Whining

Please forgive this moment of whining but seriously, can't a girl catch a break? With every good thing lately there's a bad or icky thing. Today's good thing - I leave for CA in the morning to do a mad dash trip down to Michelle's baby shower. Today's bad thing - I've caught a cold. I suppose it is better than the head lice I could've caught at encampment, but I am miserable and I at this moment I want to crawl under my desk and sleep sleep sleep.

Slippery when wet

Subtitled - Can't a gal catch a break?

So this morning I go to the bathroom at like 2 AM. I flush the toilet like a normal person and am alarmed to discover that the toilet will not stop flushing. Now for normal home toilets that isn't an issue. Y'all just jiggle the handle or take the tank off and futz with the little ball or whatever. I don't have one of those toilets. I have a flushometer. These are the types of toilets you usually see in commercial places like your office, or the mall or rest stops on the highway. No tank. And apparently no place to shut off the water. (I discovered this at 2:00 AM because I was all anxious about what I did to cause this so I did a bunch of googling until I found what I was looking for.) I also spent a lot of time jiggling the handle and/or speaking to it to tell it to stop flushing and/or making deals with the unknown person in charge of good things happening once in a while to make it stop. Finally I fell asleep. At 5:00 I woke up again. I tried to go back to sleep but I had a lot of anxiety over this toilet thing. I don't know why I'm so paranoid, but anytime anything breaks in my apartment I freak out. I want to fix it myself.

So I wait awhile and finally put a call in to my manager at about 9:15 this morning. He's peeved with me because I should've called sooner. He lives in my building. I've called before at 8:00 and it seemed like I had woken him up so I am never sure when is the appropriate time to call. So he's out of the building but will be back in about an hour. Two hours later he comes and fixes the toilet. According to the manager about 2 - 3 toilets break any time he shuts off the water to the whole building. He had already fixed 3 other toilets the day before. It takes him about 15 minutes. The thing doesn't fit quite right but he can't figure out why it doesn't and just leaves it. Now my toilet makes a weird rather loud sound whenever I flush but whatever, I can flush and that's all that really matters to me.

In other things that occurred...

1 - At about 5 I had to pee. So I went and then I went back into my bedroom and shut the door. I never shut the bedroom door all the way because the door knob has issues and won't turn so that the tumbler (is that the right part?) gets sucked in. I didn't pay attention and shut the door all the way. Fuck. Now I'm panicking about being stuck in the bedroom and the chain is on the front door and my cell and my home phone are in the living room anyway. Finally I keep turning the knob until the knob almost falls off and then the tumbler turns.

2 - I must've peed about 8 times this morning. All the running water was driving me nuts.

3 - Whilst in the bathroom mopping up water (at some point the toilet leaked quite a bit of water onto the floor from a spot on the back) I had shut the bathroom door because otherwise I was getting ferretous help. That's never helpful you know... So I had noticed a random little screw in the stuff on the ground but didn't think where it came from. I went to pull open the bathroom door and the knob came off in my hand. The screw was to the door knob. I found it and put it back on but since the bathroom door doesn't shut all the way anyway (up in the upper left corner it just jams shut because the doorway isn't square anymore) it wasn't as big a concern.

4 - I had been using a sponge to mop up water behind the toilet. So I had a weird percarious balancing thing going on around the toilet but my feet were slipping because damn wet linoleum is slippery and I had been wringing the sponge out in the toilet. I repositioned myself to mop up more water and without thinking I set the sponge in the toilet bowl. And I didn't even notice it get sucked down but when I went to grab it, it was gone and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where it went. I spent like 2 minutes trying to think before it dawned on me where it was.

All in all I have 3 good things about this whole debacle:
1 - Except the tub, my bathroom is clean and the floor recently mopped. ;)
2 - I had my favorite tacos for lunch today because at 11:40 when I was walking to work I walked by them and went in.
3 - I probably won't need this fixed for at least 15 years. (Of course I'll still be in the apartment by then but whatever.)

Put the wild in wild animals...

I forgot to mention the coolest thing about camping. I saw 4 cute little garter snakes. Three of them were in the field where we play games so I think perhaps our thumping around must've rousted them. But even cooler...

I had been sitting at the fire circle putting out the fire (after our unprecedented 2nd smore. :) ) and a group of kids came out on a "bat hunt." They wanted to see bats. So they were standing around the fire circle with a leader and they kept seeing maybe 1. Once the fire was almost entirely out (the coals were gone but I could tell the logs were still hot) I got up to go and walked back towards my cabin. I was walking on this boardwalk when something dove by my head. I stood and looked around and realized there were bats everywhere. There were a good 10 - 15 playing over the lake right where I was and swooping and diving. It was awesome. I went back to where the kids were and brought them back to the bats. We stood there for a good 1/2 hour watching the bats swoop and fly and zig and zag. It was awesome.

Camping Sweatshirt

I have a green sweatshirt from college that I love. I still wear it even though it is falling apart and now after this weekend, it stinks. Well, I guess that would depend on your definition of stinks. :) I just pulled it out of the dryer and apparently rather than washing out the smoke smell from campfire, it is now thoroughly entrenched in the sweatshirt.

The encampment weekend was very fun. I had a really good time. It was nice to be the director without the weight of my own troop there. Although on Friday I felt very restless because I couldn't figure out what to do with myself. Saturday, though, I was zooming all over the place. And I liked the fact I could focus on what I needed to for the encampment without obsessing what the girls were doing.

We had s'mores on Saturday night and usually we only allow 1 s'more per girl, but I had so much supplies I let them get an unprecedented 2nd smore. I also let them toast their own marshmallows which we usually don't allow them to do. (Usually there are so many kids that that project is a nightmare. We have the grown ups toast and make the s'mores and the kids just receive them. They were really cute about it. I had my 4 toasting sticks and we borrowed a toasting stick from someone else and let 5 girls at a time do their toasting. We only had about 38 girls total. It was a very small encampment.

I went to catch the ferry to come back to Seattle and by the time I got there, the one was full and the next wasn't until 3:00. It was 12:20 in the afternoon. I flipped around and took the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. That took me only about an hour and a half so I didn't lose a lot of time by not taking the ferry. (The ferry is 1 hour). But the traffic sucked and I was so tired that I was definitely struggling with staying awake.

All in all, I had a good time. It was a nice weekend and there were some relaxing moments. (Plus I got to watch The Office on my iPod... :D )

Just for KTP

Here's a pic of several geoducks.

Dig a duck... Dig a duck... Dig a geoduck...

Last night after I studied and while I was watching Top Chef, I googled camp songs. In the basement of my apartment in my storage unit is a computer that has every camp song I know on it. Unfortunately said computer is 12 years old, in the basement of my apartment building and buried in the back so it isn't easily accessible. So I googled camp songs to try to remember the ones I've known. I know a lot of camp songs and I was sad to see on some of the lists there were a lot I didn't know and the ones I could remember pieces of weren't there. (Michelle, I suspect all the verses of Mushroom Madness may be lost forever I tried googling even just a phrase and couldn't find it.) The other part of the problem, for the ones I recognized the words of, I couldn't for the life of me find the tune in my head. Most camp songs have that ubiquitous tune that's sort of like Turkey in the Straw combined with something else, but sometimes the words don't fit with that. There were several songs that I went, Oh I love this song but then for the life of me couldn't come up with just the right tune. I learned the Geoduck song at the camp I volunteered for earlier in May and I think it is really fun, but have not a clue how the tune goes. Ooh, maybe I should add the words to my list anyway because maybe someone else knows the tune. Good thought, me. :)

For Michelle because if she remembers this one she'll remember just how awful it was...

Stay on the sunnyside
Only on the sunnyside
Stay on the sunnyside of life
Nah nah nah nah nah nah
You'll feel no pain as I drive you all insane
Stay on the sunnyside of life

Knock knock
Who's there
Ehter
Ether who?
Ether bunny!
Yay!

There is more but I'll let it stop there. :)

Creepy

There was a woman just in my office who had the creepiest necklace on it. I think it was coral with a heart attached but to my overactive imagination it looked like a person who was all blobby with a heart. I'll try to come up with an artist rendering.

My feet are hot

I should've worn sandals today.

How Rude!

I was just bitching to Michelle that people have a high tendency to stand outside my office and either talk on their cellphones or talk to each other, oblivious to my presence. It drives me bananas and I'm not sure why people do it. They tend not to do it outside my boss's office. It honestly makes me want to push them down the stairs. Or at the very least contribute to their conversation. So just so you can understand pictorally what it is like outside my office here is a quality picture drawn by yours truly that shows the awesomeness that is my office and how easy it would be for me to dash out my open office door and do a little shove... :) (Actually this picture should be flipped. When facing the offices, I'm on the right and she's on the left.)


It is more like this. :) Also I feel compelled to say that the ugly artwork is almost spot on. It is blue circles on a white background.

Summer Goals

Y'all know how I periodically do goals. I don't think I'm currently rocking any so here are the ones for summer.

1 - Drink at least 1 of my large (32 oz) Baja Fresh cups of water a day. I have been getting headaches and the last time dehydration was the culprit. We shall test this theory. I think it may also be related to my nose thing. I am not stuffy like allergies but my nose is very very dry.

2 - I have to clean the apartment from top to bottom. My sister is visiting in July with her kid.

3 - Yet another CEBS test and then sign up for a new one. (OK that's not really so much a goal as something that will happen.)

4 - I want to go to the following places:
The Zoo
EMP (but only because the Disney exhibit is there. Otherwise I wouldn't bother with it)
I would also LOVE to go to the Point Defiance Zoo but this one I'd need to coax someone into taking me down to because it is in Tacoma and the length of the bus trip is prohibitive (2 hrs one way)
The Center for Wooden Boats (I think that one is on my list every year)

5 - I have to start going to the gym and doing stair climbing. I want to do the stair climb in March and I want to be able to do it without needing EMT assistance. I may start a whole other blog on this. I may not.

I think that's enough for now. :)

Drool!

Aha! Thanks to the power of the google I have discovered that people drool when they're sleeping with their mouths open. I never used to sleep that way but this new pillow is causing it perhaps? I'm not sure. This warrants more study.

83 Posts away

With this post I am now 83 posts away from 2,000. I should do something special for that. I don't know what though.

Unrelated there is a giant fly in my office and it is annoying me a lot.

Also unrelated. I was sitting on the floor of my office stuffing retirement plan enrollment kits into a drawer when I thought of the phrase 'dinkin flicka' from The Office. It cracked me up because it was so random.

I like it...

When a Christian band gets lured into the mainstream world of secular music (non-secular? I can never remember which is which). I don't know it makes me giggle to think that the devil is all sorts of busy. :)

Bloodwatch

Wish me luck! I'm off to donate blood again today. Well at 7:15 Seattle time so think magic 38 thoughts at 7:15 Seattle time which would be 7:15 CA time and 8:15 AZ time and 9:15 for those of you in the middle east. I've been dutifully taking a damn multivitamin for several weeks now. I am full of hope!

Random thought

There's an employee here who makes me want to slash my wrists before she comes into my office so I don't have to deal with her. She's been in twice today to see me. I should be dead now. :)

I love it!

Little kid teeth. They are so cute! Before their grown up ones come in. (I got a catalog with little girls on the front cover smiling and their teeny tiny little kid teeth are just so so cute.)

Unrelated but if I were to ever get married, I think a bride and groom rubber duckie would be cute on top. (Although bride & groom devil ducks would be even better!)

Also. I saw Pirates of the Caribbean#3 this weekend. On the one hand, I liked it. It was fun and I watched it on the big screen which is always fun. Less fun, I thought I loved the seats at the Cinerama but I don't think I do. It reclined a bit too much and I was uncomfortable. But I did like the movie, although I felt the story got a bit rambling part way through. I was having a hard time figuring out who was scamming who. I also kind of felt like things were set up that didn't follow through. Like I figured it would mean something later and didn't. Or maybe it did and I just didn't get it. I also want to say... 'Ha! George Lucas... that's how you write a kickass female character and have her stay that way.' Also, if you haven't seen the movie stay through the credits, you know how this series does that. And I will say that it was the bit after the credits that made me realize how hot Orlando Bloom really is. He was made to be a pirate.

Also. I've started using one of those memory foam pillows in the funny shape. I think it makes me drool more. I keep waking up with this mass quantity of drool. I NEVER used to drool. I may have to google this.

Yay another awesome day!

Another great day of nothing to do! How awesome is that? I studied for my test for a little while this morning while I did my laundry but that's about it for projects to accomplish today. I did some dishes. I made some fantastic FANTASTIC enchiladas and have chicken stock reducing on the stove. I had chocolate chip pancakes and sausage for breakfast.

Hee. I watched Beverly Hills 90210 this evening and it was the premiere episode and Brandon was asking where to take a girl on a date and Andrea suggested Moonshadows. That made me laugh because whenever I used to drive past it in Malibu I would always think it was a strip club. I know it isn't but something about it always reminded me of one.

Decadent

This weekend for the first time in a long time I have nothing to do. It is so exciting. This morning I had to take Tess for her monthly shot and now I'm all done for the whole weekend. This morning I am having pancakes and sausages. How yummy is that? :D I woke up starving too because last night I had a migraine and when I tried to eat it just made me more nauseus. That was not awesome. I think this afternoon I'm going to Cinerama to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I am excited about that too. :D

Inappropriate thoughts whilst watching an elementary graduation

1 - Where do all the white kids go to school? Of the 35 kids who were graduating, only 1 was white. Since we do choice schools not neighborhood schools shouldn't there be more diversity? I was one of about 7 white people in the whole room. Two were teachers and 4 were with the 1 white kid.

2 - Wow some of these girls are developing young. Seriously.... these kids were 5th graders. That's 11. Some of these girls looked to be teenagers.

3 - While listening to the music teacher encourage the crowd to get riled up and cheer for the kids... I'm white, our people don't do that.

4 - Isn't there supposed to be a separation of church and state? While listening to the two songs the kids sang that seemed to be a bit on the praise G-d side of things. They were good songs, though, and the kids sang them well.

5 - It's just 5th grade graduation. Not high school. Not college.

All in all, though, I had a good time. I'm glad I went. I really enjoyed seeing the girls graduate and one even gave a little speech. They were rather excited to see me there too. :)

IE vs Firefox & Blogger

So I may or may not have revealed that recently I pulled IE 7 back off the computer. I hated it and it was logjamming the computer so I was done with it.

When I did that, though, a mysterious thing happened. Blogger stopped working in IE. The links wouldn't click. So at home I started using firefox if I knew I wanted to use blogger. Periodically I'd go back to IE to try it out and then things got weirder. Posts I would make at home using firefox wouldn't show up but posts that I did at work using IE would. So there'd be gaps in posts. (Using the home IE. The work IE had no issues like that even though I'm still using IE6 at work too.). It was altogether weird.

The point being that last night when I went online and checked out my blog using firefox I discovered the new masthead is about an inch too long. But when I look at it using IE it is just fine. That annoys me and could explain why when I did the first layout change using firefox it didn't seem like it was too short but when I looked at it on IE I could see that it was. But this means that when I change the masthead at home I'm always going to be changing it just wrong and since I can't use IE at home with blogger. Grr...

Something new to obsess about

I've never sent out an evite. I know I know. So I sent out my first one today. Apparently I'm now going to obsessively check my evite to see who has rsvp'd for the party for my Service Unit. (I do have the option to email the responses to me turned on, but like a little thing like that will stop me.) :)

I will apparently also feel sad when people RSVP no.

Fair Warning

I will continue to futz with the blog template. :) Especially now that I've realized that I get rather tunnel visioned and can mess with all the templates and still put in my own header. :) I like what I've done for now, but when I go home I may change. I have a couple other photos I've taken that may make good headers.

Littlehands

Littlehands has a new job. I'm glad for her. She'll be leaving well I guess in about 2 weeks but I don't know that for sure. It does make me wonder, though, if we'll still be friends when she leaves. We do hang out outside work and talk about other stuff besides work stuff, but I think slowly we've been hanging out together less and less. The sad part, I'm not 100% certain I'll be sad if we don't hang out when she leaves to go to her new job. Sigh. I hate trying to make friends as an old person. This leaves me with 1 Seattle friend again.

The Awesome

Awesome thing 1
We've begun my favorite time of year at the U. Summer. I normally loathe summer in principle because I don't like to be hot, but summer at the U is awesome. Firstly, we get to wear jeans every day. I LOVE jeans every day! We also start summer hours next weekend. It used to be that we rotated schedules and one of us worked until 4:30 and the other two left at 2:00. My boss's boss instituted a new summer schedule for the whole campus. It closes down at 3:00. I'm not sure if it is better or worse than the other schedule. On the one hand, we get to leave EVERY Friday at 3. On the other it isn't 2. :)

Awesome thing 2
I had a chocolate chip turnover from my bakery this morning. I heated it up in the microwave and it was perfect. Perfect I say! I have an orange poppyseed thing for breakfast tomorrow. Yay!

Awesome thing 3
I had a good horoscope this morning: Quickie: There is sweet romance at work in your life now, and it's encouraging you to smile. Extended: There are a lot of competing forces at work in your day, which could create some odd illusions and add up to a very unpredictable twenty-four hours. There is some sweet romance at work in your life now, and it is giving you all the encouragement you need to keep thinking positive and hoping for the best. Keep the lines of communication open with the people you want to get to know better. If you are ready for more, then let them know.

Awesome thing 4
I'm a great aunt. (Or a potential felon, you can decide) My nephew's birthday present is wrapped and ready to ship off. What did I get him... Rum. Two bottles of rum. Currently he is under 21 (which is why I'm a potential felon) but he turns 21 on the 16th so it is the perfect present, right? :) (Especially considering he lives with my parents.)

Busy as a bee

Yesterday I went to see two of my girls' dance recitals. They were so cute! Is it weird that I do this? Theoretically I'm attending the 5th grader's graduation on Thursday. The girls invited me, I just don't know the time yet. Apparently I do have a way with the kiddos. The cousin of one of my dancing girls was there and we talked and played a silly game about being the toll bridge. Apparently she doesn't talk to strangers. It took her 8 months to speak to her PE teacher. Hee.

Today I handed out programs at my employer's graduation. It was a lot of fun actually. It was exhausting though. I was up and out at 6:50 to be there by 7:30. Y'all should be proud of me... I walked there. Of course that's mostly because I am a ditz. We held the graduation at Qwest field. For those of y'all not from Seattle, there is a set of streets that are pairs where there are 2 streets share the same first initial. So it is Pike and Pine, Union and University (I live between these 2), Seneca and Spring, Madison and Minor, Cherry and Columbia and Jefferson and James. Except I always forget that it is Jefferson and James and think it is Jackson and James. So when I got the directions from the bus it said get on the bus at 6th and Seneca and get off at 6th and Jackson. Jackson's so close, I thought. I could walk it. Well, it turns out I was wrong but it still isn't that far anyway. According to Mapquest it is only about a mile and a half. It was fun and tiring and I got some studying for my test done during the actual ceremony so that was good too. :)

Next weekend there is absolutely nothing on the schedule. Nothing. Yay!!

Burned out!

Thus begins the 3rd Annual Summer of Joanne. :) I am burned out and not volunteering for anything again until the fall. (Well unless something strikes my fancy.) According to my calendar, I've been volunteering since April. Every weekend there has been at least 1 thing on my calendar and I am tired. And I didn't realize how tired I was until this week. I was actually looking forward to a nice quiet do nothing weekend, but that's not happening. I'm going to the dance recital for 2 of my girls on Saturday and on Sunday I'm volunteering for my college's graduation. I'm bringing a book or 2 and my ipod because all I'm doing is handing out programs. Ooh maybe I should find the instructions for my crocheted headphone covers so I can fix my favorite headphones. :) Next weekend is nothing. NOTHING at all. I'm excited for that considering the 2 weekends following the 22nd is another camping trip and the 30th is a whirlwind trip down to CA for the weekend.

2 Things I want today...

Today (only today) I only want 2 things from people.

1 - Invest your money wisely. I have just received a retirement enrollment form and the person has requested the money market fund for 100% of her retirement contribution. The money market? That's like 3 or 4% interest. You may as well shove your money in a mattress and you'll have the same effect. Inflation is going to eat that up. Why even bother? There are life cycle funds that will invest wisely for you based on your projected retirement date. Even that's better than the money market. Seriously.

2 - Women should comb their hair. I don't get why they don't. Do they think it looks pretty? And I'm not speaking of dread locks which I think are atrocious but I do get that they are a statement. I mean just regular hair. So many women walk around with rats nests in the back of their hair like they are toddlers who have been lying on their pillow rubbing their head back and forth. I don't get it. I was just in the bathroom and this girl very carefully applied make up so her face would be pretty but her hair was pulled back in this unkempt, trashy ponytail. Think back to when you were a little girl (for those of you that were girls or Michelle, think about when we worked at GS camp). Remember how you'd try to avoid getting your hair combed so you would have this weird spazzy ponytail that just looked unkempt. That's what her hair looked like. I'm cool with the "messy" ponytail or bun you see but at least the part around the head is nice and combed back... not just rats nest ponytail. (And I'm not lumping girls with curly hair into this because I know they have a special set of challenges with their curls. This is my want for girls with relatively straight or only wavy hair.)

I don't think I'm asking for too much, right? :)

I am a dork...

Or at least that's what my clothes say today. I hate what I'm wearing but when you procrastinate doing laundry as long as I have there's not much choice. On my feet I have black danskos. They're fine. I like them. I have white socks though that I rather like but maybe not with black shoes. Then there's the too short khaki colored denim "jeans." Awesome we're moving into total nerd territory. Top it all off with a blue gray long sleeved shirt that I keep tugging at because it is too short and you have an outfit fit for a dork. Sigh.

Success!

Thanks to my testing blog and PM's suggestion I check the HTML code, I've figured out how to change the masthead. So after work I may find a pic I like and play with photoshop and come up with a new picture for this one. This could lead to a whole new look. Yay! :)

(You know, or I'll do laundry and have clean undies. I could do both I suppose...)

The epitome of lazy...

Do I break down and do laundry or do I just buy new undies?

Also, for someone who is smarter than me about stuff, how do I know how big my masthead on this blog is? Blogger now allows us to upload a picture (which I'm totally excited about) but I don't know the dimensions of that little box. (I could do a bigger one I know but really width is my issue. I can't seem to get it wide enough so blogger left justifies it and leaves blank space on the right side.)

Blogger's Block

I have blogger's block. I want to write about things. I don't know what I want to write about. I don't know how I want to write about. I think I'm tired. I actually may have a couple things to write about but I'm stuck on where to start or what to say. Maybe tomorrow.

Unrelated, I hate how under the cap games (from soda bottles) have gotten so complicated. I just want to know if I've won a prize or not. I don't want to have to go to this website and enter the code and use my code to enter for a drawing blah blah blah. Just "Yay you won" or "Sorry you are a loser!"