Footloose and fancy free!

What a glorious weekend!

Yesterday I field tripped to Odyssey Maritime Museum for a Gluten Intolerance Group event of GF beer and food. I had pizza and quesedillas made from teff tortillas, and these amazing chicken wraps. I also tried my first crab cake which confirmed my dislike of crab cakes. There was also brownies and pound cake. The pound cake was great... the brownies not as much. I also had 2 beers which prompted me to think that I may be a bit tipsy. :) One was actually a cider and that was yummy. The other was a GF beer and since it has been over 11 years since I last had a beer, clearly I don't remember what real beer tastes like. This was really bitter and I wasn't partial to it. It is cool to have an option though. I like the Odyssey museum. It is sad it may be closing due to money. But it is a cute little museum with fun and interesting activities. I think the bad part for them is that they don't have rotating exhibits and I think that's a problem for repeat business.

Today was The Big Climb for Leukemia and Lymphoma. Today is the day regular people do the climb up the 69 flights of stairs. They go up 788 vertical feet and it is 1,311 stairs. It was a good time, but I am EXHAUSTED. I left the apartment at 6:30 this morning and got home at 6:30 tonight. I was at the climb until 4:00 and then stopped into the library to study for an hour and a half. I picked up dinner on the way home and now I'm sitting here propping my feet up. I've been on them about 10 hours... they kind of hate me right now. :) A couple things that surprised me or touched me about this climb... 1 - there were a large number of kids doing the climb. It was awesome to see these little kids who RAN up the stairs. Similar to the firefighters, there were a lot of groups running or climbing for someone else. There was one team from Olympia that was HUGE. (Puyallup I think now that I think about it) They were all wearing blue t-shirts and had 3 ribbons pinned to their shirts. The ribbons represented 3 kids who had cancer. They also had a picture on their backs of a little baby. I asked one of the women walking about the child, and unfortunately s/he had passed away. I almost wanted to cry, it was so sad to think about this cute little baby (toddler technically) with bright blue eyes who died so young. I was kind of glad when that whole group ended up going back downstairs after they were done. The shirt made me sad. A coworker talked to me about maybe doing this next year. I think it could be a good thing. I don't know if I can train for it though. I'm not sure how the tendon will love this. Ooh also, I saw the two married guys we went to Long Beach with at the top of the climb. They ran up the stairs which is awesome! (There are two different ways to do the big clmib. There's one group that gets timed and for them it is all about the time. There's another group that just walks and they aren't timed. Well, walkers probably could do the timing thing if they wanted to. Really it is just timed vs not timed.)

Next weeekend is shaping up to be just as busy as this one. I can't wait until April, when I'll drop to sleep all weekend long. :)

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Are you wearing your green? I am! (Of course I have green eyes so I wear green by default. :) )

I had a FABULOUS Friday night! My new DVD shelf and dutch oven came in from Target. The DVD shelf was completely easy to put up and it is a perfect size for the space I purchased it for. If I were the type who owned 100s and 100s of DVDs it wouldn't be enough, but it is perfect for me. :) When poking around the cupboard where my VHS tapes are stored, I discovered I had more DVDs than I thought I did. There were about 5 Disney ones I had forgotten I bought when I lived in CA. Yay!

I then went downtown to go shopping! I spent a bunch of my mom's birthday money which was nice. I picked up two DVDs that I wanted, a new shirt that I think will look cute for going out, a new computer game, new socks & jammie bottoms, and a bunch of little Japanese things from this new store in the mall called Daiso. It is like a Japanese dollar store (almost everything in the store is $1.50). I picked up some Indian food and even better Coldstone Ice Cream! :) Life is great! :D

Loot!

My baby sistah came through like a champion! Firstly she sent me gorgeous tulips to my office (since my #1 birthday request is always flowers sent to work.). Then today I got another present from her. It had a cool Mickey Mouse rain jacket and umbrella... and even cooler... Mickey Mouse silverware! :) She needs to know she's now on the hook for Mickey Mouse plates sometime in the future. ;) My mamacita actually came through quite well as well (which is a bit of a surprise). She bought me a red pot (which I asked for) and red kitchen tools (which I didn't but that's okay). She also sent me a gift card to Target which makes me happy. :) I used it to order a dvd/cd rack and a dutch oven for camping. I'm excited about the two of them arriving. She also sent some $$ which is always nice! :)

Michelle & I were discussing my whole inspection problem. I'm being inspected tomorrow and I'm kind of annoyed about it. I can respect Michelle's opinion... the owners of the building want to be sure I'm doing right by their building. I'm not growing pot in the kitchen or anything. So while I can respect that, to me this is my home and I don't want a random stranger traipsing through my apartment. I think it would be easier for me if I there was a system to it. If I knew every January they were going to want to inspect I could cope with it easier than the random papers attached to my door telling me they're coming in x amount of days. Also I've been "randomly" selected more times than some of my neighbors. That bugs me too. Although I think this round, they're inspecting everyone. So I'm taking the morning off work so that I can be here when they come through and I'm shutting my bedroom door because I'm hoping they'll at least respect that request. The nice part is, that when I'm done I am done and I can spend this weekend and the rest of this week studying my ass off for my CEBS test next week.

(totally unrelated, I'm looking at what this guy is making on food network and it totally looked to me like a vagina. The decoration and all that. It was vaguely disturbing.)

Crisis averted

I didn't expect to be spending my birthday evening trucking up the hill to the flexcar I had on Sunday, but 30 minutes ago there I was. I should rewind a little further when I was sitting on my bed counting Girl Scout cookie money. I counted what we took in on Sunday and then decided to marry it with the money from the previous sales. As I'm going through the money from the previous sales I realize a very bad thing. I'm missing a hundred dollar bill. I had received it on Sunday and since I had to go to the car to get the change (since like a weirdo I was carrying ALL the GS money I had) I left the bill in the envelope in the car. So I'm realizing the bill is not with the envelope. I check my jacket pockets, throwing out every thing in them... no bill. I check the back pack I was carrying... no bill. Now I'm panicking because the only other place it could be is in the flexcar. I had "hidden" the money in the console under the arm rest and it must've falled out. I call flexcar and ask both if someone turned one in or what the procedure is if I need to just check on something that may be lost... do I have to pay the whole half hour rate? (Although it is 5 bucks... if the bill is in the car it is totally worth it for me being dumb.) So he was very helpful and nice and said that for lost and found calls if there're no miles on the car during my 1/2 hour I don't pay for it. I throw on my jacket and trudge up the hill to see. The whole while I'm asking for what I want and visualizing the result in my head. I open the car and lo and behold... there's a hundred dollar bill in the console. Maybe the secret DOES work... ;) (But my apartment was decidedly NOT clean when I got home so now I'm conflicted). As a treat to myself, I bought myself McDonalds for dinner. I was going to cook a real meal since I need lunch the rest of the week but I changed my mind. :)

Happy Birthday To Meee!

Happy Birthday to Meee!
Happy Birthday to Meeee!
Happy Birthday to Meee eeee!
I don't look thirty three!

(Or maybe it is act thirty three!)

Today is going to be a good day. I've decided it is so and I am embracing the birthday. I'm wearing my shiny deep purple blouse. I'm wearing a springy lavender skirt. My boss and a coworker gave me daffodils for my birthday which are in my office looking all happy and yellow.

Oooh! I also baked cupcakes last night! CUPCAKES! :) Chocolate ones that I frosted with vanilla icing and I had pink frosting to put on them but I didn't because I ran out of time. (Plus the pink frosting wasn't as good as I wanted it to be). I brought them in to share and baked them in heart shaped cupcake tins (the ones from Reynolds like the star ones).

I've also decided I'm going to embrace the concept of "The Secret." That's that semi-crazy book about how you can get what you want by putting it out there. Ask, receive, believe is her mantra. Truthfully I buy into some of it (power of positive thinking and all that I believe but that is not unique to her) but the other part I find weird. I read an excerpt (which by no means is the whole book, but what I read was weird) in either Time or Newsweek online and she goes on and on about how to become skinny visualizing, and believing but not dieting and don't even think about dieting... to the point of not even looking at fat people. So I have two that I'm going to try. The first is that I'm going to ask that my apartment will be clean when I get home. If I receive that... then I'll believe. ;) The other is a secret, but I'll even try to incorporate her whole looking at pictures and visualizing what I want and look at people successfully doing what it is I want. I'll let you know how this works out. :) (I'm fairly certain the first one won't but you know... power of positive thinking and all.) :P

Happy Birthday, Joanne!

Your blog asked me to post this for you.

Conflicted

So I'm watching stupid My Super Sweet 16 on TV right now and as appalling as the show is, the birthday girl did apparently do a toys for tots drive in place of receiving presents. Or so it appeared, since there were Marines there with big bags and everybody was bringing really childish toys (although I did briefly think it was part of the whole "Christmas" theme). Of course on the flip side, she did have a semi-famous rap star (I haven't heard of him but when I heard his song I recognized it) and he was at least 85k to play the party. AND she received a special custom 6 door hummer. (Who needs a 6 door hummer?!) So I guess in the hierarchy of grossness of that show she's less gross than some of the other girls and she didn't have any selfish meltdowns like some of the other girls did.

Unrelated, we had another site sale today. We started out with 9 cases of cookies (which would be 8*12 equals 96 cookies) and we ended with only about 30 cookies so that's damn good. Now I have to figure out if we will do one more site sale or if we should just be done with all that and well I don't know what to do with the other 30 boxes.

I cleaned the bathroom this morning. Well most of it. I have to do the tub again because the soap buildup is bad.

Paranoid and suspicious

I received a notice yesterday that next Thursday they are going to come in and inspect my apartment looking for any repairs that may need to be done. My first thought was "Fuck I have to clean." My 2nd thought was more paranoid... are we going condo? As more buildings around me convert, I've had minor fears that we're going to be one to go next. I usually manage to assuage them with the thought that our 1 bedrooms aren't kosher 1 bedrooms by city of Seattle standards. With the exception of the 4 corner apartments, the one bedrooms are all interior bedrooms. To be considered a true 1 bedroom, they must have a window of x by x inches for egress. And actually the apartment across the hall from me (and I assume on all the floors) is a 2 bedroom which isn't a kosher 2 bedroom since one of the bedrooms is interior. My other thought is that we're under yet another new management company. I think that is more correct since I didn't think RPM was our management company before. They most definitely are now. In either case, I have a fun week of cleaning ahead of me. Go me.

In other news, I've broken my itunes cherry and purchased 2 singles last night. It didn't take as long to download on dial up as I thought it might. Obviously it isn't ideal for huge downloads, but for one or two it seemed just fine. In case you care I purchased Hate Me by Blue October and In The Sun by Jonathan Author. In The Sun is technically a Christian single, but not listed that way on itunes. If you've watched Saved! as many times as I have you would know In The Sun is the song that plays when Cassandra is looking for Roland after he spends the night abandoned at the school after Cassandra gets expelled.

69 Flights to the top baby!

I volunteered again for the firefighter stairclimb today. I had an afternoon shift and I wasn't doing equipment removal like I did last year. Somehow it felt less... I don't know... less accomplishing. I did time chip removal this year. (I asked for equipment removal but they only had cadets doing it this year.) It was still fun. It's always fun. We went out for a very short time afterward, but since this year they advertised that there was an event at Fado's it was probably 50% more crowded than it was last year. They were at capacity and continued to be that way until we left. For me, personally, a bar where I have to sidle by because we're wall to wall humans is not fun. NOT FUN I say. The person we rode with decided to leave early so we left with her. I'm not too sad about that. Now I can cook dinner and put new sheets on the bed. Such an exciting life this singleton leads. :)

I sometimes wish I had littlehands easy way with people. She seems to make friends very easily and people always want to hang out with her. I'm a little envious of that. (Again with the envy? What's wrong with me lately?! :) ) Sometimes I still feel like that nerd from the 8th grade whose best friend moved on without her. And like I'll never catch up. (Ok apparently 1 drink is not the right amount for me. It appears to make me all meloncholy.)

Yesterday while I walked past Domino's pizza I thought what if I just buy and eat a whole pizza? What would happen? For the most part I probably wouldn't break out too badly. I do take medicine to control the rash, but I suspect an entire pizza would be more than the amount of drugs I take can handle and I'd end up broken out. I also think that if I were to do that it would make me want to eat wheat all the time and ruin my years of not having it. It is kind of like having a one night stand in the middle of a dry spell. After a certain period of time without sex you barely notice it anymore, but if you have sex in the middle of that, it's all you can think of again. It throws the whole balance off. :) That's my theory anyway.

I was right about hippies.

This morning was our first site sale day. We went to PCC at 10:00. I figured that'd be a good time because people like to shop early in the AM to get it done with. I was right. We sold 50 boxes in our 2 hours there. It'd be more exciting if that translated to more than 22.50 but whatever. :) Only 3 girls showed up. We had a pretty good time. I'm pleased with our first site sale results. :)

So sweet!

I just got flowers in my office! I LOVE flowers at my office! They're from the same super sweet guy who gave me chocolates for helping him and his wife with their medical insurance stuff. So sweet I almost cried. :)

Green Eyed Monster

I knew after Michelle told me she was pregnant that somewhere along the way I'd feel a pang of envy. It's normal. (Well at least I think it is normal.) She's got parts of her life that I hope to someday have. And I'll get there. I have no doubt about that. And I like my life, but you know once in a while... Grass is greener syndrome and all that.

But today I had a pang about something I hadn't anticipated having a pang about. Given that my plan is to adopt children, I'm never going to know the joy of picking out my child's very own name. I'm anticipating that they'll all come pre-named. Babies are few and far betweeen. And I don't have the money or the inclination really to pursue that rare commodity - the healthy white baby. So that leaves me taking in the pre-named children.

*Since we're 8 months since my last period, I'm fairly certain that the difficult if not impossible is on the brink of becoming impossible to have kids. There're two potential reasons for this... PCOS or early menopause. I haven't gone in to find out the final answer because really... what difference does it make. There's nothing a doc can do for either one really.

Tilting at windmills

Y'all know I'm a frequent windmill tilter. Sometimes I just have to find an answer. So Lame Giant emailed me back. They emailed me how to figure out the sizing of clothes. I hate canned responses. So I emailed again. We'll see how long this goes on...

Vanity Sizing

I know I've read about it before, but i was reading an article in Cosmo today where they talk about vanity sizing. Even The Gap does it allegedly. So this got me thinking... does the fatchick store do it too? On the one hand, I can't see it as being hugely beneficial, but on the other hand, I would think if they didn't, the sizes would get so out of whack it wouldn't be possible for everyone not to do it. The funny thing is, though, whenever I hear of vanity sizing it is the 0s 2s and 4s being discussed... not the 22s or 24s. So of course, seeing as how I obsess, I've now emailed lame giant to find out if they do it. I wonder if they'll even be honest in their response.

Oh holy fuck I hurt...

The best shower ever is the one after camping when the water releases all these smells you've been stockpiling in your skin and hair and it just feels so cool. The 2nd best shower ever is the scalding hot water after you've spent 8 hours outside lugging boxes all over a damn playground. I'm not sure what our high was today, but I know it wasn't that high. I was wearing wool socks, long johns, jeans, a long sleeved t-shirt, a t-shirt over the long sleeved t-shirt, my fleece and at one point my rain jacket and hat and mittens. And at one point I was still shivering. Then we got smart and moved out of the wind so it wasn't so bad. :) And while I was helping load cookies into cars I was actually rather warm.

At 8:00 the semi got there and started unloading pallets. We had to unload the boxes from the pallets and stack them. That was task #1. Then we start rearranging the boxes by troop. So we're lugging the boxes from the stacks of type to various spots all over the playground (which was at least covered because it was also raining). Now I know somebody does this every year, but this was my first year of being somebody. I so don't plan on doing this next year. (Oh who am I kidding? If there's no cookie manager like this year, I'll end up helping the poor sap we con into doing this.) All in all, we got all the cookies out. I am clean and warm and dry. I am sore, but it is the type of sore that is from doing stuff, not the type of back pain that says you will be flat on your back for a week unable to move. I'm sure I'll sleep like the dead tonight and that's exciting. So that's all for now folks.

KTP made me do it.

Apparently my last post has been up too long and now I'm receiving pressure from the peanut gallery to change it. Some people! :)

The sad part is, I don't have a lot to report these days. I reread HP 5. I'm working on 6 to be ready for the 7th book to be released.

This weekend begins the mass volunteering for the next 5 weeks (I think).
Sunday I'm going to be working at the Girl Scout cookie delivery place helping coordinate the cookie pick up for my service unit.
The 3rd I'm selling cookies at PCC.
The 4th is the Firefighter Stairclimb.
The 8th I'm selling cookies.
The 10th I have a Service Unit Meeting.
The 11th I'm selling cookies.
The 16th I'm selling cookies.
The 18th is the Big Climb.
The 24th is my next CEBS exam.
The 24th is the HopScotch beer festival for which I will be pouring beer.

AND somewhere in there I'm being fitted for a crown, receiving a crown and turning 33. Phew! I'm actually rather excited to do all these things. I love selling cookies with the girls. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the firefighter stairclimb. (C'mon who doesn't? One of the perks is that we go drinking afterward with the fireboys who are flirty and fun!) And the HopScotch beerfest is a good time too, plus full of straight boys... :) (OF course, all those cookie selling days and the service unit meeting... this is just a couple hours out of the whole day. Which is good since apparently I have given myself no time to study for the damn CEBS exam.)

I think Saturday I'm going to try to go to the Smith Tower. The observation deck has amazing views and they have a Chinese Wishing Chair which, according to myth, causes a young woman to get married if she so wishes within the next year. :) Match ain't doing much for me, so maybe it is time to bring in the mystical. (Of course, I went through my blog archives recently and according to the psychic we took my mom to see not last Christmas but the Christmas before (05), one of us would be married in 2 years... the timeline would work! :P)

It is even in my dreams.

Recently I've posted twice over at the Peevery my rage at dog owners. (I think I've posted here too). Apparently I cannot escape the dog poop. It has now invaded my dreams. Last night I was dreaming that I was trying to camp with a bunch of people (52 at last count, they kept multiplying) and every time I tried to set up a cot for someone to sleep in dog poop was in its place. Giant elephantitis sized dog poop. I never saw any dogs leaving it though. It was obnoxious. According to dreammoods:

Feces: To see or come in contact with feces, signifies aspects of yourself that are dirty and negative and which you believe to be undesirable and repulsive. You need to acknowledge and express these feelings, even though it may be shameful. Release the negativity in your life. Alternatively, it may also refer to someone who is anal retentive.

To dream that you are unable to dispose of the feces, suggests that you are unwilling to let go of your emotions. You have a tendency to hold in and keep your feelings to yourself. (Apparently I'm unable/unwilling to let go of my hatred towards bad dog owners??!!)

According to Freud, feces is related to possession, pride, shame, money/financial matters, or aggressive acts.?So to dream that you are playing with feces, symbolizes your anxiety over money matters and financial security.

Camping: To dream that you are camping, suggests your need for relaxation and a long-deserved break.? You may be looking to be more in touch with nature and for a simpler life. Alternatively, it refers to your social circle and support group. You need to have a sense of belonging, but at the same time be self-sufficient and independent.

Bloodletting.

They use leeches for that right? :) So yay for me! I went to donate blood and they actually took it! Thus ending a several month long bout of anemia. (Apparently eating red meat for dinner on Friday, Saturday and Monday night as well as Tuesday lunch helped a lot.) (I feel compelled to point out that it wasn't until I thought about it that I realized I actually ate that much red meat over the weekend. It was completely unintentional. :) ) This also means that I can go have a blood test done and pass it so my dr won't take away my beloved pills.

I decided to take myself out to dinner afterwards to reward myself for my good behavior. I first tried to go to this place across the street from the blood donation place. They closed at 8. Sigh. Then I went down two doors to the teriyaki place. They only take cash. Why is it that teriyaki places only take cash? So finally I got Thai. Yum. :)

Bathing suit

Is it slightly wrong that if Disney made a bathing suit for fat asses I would totally buy it? It is, isn't it. It is a sickness. I know. (They don't but they do make one for skinny asses. KTP you're skinny now... care for one? ;) )


I bought three new shirts at the fat chick store this weekend. I'm very pleased with them. Two of them are like the pic. One is that color actually and the other is a deep purply color. Michelle, you would be impressed because they actually fit properly. I bought the correct size for me instead of what I would usually do which is buy the next size up because I feel more comfortable in floaty clothes. Because of the (Oh I don't know the word for this but where they tuck it in to make it more form fitting) because of that, the size larger looked really bad on me. I'm wearing the purple one today and I've already received several compliments on them. :) Yay!

So this brings me to a whole other topic, Big R doesn't like it that I call Lane Bryant the fat chick store. He says I'm denigrating myself. I don't view it that way at all. I use it merely as a descriptor. I am a fat chick. The store caters to me. So it is a fat chick store. It isn't like I say fat chick with some sort of disdain. It is more like a badge and I own it you know. What do you think?

Writer's Block

I've started and re-started this post several times over the weekend. For some reason I'm finding myself incapable of finding anything to say. Or the few things I'm thinking of saying are just dumb.

I did see Because I Said So. It was cute in that romantic comedy sort of way. I liked it. (I'm being dive bombed by a gnat and it is making me CRAZY). If I had the kind of mom Diane Keaton was, I might have killed myself. She was a bit crazy. The two guys were really cute and I'm glad she ended up who she ended up with. Probably not a $10 movie, but whatever. I don't tend to dwell on that. :) I went to Johnny Rockets before the movie since I didn't get to go on Valentine's day and get a burger at The Deluxe. Did I mention my disappointment about V-Day? I was supposed to go to dinner with littlehands and Big R. They had said lets go to the Deluxe for burgers. I spent the whole day excited about that because The Deluxe's burgers are AWESOME. Big R picks me up and says he doesn't want to go because he had burgers for lunch and he wanted something 'less carby' (his clingyness to fad diets annoys the crap out of me). So we ended up eating Chinese food. (I have no idea how that is less carby. I'm pretty sure it isn't given what he ate.) I realized after dinner that I really hadn't wanted Chinese. Anyway, I've totally digressed.

This week I'm supposed to go to the gayest Mexican restaurant ever. I'm hoping it happens. I'll be disappointed if it doesn't.

I went to watch V practice rugby on Saturday. Rugby is a sport that makes absolutely no sense to me, but I am going to go to a game. I'm going to have to read up on the rules and to figure out what exactly they are doing. They kept touching the ball to their foot and then continuing the game. That was weird. (Surprisingly Wikipedia has failed me on this. Their different pages are providing me with no help whatsoever.) Quake has a thing on their site but it is a pdf and it was taking too long to download on dialup. I'll check it at work.

Finally I am attempting to donate blood yet again tomorrow. Apparently I'm a glutton for punishment. :) (I can't help it. They call because they are desperate. It doesn't hurt me any to at least try.)

The whine of the drill

I survived my first ever root canal this morning. Although the shots just to make me numb were about to send me through the roof. In all honesty, any residual pain I currently have is in the places where I was shot. And they had to shoot me twice. The second one was the worst and actually brought tears to my eyes. In the end, though, I laid back in the chair and listened to an old episode of Charmed through the headphones. I could've watched it on the TV in the ceiling, but about 50% of the appointment she or the microscope was in my face. Also I really don't like to even SEE the little things she uses. I was going to post a thing about the smells, but I just grossed myself out so I don't want to do the same to you. I will say that whatever she was using at the end of the treatment smelled good to me. It smelled like nutmeg or something like that. Prior to that though. Not good.

As a treat to myself for being so good ;) I'm going to the movies tonight with a friend. We're going to see that Mandy Moore movie, Because I Said So. I really like Mandy Moore. I like how she plays basically good girls and you won't ever see her in like a ShowGirls type of movie. I find myself more and more liking the simple basically sexless types of movies. Like I don't mind a little bit of sex in a romantic comedy (I mean you have to have some...) but the just free for all that you sometimes see in other movies. Unfaithful, for example, had WAY more sex than I generally want to watch. Someone over at the peevery commented that I was jealous, and that's not really it. I don't know how to explain it. I really just like movies that are well written stories (or even half assed stories - I LOVE romantic comedies) as long as there's a story and that story isn't "Guy delivers pizza to all blonde slumber party of girls in tiny t-shirts and hilarity ensues." I'll just go and grab my cane and shake it at a few kids on my lawn now. :)

Pornstache!

I've been smiled at 3 times by people on my alternative site. The similar factor on all 3... the presence of a pornstache. Not that I ever think mustaches are attractive, but all 3 seem to have an especially smarmy quality about them. They are definitely of the R0n Jeremie (total misspelling I know) school of 'stache. Vastly icky. Oh and one of the 3 lives in Kentucky. What the hell is he even thinking?

Valentine's day or whatever

So tomorrow is the great holiday known as Valentine's day. The happiest part to me... No more Valentine's day commercials for another 300something days. I was talking to my coworkers today and I came up with two thoughts on the whole subject...

1 - All my future manfriend has to do is buy me flowers and I'll be totally happy. Let me clarify a moment... buy me flowers, have them sent to work and know me well enough to know that I don't really like roses so that tulips or daisies are a better option. I will then reward him with the gift every female gives to her man on Valentine's day... tickets to a sporting event. ;)

2 - After about the 3rd grade Valentine's Day is destined to suck. Before that point, everybody gets the class list and puts a Valentine in the envelope on the desk and everybody gets one from everybody else. Fourth and fifth grade it starts to get weird (if they even still do them then because now that I'm thinking about it I didn't do anything with my class when I taught 5th grade.) By the time you are in high school there's always all this external pressure. That continues. I know that people do it to themselves, but the hype on TV doesn't help at all. And it is just sad. It shouldn't be that way, you know?

Also littlehands and I are doing Valentine's for the office again. This year I have purchased those lick 'm aid powdered sugar yummyness. It will be amusing to give it to my biggest boss and regular boss who are all healthy. :)

I'm a grown up dammit!

Whenever I don't do something I'm scheduled to do I get all weird about it. Like no matter what I should do the task. Tonight I skipped belly dancing. I skipped it in part because I didn't feel like going. The other part is that I'm really uncomfortable doing things in front of the group and she always has us do one or two things in front of the group. If I were comfortable doing the moves it might not be so bad, but I never feel ready to dance in front of the others and I have to do it. I feel like I sound like a petulant child. Waaahhh I don't wanna... I don't wanna... I don't wanna... But in reality, I'm a grown up. If I don't want to do some things, I don't have to, you know? (Of course part of the whole force myself to do things is that I know I'm lazy... So sometimes I have to force myself to do things because I know I'm going to be lazy and not do anything.) But nothing bad is going to happen if I skip class. Nobody is going to judge me. There is no cosmic score sheet I'm now in the red on.

March is again the volunteer month from hell. I'll be selling cookies at 4 different site sales. I have the Firefighter Stair Climb on the 4th. I decided to volunteer for the Big Climb on the 18th and then just in case I had nothing else to do, I'm pouring beer again at brewfest on the 24th. Of course these are all annual gigs so it isn't anything new. (Well the Big Climb is new but it is the same as the Firefighter Stair Climb except it is regular people in regular clothes not fireboys in firesuits.)

I had the best dinner tonight! I had a hamburger on a bun! And french fries! It was awesome. :)

There's a new law being looked at here in Washington. They're considering letting dogs into public places if the shop/restaurant/bar says it is okay. I can't believe how against this I am. I know I have dog issues because I'm surrounded by jackass owners. Between the barker across the hall and the damn owners who don't clean up the poo when they are supposed to I'm about done with dog owners. And the reality is, the guys who will be bringing their dogs into the bars or restaurants... they are the owners who don't control their dogs to begin with. These are the folks whose dogs are not on leashes and who don't respond to voice command. Or the dogs who bite people or other dogs and then the owners demand to know what YOU did to provoke them. It is infuriating. I know there are plenty of good, responsible owners, but damn the bad ones that I'm surrounded by really REALLY poison me against dogs. Of course, to me, the other part of why the law is stupid is that not everybody likes dogs... They shouldn't be forced upon people who may not want to deal with them. (Which one cafe owner commented on. She said if the law were to be passed, she wouldn't change her rules. She accepts that some dog owners may decide to not patronize her shop anymore but at the same time she wants to be more supportive of ALL her customers.)

I really like the new Mac/PC commercial about new Vista where you have to verify almost everything that you do. It makes me chuckle.

I do not like how when I'm using tabbed browsing in IE7, I can't use the tab key or the alt-tab like I'm used to to jump from tab to tab.

No homelessss penisss

I went to dinner tonight with littlehands (the coworker I go camping with. I used to use her real name but she'd rather I didn't. Although littlehands still is fairly descriptive) and Big R and flower (also of the girls' annual camping trip although rarely mentioned because I only really see her on very rare occasions). Our other friend, formerly of the cult of the virgins(and the 4th camper on the annual camping trip), has a new boyfriend and she was having us all get together to meet him and a couple of his friends were there too. The guy seems nice enough. She's all excited because this is her first real boyfriend. They're moving at the speed of sound, seriously they met last week. He sent her roses this week for their 1 week of meeting anniversary. If it were me I'd have zoomed right out of there. But she's happy, so we're supportive. And he's WAY better than the last guy she was seeing. (They never had the all important boyfriend/girlfriend talk hence he was not a boyfriend). He was telling her how lucky she is because he's so understanding about the virgin thing. Honestly, any time a guy tells you how lucky you are to have him, clearly you aren't. (Similarly if they have to tell you how good a product is in the name, it isn't a good product. Try My-Tee Fine Ice Cream sometime and you'll see what I'm talking about - Michelle knows.) There were many many other red flags, but that's the most glaring.

We went to this Mediterranean place down in Belltown. It was pretentious and the portions were tiny. If I'm shelling out 17 bucks for food, I want to be kind of full. (I do realize that in the pretentious world 17 bucks isn't that much but I could fill up at Applebees or Chilis or any one of a number of chain places for 17 bucks including tip so... becuase I'm a Philistine that's my basis of comparison). Also, it wasn't that good. Actually the steak on the kabobs was good (there were all of 6 pieces of steak on the two kabobs.) but just not enough. The rice tasted like soap.

My side of the table, littlehands, Big R & flower were all chatting about our own stuff and somehow we got to talking about witnessing peeing in public. Apparently flower saw some woman on Broadway just totally drop trou and bend over and pee. Sadly, I could top this with the guy on the bus who peed. He just stood in the aisle and peed. Luckily, he didn't drop trou, though, so I didn't have to see homeless penis. :)

Big R also pissed me off greatly this evening. He tends to just talk sometimes. And talk and talk. He thinks he is being funny but really he's just annoying as fuck. We were crossing the street passing two straight guys and he growled and babbled some stupid bitchy thing and so I ended up shouting at him to shut the fuck up. He just kept babbling. I'm fine with conversation but not with people who require constant talk. Sometimes silence is okay.

Alternatives...

Michelle and I were discussing today alternate ways of meeting men for Joanne. (Ok, I think we actually talked about this yesterday but still...) She had been on the Freakonomics blog and it was mentioned that there are all sorts of niche dating websites. The blog was actually highlighting a farmer's dating site so they can meet a wife and then create farmer's daughters. One of the other sites the blog listed isn't actually a real site but it was basically for bigger gals. I googled plus sized singles sites to see what could appear and here's where my problem with niche sites starts. I like the idea of using a site like that becuase really it is easier to go that route than to go on a site like match.com where all the people (including the over 300 lb men) want "Slender or toned or athletic" chicks. The part that disturbs me, though, is how fetishized it can all be. And that disturbs me. One site was for "...and their Admirers FA's - (Fat Admirers) with thousands of personal ads currently listed here on our website." Something about that phrase just creeps me out. On another in a gentleman's intro he says "likes tattoos /piercings rockbilly gothic kinky fetish BBW WOMEN" which yes, clearly he's not someone I'd be into but the whole fetish concept just bugs the crap out of me. Is it a fetish if a guy wants a skinny chick? Or if he prefers an athletic chick? Or if he likes them curvy like J-lo? If he prefers large ta-tas... or smaller ta-tas? (I'm assuming y'all have answered rhetorically no to all of those) ... so why is liking a big chick a fetish? I think ultimately, even though I don't necessarily agree, the word fetish has an implied bias of 'not normal.' And that bugs me a lot.

So ultimately I'm going to try one of the alternate sites and see what happens. Can't hurt, right? (You know unless I can't even find a guy on a site that is supposed to be for gals like me...)

Hee hee

I saw this cartoon today in my email and it cracked me up. Totally me. (The cartoon, by the way, is Adam at home. I like it.)

Dun dun dun

Root canal. I have an appointment with an endodontist on Thursday to discuss said root canal. It is better than I anticipated. I figured he'd say dun dun dun pull it. So to me that's a step up. I can cope with a root canal. I can't cope with a bridge. I go back in March to do the cleaning and then to discuss whatever other mouth issues there may be. Heh may... there are. Could've been much worse so I'm okay right now. :) One thing... his office was very old fashioned on the x-ray thing. I remember one dentist I saw in Fairbanks (so that would be a minimum of 10 years ago since I left in 1997)had a different kind of mouth x-ray thing. It definitely did not involve shoving those little things in my mouth and poking my under tongue area and hitting my gag reflex to take a picture. But this guy was nice and striaght forward and his peeps were nice so I'm fine with that.

Dental playlist

So for my dental appointment that I'm freaked out about I have set up a special playlist in pica, the ipod, called dentist. It is full of music that will make me happy, mostly Disney tunes. There's the theme to the Main Street Electrical Parade as well as the Pirates of the Carribean theme. I can imagine I'm on the street waiting for the parade to start instead of having my mouth messed with by hygenists with an agenda. :)

In belly dancing class last night we started some hip work. Damn that was hard on the achilles tendons. We had to keep our knees bent pretty deeply and, as y'all know, mine don't bend that great because of the short tendons so that was a bit of a stretch. But it was a lot of fun and I think I have the first part of one of the movements down but the other part I was having a hard time understanding. I'm going to have to practice at home without a baggy t-shirt on so that I can perhaps see what I'm trying to do. She asked if any of us would be interested in doing a performance. I can safely say for me the answer would be oh hell no. :)

Called out...

I got served by one of my girls the other night. (Ok I don't really know what that means but I'll use the slang.) :) She called me on the fact that every Thursday I wear basically the same outfit... dark teal/peacock colored work pants and an off white sweater. I had to explain that I own 4 pairs of work pants and 5 sweaters. The off-white sweater is the only one that I think really goes with the teal/peacock colored work pants and since those are my least favorite pants, I wear them last in the pant rotation. I hadn't really realized I do it, but once I thought about it... clearly I do. So in an effort to mix it up a bit I'm wearing the dreaded pants today... Although I forgot and I'm wearing the black sweater instead of the off-white. I'll have to make an effort on Thursday NOT to wear the white. :)

Just call me Grumpy

I have a tooth ache. I've had one for quite awhile now and I'm breaking down and going to the dentist. I know the problem. I don't know how they will be able to fix it. A tooth way in the back of my mouth came in forcing the tooth next to it to move. That tooth is now positioned wrong and, of course, in pain. Sometimes massive sometimes not. The good part? Since I'm in pain, I'm apparently much less likely to snack or eat at all really. The bad part? Every time I sneeze I involuntarily clamp my teeth down and that sends a whole new wave of pain through my jaw.

I'll never learn

I went to the GF bakery yesterday. I am on the fence about them still. I kind of feel like they are moving into the way too chichi food and I'm not so fond of that. So I went and there were not a lot on the shelves, but over on the racks there were plenty. I grabbed a cinnamon bread off that shelf to be told that they are for a grocery store delivery. Crikey. If you've got nothing on the shelves of your own store, shouldn't you make sure you can put stuff on them first for your regular customers? So this evening I go to put the food I purchased YESTERDAY into the fridge and wouldn't you know it... bagels have mold. Fuck. Are you kidding me? I can accept that the food gets moldy quickly (which is why I was dumping it in the fridge today) but honestly 36 hours later??

Sometimes you don't want to know.

The lady from the management company called me back this morning. Apparently she got my letter confused with other people's. (Duh). So my total rent is now $825 plus $10 for my storage unit. That's an increase of $70/mo. That's kind of a lot. Unfortunately a random internet search reveals I'm still getting a deal. It is better I asked though, because I could just see not paying the extra $25/m0 and at some point them figuring it out and slapping me with fees and a big bill to pay back the back rent. Michelle pointed out I could show them their stupid letter as proof I was paying what I was told, but I still suspect that I couldn't fully get away with it. I'd definitely have to make up back rent probably.

Condos in my area are now all going for over $200k. There are new ones going up with 'rates in the low 300's'. I get the housing market is changing but honestly I want 4 walls and a few windows a bathroom and a bedroom. I don't need granite countertops or stainless steel appliances. All the condos going up anywhere near me are either conversions or "luxury" condos. I know this logic probably isn't logical, but I really hope all these luxury ones help drive the prices of old and boring ones down a bit. I hope none of the sellers end up under water, but other than that at the rate condo prices are going here, nobody will be able to buy one. What kind of single person pays $300 to $400k for a one bedroom or studio condo? I don't get it.

It happened

I knew it was potentially coming. I felt it. The rent increase. Although the letter is worded so weirdly I can't figure out how much I'm supposed to pay in rent. Seriously, what kind of moron wrote it? It was also addressed to the wrong person. I now wonder if they have no idea who lives in my apartment. Now apparently I'm going to have to call my apartment manager to get this figured out.

We appreciate your residency at the apartments. While it is neither
pleasant nor easy to raise rents, we find it necessary to due to an increase in
operating expenses. Effective April 1st 2007 your unit rent will be $770
which is in line with the current market value. You will also be
responsible for your portion of $25 for the combined utilities charges.

XYZ management values you as a resident and we are committed to providing
the best residential facilities for the current market rental rate.
Effective April 1st 2007 your rent will be $775, your utilities will be $45 for
a total of $800. If you park on the premises you will need to add your
parking charges to $800 for your grand total.

Random about TV (apparently)

My dinner plans tonight got cancelled. Is it slightly wrong that I'm okay with that because it means I can sit at home and watch Beauty and the Geek and Top Chef? Probably. Although I already know who wins Top Chef and I'm not happy about it. I do kind of want to see how they get there and how it happens. You know?

In other TV news, I'm giving Veronica Mars one episode to prove me wrong before I stop watching. In the previews from last episode she gives the oh so typical "I'm pregnant" line to someone. I'm hoping, as Michelle suggested, it is for a case and not a clear Jump the Shark moment. My biggest TV peeve ever is the way teenagers on TV get pregnant at the drop of a hat. They can't just have sex. There ALWAYS has to be consequences and 99.99% of the time it is pregnancy. On Degrassi they had the consequences of oral sex be Gonorrhea. (And yes I do watch a Canadian TV show on The N. In fact, I should be ashamed to admit that the primary reason I keep digital cable is so that I can watch Degrassi on The N. I should be ashamed I know).

Totally Fun!

I took my first belly dancing class last night. All my worries were dumb. It was really fun. I was not surrounded by size 0 coeds. There were a wide variety of shapes and sizes. I wasn't even the oldest person there I don't think. I think I'll take it again next quarter. And I highly recommend it. I can feel the burn today. :)

Thanks to Michelle & KTP I started using Pantene Ice. I really like it! It makes my hair feel very soft.

Hmm... I had a 3rd thought but it has escaped my pretty little head. :)

Thirty-Six

That's my magic number. The problem... in order to donate blood I need a hct of 38. So despite the fact that I have stopped taking my Aleve. I have started taking a multi-vitamin and drinking a lot of orange juice (something about Vitamin C and Iron). I am still technically anemic. So I was yellow carded again. This is the 5th (or 6th) one. This is causing me a tiny bit of stress because I have to do another blood draw before I can get my next round of my regular pills and I'm worried she won't give them to me if I'm anemic.

Easily influenced

I've become Food Network's bitch. I'm not even on any sort of diet, but I just love Food Network on Sunday nights. I love Iron Chef America and I LOVE Food Network Challenge. Tonight's challenge is called Flying Knives. Basically it is 5 teppanyaki chefs showing off their flair. All I can think of while I watch this is how much I now want to go to Benihanna's.

Go go gadget... pooh too tired...

This weekend has been go go go for me.

Friday I hopped the bus to Bellevue where I met up with Big R and we shopped. SHOPPED. I walked into the Apple store and slapped down my debit card and walked out with Pica, an 80g black ipod. She's pretty and shiny and I get worried I'm going to break her. Or make her less shiny and pretty. I've got mad skillz in that realm you know. I also bought 3 new pairs of earrings and a new pair of old lady tennis shoes. Yay!

Saturday I just took Tess to the vet. I spent the afternoon relaxing which was nice.

Today I was up at the crack of dawn. I did laundry and was out of hte house by 8:30 to meet I for breakfast. She needed to interview someone in my age bracket for her adult psych class so... :) Apparently I'm in a normal place. That's good to know. I went to the grocery store and went home for lunch. After lunch, I went for a Sunday adventure! I went to Golden Gardens in the Ballard Area. As I got off the bus I discovered that the bus stop is at the top of a mother fucking cliff. I had to go down a ton of stairs to get to the park. I actually felt a tiny bit dizzy on the stairs at the top. So when I got down the stairs to the park I thought it will kill me to walk back up the stairs. My second thought was that I should've brought my kite because it was perfect kite flying weather. I walked around the park and the beach. I took a bunch of photos but I am not pulling them from my camera right now because I'm tired. So while walking on one of the paths I saw a sign that indicated the Ballard Locks were near. I knew I could catch a bus there. So I start walking. And walking. And walking. Forever later I end up at the locks and I was going to go into the parkbut I was too tired. I will say that I walked 13,361 steps which is equal to 788 calories burned and 3 and 1/3 miles. I rock!

Laguna Beach & The Hills

KTP, you may be the best person to answer this question since you watch far more MTV than a normal person our age should... although I'm right there with ya. :) So what I don't understand is what are these two shows. Are they reality? Are they fiction? Are they a fictionalized faux reality kind of like how The Office is a "documentary"? Those aren't real people living life are they? I ask this because I watched 4 minutes of an episode where a blonde implied to a guy with the freakishly whitest teeth I've ever seen that she was pregnant. She wasn't but she wanted him to feel bad because she had felt bad for those days she thought she was. It totally seemed like something Brenda Hampton would write. They also had NO chemistry as a couple. I don't get it...

How does this work?

So I was just reading online about a house going on the market for $155 million. Further down the article it talked about Trump's home that he's asking $125 million. So I went to a mortgage calculator and the monthly payment on a simple mortgage for that much is $729,000. Who pays that as a mortgage? How can they?! Am I missing something. Well clearly nobody would mortgage that much... There's something about the world of super high finance that I'm totally missing. I can't imagine that someone has enough liquid assets to be able to outright purchase a house for $125 million. So how does that work??

I am such a 5 year old!

I received my tax refund this morning. I actually knew it was coming because I went online last night to check the status. My first thought while walking to work this morning... I want to go shopping TONIGHT. :) I'm getting an ipod and after thinking about it and discussing with Michelle I think I'm going whole hog fancy... 80 gig. This way I won't have to purchase another one for many years. (Pip I got either Christmas 2002 or my birthday 2003 so that's 4 years... That's a pretty good run I think.) I'm also ordering the newbie a case online so that there is some modicum of protection around it. I'm HARD on stuff... I know this. Luckily since I work for the college, I can get a discount from the Apple store... and since every place and their brother has the ipod for the exact same price the Apple store it is! And I'll be able to use it on my next Sunday Adventure! Yippeeeeee!!

Oh my hips don't lie...

Tonight I signed back up for the hydrofit class that got cancelled last time. It was a lot of fun and there are 4 people in the class so that means it will keep going. Yay!

Michelle & I discussed belly dancing today. I think I want to take a class on it. So isn't it lucky that my college is offering a belly dancing class. Yay! I signed up for it today and am looking forward to it. I have previously mentioned, I'm sure, my girl crush on Shakira. I want to make my hips do that. Or at least something like that. Plus belly dancers are all hippieish and all about "accept your body" blah blah blah.

After I get my tax refund I have a 3 fold plan for it. 1 - New pair of tennis shoes so I can go back to the gym. My current pair are not doing well after a year + of hard wearing. And they stink. Like REALLY stink. 2 - New iPod. I'm going to go with a video one. I thought I could get a good deal through the college at the apple store, but sadly the cost for the one I found on the apple site is the exact same cost I can get it from Amazon for. 3 - Sending it off to my good friend... mortal enemy the credit card company. 4 - Maybe another tattoo... ;) (Ok probably not another tattoo. Maybe... No, probably not... :) )

To Ipod or not to Ipod that is the question...

I'm getting a tax refund. The bulk of it is going to my friend American Express. I am saving out a bit of it for something fun for me and for a new pair of tennis shoes. (I know a wild life I lead).

I'm considering purchasing a new MP3 player... quite possibly an ipod. I've been against buying a new one for awhile. I don't believe in replacing something with a newer model just because it is the newest latest and greatest. If there were absolutely nothing wrong with Pip (my current mp3 player) I'd probably consider it and then move on, but Pip has developed an issue. The headphone jack is damaged and it only plays into one ear of the headphone. (I know this is usually a headphone issue, but I've tested the headphones and they both work on other products.) Pip will also ONLY play MP3s and the newer music downloads do into WMAs or some other type that I can't then translate into MP3 despite having the software to do it because they are protected. I do know I could go to all of mp3s dot com and even pay less but I am vaguely troubled by their questionable legality. If I'm actually paying for the damn track, I want to know that the track is fully legal and if I'm going to get busted for illegal music it won't be for something I actually paid money for. :) But my issue with the ipod is two fold... (And it can be attributed to the fact that i've only ever worked 1 ipod so I could just not know stuff.) I don't like the dial. Mine has buttons and I prefer that. It also seems like there's no way to just listen to a random selection of whatever music is on it. Like if you listen to the stuff in the folders you're stuck in whichever folder you're in. (There could be a way I don't know about). And although it is being a sheep, I've never had an issue with following a trend I like and I kind of like all the accessories that are available for the ipod. So I put it to y'all... your thoughts?

200 hours

That's my conservative estimate for how many hours I volunteered last year. I'm doing a survey for America's 2nd Harvest and it is one of the questions on the survey. I went through last year's blog entries and added it up. I may be missing some time depending. That's 10% of my working hours. That seems like a lot, but when I was going through blog posts it hardly seemed like any time at all. Especially when you consider how much time I waste doing absolutely nothing at all.

This weekend I have no volunteering planned, but I am planning a Sunday adventure. I may try Seward Park since I've never been. Or I may go to Sand Point Magnusen Park to fly my kite. That one, of course, requires me to consult with the weather forecast to see if there will be a kite flying breeze. This beach park sounds really nice and could be fun. Perhaps Golden Gardens? Maybe the Ballard Locks. What do you think? What looks good? I think I'm going to pack a picnic lunch too.

I hate January!

We only get paid once a month. We get paid before Christmas and won't get paid again until Jan 31. That's 5 and a half weeks. It is too long to wait!

Groovin' on a Sunday afternoon

So far here's what I have accomplished today... Shower. I haven't even done laundry, which is causing a little thought in the back of my head to twitch since I know it needs to happen and the longer I wait the more it twitches because I hate fighting for laundry room time. I was up late last night IMing with a friend who is commiserating with me about the uslessness of boys. We're considering creating our own convent since we both are apparently so repugnant that no man will date us we need to do something. It would be either a convent or become lesbian but I don't know how my esteem could handle it if I couldn't get a member of either sex. (Ok I'm exaggerating. I've always said that I won't meet a guy in a bar because I'm just not that girl. That doesn't really bother me actually.)

I updated my browser to IE 7. (Ok I didn't do it, Microsoft told me to do it and I am at the mercy of the evil empire.) I'm not sure how I feel about it. I have a theory that their phisihing scan is slowing down my browsing and that bugs me.

Another thing that has been bugging me... have y'all noticed these new passive/aggressive wives commercials that are on? I've seen two so far and both make me want to punch the wife. In the first one a woman goes up to her fridge and bangs the glass into a door and it is about new appliances and she says to her husband "The water isn't working. Oh the Ice isn't working. Oh it is because we don't have them." I totally wouldn't buy her a fridge after that. The other is an H&R block commercial and the couple is getting audited and the wife says "we should call our tax guy. Oh we can't because we used a box. Let's ask the box what to do." So dumb.

I finally watched Murderball last night. I've had it from netflix since oh I don't know when but just after New Year's. It was really good. It is about the Paralympic Rugby team. They are crazy! They use special wheelchairs and crash into each other. It is really cool. The movie talks a lot about how the guys ended up in their wheelchairs and their lives. I found it funny and interesting and really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it.

One other thing bothering me... the neighbors let their dogs run up and down the hall and throw the dog toy. During the day it doesn't bother me as much as when they do it in the middle of the night. Although during the day it bugs me because I feel like I'm trapped in my apartment since I don't want to go out there while the dogs are running around (mostly I don't want either of the dogs dashing into my apartment which could just be my neuroses.).

FINALLY... The elevator was broken again on Friday after work and still broken when I went out. Luckily it was working when I got home at 2:00 AM. After walking up the big hills to get home I would've been a significantly unhappy camper if I had to walk up the stairs too.

I give up

Last night, well okay technically this morning, I was all set to write a rambling drunken post about boys and how I really and truly am over lusting after and crushing on the former wc. I fell asleep instead. So unfortunately for you you won't get the drunken maudlin rambling; you'll just get sober maudlin rambling. : ) You also miss out on my musing about whether or not I'm going to hell for using a juice box as a mixer with rum. It is pretty good... Capri Sun Tropical Punch and Mango Rum. Although you should probably use less mango rum than I did because when I got to the bottom of the cup, it was mostly rum.

I know I said it before but thanks to my own delusions and those delusions of my friends I've still managed to convince myself he's interested. But now I'm really done. Last week he was in my office (he still visits daily despite the fact that his office has moved) and we were talking about his band and he had two shows coming up. He said I should go to one. We discussed the relative virtues of the two shows and I said I'd go on Friday. I go. BY MY SELF! So I go and I see him with his band and a bunch of their friends. That's just too much for little ol' me. I can't go up to that entire group. I think that's worse than when men say they don't want to go up to a gaggle of girls. So I position myself in several spots where I think I must be in his line of sight and hang out and drink. The bar had a type of cider in the bottle that I can drink. Finally the 2nd band ended (and they were pretty good) and it was time for his band to go on. They do their show, and they're really good. They were the last band to play. So after they were done I was sitting on a chair in the front and after he broke down all his gear he came over and we talked. For like 5 minutes and then he went to get his car to leave. I helped him load his drum stuff up and he left. What's the point? Honestly.

The other thing I learned... Pioneer Square is freaking FAR from my apartment. It is just over a mile, but going TO the bar was easy since it was all downhill. Coming back from the bar... A whole other story. And it was 1:30 in the morning. It is nice, though, that I can walk home at 1:30 in the morning from a bar and have no problems. :)

Fat asses do not ski.

I'm considering going skiing. I've kind of always wanted to but the expense of all the equipment necessary has really caused me to not do it. So now my friends are going and I'm considering it again but the one thing I think I would have to purchase would be ski pants. I have a good waterproof coat. I have mittens (although I would probably need gloves). I do not have a good hat, but that's not too bad to purchase. (I do have a cute hat but it wouldn't be good for this project. Although somewhere in the recesses of my storage unit I'm fairly certain I would have an ear band made of fleece which would fit the hat bill to keep my ears warm. I also have wicking long johns in that same place all from living in Alaska.) Anyway, I'm trying to find ski pants, but apparently like finding other clothes for fat chicks, this is not easy. We fatties do not ski, which doesn't make sense to me since we've got all this extra padding to keep us warm. I may be able to borrow Big R's since he has out skinnied his other pair.

Don't be a hater

Because I have already done my taxes and will be getting my refund in 8 - 15 business days. YAY!

Affordable?

When I got home last night, there was a flyer in my box for apartment rentals that are affordable and luxurious and given my current apartment dilemma (oh who am I kidding... I always make a big deal out of shit that turns out to be nothing but I digress) I eagerly opened it up. Great... One bedrooms start at $688 and this includes utilities. My current apartment's base rent is $695 plus utilities at $50 and my storage unit that houses empty boxes for my next move at $10. (And with that you know exactly how much rent I pay each month). So this is cool until I realized that this is for lower income folks. According to the flyer you have to make less than $27k annually. Now this seemed kind of high to me. Doing the math and taking out for taxes the person would have less than $1,000 per month to live on for everything else in their lives. That somehow doesn't seem like enough to me.

Unrelated, or related depending... I have been buying these chocolate chip cookies from a health food store in Northgate. They are frozen and all I have to do is bake them. They are DELICIOUS. I LOVE them. I bake 4 at a time and eat two at night and two in my lunch. I just noticed, because clearly I'm an idiot, they are $8.00 a dozen. That's $.66 per cookie! I eat $2.64 per day in cookies alone. It is no wonder I need poor person's housing (for which I don't qualify anyway).

A Wish for a snow day...

When I left for work this morning the snow was falling pretty fast. And sticking. And yet, we are at work today. My biggest boss isn't here. My immediate boss isn't here. The only person with any power that is here is my notboss. And she really doesn't have any power either. The funniest part is that I just received an email that said due to the bad weather, the fac/staff dining room is closed because the people couldn't come to work.

Unfortunately, now that we are all here, it isn't like they are going to let us go home. That sucks.

March!

I don't know why I do the march anymore. The first year all the families were into it, and in fact I only do it because they wanted to. The 2nd year we cancelled (despite the fact that I have a post about doing it. I don't know what's happening there but we cancelled because it was POURING.). The third year I think 3 or 4 girls went. This year I had 1 girl. One girl and that's it. I offered to not have to go and she could just go home, but she wanted to go. So she and I marched and talked. She's a funny little thing. My first year I wasn't sure about her, but now I like her. The march was really short this year. Usually we go downtown and it is long but this time was a short short path. So we were done in like 2 hours... actually probably much less because we started rather late. My girl and I stopped and got hot cocoa at Starbucks which is her favorite part, I think. Last year we did the same thing. It is a nice end when it is so cold outside. I'm not sure if we'll do this again next year. Maybe I'll find something else to do that weekend. :) Ooh maybe I'll have managed to find myself Mr. Right Now and we can do a weekend getaway. ;) (Ok maybe I'm delusional)

I'm taking a multivitamin. This is to help my iron levels. The pills are HUGE. I have to get the iron up so that when I go get my next blood test I am not low iron and my dr will keep giving me my pills. These vitamins have like 150% of iron and 100% of vitamin C. Isa says Vit C is good for iron absorption. Plus, once I hit magic 38 I can donate blood again! Yay! (Blah blah blah critical levels.)

Every year...

Every year the elevator in my building stops working on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I don't know what causes it. Poltergeist I think. I only know this because every year I do the Martin Luther King Jr March and I come home from a long march all tired and then have to climb 4 fucking flights of stairs. This year, apparently the elevator is starting an hour and a half early. I went down to fetch my laundry out of the dryer to discover there was no elevator. Now unlike the last time this happened, I wouldn't have done my laundry if I had known this was going to happen. So I trudged up the 5 flights of stairs all grumpy and tired and shit and thought 'If my apartment building owners think they can raise rents with shit like this happening all the time, they are nuts.'

Which brings me to my 2nd point. I was talking to my apartment manager recently about the possibility of a new lease. I've been leaseless since this guy started. Every time I have asked, I get told that they will want to raise my rent $25 to do it. So I asked again last week sometime and he said the same answer and then mentioned that they (the building owners) want to eventually raise the base rents to $900. Are you fucking kidding me?! If my math is correct, that would be $900 base rent and then an additional $50 for utilities which would be a $200 increase for me. That's a buttload of money and totally not worth it. A neighbor heard that and agreed with me that this building is not worth $900 (or $950)/mo. Now I am willing to pay more in rent, don't get me wrong. I haven't had an increase since I moved in 4 years ago. It would only make sense that I should pay more eventually. But not THAT much more. And considering how often little things like the elevator breaking happen, I also don't know that I could support that much of an increase.

When I was downstairs doing my laundry I discovered one other little needly thing. They've raised our laundry rates by a quarter. It was $1.25 to do each load of wash and the same to dry. Just last Sunday it was still just $1.00. And it isn't as though these machines have been improved at all. They are the same crappy ones that were there last week. I will say it did give me 15 more min of drying time, so I guess that's okay, except I really didn't need the extra 15 min.

Someday I will have the money to buy my own place... although by the time that happens even the distant suburbs will be out of my price range. (Actually I'm hoping the glut of new 'luxury' condos don't work out for all the developers and so they end up going for cheap because everybody and their brother is building one on any 5' of space available. That's probably bad for me karmically but whatever, I never get what I want anyway.)

Such a ditz

I am such a ditz sometimes. I had a meeting to go to today. A meeting I scheduled for the Girl Scouts leaders as their Service Unit Manager. I scheduled it for 10:00 at a library. I was thinking I didn't want to get to the library too early because the library didn't open until 10:00. So last night I was looking up the bus schedule and oh.... I now know how I got confused. Anyway the first time I did a bus search last night I did it to arrive by 10:00 like I needed to. Yet somehow when I was double checking the bus times this morning I looked for a 10:30 arrival time and to further complicate things I looked for a 10:45 arrival time. (Which I will sometimes do so that I can get to a meeting early if I need to set up or whatever.) So as I got to the meeting at 10:45 you can imagine my chagrin as I suddenly realized I was 45 minutes late. Duh, I am so dumb. Luckily nobody but the Girl Scout employee who works with our service unit and one other adult showed up. We were supposed to have a vote. In order to have the vote we had to have a quorum of 13 people. Ha! Like we ever get that many people.

Twice denied

So today I got yet another yellow card from the blood mobile. I got an email that basically said due to the bad weather they are desperate please donate, there's a blood mobile at your employer. (Ok they didn't say "there's a blood mobile at your employer" they said where the blood mobile was and it happens to be my employer.) So I go and eat a hearty lunch and I duck into the bus. And I do all the questions. And I have a good pulse. And I have a good temperature. And I answer all the questions right. And she takes the drop of blood and drops it in the green stuff and it barely drops then floats right to the top. Yup, still anemic. Still yellow carded. I'm at 36% today, though so that's ... well I was going to say good but really it is 1 point higher than last time which was 1 point lower than the time before so that's apparently where I hover.

Then, I logged into blogger to post about this and yay! I've been invited to move Joanne's Life over to the new system. I am excited about this only because I have serious hatred in my heart for the template and I want want want to move to something that will hopefully help me/let me do my own more easily without having to know massive amounts of html. So I click the button... and yet again denied. Apparently Joanne's Life is too fat to move over to the new blogger. They are only letting runway models move and maybe someday if I'm lucky they'll expand to allow those of us bigger chicks to do it. They probably would rather do trannys too. :)

(Ok I'm not actually bitter about it. I still hear about problems, so if I can hold off until everything is perfect I'm not too traumatized.) :)

It didn't make me sad.

I was listening to Adam Corolla this morning on the radio. Danny Bonaduce now is on with him and I loved Jamie & Danny when I lived in LA. I lost my weird love for Danny while watching Breaking Bonaduce because that was just bad. But I do enjoy him as a radio personality and I find Adam Corolla sometimes funny. So this morning I was listening to Adam and Danny and they were discussing who would men rather have sex with... a fat chick or a mtf really hot post- op tranny. Apparently there are a number of men who would rather do the tranny. And they had a bunch of guys calling in to give their opinions. Which is fine but Adam says at some point that he feels really bad for any fat chicks listening and makes a joke about how we're all going to kill ourselves. And all I could think was why would I feel bad about this? Would I want to date a guy who not only would contemplate this question but call in and give his opinion on it? Especially if the opinion was "hot tranny." It did make me chuckle because I was just laying there thinking, 'Thanks, Adam, these guys are giving out their names and locations and you've just helped a bunch of women weed out a few more assholes.'

Weathermen Suck

So allegedly there is going to be this big storm starting at 10:00 tonight. We're going to get snow (and theoretically) things like schools will be closed. So far, no snow. There'd better be snow here in the morning or I'm suing for mental distress.

I went out with Big R tonight. We threw some darts. We had these two guys join us. One was very funny, but older; the other standoffish but young and hot. The old one bit me! It kind of hurt. But it was a fun time and we laughed a lot. They then disappeared and we went upstairs to watch scaryoke. That was not good, but then again is it ever?

There was something else I wanted to talk about but I'm falling asleep on the sofa and want to go to bed.

Talismens

So I'm an atheist, maybe at the closest agnostic but really mostly atheist. Having said that, I will fully admit to having weird little beliefs. They are completely illogical and I'll admit that, but you know they make life fun. Many many years ago I got a daruma doll. I colored one eye, and made my wish. The wish came true and so I colored the other eye. It was a pretty big wish and it came true really quickly. Clearly there are some other forces at work. :)

Michelle's mom gave me this very cool box of stone charms. I googled the meaning of the different stones and discovered that rose quartz is traditionally worn to attract love and heal broken hearts. :) Since then I've been wearing it regularly. I'll let you know if it works. :)

The difference between them & US

I really appreciate that all the tapes and video of Steve Irwin's death have been destroyed or turned over to his wife. That there's not one out there just waiting to be leaked to someone. You know if the investigation had been done here in the states one of them would have 'accidentally' ended up missing and then the highest bidder would've had it and ultimately it would be all over the net. (Yes I do have low expectations for the US media, why do you ask?)

Old friends

One of the cool things about old friends is how you can pick up with them, even years later, and it is almost like the time and space was never there. Spending all those hours with my friend yesterday was almost like we were back in Alaska just chatting and laughing. Her other sons are hellions and it is so funny the stuff they get themselves into.

Mad dash

Firstly, let me tell y'all how much I love cruise control. I never had it on any of the cars I've owned in the past because they were all standards, and well old. (Since I think it can be had on standards now.) So last night I was driving back from Portland (I'll get to that in a moment) and I just set the cruise control to about 3 mph above whatever the posted limit was and called it good. I know that Michelle has done extensive research on gas mileage and cruise control and since I was going up and down a lot of hills I would've been better off without it, but when I first left Portland I discovered that because it was so dark and so quiet and there were not a lot of cars out I would find myself hitting 85 without even realizing it. Also, the Foo Fighters are fun to sing along with at the top of ones lungs totally out of tune. Am I tone deaf because I can hear I'm completely wrong, or are you only tone deaf when you are singing totally wrong and think you sound good? That's an interesting conundrum.

Also, I may honestly hate downtown Portland. I spent 45 minutes lost before I got to where I was going and then I spent another 20 trying to get out. Seriously, they need to do something about the sinage and not have a right turn arrow to get to the 5 freeway right at the exact spot you are supposed to turn right with no warning whatsoever that it is coming. (I'm not at all bitter about that.)

So now why was I in Portland? Let me first say that whenever I think of going to Portland, for some reason I always think it is much farther away than it really is. It is basically a trip to Phoenix for my family and we did that periodically. Maybe because it is a whole other state away. I don't know.... or maybe because when I've gone it has been after work so we've been stuck in I5 traffic until hell froze over. But I've totally digressed.

Michelle IMd me last week asking if I had seen the emails from our friend's mom. And hotmail, being the crappy piece of crap it is, had been sending them to junk so I hadn't seen a one. Apparently our friend (who lives in Juneau) had her next baby and unfortunately he ended up with collapsed lungs and was medevaced shortly after birth to Portland. She followed along a day or two later. So she's been in Portland since Christmas day. Had I known this sooner, I probably could've gone down sooner. So I emailed her mom and asked if it would be okay and then I emailed her directly and offered to come down and hang out. She was agreeable and so on Sunday I rented a car and made a mad dash down there. I stopped along the way for baby presents and even better trashy magazines for her. :) She'd been doing counted cross stitch the whole time she's been there.

The baby is doing so much better. He is still in the NICU which is a little sad, but he only has one more hurdle to go through and he'll be released. He's much better off than all the other babies there. He was full term (and ginormous - 9 lbs 6 ozs - she's little, I don't know how that keeps happening to her). Apparently the doctors think that when he took his first cry he did it with such force he caused a hole in the sac that surrounds the lungs which caused their collapse. Who knew that kind of crazy shit was possible?

There's a little tiny baby on the other side of him who at birth was 1 lb something ozs and only 1 foot long. That's a ruler length. The littler of the two of of my ferrets weighs more than this baby (and is probably longer too). How freaking sad is that? He was the only baby in the area not encased in one of those plastic things. The babies in those plastic things don't even look real. They looked like dolls or something. They never moved or anything. It was very sad.

So the last thing that her baby has to do is learn to eat. He doesn't want to. The first two weeks he was fed through a feeding tube (which is all he has now besides the monitors). She keeps trying to convince him to nurse but he hasn't figured it out yet. He can't leave until he does. So I spent a whole bunch of time with her in the hospital yesterday and I told her if she wants me to come down again just say the word and I'll come to visit. I'm sure it is lonely there for her. She was saying that a lot of the other moms don't come very often and that's sad too. (The 1 lb baby's mama is 13 which is beyond sad.) I was talking to the nurse and she seems to love it, but I honestly couldn't imagine. She does have a rather healthy some things just aren't meant to be kind of attitude which I suppose you need there.

The Family Stone

Have any of y'all watched this movie? I'm going to spoil it for you if you haven't, so you may want to stop reading now....

Ok I warned ya. I watched this tonight on fancy pants cable. I did not like it. I wanted to like it. It seemed like it could be funny or charming or whatever. SJP winning over the family. But once the sister showed up I knew it would go in the direction it went. The way Dermont Mulroney looked at her... You know boyfriend swapping was going to happen. And that was just icky. And I'm not sure if SJP was supposed to be this total bitch, but I mostly felt really bad for her. They were all so mean to her and so unwilling to even think that perhaps she might have good qualities. Although when she started dating the brother suddenly she was okay? I don't get it.

I hurted myself...

I fell down today after work. I stepped wrong and hit the edge of the sidewalk which twisted (the bad ankle yet again) and fell into the mud. Now my new shoe is muddy, the knee of my work pants are muddy and my ego is bruised. (Since about 3 of my girls saw me do it).

We have our camping spot for the year. I'm excited. The girls and I will be going to Cape Disappointment and staying in yurts. The moms and the girls should be happy. We'll go to the Lewis & Clark Interpretative center and we'll get to beach comb and perhaps clam or crab. I've never done either one, and I don't like seafood, but the girls may like it. I'm excited for it actually.

This is the story of 7 people...

who stayed together in a house on New Year's Eve. We were kind of two camps of people... the marrieds and the singles. Isa and Isa's former roommate and I were the singles and married friends of Isa and their married friends were (obviously) the marrieds. We had a good time all in all. I played apples to apples Sunday night for the first time and that game is totally fun. It was a pretty pretty house and I spent a lot of time relaxing, which was nice. I also found the place I'm going to drag my girls for camping. So that's fun! :) There was a small bit of tension. One of the marrieds was unhappy about having to do dishes and that sort of thing. They were a little peeved at the planner of the trip that there wasn't more of an explanation about how meals were going to work, just a vague instruction to bring like one thing that didn't seem to relate to anything, but what are you going to do you know? We all coped and it was definitely something I'd do again.

This is the house in Long Beach. Pretty huh? 3 bedrooms upstairs and 1 downstairs in the garage. That room was freaking arctic and kind of creepy. Isa volunteered to stay down there which is good because I was creeped out just the first time we went down there.

Being the morning person that I am, I was up early each morning. This house was just across the dunes from us and I saw it on my way to the beach. This house almost makes me reconsider my whole hippy working for a non profit way in favor of selling my soul to some corporation. Seriously.

A couple of other houses on the beach on Saturday morning. I included them because I know how Michelle likes pictures of houses. :)

A little sunrise over the ocean shot. The beaches at Long Beach are not supposed to be swum in. Apparently the currents are really bad and you could get sucked out in an instant. I may let the girls wade at least.

Sunrises over the sand dunes. There was a lot of this sea grass. I wonder if we could use it to weave... hmmm....

Pictures middle of the road...

Apparently there's a limit to the amount of pics one can load into blogger so the photos are actually broken up into 3 posts...

Midday Saturday, I went to town with the marrieds. We walked around downtown and I took some pictures. There's a famous 'sea creature' (Jake the Alligator Man, I'm not linking to it because I find it creepy) that I have seen bumper stickers for that actually is housed in Long Beach. And I saw it at Marsh's Free Museum. We went back to the house and I ate and then went back out with the singles. :) We walked down the boardwalk and got ice cream.

This is a giant frying pan. I don't know why they have a giant frying pan in the downtown area, but they do.

Near the giant frying pan are these wood carvings of sea creatures. There were other random wood carvings around the downtown area including a giant Razor Clam and Lewis & Clark statue.

Long Beach claims to have the world's longest beach. We don't know how that could be because like Hawai'i is an island and wouldn't it have a long beach? (Although according to Wikipedia it isn't even close to being the longest beach in the world.)

Whale skeleton. It beached itself at some point in the past and they originally buried it. But some science group encouraged the digging of it up and setting it out. I can't even begin to imagine how gross it must've smelled when they dug it up.

Me in my new jeans. :) In front of a whale statue near the whale skeleton. (oh I'm also wearing my new Danskos because when I was getting my stuff together I was thinking I hate my tennis shoes so I'll just wear these, not thinking about walking on the beach or anything like that. So I have to say these danskos rock the house. They walked on the beach and about 3 weeks ago I waded in shin deep water in them so they are tough as heck.) :)

"Let's go Fly a Kite. Up to the highest height...." I was so excited on Sunday morning. I bought a kite on Saturday night and on Sunday morning I headed out to fly it. All 3 mornings I was the first one up so I had some nice alone time. Saturday and Sunday morning I headed out to the beach early to see what I could see. So this is my kite flying above the ocean.

Here I am so proud of getting it up. There was a person trying to get a sport or stunt kite up near me and they couldn't get it into the sky. That made me laugh a bit. Now that I own a kite, I can take it to the park and fly it there. Yay! I've wanted to take a kite to kite hill (Sand Point Magnussen Park) for awhile now.

Aww poor kite fell on the ground. Isn't it cute though? :)

On Sunday the marrieds stayed at the house while the singles went to visit the light houses. There are two in the area, Cape Disappointment and North Head. We were able to climb up the stairs to North Head and this is from up there looking down at my friend. (In the purple jacket. The dog couldn't come up.)

(The third installment will have some more pics from the light houses and some other stuff.)

Long Beach Pics take 2

Round two of pictures from Long Beach with my usual silly commentaries.

This was up in thetop of Northe Head Lighthouse. The cute little docent was talking about the differences in light houses. While exploring the lighthouses I kept having the song Candle on the Water from Pete's Dragon run through my head. I love that movie and the song.

Me and my coworker and our usual camper friend. This picture points out to me that I should NOT wear this hat in pictures since I think it makes me look like I have a tiny head and a giant body.

The North Head lighthouse up close. I think this looks vaguely phallic. (Ok not vaguely, maybe overtly phallic actually.)

Here I am in front of the North Head Lighthouse. According to what I've read, a lighthouse keeper's wife killed herself by throwing herself off the cliff rocks. That's sad.

I only added this picture in because I thought it was kind of cool. I put my camera up to the lens of one of those binocular machines.

This is the Cape Disappointment lighthouse. Isn't it pretty? We couldn't go up to it though because the path had problems after the storms that occurred earlier this month. From the Lewis & Clark Interprative center you can take a great picture. We also went into and wandered the L & C Interpretive center. It was kind of cool. When I take the girls camping in June, we're going to go there.

Nighttime our last night there. I just liked this picture. The tide was WAY out and there were a ton of people on the beach clamming. I've never done that. I don't eat clams, but I may let the girls try it when we go camping.

I just really liked the apparent rings around the moon. I thought they were cool.