didn't register in my head at all that this could impede my blood donation. I was sad. I was especially sad since they had called because they needed more blood of my type.

I got paid yesterday which is ever so exciting so I went grocery shopping as I had no food. I spent $50 and bought no food that had any nutritional value at all. Now I will say that gluten-free food is expensive, but honestly this was appalling. I looked like a frat guy except I had no beer. Mmmm... but I do now have cake and icing and cookies and corn chips. :)

This week's vegetable attempt is green snap peas. I'm going to try them fresh with maybe a little bit of ranch and hope that goes well. I really feel like I should like them. Unlike broccoli or brussel sprouts which I feel nobody should like. :)

The food network challenges are so fucking amazing. I'm watching one tonight is having the competitors make candy castles. It is phenomenal. The chocolate castle which is all dark and brooding is my favorite by far. I do wonder what happens to all the different end pieces.

I've had Flight Plan sitting on my table for a whole week. I don't think I'm going to end up watching it. Up next, though, is Anne of Green Gables. I love that movie.