14 Days

It is officially 14 days until I turn 34. THIRTY FOUR people. Do you know what this means? I'm in my 30's. Not even in my 30's. I'm in my mid-30's. If I were going by my plan, I should be beginning the wheels towards adoption next year. I am so not ready for that. I have a whole long post rustling around in my head about that but that's for another time. Instead ponder this. Thirty four.

This post brought to you by the numbers 3 and 4 and by the letters D L and O.

Learn Something New Every Day

I was just checking on Metro's trip planner and I was thinking, how am I going to know which way to walk once I get to a place. This is a frequent wonder for me because frequently I'm going somewhere I've never been before. I never noticed before that they actually have walking directions for the rest of the route. How cool is that? Very cool I say.

Totally unrelated, I went to see Be Kind Rewind over the weekend. It was HYSTERICAL. Seriously probably the funniest movie I've seen in a long time. It also was really different than I expected it to be. I don't know how to explain that and I can't tell you what I was expecting, but it was different. It was very sweet. Maybe I've got a preconceived notion of what Jack Black movies are like, but I found it really very good. My only complaint is that some of it is shot as though it is an old movie and so the projector 'flickers' and I had a headache already and that seemed to encourage it.

My feet are hot

I'm wearing wool socks. Today began the month of Volunteering heck. (Although maybe this year won't be so bad??) I was up and out at 6:50 (that's WAY before I ever leave for work folks). I caught a bus up to an elementary school where the cookies were delivered by big giant truck. Then I spent the morning unloading cookie boxes and moving them around the playground. It was good work, but hard work. I now have 3 cases in my apartment that I now have to pass out. (Ok 15 of those cookies are mine. That's sad for me.) :)

Next week I've got site sales and the Firefighter Stair Climb. The following week is more cookie site sales. That may be it for March for me. For some reason I thought March was usually a busy volunteering month for me. ( I still think it is, I just think I can't remember the other things.)

March is moneylicious

March is going to kick my ass fiscally. I have used the Flexcar a ton this month at $10.00/hour. And... drumroll please... I went to the podiatrist on Wednesday. Apparently I need custom orthotics to begin to help the achilles tendonitis and bunion. My insurance company does not cover them. I have emailed my contact to find out why and she doesn't really know why either. But these fabulous things will cost me $470. Yay. If they will help, awesome. And for $470 they better fucking work. They're going to watch me walk and take the cast of my feet on the 6th. Yay. (Or something) But this does mean that I will not be buying a new sofa soon. Maybe after the other IRS rebate check.

Rhetorical Question

Why are all the outlets in my apartment in retarded places? If I want to have the new air purifier I just bought anywhere near my entrance I have to either a - put it in the bathroom and keep the light lit at all times (because for some unknown reason the outlet does not work when the lights are not on). b - Plug it in part way down the hall (this would work but since it is the only one near the cable cord I have a power strip plugged into it for all my TV needs and it is where my wireless box is connected). c - plug it in the living room, but this outlet is on the switch so it only works when the light is on. d - in the closet in the bedroom (who puts an outlet in the closet??) or e - next to my bed where my bedside lamp and alarm clock are already plugged. Seriously. I need more outlets.

Je fait du camping

Lyday and I went camping Friday - Sunday morning. We went to Battle Ground Lake State Park. It definitely was cold. Saturday's high was 51 degrees. It was fun, though. I had a good time and really liked the place we were at. It had several trails. We spent two hours hiking around on Saturday early afternoon. When we got back we had a campfire. We went into town for dinner with a friend of Lyday's and that was fun too.

My new tent. My mom sent it to me for Christmas. I had never set it up before. When I opened it I discovered that the cables that hold the poles together in one long pole were all broken. So we had to put each individual segment together and push the pole through the sleeve. It wasn't insurmountable, but it was annoying.
Broken cord.

Early in the morning I got up before Lyday and went walking down to the lake. A dad and his son were fishing. It's very cute to me.

The lake. It is very pretty. There is swimming and apparently when it is open for summer, there are paddle boats that can be rented. Now I want to go back in the summer.

We hiked both the high lake trail and the regular lake trail. While on the trail, we saw a bald eagle flying. That was seriously awesome. I've seen them before in the wild in Alaska.

Another shot of the lake. There were a lot of people fishing. It seems to be THE place to fish. I talked to a lot of the different people asking how they did. Most had not caught much, or had just gotten there.

Tree hugger!

Another side of the lake. It wasn't a huge lake, but it was pretty.

Bat box! I like bat boxes mostly becacuse I like bats. There weren't any up in the box though.

This rock and fern section was so cool. I really liked the cascade of rocks.

Rocky! The rock looks like a person. And it was pretty.

Campfire. I always take a picture of my camp fire because I'm always a little amazed that I can make one. :)

In all my scout camp years, I wore the same sweatshirt and I would put up the hood and pull it tight around my face. It kept me really warm. I used that technique again camping. Seriously you stay warm.

On Saturday Lyday decided she needed an air mattress. So she bought one. You can tell she is much happier with the air mattress than the thin camping pad. :)

Guess What Came In?

Guess? Go on...

My passport! It was in the mailbox from Saturday I guess. Yay! I can now go anywhere I want. :D

Could've been worse... Could've been better

Happy Valentine's Day y'all! Was it a good one for you?

Mine could've been better. It wasn't nearly as bad as The Worst Valentine's Day Ever, but not as good as the Best Valentine's Day in recent memory. (Only slightly related, I just reread all of February that year. That was a funny month, although it did make me sad and miss MP a bit, but I'm already over it.) Anyway, I had to take Rigby to the vet in the AM. She has an eye infection. Much better than the last time I had to take a ferret to the vet, but still kind of unpleasant. Rigby never goes so she gets really weird about the whole thing.

Work was interminable.

I went out to dinner with Lyday and then to a movie. Dinner was yummy. I got Mexican food at the mall. We sat for about 20 minutes and there were no rumblies in my tumbly. We went to the movie about 40 minutes before the movie started and there were no rumblies in my tumbly. About 15 minutes into the movie... massive rumblies. And we were in the center of the row. I bailed out and left the movie and spent about 45 minutes tripping from the movie theater to the bathroom and back and forth. I never went back to my seat because, well those people would hate me, and instead just leaned against a wall watching so I missed the entire middle of Definitely Maybe. Sigh. What I saw was cute.

Now, given all that, I could have had the Valentine's day of the young lady I saw arguing in the lobby. Apparently there was some shoving. I am unclear as to who shoved whom as they both seemed rather adamant that the other started it, but she was sobbing loudly boo hoo hoo and saying to him "I can't believe you are doing this on Valentine's day." She clearly had a worse day than I did.

Longass Week

And it is only Tuesday! Actually, after today everything is down hill because I have no more meetings this week. Yay!

Last night we had our cookie site sale meeting. We've got sites and that is all that matters.

Tonight is Thinking Day. I've ordered Sambusas from a local Somali restaurant. I have high hopes for them. A mom from the other troop made coconut bread for Jamaica. I carved stamps out of pink erasers to stamp the passports with. It was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. I cut a star out of the middle of one for Somalia since their flag is a white star in the middle of a blue field. For the other I carved out a palm tree. In retrospect it may have been easier to just dig in the basement for my arts & crap box which has stamps, but whatever. All the letter boxers carve their own stamps. I'm just practicing. Yeah, that's the ticket. :)

Camping is probably on for the weekend. It is supposed to get to highs of 60. Yay! Lows in the upper 30s. I'm excited about that.

I'm going to the movies on VD with Lyday. We're seeing Maybe Definitely or something like that I think. She was not down with the 2 hours of things blowing up. Although looking at the movie list, I don't think there's something that falls into that catagory I want to see anyway.

Moving

Whenever I start to think about moving away from Seattle, I need to go down to the bakery in Maple Valley and be reminded I'll never find a place that awesome anywhere else. I spent a scandalous amount of money there this morning but... everything is oh so awesome. I've already eaten two donuts. TWO!

I've received a response to a personal ad I have on one for fatchicks. I haven't written back because I don't know what to say. :) He said I was beautiful. Do I say he's attractive back? He isn't unattractive. Do I ask questions? He didn't ask any questions of me. Why don't I know how to do this anymore? (Oh because I've had personals online before and nobody ever responds to them.)

I may not be going camping next weekend. I am fine with going caming in the cold. I am not fine with camping in either the rain or the wind. According to weather.com, there will be mucho raino on Sat, Sun and Mon. Camping in the rain is miserable. We'll check it out again closer to the weekend. Since it is winter, you can't make reservations anyway so it wouldn't be a big deal if we decided not to go. I tested out my little propane heater and my lantern. Both work so that's nice.

When I got back from Maple Valley at about 10:05 there was a guy waiting for the Flexcar. He said he was just about to call. I have the car until 10:30, I replied. No, says he, I have it at 10:00. Well he was wrong. As I was walking away I noticed he kept trying to unlock the door with his key card, which of course didn't work because his reservation was 10:30.

Wiped the fuck out.

I'm tired. This has been a long and fairly weird day.

1. I made a faculty member cry. I feel really bad about that, although in reality it wasn't ME that made her cry - just some information. She is worried her contract may not be renewed next year and I gave her the COBRA information.

2. I spent this morning putting together some numbers for a meeting this afternoon to be told 10 minutes before the meeting that I probably didn't need to do that.

3. I lost two of our insurance bills. I put them some place for safe keeping. I have no idea what that place is, but I spent over an hour looking for that safe place.

4. My benefits committee meeting was actually pretty good. That was a high point.

5. We went to coffee this afternoon so no work got done this afternoon.

Clearly I have SOME standards. :)

Subtitled: Maybe Michelle was right. (Who am I kidding? Maybe??)

I've said that I am pretty open minded towards guys. I've even joked that they have to be breathing and heterosexual and that's all I'm looking for. Monday night I was given the chance to put my money where my mouth is. As Lyday and I were leaving a restaurant to the parking lot, two guys walked up to us and asked if we had any cigarettes. Neither of us smoke so we said no. Then one of them looks at us and looks at his friend and he says "Hey, there's two of us and there's two of you" and kind of gives that head jerk. He says "We've got the alcohol, you've got the transportation, where's the party?" Lyday and I look at each other and I respond with Fred Meyer (which is where we were headed) and she replies with "Not in my pants, thank you." And we both head to the car laughing. These men were older and drunk and quite possibly regularly so. So Michelle was right in that improving ones appearance improves ones odds of picking up a guy. :) She hadn't specified what kind of guy, just that it improves the odds. :D

Weird things

You know how I've mentioned before how frequently I get calls that are wrong numbers. I just received one today on my cell. Even weirder, I called the person back to tell her. I only did it because she was talking to the person explaining how she needed the person's numbers for Girl Scout cookie ordering. If it had been for any other reason I wouldn't have bothered. :) She didn't pick up so I left a message saying that she had called me by mistake and that I didn't want her to miss out on her cookie orders but that the number she called was wrong. And I gave the number so she wouldn't try calling it again.

Unrelated, my job is getting weirdly uncomfortable right now. It is all transitional stuff so hopefully temporary, but still. I don't want to blog about it because I've realized I don't like to blog about the bad stuff. I don't want to reread that years from now. Well, plus I'm paranoid. :)

Accomplished a lot today!

I'm so pleased with everything I got done...
1 - Took Tess to the vet for her shot.
2 - Went to the pet store to get them new food.
3 - Went to the close GF bakery (not the one in Maple Valley) and got a few things.
4 - Went and got passport pictures taken.
5 - Applied for a passport. (yay!)
6 - Filled my apartment with smoke.

Whoops #6 was not an accomplishment that I should brag about. I was cooking a hamburger and apparently burned it a bit. And then when I took the burger off the pan, I forgot to turn off the burner so even more smoke started billowing in the kitchen. In related news, apparently my smoke detector is not working. I'll have to get on battery replacement. :)

I may be an idiot

But I've just agreed to go camping with Lyday President's Day Weekend. Yes. That would be February 16. Am I high? Possibly. We're going camping at Battle Ground Lake State Park. Yay! I'm getting excited about it, although it will not be a warm trip. I'm going to have to acquire some more long undies. I can't find the silk ones I used to own.

My sleeping bag is good to 20 degrees. We've bought extra propane and a tarp for under the new tent. Somewhere in this apartment is actually a small propane heater we can use if we need to. I think it will be good. :)