Tuesday, November 14, 2006

I am not a city girl

Okay, obviously I failed at NaBloPoMo. Oh well. I kinda figured it wouldn't last, but I was going to try anyway. But, that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is to state how much I truly dislike cities.

Tonight I took the train down into Philly (because driving on the Schuylkill Expressway would have made me want to jump off one of the buildings downtown). I went into the city on a mission that I can't get into because it's a surprise. But, suffice it to say I had to go to a store that only exists (locally anyway) in center city Philadelphia. The train ride wasn't too bad, except there were more people than I'd like, meaning I had to share a bench seat with a total stranger. I'm not comfortable with that, because I feel like I'm imposing greatly on this other person. But, I survived and got down to the city. I made my way up to street level and then had to figure out which way to go. The one thing I REALLY loved about Salt Lake City was that there were reference points for directions. The really big really close mountains were to the East, which gave me a reference point for every other direction and made getting around really easy. There are no reference points for me in Philly. I get up to street level and generally head the wrong direction first and get to the first corner and have to turn around and head the right direction. Tonight I got lucky though and headed the right direction first. But, the streets are too crowded, I don't like all the noise (honking, shouting, more honking), I am very uncomfortable with all the people begging for handouts and the whole experience just stresses me out and makes me neurotic. But, obviously I survived. I also had a very successful shopping trip. Well, actually, the success of the shopping trip will be proven or disproven later this week. I'll try and update then.

For now a song quote... "oh give me land, lots of land and the starry skies above"

Thursday, November 09, 2006

PSA-for-the-day, etc....

I just have to rant momentarily. The problem I was having yesterday with the travel booking site at work turned out not to be a problem with the program, but a problem with my computer. ARGH! My computer is old and defective and has an old and defective operating system on it. I have troubles with creating FedEx labels and troubles with the travel site and it's stupid. Stupid company and their stupid lousy cheapness. BAH!

Someone posted a comment to my request for ideas with a couple suggestions and a couple of things one should never blog about. I would just like to tell the internets that I promise you I will never blog about bodily functions of any sort, particularly not anything specifically feminine. I will also never blog about laundry, because I don't mind doing it and therefor it is not something that I would ever feel the need to write, or complain, about.

As for the suggestions, I would like to take the one regarding a funny story from my childhood and use this moment as a PSA. With winter coming in most parts of the country I would like to warn everyone against the dangers of kerosene heaters. Okay, honestly, I'm not so sure how many people even use them anymore, but personally they scare the daylights out of me. The reason for that is, that when I was 4 or 5 I had an incident with a kerosene heater. At that time I was being babysat quite frequently by a really awesome woman named Marilyn who had two kids. One was several years older than me and the other was my brother's age, two years younger than me. We all had a lot of fun playing together, her kids, my brother and I. One chilly afternoon we were playing and, I don't remember why, but I was in the living room backing away from one or all of them. I distinctly remember the backing away part because of what happened next. So, of course, to protect myself in case of a fall, I had my hands behind me as I was backing up. Well, I managed to slowly back my hands right onto the top of a kerosene heater. Those suckers are HOT. I don't remember anything about what happened next, or the obvious trip to the hospital, but I most definately remember the thick white bandages wrapped around my hands for quite a while afterwards. My hands are fine now, no long-term damage. My recollection of it is entirely amusing, because it was a pretty stupid thing to do. But, it's also made me very wary of kerosene heaters. I won't go anywhere near the things. So, there's my PSA for the day, don't get kerosene heaters when you have kids that might, for some completely unknown reason, back into it with their hands. :)

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Funky Lil Kitchen

I went to Funky Lil Kitchen for dinner tonight. It was incredibly yummy and I was reminded of how I love that restaurant so. I had incredibly yummy scallops that came with a spinach goat cheese oatmeal. I know it sounds wierd, the oatmeal, but it was amazing. I love that place.

Anyway, other than that, still not much exciting. The travel purchasing program at work today was being hateful. I tried 8 times or more to book travel for my boss, but it refused to cooperate. Then the one time I almost had it cooperating, it died on me when I was ALMOST DONE! Evil hateful internet based bastard program. I really hope it cooperates with me in the morning.

Today I had Trader Joe's organic vegetarian chili for lunch. It was good, but I really don't like how Trader Joe's frequently insists on using tofu to substitute for meat in lots of things. There was tofu in this chili substituting for meat. There are much better ways to make vegetarian chili than using tofu as a meat substitute. If I'm going to be vegetarian, I don't want meat substitutes, because I've obviously chosen NOT TO EAT MEAT! I don't need fake meat. It's not good. Creative vegetarian chili is much better than tofu vegetarian chili.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Rachel's suggestion...

So, I have no idea what to write and no one left me any comments (BOOOO on you all!!), so I'm taking the suggestions of the 10-year-old who's camped out next to me working on homework, sort of. Sort of homework, not that she's sort of working on it.

Anyway, her suggestion was to write about where I'm staying. I'm staying with her in a really cool old house. The oldest part of the house is over 250 years old, which I think is awesome. I love old houses. I grew up in one that is currently about 170 years old. I lived mostly on the third floor, which was awesome because it was quiet and had a tilted ceiling. Our house, along with the house I'm staying in now, has streaky glass windows because the glass is so old and glass is really a liquid so it moves over time. I love that the house has wood floors and old deep window sills and a huge bathroom (cause there wasn't a bathroom inside when it was first built, so some other room became the bathroom). I also love that the house has water-filled radiators instead of forced air heat or clicky electric baseboard radiators. My room on the third floor had clicky electric baseboard heat, so I never turned it on because the noise always woke me up, so my room would get to 40 degrees in the winter. I'm not kidding, you could see your breath in my room on really cold mornings.

The house I'm staying in now is really neat and bigger than the house I grew up in. It's also in the midst of some reconstruction. They just recently redid the kitchen to be more in line with a late 1700s style. It's beautiful and as Rachel told her mom "it looks like a country store". It's also got an amazing stove, which I'm greatly enjoying cooking on. There's going to be a dining room with a really old really huge walk in fireplace, but that's still very much "under construction". But, even under construction I still think the house is amazing. It's fun living here for a little while.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Okay, maybe I need some suggestions...

If I still have any readers out there I think I may need some suggestions on what to write about for the next month. Is there anything you'd like to know about me? Any story you'd like to see posted on the internet? Any burning questions you'd like answered? Otherwise I'm just going to start rambling and that could turn bad.

Today was really uneventful. The biggest thing that happened today was that I went to Tower Records (which is closing, which is awful) and got the latest Duhks album. I love the Duhks. They are completely adorable and great musicians to boot. And they're Canadian, which is a bonus in my book. Really, that's all I have to write about, getting a new cd. I know, it's sad, but I can't think of anything else. I'm sorry. I'm going to sleep now and hope that I can come up with something better tomorrow.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Photo albuming!

This weekend was photo albuming weekend. Friday night I gathered up some photos and some of the miscellaneous stuff from my trip (tickets, pamphlets, etc.). Saturday I went to my storage space in West Bumblef&*%, PA in search of my scrapbooking supplies (no, I do not scrapbook as a hobby, I made one for my mom and that's it). Sadly, it was a fruitless trip, as I couldn't find the box with the supplies. The thing I really wanted was my Creative Memories tape roller. Seriously, the thing is fantastic for sticking down pictures and whatever. My plan was to mostly just put pictures into a regular album, but to include some of the tickets, etc. from the trip by sticking them to a 4 x 6 piece of paper and sliding them into a picture slot. So, no luck on finding the tape roller meant having to use glue. Saturday night I sorted through all my digital pictures and came up with 169 photos to print. I went over to the mall, dropped off my files at Ritz and then wandered the mall for an hour.

Okay, sidebar here: Who authorized this change to have Christmas season start after Halloween instead of after Thanksgiving? The mall was FREAKIN CRAZY!! People everywhere. I was ducking and diving to get around all the people. This is why I cannot live in a city, I hate crowds. I hate being slowed down by slow people and I end up having to duck and dive to get around them. It's awful.

Back to the story. I picked up the photos, flipped through to make sure they were mine and that there was nothing terribly wrong with any of them and headed home. On the way I calculated how big of a photo album I would need for all the pictures I had printed (which including previously printed ones that I wanted in the same album totaled more than 225 photos) and picked up an album at Target.

This morning I woke up, got some coffee and some breakfast and headed back upstairs to start my project. The glue I ended up choosing to use has a very strong smell, so it was a bit like huffing, but thankfully not too bad a high. I put together all my little "stuff" pages and then put all the pictures and all the "stuff" pages in the book. I now have a pretty good size album that basically covers the last year.

Next project, to get some more of these pictures up on the internet.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

I think I'm flunking NaBloPoMo

I keep doing these last minute posts. Oops.

This weekend is trying to put together a photo album madness, thus the forgetting about the posting. I'm sorry.

Friday, November 03, 2006

Quick post

Ooops. So, I ended up going out tonight and didn't post before I went out. So this is a quick post to get one in before midnight. :) Brief summary of randomness of the day:

Frustration: Stupid Arnold's Go Karting closed their track today from 1-2:30pm, right at lunch time when we tried to go go-karting. BAH!

Frustration: Stupid work vacation time madness. I logged on to our etime-sheet system and it suddenly told me I only had 2.5 vacation days total, which is the alottment I'd have for starting in October if I was only supposed to get 10 days in a year, but I'm supposed to get 15. So, much researching and nothing found and then I figured out tonight that I am still right and someone who entered my data in the system is stupid. BAH!

Frustration: I can't post to my blog from work because Big Brother is watching. BAH!

Yeah: My good friend Carolyn invited me out to fun First Friday in Ardmore at the last minute. YAY!!!

Thursday, November 02, 2006

My Freshman Experience

Something today at work, I can't remember what, made me think of my freshman college semester. Note, I didn't say year...

I went straight from high school to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I went there to study theatre design. I had a dream of becoming a set and lighting designer. That dream quickly ended when I realized that at the end of 4 years I would have more than $100,000 in debt and a degree with little likeliehood of being able to pay that off in my lifetime. My parents also raised me to be very conscious of going into debt, so that much debt scared me.

But, anyway, in that semester I had a very interesting freshman experience. CMU was a GREAT school. It has such an amazingly diverse student body. With exceptional programs in both the sciences and the arts, including acting and musical theatre, you get this crazy variety of students. It's a lot of fun to walk around and see such diversity of not only races, but student types (geeks, MTs (musical theatre, a whole other type of crazy), actors, artists). I had friends in the theatre department and in the computer science program. One of my very closest friends from high school, who I happened to be dating at the time, also went to CMU for computer science, so I made a lot of friends in his crew. It was great. That was one part of my freshman experience.

The other thing that sticks out the most in my memory from that semester was the last two/three weeks of school. I got so ridiculously sick one of my friends asked me if I was going to die. And my honest answer at that point was "I'm not sure". It started as we were getting ready for finals. I was part of a set building crew, so a lot of my time was being spent in the wood shop. One day in wood shop my ears started feeling funny. Then they started hurting. By the end of our session in the shop the only way I was comfortable was if I was bending over with my head hanging upside down. I got back to my dorm room and asked my friends what they thought I should do. They suggested I ask the Resident Advisor. So, I went over to the RAs room. She thought we should call Campus EMS since it was too late for any normal doctor's office to be open. Campus EMS guy had no idea what was going on, so he had one of the Campus cops take me down to the UPitt ER. I sat around at the ER for almost two hours to find out I had an ear infection. WHAT?! Who gets ear infections as an adult? I used to get ear infections all the time as a kid, but I thought this was crazy. Well, I got medicine and went on my way. Boy, did I realize why kids scream so much when they have an ear infection, they hurt.

I think it was within a day or two of the ear infection being diagnosed that I started getting sick. It was just a general sick feeling at first. Then I just felt awful. Then I couldn't keep any food down for almost two weeks straight. Seriously, I would wake up, try to eat, then within an hour it was back up. Same with anything else I tried to eat all day. I was so sick that my drafting professor sent me back to my room during class one day. I LOVED my theatre design classes, particularly drafting, so I didn't want to miss any of them being sick. But, I left the class for a few minutes to go to the bathroom and got sick. When I got back he was all "are you okay" and I told him I'd be fine, but he knew I was lying and sent me away. That got me a little concerned about how sick I was, I kinda figured college professors would never do something like that.

So yeah, I spent a lot of my freshman semester throwing up, but sadly it had nothing to do with any partying or anything at all fun like that.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

NaBloPoMo, or let's make myself crazy month

Okay, I have decided to TRY and participate in National Blog Posting Month, which is November. It's sort of along the lines of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, in which you write a 50,000 word novel in one month, except I have to post on my blog every day for the entire month. I got to this through Guinness Girl, whose site I checked out after she posted a fabulous music list on Lawyerish's site.

When I first read about this I was thinking, there is NO WAY I can post something every day. But, then I started realizing that Lawyerish has given me quite a bit of inspiration on the posting front. She posts quite frequently with stories from her youth and college days and stuff. So, I can do stuff along those lines. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully I have 30 days of interesting stories to post. The only thing is that I think since I haven't posted in more than 3 weeks, I've probably lost all my readership. Sorry folks.

On to a real post now. Since getting back I haven't really had any time to sit around and work with all my pictures to put them into a reasonable size to make them uploadable to the internet land and viewable by all you nice people. Part of my NaBloPoMo vow will be to get pictures up here, or at least on Flickr.

Being back at the old job has been interesting. It's going pretty well all in all and I'm optimistic that it will get better. I like the work and I really like the people I work with, so that's really good.

It's wonderful to be back with the Girl Scouts. All the girls were very excited that I was back, and a lot of the parents too since I babysit. We've now had two meetings since I've returned and it's been so much fun. It's really cool to see them grow up like this. They have all gotten really tall in the last year.

Being back otherwise has been pretty eh. I've really got to work on finding things to get into outside of work. But, right now my living situation is a little chaotic, so it may have to wait until I get a bit more settled. The one thing I really want to do is find out if there is any indoor tennis locally that I could play. I was really enjoying playing tennis a lot more in SLC. Note, however, that I didn't say I was getting any better. I don't think I was playing enough to really improve much. But, I'm okay with that. One other thing I really want to do here is more walking/running. Where I'm living now there is a little dog in the family who is very full of energy. I think he is going to be my motivation to walk/run. I need to just think about going for a walk with him when I get home and see him going crazy. For such a little dog he's very good on walk/runs. He really pulls me and that's good motivation to try and run more. I think I've made enough resolutions for myself for the next month, I'm going to go think about how to work through those.