So my stomach has been hurting for well over a week, which I somehow always seem to take as something normal, despite the fact that my parents are encouraging me to go to a doctor. But I hate going to the doctor, and I haven't been to one here since I got my last inhaler prescription at Vaden, which I should probably replace at some point since that was well over a year ago and I used the last refill over the summer. Sadness.
Anyway, the stomachache, probably due mostly to stress/no sleep/last week's binge drinking, caused me to stay home Thursday and go home early on Friday. That means I am even further behind at work than I was. I also didn't get to rest that much, since I moved Friday (thanks to Jasmine and Ritu! and to a lesser extent Tammy and Shedletsky! for helping me). I have to go clean my old apartment now; I'm at work because I had some emails I needed to send out and I don't have internet at either place anymore. But by tonight, I will be done with the old apartment! Thanks for the memories, apartment--I enjoyed living with Walter, and there were some fun memories (the olympic rings cake, for example), but it has outlived its place in my life.
Now the fun will be trying to put the new place in some semblance of order, and with some semblance of quickness since Terry is having people over next weekend. This weekend was brutal--stomachache all the time, moving on Friday, the beach w/some of the mafia kids since I'd promised Jasmine I'd go and it was her last night here, then 'partying' in the Uhaul...then Saturday dim sum w/Tammy and Claudia (I cancelled on Shedletsky, then the three of us ended up going w/out him because I changed my mind and couldn't find him), then moving my computer, stereo, and all the other heavy things, then passing out at ten last night. Today I had brunch w/Ritu at Roble, which was great, and I saw Eric C, which was also great, then came to the office, and now I have to go clean.
After that thoroughly uninteresting update, I need to go so that I can finish cleaning while there is still daylight, since almost all of the lamps are at the new place. I will have you all over soon, I promise! And I will start writing interesting and ridiculous tings again as soon as I get settled in with the lovely internet at my fingertips.
It's sort of nice having wireless because it's like it's all around you all the time. I miss that security, and I can't wait to have it back. Comcast in coming on Tuesday! And then my life will be happy again.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
i'm a driver, i'm a winner...things are gonna change, i can feel it
Oh, the joys of being employed. I was at work for what, eleven hours today? And eleven hours yesterday? However, I had rib-eye steak and gnocchi carbonara for lunch, and I had enchiladas for dinner, so it's not like I'm truly suffering. However, work is a) cramping my style (even if it does enable me to pursue a type of style in my leisure hours that does not involve living in a box and squeegeeing windshields under the bridge) and more importantly b) keeping me from finishing the move into my new apartment. It was all I could do to actually do laundry last night; and since I moved all my hangers already, all the clean clothes are sitting in one basket on my living room floor and another basket in the passenger seat of my car. Sadness. Tonight, I got home a little after eight, was going to move things, but instead did a little bit more work, watched TV with Terry (oh 'Scrubs', how I love you, and to think that I missed out on you when everyone used to watch you in the Loro lounge!), then decided it was time for bed.
I really need to decide what the next step is--not that I'm considering leaving work anytime soon (for my coworkers who read this), but I also don't intend to stay forever, and some overarching life goals would be good right about now. For instance, I was watching 'Sex and the City' tonight (another good show I never used to watch), and Carrie needed to buy her apartment, and realized that she had no money or assets. Now, at 23, I'm not worried about buying a house--but someday I would like one, and unless my dream of writing romance novels and getting rich quick comes true, I should be thinking more about the future. However, the future is so far away...and the beautiful kitchen gadgets at Crate and Barrel are achingly close.
To top it off, my oldest niece turned 13 today! That also seems impossible...I was ten when she was born, and now suddenly I'm thinking about assets and mortgages and financial goals and moving and jobs and career plans and life plans and all the things that being a grown-up is supposed to entail, and yet when she was born I was thinking more about Nancy Drew and the stars (i.e. hot gaseous masses, not the hot people I now watch on VH1) and why all the kids at school hated me and how absolutely adorable my niece was. I don't want to be ten again, which is good since you can never go back, but when I was ten I never expected that my life would be where it is now. When I was ten, I hoped I'd be an astronaut or something...but I secretly really just wanted to be a mom, and I expected it to start around the age that I am now. Now, I definitely don't want kids at this age, especially since I'm so far from knowing what I want...but we never know what we want, and I've spent so much time doubting myself and wondering about potential paths, never wanting to commit to any one thing, always 'committing' to the wrong thing/person because at the end of the day I knew it would never work and so I wouldn't really have to commit to it after all.
I've said this all before, reached the same conclusions before, and so I doubt that this will really help. But every once in awhile, I have to remind myself of it so that someday, I'll catch myself in the right moment when I'm actually willing to make the change. Until then, I am trying to maintain my childlike wonder for all things, and I hope that you will too. Despite my rather cynical, sarcastic side, there's a lot to enjoy about life. Actually, Terry said that when she saw me Thursday night (the night of the drunken post, see below), it was really strange because I was so happy and there was absolutely no cynicism, sarcasm, or biting wit at all. Not that that's the real me either--but it's interesting that when my inhibitions go, they take the sarcasm with them.
Okay, enough introspections, it's time for bed!
I really need to decide what the next step is--not that I'm considering leaving work anytime soon (for my coworkers who read this), but I also don't intend to stay forever, and some overarching life goals would be good right about now. For instance, I was watching 'Sex and the City' tonight (another good show I never used to watch), and Carrie needed to buy her apartment, and realized that she had no money or assets. Now, at 23, I'm not worried about buying a house--but someday I would like one, and unless my dream of writing romance novels and getting rich quick comes true, I should be thinking more about the future. However, the future is so far away...and the beautiful kitchen gadgets at Crate and Barrel are achingly close.
To top it off, my oldest niece turned 13 today! That also seems impossible...I was ten when she was born, and now suddenly I'm thinking about assets and mortgages and financial goals and moving and jobs and career plans and life plans and all the things that being a grown-up is supposed to entail, and yet when she was born I was thinking more about Nancy Drew and the stars (i.e. hot gaseous masses, not the hot people I now watch on VH1) and why all the kids at school hated me and how absolutely adorable my niece was. I don't want to be ten again, which is good since you can never go back, but when I was ten I never expected that my life would be where it is now. When I was ten, I hoped I'd be an astronaut or something...but I secretly really just wanted to be a mom, and I expected it to start around the age that I am now. Now, I definitely don't want kids at this age, especially since I'm so far from knowing what I want...but we never know what we want, and I've spent so much time doubting myself and wondering about potential paths, never wanting to commit to any one thing, always 'committing' to the wrong thing/person because at the end of the day I knew it would never work and so I wouldn't really have to commit to it after all.
I've said this all before, reached the same conclusions before, and so I doubt that this will really help. But every once in awhile, I have to remind myself of it so that someday, I'll catch myself in the right moment when I'm actually willing to make the change. Until then, I am trying to maintain my childlike wonder for all things, and I hope that you will too. Despite my rather cynical, sarcastic side, there's a lot to enjoy about life. Actually, Terry said that when she saw me Thursday night (the night of the drunken post, see below), it was really strange because I was so happy and there was absolutely no cynicism, sarcasm, or biting wit at all. Not that that's the real me either--but it's interesting that when my inhibitions go, they take the sarcasm with them.
Okay, enough introspections, it's time for bed!
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
cocaine nosejob
Well kids, I'm back. I must say that being drunk is tres fun, but being sober is also a good time. I am currently exploring sobriety with a new, more appreciative attitude. After drinking to the point of either tipsyness or smashedness six night out of seven (and the only night I didn't drink was the night I spent four hours driving back from the Loro ski trip), my liver deserves a long, nutritious vacation.
So, to feed it, I went to dim sum on Saturday with the opium lounge club, and we played Shrimp or Feet. It was Shedletsky's turn, and he quite unfortunately picked tripe with chilies and ginger. That's right, tripe, as in "The rubbery lining of the stomach of cattle or other ruminants, used as food" (definition courtesy dictionary.com). Shedletsky, true to his selfish roots, refused to even try it; this failure, combined with his refusal to try duck tongues a few weeks ago, means that he is at -1 points after his second turn. Tammy, Claudia and I all tried it, and Tammy and I went the distance, splitting the dish equally for half a point each. It was pretty gross; the tripe pieces were about two inches long, the main piece was very rubbery/chewy, and each piece had four or five little wavy 'appendages' attached to one side. The appendages were more flexible than the main pieces, thinner, very bumpy in texture, and altogether quite strange.
Verdict: I'm not a fan of tripe. I am also more scared of the game than I was before, since the tripe came off of what I had previously viewed as a moderately safe cart that contains various types of dumplings. I also know for a fact that they serve some sort of tripe soup that one of us will get eventually, much to our continuing dismay. Also, no one has had feet yet, which is too bad. So, standings after 1.5 turns are:
Tammy: 2.5pts (baked bbq pork bun, deep fried shrimp dumpling, 1/2 tripe)
Claudia: 2pts (marinated duck tongue)
Sara: 1.5pts (pan fried rice noodle, 1/2 tripe)
Shedletsky: -1pts (shrimp/pork dumpling, refused to try tongue, picked and then refused to try tripe)
Right now it seems to be about 50/50 as far as the difference between good and bad; or, if you prefer, 2/2/2 for great/mediocre/hideous. Not particularly great odds, eh? Anyway, it's my turn next! And Claudia gets another turn before the end of the second round as well, so she should be solidly in first unless disaster (in the form of gelatin w/blood and sea creatures) befalls her. We also need to come up with some sort of suitable, awful punishment for Shedletsky, since he refuses to even try foods and clearly doesn't care if he loses right now.
In other news, I moved some stuff to Menlo Park this weekend, but I have so much stuff that it seems like I haven't made any progress at all. For most people, moving ten boxes of books, six tubs of clothing, several board games, a coffee maker, forty or fifty hangers, two pillows, and three boxes of souvenirs/keepsakes would be great progress; but for me, that's just the beginning. Ah, fun times. I can't wait to be settled in, though--our new place is lovely, and is such a step up from the car-repairing neighbors. So, if you need to get your car pimped, you only have another week to visit me and get my neighbors to do it; after that, I'll be in Menlo Park, where pimping is frowned upon. But that means that I'll be so much closer to campus! And campus = friends, and friends, as you know, I love (almost as much as I love the letter 's'). The one bad thing about my new apartment is that the fastest way to get to work is to cut across campus via Arboretum...and that means driving past Crate and Barrel every day. Please rescue me from myself! [Editor's note: it's too late for that; I ordered bedding from Crate and Barrel yesterday. yay.]
So, to feed it, I went to dim sum on Saturday with the opium lounge club, and we played Shrimp or Feet. It was Shedletsky's turn, and he quite unfortunately picked tripe with chilies and ginger. That's right, tripe, as in "The rubbery lining of the stomach of cattle or other ruminants, used as food" (definition courtesy dictionary.com). Shedletsky, true to his selfish roots, refused to even try it; this failure, combined with his refusal to try duck tongues a few weeks ago, means that he is at -1 points after his second turn. Tammy, Claudia and I all tried it, and Tammy and I went the distance, splitting the dish equally for half a point each. It was pretty gross; the tripe pieces were about two inches long, the main piece was very rubbery/chewy, and each piece had four or five little wavy 'appendages' attached to one side. The appendages were more flexible than the main pieces, thinner, very bumpy in texture, and altogether quite strange.
Verdict: I'm not a fan of tripe. I am also more scared of the game than I was before, since the tripe came off of what I had previously viewed as a moderately safe cart that contains various types of dumplings. I also know for a fact that they serve some sort of tripe soup that one of us will get eventually, much to our continuing dismay. Also, no one has had feet yet, which is too bad. So, standings after 1.5 turns are:
Tammy: 2.5pts (baked bbq pork bun, deep fried shrimp dumpling, 1/2 tripe)
Claudia: 2pts (marinated duck tongue)
Sara: 1.5pts (pan fried rice noodle, 1/2 tripe)
Shedletsky: -1pts (shrimp/pork dumpling, refused to try tongue, picked and then refused to try tripe)
Right now it seems to be about 50/50 as far as the difference between good and bad; or, if you prefer, 2/2/2 for great/mediocre/hideous. Not particularly great odds, eh? Anyway, it's my turn next! And Claudia gets another turn before the end of the second round as well, so she should be solidly in first unless disaster (in the form of gelatin w/blood and sea creatures) befalls her. We also need to come up with some sort of suitable, awful punishment for Shedletsky, since he refuses to even try foods and clearly doesn't care if he loses right now.
In other news, I moved some stuff to Menlo Park this weekend, but I have so much stuff that it seems like I haven't made any progress at all. For most people, moving ten boxes of books, six tubs of clothing, several board games, a coffee maker, forty or fifty hangers, two pillows, and three boxes of souvenirs/keepsakes would be great progress; but for me, that's just the beginning. Ah, fun times. I can't wait to be settled in, though--our new place is lovely, and is such a step up from the car-repairing neighbors. So, if you need to get your car pimped, you only have another week to visit me and get my neighbors to do it; after that, I'll be in Menlo Park, where pimping is frowned upon. But that means that I'll be so much closer to campus! And campus = friends, and friends, as you know, I love (almost as much as I love the letter 's'). The one bad thing about my new apartment is that the fastest way to get to work is to cut across campus via Arboretum...and that means driving past Crate and Barrel every day. Please rescue me from myself! [Editor's note: it's too late for that; I ordered bedding from Crate and Barrel yesterday. yay.]
Friday, January 21, 2005
hooray!
oasy so that was really too much alocholiszzle
i am realy drunk
and this is not meant to worry and y of you
seriously
but i just ahd a lot of vodka
which in russian is water
lik e the water of life
and it is our friends
i love friens
ds
ythey are the bombdiggityss
and lik ethe lieesttser 's
'
it is our firensda s well
hi kids@!
i amon the ski trip
and by 'amon' i mean 'am on'
not hte god of eypgyt
you knwo wat i mean
pharousahs, gods
they are the same
in egypts
wheeee
hi kids
vokda and v8 = friends
and tahoe = friends
and sales vonfereances = friends
vonfereances =- conferences
you knwo what i mean
and we are all firends
friends
yay friends
yay new paartmenets whihc i will move into tomorrow
and yay for all the poeple who mena so much to me
claudia adn teytysedgrey (terrysgt)
emilay
wqalter
(ahaha walter will think its funny that i can
't sepell her name beczuse i'm tood runkg to see)
john and cris and zacdh and adita and ritu and reness and julie elien and greg and tom and rachel and sthari and doug and shed nd curt adn eric and sean (who is in cahrage!) and micahel adn jasungmen adn tammsy(TAMMY SO COOLS)adng wahtever i can't dstyeps anwyamore and tehr'es a itnotehre party that iwasnt to go toes so goodbye!!!)
i am realy drunk
and this is not meant to worry and y of you
seriously
but i just ahd a lot of vodka
which in russian is water
lik e the water of life
and it is our friends
i love friens
ds
ythey are the bombdiggityss
and lik ethe lieesttser 's
'
it is our firensda s well
hi kids@!
i amon the ski trip
and by 'amon' i mean 'am on'
not hte god of eypgyt
you knwo wat i mean
pharousahs, gods
they are the same
in egypts
wheeee
hi kids
vokda and v8 = friends
and tahoe = friends
and sales vonfereances = friends
vonfereances =- conferences
you knwo what i mean
and we are all firends
friends
yay friends
yay new paartmenets whihc i will move into tomorrow
and yay for all the poeple who mena so much to me
claudia adn teytysedgrey (terrysgt)
emilay
wqalter
(ahaha walter will think its funny that i can
't sepell her name beczuse i'm tood runkg to see)
john and cris and zacdh and adita and ritu and reness and julie elien and greg and tom and rachel and sthari and doug and shed nd curt adn eric and sean (who is in cahrage!) and micahel adn jasungmen adn tammsy(TAMMY SO COOLS)adng wahtever i can't dstyeps anwyamore and tehr'es a itnotehre party that iwasnt to go toes so goodbye!!!)
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
too much alcohizzle
Hello, friends. I'm sorry that I haven't written since I got back to California; I know that I use the phrase 'insanely busy' a lot, but this time it is no exaggeration. In the past two weeks I have:
1) worked 12-14 hours/day for two weeks (ugh)
2) found a new apartment
3) attended a karaoke/dress-up birthday party
4) went to Tahoe with the Loro mafia kids
5) came to San Francisco for the sales conference
I will address all of these issues as follows...
1) Working 12-14 hours/day sucks. There's nothing more that can be said about that.
2) Claudia, Terry and I are moving next week! We signed a lease on a three-bedroom condo in Menlo Park, two blocks back from Secret Safeway in Sharon Heights. It's lovely--quiet, beautiful, tree-filled setting; sparkling pool; great bedrooms; jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom; wonderful kitchen; built-in display cabinets (and liquor cabinet!) in the dining room; patio; etc. And, it's v. close to Stanford for Claudia, which also means that I can visit Stanford people more easily. Yay! I'm moving my stuff starting as soon as I get back from Tahoe Friday afternoon (more on that in a second).
3) The karaoke/dress-up party was surprisingly fun; I normally don't have a fantastic time at the boys' parties, but this time I really loved it. I got drunk off of sangria made with wine and bacardi 151 (potent combination), as well as some vodka and cranberry juice that I had in a canteen labelled 'chemicals' (an homage to Gavin Rossdale/Bush's 'The Chemicals Between Us'). We sang a lot, and Bon Jovi was included in the mix. I saw all my friends, slapped Ritu's boyfriend (hard!) after a mock argument heated up, and sang 'Take Me On' by A-ha in honor of the two members of the School of Ruckus (!) who were present at the party [for those of you in the know, the School of Ruckus members there were Vijay the SLE tutor and the drummer whose name I can't remember]. Fun times were had by all.
4) The Loro mafia ski trip was everything that I could imagine it to be and more. I missed the cataclysmic final act, but I participated in all the good stuff--and the group had started drinking, which was really weird and unexpected, and meant that I've gotten tipsy/drunk 4 of the past 5 nights. We played 'never have i ever' as a drinking game, and interesting tings happened Friday night. Saturday, I hung out with Michael and Jasmine all day, and we had lunch with my friend John; then Jasmine made tasty enchiladas, and we played indian poker as a drinking game. Indian poker was ridiculously fun, considering how ridiculous it is. Then, Shedletsky, Doug, Curt and I played four-person mafia and kept the whole house up, much to others' chagrin and our absolute amusement. I hung out there all day Sunday, and made it home from the Nevada side of Heavenly in 3hrs 59mins. There are many many fun things that came out of this trip, but for the sake of sensitivity (which I don't use very often) I will not recount it here. Sorry.
5) Sales conference/ski trip is this week. So I got back from Tahoe at 1am Sunday night/Monday morning, slept for six hours, repacked my stuff, went to work on Monday, and then took a bus to San Francisco Monday night. I'm here now and am having a great time, although I'm tired, and I drank Monday and Tuesday night. Tonight is the closing banquet (banquet=alcohol), and tomorrow we take a bus to Tahoe (tahoe=alcohol). Then we come back Friday and I have to work Friday afternoon before beginning my third move in fifteen months. Ugh. I bought Dramamine to fight car sickness on the bus and drug myself into blessed slumber, so I hope it won't have a bad reaction to any leftover alcohol in my system :)
And that's all for now! Time to change for dinner. Take care, friends, and I'll start checking in more regularly in the near future.
1) worked 12-14 hours/day for two weeks (ugh)
2) found a new apartment
3) attended a karaoke/dress-up birthday party
4) went to Tahoe with the Loro mafia kids
5) came to San Francisco for the sales conference
I will address all of these issues as follows...
1) Working 12-14 hours/day sucks. There's nothing more that can be said about that.
2) Claudia, Terry and I are moving next week! We signed a lease on a three-bedroom condo in Menlo Park, two blocks back from Secret Safeway in Sharon Heights. It's lovely--quiet, beautiful, tree-filled setting; sparkling pool; great bedrooms; jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom; wonderful kitchen; built-in display cabinets (and liquor cabinet!) in the dining room; patio; etc. And, it's v. close to Stanford for Claudia, which also means that I can visit Stanford people more easily. Yay! I'm moving my stuff starting as soon as I get back from Tahoe Friday afternoon (more on that in a second).
3) The karaoke/dress-up party was surprisingly fun; I normally don't have a fantastic time at the boys' parties, but this time I really loved it. I got drunk off of sangria made with wine and bacardi 151 (potent combination), as well as some vodka and cranberry juice that I had in a canteen labelled 'chemicals' (an homage to Gavin Rossdale/Bush's 'The Chemicals Between Us'). We sang a lot, and Bon Jovi was included in the mix. I saw all my friends, slapped Ritu's boyfriend (hard!) after a mock argument heated up, and sang 'Take Me On' by A-ha in honor of the two members of the School of Ruckus (!) who were present at the party [for those of you in the know, the School of Ruckus members there were Vijay the SLE tutor and the drummer whose name I can't remember]. Fun times were had by all.
4) The Loro mafia ski trip was everything that I could imagine it to be and more. I missed the cataclysmic final act, but I participated in all the good stuff--and the group had started drinking, which was really weird and unexpected, and meant that I've gotten tipsy/drunk 4 of the past 5 nights. We played 'never have i ever' as a drinking game, and interesting tings happened Friday night. Saturday, I hung out with Michael and Jasmine all day, and we had lunch with my friend John; then Jasmine made tasty enchiladas, and we played indian poker as a drinking game. Indian poker was ridiculously fun, considering how ridiculous it is. Then, Shedletsky, Doug, Curt and I played four-person mafia and kept the whole house up, much to others' chagrin and our absolute amusement. I hung out there all day Sunday, and made it home from the Nevada side of Heavenly in 3hrs 59mins. There are many many fun things that came out of this trip, but for the sake of sensitivity (which I don't use very often) I will not recount it here. Sorry.
5) Sales conference/ski trip is this week. So I got back from Tahoe at 1am Sunday night/Monday morning, slept for six hours, repacked my stuff, went to work on Monday, and then took a bus to San Francisco Monday night. I'm here now and am having a great time, although I'm tired, and I drank Monday and Tuesday night. Tonight is the closing banquet (banquet=alcohol), and tomorrow we take a bus to Tahoe (tahoe=alcohol). Then we come back Friday and I have to work Friday afternoon before beginning my third move in fifteen months. Ugh. I bought Dramamine to fight car sickness on the bus and drug myself into blessed slumber, so I hope it won't have a bad reaction to any leftover alcohol in my system :)
And that's all for now! Time to change for dinner. Take care, friends, and I'll start checking in more regularly in the near future.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
arrival
I'm back in California. Walter picked me up at the airport. It was surreal. He slept on my floor last night and will again tonight, and may or may not leave tomorrow. We went to Pizza My Heart with Claudia, Adit and Terry, as well as Can, Shedletsky and Joanna (who met us there), and fun was had by all (I think) even though I was being even more obnoxious (i.e. mean) than usual.
Work was brutal, since I didn't go to bed until almost four last night; I got there at 9:40, which was pretty early considering how late I went to bed, and found out that I have a lot of work to catch up on. In fact, I have so much work that I decided to come home at six anyway, because there was no way that the dent that I could put in the amount of work would be sizable enough to be worth staying another hour. So, I have many fun and varied projects awaiting me for the rest of the week. Wheeee.
I have nothing else to report that is worth staying up longer for, so I shall go to bed. I hope that everyone else made it to their destinations safely and that all is well :)
Work was brutal, since I didn't go to bed until almost four last night; I got there at 9:40, which was pretty early considering how late I went to bed, and found out that I have a lot of work to catch up on. In fact, I have so much work that I decided to come home at six anyway, because there was no way that the dent that I could put in the amount of work would be sizable enough to be worth staying another hour. So, I have many fun and varied projects awaiting me for the rest of the week. Wheeee.
I have nothing else to report that is worth staying up longer for, so I shall go to bed. I hope that everyone else made it to their destinations safely and that all is well :)
Monday, January 03, 2005
massive attack
I'm too tired to write much, but it will be interesting to see if I get back to California tomorrow...an ice storm is currently beginning to move over my area, and is supposed to last all night. That could severely hamper my ability to drive the seventy miles from my house to the airport. Luckily I don't have to be there until 4:30 or so, so hopefully they can clear the roads...but I need to go to work on Tuesday, so I hope that everything works out okay.
However, it's been a great break, and today was a fitting end to it; my mom made vegetable stew (and by vegetable I mean mostly meat and potatoes, w/some corn, green beans, carrots, and tomato juice for color), and Aunt Becky and Grandma came over to eat. We tried to play hearts, but it's a bad game for six people, so we quit early. Then we played a quick hand of 'square dance solitaire,' which evolved over my vacation into an actual game of sorts; it started when I was playing solitaire after a game of hearts, and my dad was sitting at the table watching me and telling me what to play. This eventually developed into some sort of singsong rhythm, which turned into a rhythmic call-type 'song,' like move callers for square dancing. We built it up for my aunt, telling her she had to play square dance solitaire...and when my dad first started calling the moves, she laughed until she cried.
I guess you had to be there.
Anyway, then Lorena showed up with some books on Scotland that she wanted to loan me after I told her I was interested in Scotland, and she read us all a Scottish version of 'Three Little Pigs' in a Scottish accent. We also drank some champagne that I had brought back for new years eve and not opened, since I knew it would turn to vinegar if I left it here. Aunt Becky, Lorena, and Gram all left, but Katie showed up around 7:30. We didn't talk much, and instead watched a re-run of 'Cold Case' on CBS, followed by a network airing of 'Behind Enemy Lines.' I actually liked it a lot; the premise wasn't particularly great, the idiocy level was high (like when Owen Wilson called in to base to say that he was at the rendezvous point, lost contact in the same location, and the admiral was yelling for someone to 'triangulate his position,' which should have been completely unnecessary). They made effective use of completely unnecessary slow-motion, Owen Wilson was ridiculous in the serious role since he often appeared to have a Hansel-type pout (although I'm of course biased because I have seen Zoolander 300 times), and I completely loved it, of course.
So for a last day, that was pretty great--awesome soup, games with my family, square-dance solitaire, Scottish folk tales, champagne, quality time with my best friend, and a thoroughly ridiculous war movie. Yay. So, goodbye Iowa...I shall see you again around the Fourth of July. See you soon, California...I'll be back before you know it (unless I'm iced in, of course).
However, it's been a great break, and today was a fitting end to it; my mom made vegetable stew (and by vegetable I mean mostly meat and potatoes, w/some corn, green beans, carrots, and tomato juice for color), and Aunt Becky and Grandma came over to eat. We tried to play hearts, but it's a bad game for six people, so we quit early. Then we played a quick hand of 'square dance solitaire,' which evolved over my vacation into an actual game of sorts; it started when I was playing solitaire after a game of hearts, and my dad was sitting at the table watching me and telling me what to play. This eventually developed into some sort of singsong rhythm, which turned into a rhythmic call-type 'song,' like move callers for square dancing. We built it up for my aunt, telling her she had to play square dance solitaire...and when my dad first started calling the moves, she laughed until she cried.
I guess you had to be there.
Anyway, then Lorena showed up with some books on Scotland that she wanted to loan me after I told her I was interested in Scotland, and she read us all a Scottish version of 'Three Little Pigs' in a Scottish accent. We also drank some champagne that I had brought back for new years eve and not opened, since I knew it would turn to vinegar if I left it here. Aunt Becky, Lorena, and Gram all left, but Katie showed up around 7:30. We didn't talk much, and instead watched a re-run of 'Cold Case' on CBS, followed by a network airing of 'Behind Enemy Lines.' I actually liked it a lot; the premise wasn't particularly great, the idiocy level was high (like when Owen Wilson called in to base to say that he was at the rendezvous point, lost contact in the same location, and the admiral was yelling for someone to 'triangulate his position,' which should have been completely unnecessary). They made effective use of completely unnecessary slow-motion, Owen Wilson was ridiculous in the serious role since he often appeared to have a Hansel-type pout (although I'm of course biased because I have seen Zoolander 300 times), and I completely loved it, of course.
So for a last day, that was pretty great--awesome soup, games with my family, square-dance solitaire, Scottish folk tales, champagne, quality time with my best friend, and a thoroughly ridiculous war movie. Yay. So, goodbye Iowa...I shall see you again around the Fourth of July. See you soon, California...I'll be back before you know it (unless I'm iced in, of course).
Saturday, January 01, 2005
it's way too late to be this locked inside ourselves
Today was super fun--we had our neighbors, Ross and Lorena, as well as Katie and her dad over for dinner, an occurrence that is becoming something of a tradition. As I've mentioned before, Ross and Lorena are really awesome, interesting people; they were in one of the first waves of the Peace Corps back in the sixties (to Nigeria), and he is the Presbyterian minister while she leads the talented and gifted program at the jr. high/high school. And of course, any time that I can spend with Katie is good, although never enough, and her dad is entertaining as well, so a good time was apparently had by all. We made prime rib and crab legs...and the eight of us ate a ten-pound prime rib (that includes the bone, though, which we didn't eat) and five to eight pounds of crab legs (which includes the inedible shell, of course), as well as new potatoes, green beans, sourdough bread, salad greens, and my jam thumbprint cookies for dessert. Ah, everything was so tasty! We also had a bottle of zinfandel from the Valley of the Moon winery that I went to in Sonoma with Ritu and Maneesh--I really liked that wine, I had a bottle of it when I made the chorizo/garbanzo bean soup a couple of weeks ago, and so I brought another bottle of it home with me. I have a bottle of merlot that we didn't get around to drinking, so my parents can drink that sometime, but I insist on popping open the champagne I brought home before I leave, since it would be tragic to let it turn to vinegar. I may get the chance tomorrow, since Aunt Becky is coming down to play games (and eat more food, no doubt...I guess we're making stew or something...as my mother said, it would be a tragedy if I couldn't cook, since that's all my family does).
In forty-eight hours, I should be landing in the San Francisco airport. I tried to change my flight so that I would get in earlier, because I'm currently scheduled to land at something like 11:45pm, and I will have to pick up my luggage before I can go home, but Northwest wanted to charge me $800 to change my flight, which seemed ridiculous at best and robbery at worst. In some ways it's nice, because I don't have to be at the airport in Des Moines until 4:30 or 5, which means I can eat lunch at home and will have time to shower and finish packing...but it sucks on the other end, since I'll have to find a way home from the airport at midnight, which requires either a shuttle or a request for a ride from one of my friends. So, we'll see what happens. I'm actually more worried about the weather than anything, since it's icy here right now and may get worse before Monday...and I *have* to go to work on Tuesday, since I'm training people Tuesday morning. Bleh. It's been really nice to have a break; I've made a point of checking my email only rarely, and refusing to think about it otherwise. Vacations are wonderful things, aren't they?
However, I didn't write anything in my romance novel this break, which makes me sad. It also makes me angry at myself, truth be told, since I wanted to finish it by the new year, but lacked the will/inspiration. We'll see what January holds in regards to the novel. I do intend to read more about Scotland; the more I know, the more fascinated I am with their culture, and I feel like more information about Scotland (particularly the Highlands) can only help me to form a picture in my mind. I was talking about Scotland with Lorena tonight, and she was there several years ago before visiting her son in Kenya, and she was telling me about all sorts of books she has about Gaelic culture and customs, Scottish fairy tales and myths, Scottish spirituality, etc., that sound fascinating. She's supposed to give me the titles/authors tomorrow so that I can find them in a library or get them off of Amazon...so expect more information about Scotland, if nothing else, since I like to share the fascinating little tidbits that I pick up while reading.
I wanted to write my year-in-review tonight, but it's almost two a.m. and I need to go to bed if I have any hope of getting up early enough tomorrow to shower before my aunt shows up. I also have to start the brutal process of packing; I got lots of breakable or semi-breakable stuff for Christmas (like irish coffee glasses, candleholders, a cake plate that had belonged to my grandmother, etc.) that I have to package carefully. I also have to figure out what to have my mother send me later, like the waffle iron, my pizza stone, and the casserole dish that is the only really perfect dish for baked beans or pizza surprise ('pizza surprise' is what we call midwestern goulash--elbow macaroni, ground beef or sausage, tomato sauce, and cheese--because my dad was going to try to make us pizza in Ukraine once but realized that he didn't have the ingredients for it, and so we ended up with goulash instead, so it's pizza surprise because the surprise is that it isn't pizza). I got the casserole dish for Christmas last year but didn't want to risk leaving it in the kitchen when I was sharing with the two random roommates--the casserole dish is an antique, and it's the same as the one my mother uses, since she got it off of eBay. The casserole dish was an effort to forestall a blood feud over the inheritance of the real casserole dish, since all of my siblings would want the dish...so my sister and I got 'new' ones from eBay, and my brother will eventually get the real one. Seems fair to me, especially since I get to start using mine whenever I want. Too bad it isn't red, though...it's a light blue, so it doesn't match the rest of my stuff at all, but it produces awesome baked beans and so I can't complain.
Now I'm just rambling, and for no purpose whatsoever since a discussion of casserole dishes and pizza surprise is hardly interesting. Goodnight!
In forty-eight hours, I should be landing in the San Francisco airport. I tried to change my flight so that I would get in earlier, because I'm currently scheduled to land at something like 11:45pm, and I will have to pick up my luggage before I can go home, but Northwest wanted to charge me $800 to change my flight, which seemed ridiculous at best and robbery at worst. In some ways it's nice, because I don't have to be at the airport in Des Moines until 4:30 or 5, which means I can eat lunch at home and will have time to shower and finish packing...but it sucks on the other end, since I'll have to find a way home from the airport at midnight, which requires either a shuttle or a request for a ride from one of my friends. So, we'll see what happens. I'm actually more worried about the weather than anything, since it's icy here right now and may get worse before Monday...and I *have* to go to work on Tuesday, since I'm training people Tuesday morning. Bleh. It's been really nice to have a break; I've made a point of checking my email only rarely, and refusing to think about it otherwise. Vacations are wonderful things, aren't they?
However, I didn't write anything in my romance novel this break, which makes me sad. It also makes me angry at myself, truth be told, since I wanted to finish it by the new year, but lacked the will/inspiration. We'll see what January holds in regards to the novel. I do intend to read more about Scotland; the more I know, the more fascinated I am with their culture, and I feel like more information about Scotland (particularly the Highlands) can only help me to form a picture in my mind. I was talking about Scotland with Lorena tonight, and she was there several years ago before visiting her son in Kenya, and she was telling me about all sorts of books she has about Gaelic culture and customs, Scottish fairy tales and myths, Scottish spirituality, etc., that sound fascinating. She's supposed to give me the titles/authors tomorrow so that I can find them in a library or get them off of Amazon...so expect more information about Scotland, if nothing else, since I like to share the fascinating little tidbits that I pick up while reading.
I wanted to write my year-in-review tonight, but it's almost two a.m. and I need to go to bed if I have any hope of getting up early enough tomorrow to shower before my aunt shows up. I also have to start the brutal process of packing; I got lots of breakable or semi-breakable stuff for Christmas (like irish coffee glasses, candleholders, a cake plate that had belonged to my grandmother, etc.) that I have to package carefully. I also have to figure out what to have my mother send me later, like the waffle iron, my pizza stone, and the casserole dish that is the only really perfect dish for baked beans or pizza surprise ('pizza surprise' is what we call midwestern goulash--elbow macaroni, ground beef or sausage, tomato sauce, and cheese--because my dad was going to try to make us pizza in Ukraine once but realized that he didn't have the ingredients for it, and so we ended up with goulash instead, so it's pizza surprise because the surprise is that it isn't pizza). I got the casserole dish for Christmas last year but didn't want to risk leaving it in the kitchen when I was sharing with the two random roommates--the casserole dish is an antique, and it's the same as the one my mother uses, since she got it off of eBay. The casserole dish was an effort to forestall a blood feud over the inheritance of the real casserole dish, since all of my siblings would want the dish...so my sister and I got 'new' ones from eBay, and my brother will eventually get the real one. Seems fair to me, especially since I get to start using mine whenever I want. Too bad it isn't red, though...it's a light blue, so it doesn't match the rest of my stuff at all, but it produces awesome baked beans and so I can't complain.
Now I'm just rambling, and for no purpose whatsoever since a discussion of casserole dishes and pizza surprise is hardly interesting. Goodnight!
and they rode on in the friscalating dusklight
Happy new year, everyone!
Mine was not particularly exciting. I woke up this morning around noon, accompanied my mother to the next town over (~30 miles away) to pick up a prime rib for tomorrow night's feast (and also got to buy some awesome white skechers with hot pink/glitter trim), came home and made jam thumbprints, ate dinner, and watched 'JAG' and 'Without a Trace' on CBS (classic Midwestern television...I hadn't seen JAG for a long time). Then, my mother wanted to watched 'The Royal Tenenbaums,' which I had received for Christmas, so I popped it in the DVD player...and she of course promptly fell asleep, so I watched the last hour and twenty minutes by myself. It ended around 11:55, so I got to see the countdown (and chose to watch the countdown on Conan instead of Dick Clark/Regis' New Years Rockin Eve), and then sat around and watched the news. V. uneventful and boring...but I didn't have to clean up anyone's vomit, or fight crowds, or get mauled in a club, or try to decide who would be the designated driver (usually me), so there were definite advantages to this 'celebration.' And I *love* 'The Royal Tenenbaums,' so watching it again was great.
Tomorrow will be more fun...we're having our neighbors over, as well as Katie and her dad (which was a surprise since I thought she would be out of town tomorrow, but I'm glad she'll be here), for our ritual winter feast. We're having prime rib and crab legs, and perhaps new potatoes, but the focus is really on the meat. And the alcohol...I brought wine and champagne back from California, so I'll have the chance to enjoy some libations a bit stronger than iced tea.
Also tomorrow, or the next day, look for my recap of 2004...I was going to write it tonight but I'm too lazy. I hope that everyone else had merry and safe experiences tonight!
Mine was not particularly exciting. I woke up this morning around noon, accompanied my mother to the next town over (~30 miles away) to pick up a prime rib for tomorrow night's feast (and also got to buy some awesome white skechers with hot pink/glitter trim), came home and made jam thumbprints, ate dinner, and watched 'JAG' and 'Without a Trace' on CBS (classic Midwestern television...I hadn't seen JAG for a long time). Then, my mother wanted to watched 'The Royal Tenenbaums,' which I had received for Christmas, so I popped it in the DVD player...and she of course promptly fell asleep, so I watched the last hour and twenty minutes by myself. It ended around 11:55, so I got to see the countdown (and chose to watch the countdown on Conan instead of Dick Clark/Regis' New Years Rockin Eve), and then sat around and watched the news. V. uneventful and boring...but I didn't have to clean up anyone's vomit, or fight crowds, or get mauled in a club, or try to decide who would be the designated driver (usually me), so there were definite advantages to this 'celebration.' And I *love* 'The Royal Tenenbaums,' so watching it again was great.
Tomorrow will be more fun...we're having our neighbors over, as well as Katie and her dad (which was a surprise since I thought she would be out of town tomorrow, but I'm glad she'll be here), for our ritual winter feast. We're having prime rib and crab legs, and perhaps new potatoes, but the focus is really on the meat. And the alcohol...I brought wine and champagne back from California, so I'll have the chance to enjoy some libations a bit stronger than iced tea.
Also tomorrow, or the next day, look for my recap of 2004...I was going to write it tonight but I'm too lazy. I hope that everyone else had merry and safe experiences tonight!
Thursday, December 30, 2004
logic will break your heart
It's hard to believe that it's been a year and a half since I graduated from college. That's such a long time...and yet it doesn't feel like long at all. However, it feels like my life is slipping away from me just a little bit, and I don't get quite so many chances to indulge my random, senseless fun side as I did when I was in college. Without the ability to plan fun, random dorm events or engage in fun, random conversations with many and varied people, my life has lost some of the sparkle that it used to have.
I still have it better than a lot of people my age, or at least I think so--I've run into a couple of former classmates while home who have already been married and divorced, or who now have kids, and I have so many more options and less responsibilities than they do. And I still have a lot of fun, and I get to engage in infrequent but wildly memorable random acts of happiness, such as Coachella, or drunken watching of 'The Chronicles of Riddick,' or Germany vs. Austria night. I also have great plans for the new year...Claudia and I (and hopefully Ritu and Marco) want to go to Coachella again, and I want to have a 'Black Death' feast in April, and I have hopes for other fun activities. And of course I have the Shrimp or Feet game, which adds a lot of vim and vigor (and marinated duck tongue) to my life.
I guess my biggest fear, though, is that my friends are slowly maturing past my threshold of optimum craziness. Perhaps maturing isn't the right word...but they are slowly accruing responsibilities and relationships that make continued zaniness hard to achieve. Or, they are moving away, which makes them less useful for my purposes. When I'm thirty-five, I'd like to believe that I will also have a family to think about, rather than fun-filled trips to nowhere, but what if I don't? I can't just hang around college campuses forever looking for younger people to plan stuff with...but I also can't really kidnap my friends for extended periods of time to satisfy my needs.
Ah well, everyone has to grow up. It really is true that logic will break your heart...the cold hard facts of modern life, when looked at objectively and without false hope, are enough to dampen the enthusiasm of even the most idealistic individuals.
However, life is still good in Iowa; my family is really ridiculously functional. The four of us ate dinner together and then played a game of hearts, just like we did last night. So, I really can't complain at all. But, this idyllic little scene of familial 'perfection' makes me realize that it will be even harder for me to find a relationship and, ultimately, a life that will satisfy me, when there are so many ways that things can go wrong and so few instances where love works out. And it's those perfectionist tendencies, at the end of the day, that cost me the most.
Anyway, don't mind me, it's almost the end of the year and so it's a good time to reflect on what has come before and what may come in the future. Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve, everyone!
I still have it better than a lot of people my age, or at least I think so--I've run into a couple of former classmates while home who have already been married and divorced, or who now have kids, and I have so many more options and less responsibilities than they do. And I still have a lot of fun, and I get to engage in infrequent but wildly memorable random acts of happiness, such as Coachella, or drunken watching of 'The Chronicles of Riddick,' or Germany vs. Austria night. I also have great plans for the new year...Claudia and I (and hopefully Ritu and Marco) want to go to Coachella again, and I want to have a 'Black Death' feast in April, and I have hopes for other fun activities. And of course I have the Shrimp or Feet game, which adds a lot of vim and vigor (and marinated duck tongue) to my life.
I guess my biggest fear, though, is that my friends are slowly maturing past my threshold of optimum craziness. Perhaps maturing isn't the right word...but they are slowly accruing responsibilities and relationships that make continued zaniness hard to achieve. Or, they are moving away, which makes them less useful for my purposes. When I'm thirty-five, I'd like to believe that I will also have a family to think about, rather than fun-filled trips to nowhere, but what if I don't? I can't just hang around college campuses forever looking for younger people to plan stuff with...but I also can't really kidnap my friends for extended periods of time to satisfy my needs.
Ah well, everyone has to grow up. It really is true that logic will break your heart...the cold hard facts of modern life, when looked at objectively and without false hope, are enough to dampen the enthusiasm of even the most idealistic individuals.
However, life is still good in Iowa; my family is really ridiculously functional. The four of us ate dinner together and then played a game of hearts, just like we did last night. So, I really can't complain at all. But, this idyllic little scene of familial 'perfection' makes me realize that it will be even harder for me to find a relationship and, ultimately, a life that will satisfy me, when there are so many ways that things can go wrong and so few instances where love works out. And it's those perfectionist tendencies, at the end of the day, that cost me the most.
Anyway, don't mind me, it's almost the end of the year and so it's a good time to reflect on what has come before and what may come in the future. Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve, everyone!
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
tell 'em how your pleasure's set up on slow release
Due to the calamitous circumstances in the areas affected by the tsunami and my own morbid curiosity, I've been reading a lot of news articles lately related to the massive suffering and loss in the region. It really is impossible to imagine what's happening there, how much higher the death toll will rise, and how the survivors will ever be able to rebuild when the vast majority of them were uninsured and were already below the poverty level.
Of course, because I like to know as much as possible about everything, I started reading more about other possible geological catastrophes. In fact, this entire vacation has revolved around talk off apocalyptic events; when my parents took me out for lunch after I arrived in Des Moines, my brother and I told our father that he could engage in schemes where he borrowed money and promised to pay it back in 2013--the ancient Mayans had a 'long count' of 1,366,560 days, and archaeologists have determined that the ending of the current (fourth) cycle corresponds to the winter solstice in 2012. The Mayans had highly developed calendars, accurately predicting solar and lunar eclipses for hundreds of years, etc., and so there are some apocalyptic theorists who feel that the end of their long count (and the abrupt ending of all their calendars at the projected end of this age) indicates some cataclysmic change. So, this conversation eventually evolved to a hysterical image of my father saying 'Mayans!' to the banker after obtaining a loan, and then walking out without explaining his enigmatic comment.
So anyway, 'Mayans!' has become the punchline of my entire break, and I was doing some reading tonight and verified a rumor I had heard that Yellowstone National Park is sitting on top of a massive supervolcano that has erupted 1.2 million and 600,000 years ago, covering the western half of the United States in thick layers of ash and resulting in a worldwide 'volcanic winter'. The fact that it still has so much geothermal and seismic activity is somewhat worrisome, and scientists estimate that a vast magma chamber extends under almost all of the present boundaries of the park. Scary!
Even better, a supervolcano of some sort has erupted approximately every 50-70,000 years somewhere on earth, and the last one was ~70,000 years ago on Sumatra in Indonesia. Geneticists, working independently, discovered that human mitochondrial DNA has much less diversity than they expected based on the several-million-year history of our species--and they had determined that a 'bottleneck' had occurred in the past that narrowed our genetic pool to perhaps 5000 or 10000 individuals, before the expansion that led to our current billions. That bottleneck is estimated to be 70-80,000 years ago...coinciding perfectly with the eruption on Sumatra, which lowered global temperatures by 5 degrees Celsius and triggered a major ice age.
Now, isn't that all fascinating? I'm thinking I need to get out of the west coast; the two most likely sites for a supervolcano eruption in North America are apparently Yellowstone...and Long Valley, California (near Mammoth Lake/Yosemite), where a supervolcano erupted 760,000 years ago and volcanic eruptions continue. Then you have the Cascades, and of course all the earthquakes that California should just assume will come eventually, not to mention the freaking crazy people who inhabit California and are dangerous in their own right.
However, Iowa isn't exactly safe either--the New Madrid fault (in Missouri) had three 8+ magnitude quakes in the early 1800s, and because of the different geologic composition east of the Rockies, shockwaves from a quake of that size can travel much farther--the quakes in the 1800s were centered in Missouri, but damage was reported in Washington D.C., and church bells rang in Boston (1000 miles away!) As far as the human factor here, there is less crime, but the crime that does occur is often more bizarre--just across the line in Missouri, a body was recently found, decomposed to the point that only bones remained, and local speculation is that it was a gang hit from some criminals in Kansas City. However, it turns out that the guy was the brother or cousin (stories change frequently here) of another dude whom the Des Moines police shot earlier this year when he pulled a gun on them during a high-speed car chase...and *that* guy was later discovered to have been an arsonist who burned down a Des Moines church and several other buildings. To top it off, when the police investigated his house in Missouri, they found a stock tank in the garage with a heat lamp over it and three live alligators, which may have been used to dispose of other bodies. Weird!
So between tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, alligators, and the Mayans, I think we're all pretty much fucked. Life sure is interesting, though.
Of course, because I like to know as much as possible about everything, I started reading more about other possible geological catastrophes. In fact, this entire vacation has revolved around talk off apocalyptic events; when my parents took me out for lunch after I arrived in Des Moines, my brother and I told our father that he could engage in schemes where he borrowed money and promised to pay it back in 2013--the ancient Mayans had a 'long count' of 1,366,560 days, and archaeologists have determined that the ending of the current (fourth) cycle corresponds to the winter solstice in 2012. The Mayans had highly developed calendars, accurately predicting solar and lunar eclipses for hundreds of years, etc., and so there are some apocalyptic theorists who feel that the end of their long count (and the abrupt ending of all their calendars at the projected end of this age) indicates some cataclysmic change. So, this conversation eventually evolved to a hysterical image of my father saying 'Mayans!' to the banker after obtaining a loan, and then walking out without explaining his enigmatic comment.
So anyway, 'Mayans!' has become the punchline of my entire break, and I was doing some reading tonight and verified a rumor I had heard that Yellowstone National Park is sitting on top of a massive supervolcano that has erupted 1.2 million and 600,000 years ago, covering the western half of the United States in thick layers of ash and resulting in a worldwide 'volcanic winter'. The fact that it still has so much geothermal and seismic activity is somewhat worrisome, and scientists estimate that a vast magma chamber extends under almost all of the present boundaries of the park. Scary!
Even better, a supervolcano of some sort has erupted approximately every 50-70,000 years somewhere on earth, and the last one was ~70,000 years ago on Sumatra in Indonesia. Geneticists, working independently, discovered that human mitochondrial DNA has much less diversity than they expected based on the several-million-year history of our species--and they had determined that a 'bottleneck' had occurred in the past that narrowed our genetic pool to perhaps 5000 or 10000 individuals, before the expansion that led to our current billions. That bottleneck is estimated to be 70-80,000 years ago...coinciding perfectly with the eruption on Sumatra, which lowered global temperatures by 5 degrees Celsius and triggered a major ice age.
Now, isn't that all fascinating? I'm thinking I need to get out of the west coast; the two most likely sites for a supervolcano eruption in North America are apparently Yellowstone...and Long Valley, California (near Mammoth Lake/Yosemite), where a supervolcano erupted 760,000 years ago and volcanic eruptions continue. Then you have the Cascades, and of course all the earthquakes that California should just assume will come eventually, not to mention the freaking crazy people who inhabit California and are dangerous in their own right.
However, Iowa isn't exactly safe either--the New Madrid fault (in Missouri) had three 8+ magnitude quakes in the early 1800s, and because of the different geologic composition east of the Rockies, shockwaves from a quake of that size can travel much farther--the quakes in the 1800s were centered in Missouri, but damage was reported in Washington D.C., and church bells rang in Boston (1000 miles away!) As far as the human factor here, there is less crime, but the crime that does occur is often more bizarre--just across the line in Missouri, a body was recently found, decomposed to the point that only bones remained, and local speculation is that it was a gang hit from some criminals in Kansas City. However, it turns out that the guy was the brother or cousin (stories change frequently here) of another dude whom the Des Moines police shot earlier this year when he pulled a gun on them during a high-speed car chase...and *that* guy was later discovered to have been an arsonist who burned down a Des Moines church and several other buildings. To top it off, when the police investigated his house in Missouri, they found a stock tank in the garage with a heat lamp over it and three live alligators, which may have been used to dispose of other bodies. Weird!
So between tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, alligators, and the Mayans, I think we're all pretty much fucked. Life sure is interesting, though.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
why can't we just play the other game?
Today was amazingly non-productive, in the way that all vacation days should be--I rolled out of bed around 1pm, sat around for awhile, made a sandwich, talked to my mom while watching 'As the World Turns', watched some Dr. Phil, was amazed and disgusted by my ability to watch Dr. Phil, which is even worse in some ways that watching another rerun of 'I Love the '90s', and so made a batch of my dad's favorite oatmeal/chocolate chip cookies. Then I ate dinner, watched some more TV, read a couple of issues of one of my mom's home decorating magazines, and surfed the net looking for sofas, kitchen gadgets, etc. Now it's half past midnight, and I should go to bed again, since I'm meeting some friends in town for lunch tomorrow. Yay.
I'm listening to Interpol's 'Antics,' which I got for Christmas; I really like it, which is good since I asked my parents for it solely based on the 'If you like this, you'll like...' recommendations on Amazon. I'd also heard the song 'Evil' when I switched iPods with a coworker a couple of weeks ago; we made mixes for each other and switched for the day, and I was a bit surprised/amused when I hit 'swampler's playlist' on his iPod and saw that 'Evil' was the first song. But, the song is really good, and I recommend it. I'm not sure that I'm happy that my taste is shifting to whatever style encompasses Interpol/Franz Ferdinand/Postal Service/Killers, etc., but I'm so sick of my old music that I'll take just about anything right now. So, I'm cycling between this music, techno, and Bon Jovi, and all is good.
However, I was watching the TV the other day and a song came on, and I found myself remembering how much I liked the song...only to realize a fraction to late that it was Beck's 'Lost Cause'. I have professed to hate a) Beck, b) the album 'Sea Change' that this song is located on, and c) the song itself, so I was annoyed that I admitted to myself that I like it before I recognized what the song was. Damn. I hate when I do that--professing an irrational hatred of something that is inoffensive at worst and actually fantastic at best, and then being caught in the lie later when I don't recognize the object of my prior hatred in time. The same thing happened to me with 'The Princess Bride,' which is just retarded. Whatever, I still hate Beck, he's such a scene. The fact that I have a Beck playlist on my itunes means absolutely nothing; it's only there so that I know to avoid all of those awful songs, like 'Loser' and 'Lost Cause' and that song off the 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' soundtrack. Beck blows.
Five full days of vacation left, plus almost all of Monday, since my flight doesn't leave Des Moines until late afternoon. Iowa is great--it was like six below one night last week, with unbelievable windchills, and then there was an unexpected, highly unusual heat spell and it was fifty degrees today. The weather here is always messed up and unpredictable, which is the way I like to lead my life, so it's kind nice. They even think there might be *thunderstorms* on Thursday, which is so crazy since it should be a blizzard instead. Oh well, as long as the airport doesn't get taken out by some freak act of nature, and the airlines don't mess up as badly this weekend as they did last weekend, I'll be a happy camper.
I'm listening to Interpol's 'Antics,' which I got for Christmas; I really like it, which is good since I asked my parents for it solely based on the 'If you like this, you'll like...' recommendations on Amazon. I'd also heard the song 'Evil' when I switched iPods with a coworker a couple of weeks ago; we made mixes for each other and switched for the day, and I was a bit surprised/amused when I hit 'swampler's playlist' on his iPod and saw that 'Evil' was the first song. But, the song is really good, and I recommend it. I'm not sure that I'm happy that my taste is shifting to whatever style encompasses Interpol/Franz Ferdinand/Postal Service/Killers, etc., but I'm so sick of my old music that I'll take just about anything right now. So, I'm cycling between this music, techno, and Bon Jovi, and all is good.
However, I was watching the TV the other day and a song came on, and I found myself remembering how much I liked the song...only to realize a fraction to late that it was Beck's 'Lost Cause'. I have professed to hate a) Beck, b) the album 'Sea Change' that this song is located on, and c) the song itself, so I was annoyed that I admitted to myself that I like it before I recognized what the song was. Damn. I hate when I do that--professing an irrational hatred of something that is inoffensive at worst and actually fantastic at best, and then being caught in the lie later when I don't recognize the object of my prior hatred in time. The same thing happened to me with 'The Princess Bride,' which is just retarded. Whatever, I still hate Beck, he's such a scene. The fact that I have a Beck playlist on my itunes means absolutely nothing; it's only there so that I know to avoid all of those awful songs, like 'Loser' and 'Lost Cause' and that song off the 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' soundtrack. Beck blows.
Five full days of vacation left, plus almost all of Monday, since my flight doesn't leave Des Moines until late afternoon. Iowa is great--it was like six below one night last week, with unbelievable windchills, and then there was an unexpected, highly unusual heat spell and it was fifty degrees today. The weather here is always messed up and unpredictable, which is the way I like to lead my life, so it's kind nice. They even think there might be *thunderstorms* on Thursday, which is so crazy since it should be a blizzard instead. Oh well, as long as the airport doesn't get taken out by some freak act of nature, and the airlines don't mess up as badly this weekend as they did last weekend, I'll be a happy camper.
i ain't missing you at all
Merry Christmas, everyone. I've had a very enjoyable few days. Friday was Christmas Eve, and we celebrated with the traditional package-opening with my sister and her three kids, followed by the even more traditional dinner, church, and package-opening at my paternal grandmother's house. Unfortunately, we didn't have the traditional lasagna; instead, we had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, etc. But, I scored a cool watch from my very chic aunt (it's Paul Frank, so it has a monkey on the face, and the face is *red*, and there are three interchangeable watchbands in red, black, and white). I also got a designer mirror from my grandmother that is really lovely but unfortunately doesn't match anything that I have, nor does it go with my stuff :( It also says 'come home for love' on it, which is about as blatant as you can get with a plea to come home...I know she's not expressing anything that the rest of my family doesn't feel as well, but she isn't nearly so 'understanding' about my desire to stay in California for awhile as the rest of my family is.
Anyway, Saturday was Christmas Day, and it was nice--my parents, brother and I woke up and exchanged gifets, and sat around for awhile, and then my dad's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew came over for Christmas dinner, as well as my grandmother. Aunt Becky had left early Christmas Day to go to her boyfriend's (!) parents' house, so it was a little strange not to have her around. Also, Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day dinner are at two completely different times; Christmas Eve dinner is always around 5:30 or 6 to leave time for church, while Christmas Day dinner is always around 12:30 or 1pm. Dinner in my family is really just the largest meal of the day, hence the different times. We had ham on Christmas Day, which was super tasty, and we played 90s Trivial Pursuit (VH1's 'I Love the 90s' helped me to dominate), then I took a nap in front of the fireplace in the living room while some people watched the Chiefs game.
Yesterday was my immediate family's 'perfect day' together; my mother was expressing sadness that we are destined to have very few remaining days together where it's just the four of us, and she wanted it to be nice. So, we spent it eating brunch: Dad made bacon, eggs, blueberry muffins, toast, and fried potatoes, with orange juice and milk on the side (you get the idea that all we do is eat? no wonder we're all overweight). Then we watched the pilot episode for the TV series 'Stargate: SG1' which my brother got on DVD; turns out that the pilot is two hours, so that took a large chunk of time. Then, while waiting to figure out what game we were going to play, my brother fell asleep, and my dad and I got engrossed in a documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright on PBS. I was surprised to learn so many salacious aspects of his personal life; at one point he had a mistress with whom he was deeply in love, and she died tragically while he was in Chicago and she was at their house in Wisconsin--a disgruntled servant poured gasoline all around the house, bolted all the doors and windows but one, set the house on fire, and then slaughtered the occupants with a hatchet as they ran out the remaining door. The servant split the mistress' skull open, killed her two children from a previous marriage, and wiped out all but two of the workmen who had been in the house. Crazy!
So we watched that, and then my father made homemade pizza (I have a pizza stone that I got for Christmas last year that I need to have sent to me when I move; homemade pizza is so great), and then we played three full games of hearts. My mother was satisfied, despite the TV interlude during the afternoon, and despite the fact that she got trounced at hearts.
Today, my aunt, uncle and three cousin's on my mom's side came up from St. Louis, and we exchanged more gifts and ate lunch. My uncle on that side is paraplegic, so we had trouble getting him in the house; we ended up having to take the back door off its hinges, but he still couldn't progress any farther than the kitchen :( It's a bad deal for family unity that my grandmother on that side passed away; her house was handicap-accessible, but ours definitely isn't. Hopefully my parents build their new house soon; our house is very old, constantly shifting, and likely to collapse someday, and a newer, handicap-accessible house is just a better idea for them as they get older anyway. For instance, it's v. difficult to open and close the back door right now because the house has shifted to hamper it; however, the bathroom door downstairs was also nearly impossible to shut a few years ago and now is back to normal and shuts perfectly. Or, take the example of our icemaker, which worked fantastically when we first installed it, but no longer works because the pipe running water from the main water pipe to the refrigerator is now slanted uphill, rather than down, and so can't get water to the freezer. Isn't that great?
Anyway, the plans for the new house are really cool; a full deck off the living and dining rooms overlooking the pond, a walk-out basement with a home-theater type setup inside, a kitchen built around the antique woodblock that we still have from my great-grandparents' grocery store. But, I will still miss our house; we've lived here my entire life, and it has that cozy feeling that a house gets after being occupied for nearly a century that I can't imagine the new house will have. Not that I'm in love with my room in this house; it's usually full of junk from my brother's attempts at reorganizing his own junk, and it's like a little time capsule from six years ago, replete with my baby-pink bedspread and a calendar that still reads 'September 1999' and has the date when I flew to Stanford underlined in then-anticipation. But, whatever room is ostensibly mine in a new house will never really be mine; it will just be a room that I sleep in when I visit my parents, but it won't hold any memories of my childhood. Oh, well, all things must come to an end, and this house will not survive another thirty years, in my opinion.
I have lots of fun toys to play with when I get back to California, mostly kitchen gadgets--new red silicone kitchenaid spatulas and stirring spoons, a minature red kitchenaid cutting board, a meat carving knife and fork, irish coffee glasses, a bartending/mixed drink guide, a red kitchenaid skillet, a red griddle, a waffle iron, and some other stuff that escapes me at the moment. I also got some dvds and cds, and a beautiful diploma frame from my brother that may encourage me to actually display my degree rather than leaving it to languish in a box.
Oh yeah, and so we did Christmas with my mom's side of the family, then went to a wedding reception for my mom's cousin's son and his new wife. The girl was very sweet, and much too attractive for my smart but somewhat awkward cousin; being the nasty, judgmental person that I am, I figured that she's in it for the green card, but I could be totally wrong and needlessly cynical. Then I came home, took a nap, and went out around 11:30 for drinks with Katie, Elaina, and Katie's boyfriend James. I hadn't seen Elaina in years, since she's been in Spain and we haven't been here at the same time for a long time, I hadn't seen Katie since August, and I'd never met James. All in all, fun was definitely had; we sat at a tavern in town and had $2 bottles of Bud Light and reminisced about the 'old days.' Ha. We're getting together again on Wednesday, just me, Katie, Hannah and Elaina--it will be great to be back together again, since the four of us did everything together in high school, but have grown apart (or at least I've grown apart) since Hannah got married and Elaina's been abroad. Fun times!
This has turned into a novella, which is unfortunate since I should be writing my real novel instead :( Take care, everyone, and sleep well wherever you are.
Anyway, Saturday was Christmas Day, and it was nice--my parents, brother and I woke up and exchanged gifets, and sat around for awhile, and then my dad's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew came over for Christmas dinner, as well as my grandmother. Aunt Becky had left early Christmas Day to go to her boyfriend's (!) parents' house, so it was a little strange not to have her around. Also, Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day dinner are at two completely different times; Christmas Eve dinner is always around 5:30 or 6 to leave time for church, while Christmas Day dinner is always around 12:30 or 1pm. Dinner in my family is really just the largest meal of the day, hence the different times. We had ham on Christmas Day, which was super tasty, and we played 90s Trivial Pursuit (VH1's 'I Love the 90s' helped me to dominate), then I took a nap in front of the fireplace in the living room while some people watched the Chiefs game.
Yesterday was my immediate family's 'perfect day' together; my mother was expressing sadness that we are destined to have very few remaining days together where it's just the four of us, and she wanted it to be nice. So, we spent it eating brunch: Dad made bacon, eggs, blueberry muffins, toast, and fried potatoes, with orange juice and milk on the side (you get the idea that all we do is eat? no wonder we're all overweight). Then we watched the pilot episode for the TV series 'Stargate: SG1' which my brother got on DVD; turns out that the pilot is two hours, so that took a large chunk of time. Then, while waiting to figure out what game we were going to play, my brother fell asleep, and my dad and I got engrossed in a documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright on PBS. I was surprised to learn so many salacious aspects of his personal life; at one point he had a mistress with whom he was deeply in love, and she died tragically while he was in Chicago and she was at their house in Wisconsin--a disgruntled servant poured gasoline all around the house, bolted all the doors and windows but one, set the house on fire, and then slaughtered the occupants with a hatchet as they ran out the remaining door. The servant split the mistress' skull open, killed her two children from a previous marriage, and wiped out all but two of the workmen who had been in the house. Crazy!
So we watched that, and then my father made homemade pizza (I have a pizza stone that I got for Christmas last year that I need to have sent to me when I move; homemade pizza is so great), and then we played three full games of hearts. My mother was satisfied, despite the TV interlude during the afternoon, and despite the fact that she got trounced at hearts.
Today, my aunt, uncle and three cousin's on my mom's side came up from St. Louis, and we exchanged more gifts and ate lunch. My uncle on that side is paraplegic, so we had trouble getting him in the house; we ended up having to take the back door off its hinges, but he still couldn't progress any farther than the kitchen :( It's a bad deal for family unity that my grandmother on that side passed away; her house was handicap-accessible, but ours definitely isn't. Hopefully my parents build their new house soon; our house is very old, constantly shifting, and likely to collapse someday, and a newer, handicap-accessible house is just a better idea for them as they get older anyway. For instance, it's v. difficult to open and close the back door right now because the house has shifted to hamper it; however, the bathroom door downstairs was also nearly impossible to shut a few years ago and now is back to normal and shuts perfectly. Or, take the example of our icemaker, which worked fantastically when we first installed it, but no longer works because the pipe running water from the main water pipe to the refrigerator is now slanted uphill, rather than down, and so can't get water to the freezer. Isn't that great?
Anyway, the plans for the new house are really cool; a full deck off the living and dining rooms overlooking the pond, a walk-out basement with a home-theater type setup inside, a kitchen built around the antique woodblock that we still have from my great-grandparents' grocery store. But, I will still miss our house; we've lived here my entire life, and it has that cozy feeling that a house gets after being occupied for nearly a century that I can't imagine the new house will have. Not that I'm in love with my room in this house; it's usually full of junk from my brother's attempts at reorganizing his own junk, and it's like a little time capsule from six years ago, replete with my baby-pink bedspread and a calendar that still reads 'September 1999' and has the date when I flew to Stanford underlined in then-anticipation. But, whatever room is ostensibly mine in a new house will never really be mine; it will just be a room that I sleep in when I visit my parents, but it won't hold any memories of my childhood. Oh, well, all things must come to an end, and this house will not survive another thirty years, in my opinion.
I have lots of fun toys to play with when I get back to California, mostly kitchen gadgets--new red silicone kitchenaid spatulas and stirring spoons, a minature red kitchenaid cutting board, a meat carving knife and fork, irish coffee glasses, a bartending/mixed drink guide, a red kitchenaid skillet, a red griddle, a waffle iron, and some other stuff that escapes me at the moment. I also got some dvds and cds, and a beautiful diploma frame from my brother that may encourage me to actually display my degree rather than leaving it to languish in a box.
Oh yeah, and so we did Christmas with my mom's side of the family, then went to a wedding reception for my mom's cousin's son and his new wife. The girl was very sweet, and much too attractive for my smart but somewhat awkward cousin; being the nasty, judgmental person that I am, I figured that she's in it for the green card, but I could be totally wrong and needlessly cynical. Then I came home, took a nap, and went out around 11:30 for drinks with Katie, Elaina, and Katie's boyfriend James. I hadn't seen Elaina in years, since she's been in Spain and we haven't been here at the same time for a long time, I hadn't seen Katie since August, and I'd never met James. All in all, fun was definitely had; we sat at a tavern in town and had $2 bottles of Bud Light and reminisced about the 'old days.' Ha. We're getting together again on Wednesday, just me, Katie, Hannah and Elaina--it will be great to be back together again, since the four of us did everything together in high school, but have grown apart (or at least I've grown apart) since Hannah got married and Elaina's been abroad. Fun times!
This has turned into a novella, which is unfortunate since I should be writing my real novel instead :( Take care, everyone, and sleep well wherever you are.
Friday, December 24, 2004
nobody makes me bleed my own blood!
I'm back in Iowa, after an uneventful but very long trip back from California. I left SFO around 10:30 last night, and I had to fly through Detroit, which just happens to be in the Eastern timezone, and about an hour and a half east of Des Moines. So I got there around 6am, which was 3am PST, and sat in the airport for three hours waiting to board. The airport was freezing, since the heater was broken in the concourse, so I was happy to get on the plane. But then, my plane sat on the runway there for almost two hours waiting to be de-iced, since Detroit was in the midst of a snowstorm. To make matters even better, it was four degrees when I landed in Des Moines at eleven a.m. today. That's freaking cold! It's so cold that it actually hurts to take a breath. Luckily, my new down-lined hot pink bomber jacket with the fur-trimmed hood held up admirably under the arctic conditions, and was much more suited for Iowa than it is for the relatively tropical conditions of the Bay Area. And, I bought a hat, scarf, and mittens at the mall while we were finishing our Christmas shopping, so I'm ready for the worst. It's a couple of degrees below zero right now, with a windchill of -15 to -20...but it's supposed to get to a relatively balmy 35 or so over the weekend. Yay!
That's all for now...tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which is a big deal in my family; my sister and her kids are coming over for presents in the afternoon, and then everyone gathers at Gram Wampler's house for Christmas Eve dinner and more presents with my dad's siblings and my cousin on that side. I love that I spent an hour wrapping presents tonight and will probably spend a similar amount of time wrapping tomorrow--and then it will be unwrapped almost immediately. Oh, Christmas, how I love thee.
That's all for now...tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which is a big deal in my family; my sister and her kids are coming over for presents in the afternoon, and then everyone gathers at Gram Wampler's house for Christmas Eve dinner and more presents with my dad's siblings and my cousin on that side. I love that I spent an hour wrapping presents tonight and will probably spend a similar amount of time wrapping tomorrow--and then it will be unwrapped almost immediately. Oh, Christmas, how I love thee.
Monday, December 20, 2004
'suburban teenagers: the new prostitutes. next on oprah'
The above quote was a rather abrupt soundbite promoting Oprah at the end of a commercial break earlier today; it just wasn't a phrase that I was expecting to hear.
Hmm, the weekend. Friday Vidya came over and I made a lemon cake, and then she went home. I picked Claudia up after she went out with her coworkers and she spent the night on my loveseat. Yesterday, I watched a lot of VH1 with Claudia, then Claudia, Terry and I had In-n-Out for lunch, and then watched 'Goodbye Lenin'. It was a German film with a great combination of humor and pathos; basic plotline is that a woman who had devoted herself to the Communist East German state fell into a coma just before the fall of the Wall, and when she came out seven months later, her family was told that it was important to keep her from being shocked, and so they managed to pretend that East Germany still existed. Very good, and highly recommended.
Then I had a bunch of work to do last night, so I worked for a few hours. Bleh. I slept for twelve hours, which was *fantastic*...it was the first time in I don't know how long that I slept in and didn't have work, or brunch plans, or movie plans, or whatever. I finished my Christmas shopping this afternoon (yay), came home, made six dozen cookies and a cake for work tomorrow, and also watched the last two-thirds of 'The Two Towers' with Terry. I *love* that movie; I think it was my favorite of the three. 'The Fellowship of the Ring' has a lot of great scenes, and of course 'The Return of the King' has the climax of the whole story...but the battle at Helm's Deep, the drawing of Saruman out of Theoden, the scene where Elrond forsees Arwen's death, the oliphaunts, the shot of Legolas shooting wolves as the army rides up behind him on the hill (and then Legolas grabs the strap of the horse and inexplicably makes it into the saddle), Gimli getting tossed, the ent punting the orc, etc., etc....it's all so good. I also love the leitmotif for the uruk hai, which is most pronounced in this one, as well as the theme for Rohan, so all in all the movie rocks and I can watch it over and over again. Yay!
I'm excited for the extended version; I hope that my family follows tradition and gets me the extended version for Christmas, but if not I'm buying it for myself as soon as I get back to California. The only thing better than a ridiculously long movie is an extension of a ridiculously long movie.
So yeah, life's good, and I go home Wednesday night! Yay! I fly out of SFO around 10:30pm, to Detroit, which is unfortunate since Detroit so far east of Iowa that it's actually in the Eastern time zone :( I will sit there for approximately three hours, then get on a flight back to Des Moines, where I am scheduled to arrive sometime around 9am on Thursday. It's going to be a brutally tiring endeavor, but worth it...I'll be home for eleven days, since I don't come back to California until late on Monday the third, and I think it will be really fun. It will inevitably seem too short, but it will be great.
Now, to bed...I have a cookie exchange at work tomorrow (that's what the cookies are for) from six to eight, which means I will not get home until later :( Ah well. As long as I get a chance to pack on Tuesday, I'll be good to go. Goodnight!
Hmm, the weekend. Friday Vidya came over and I made a lemon cake, and then she went home. I picked Claudia up after she went out with her coworkers and she spent the night on my loveseat. Yesterday, I watched a lot of VH1 with Claudia, then Claudia, Terry and I had In-n-Out for lunch, and then watched 'Goodbye Lenin'. It was a German film with a great combination of humor and pathos; basic plotline is that a woman who had devoted herself to the Communist East German state fell into a coma just before the fall of the Wall, and when she came out seven months later, her family was told that it was important to keep her from being shocked, and so they managed to pretend that East Germany still existed. Very good, and highly recommended.
Then I had a bunch of work to do last night, so I worked for a few hours. Bleh. I slept for twelve hours, which was *fantastic*...it was the first time in I don't know how long that I slept in and didn't have work, or brunch plans, or movie plans, or whatever. I finished my Christmas shopping this afternoon (yay), came home, made six dozen cookies and a cake for work tomorrow, and also watched the last two-thirds of 'The Two Towers' with Terry. I *love* that movie; I think it was my favorite of the three. 'The Fellowship of the Ring' has a lot of great scenes, and of course 'The Return of the King' has the climax of the whole story...but the battle at Helm's Deep, the drawing of Saruman out of Theoden, the scene where Elrond forsees Arwen's death, the oliphaunts, the shot of Legolas shooting wolves as the army rides up behind him on the hill (and then Legolas grabs the strap of the horse and inexplicably makes it into the saddle), Gimli getting tossed, the ent punting the orc, etc., etc....it's all so good. I also love the leitmotif for the uruk hai, which is most pronounced in this one, as well as the theme for Rohan, so all in all the movie rocks and I can watch it over and over again. Yay!
I'm excited for the extended version; I hope that my family follows tradition and gets me the extended version for Christmas, but if not I'm buying it for myself as soon as I get back to California. The only thing better than a ridiculously long movie is an extension of a ridiculously long movie.
So yeah, life's good, and I go home Wednesday night! Yay! I fly out of SFO around 10:30pm, to Detroit, which is unfortunate since Detroit so far east of Iowa that it's actually in the Eastern time zone :( I will sit there for approximately three hours, then get on a flight back to Des Moines, where I am scheduled to arrive sometime around 9am on Thursday. It's going to be a brutally tiring endeavor, but worth it...I'll be home for eleven days, since I don't come back to California until late on Monday the third, and I think it will be really fun. It will inevitably seem too short, but it will be great.
Now, to bed...I have a cookie exchange at work tomorrow (that's what the cookies are for) from six to eight, which means I will not get home until later :( Ah well. As long as I get a chance to pack on Tuesday, I'll be good to go. Goodnight!
Thursday, December 16, 2004
get busy child
Today was fun; I had a conference call at 7:45am (boo), then worked all day, then came home. So maybe that wasn't the fun part. No, the fun part was when I got home and made dinner for friends. I made garbanzo bean and chorizo soup, which is a somewhat far cry from the beef stews of my childhood, but only if you are concerned by replacing beef with chorizo and potatoes with garbanzo beans. Anyway, the soup was easy to make, although it took a long time to cook; it required chicken broth, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and garbanzo beans, which cooked for like three hours, then some sauteeing of chorizo, adding that to the soup, seasoning w/fresh rosemary, salt and pepper, and then pureeing half the soup in the blender so that the finished mixture was more smooth. It was really tasty, especially when one dipped bread into it. It passed the 'would I make it again?' test with flying colors, so I should add it to my recipe box.
The strawberry shortcake also made me happy, and either my friends actually liked it smothered in half and half, or they were humoring me, but either way we all had a good time and I like my strawberry shortcake like my mother makes is, straight from the oven, covered in strawberries, and drowning in cream. Mmm. We also had a bottle of wine, although we only finished half of it, so we'll have to drink some more tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, I should go to bed; I have much work to do, and the O.C. is on tomorrow night, which I will of course want to see. Ah, so much to do...and a week from now, I will be on a place somewhere between here and the Midwest! Yay. But that means I need to finish my Christmas shopping, and take care of errands here, and we need to start looking for new apartments, which means that I should start packing soonish. Damn. Oh well, it will be lovely to live someplace else! Take care, friends...and when in doubt, listen to techno. I've got techno in my car stereo right now, and I've been listening to a techno mix at work (in fact, the subject line of this post comes from 'Busy Child' by Crystal Method). I promise, it will make all your problems go away!
The strawberry shortcake also made me happy, and either my friends actually liked it smothered in half and half, or they were humoring me, but either way we all had a good time and I like my strawberry shortcake like my mother makes is, straight from the oven, covered in strawberries, and drowning in cream. Mmm. We also had a bottle of wine, although we only finished half of it, so we'll have to drink some more tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, I should go to bed; I have much work to do, and the O.C. is on tomorrow night, which I will of course want to see. Ah, so much to do...and a week from now, I will be on a place somewhere between here and the Midwest! Yay. But that means I need to finish my Christmas shopping, and take care of errands here, and we need to start looking for new apartments, which means that I should start packing soonish. Damn. Oh well, it will be lovely to live someplace else! Take care, friends...and when in doubt, listen to techno. I've got techno in my car stereo right now, and I've been listening to a techno mix at work (in fact, the subject line of this post comes from 'Busy Child' by Crystal Method). I promise, it will make all your problems go away!
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
thumbprints and stressing
Let's see. Work continues to be hectic, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. However, I'm leaving for Iowa next Wednesday! That's v. exciting, and I'm hoping that it will be v. relaxing as well.
Tonight, Terry and I went shopping and grocery shopping, then came home and I tried a new cookie recipe. The recipe: jam thumbprints (shortbread cookies w/jam in the center). The verdict: decent, but won't replace my chocolate chip chewies as my favorite easy cookie. I need to figure out what I'm making for a cookie exchange at work next week, so maybe I'll experiment some more in the coming days.
Tomorrow, Claudia is coming over for dinner, and I'm making the garbanzo bean and chorizo soup that I had in Sonoma. The winery that served it sent the recipes out, and I really want to try it. So, we're having soup and wine, and I'm making strawberry shortcake, which Vidya may join us for (since she can't eat the oh-so-meaty soup). But first, I have a meeting at 8am tomorrow. That's in 7.5 hours! Damn. That means I should go to bed.
Luckily, 'The Librarian: Quest for the Spear' isn't on tonight; Sunday night, I ended up staying up until two because I got sucked into this awful made for TV movie starring Noah Wyle in a blatant ripoff of Indiana Jones. However, Noah Wyle wasn't a professor; he was the newly-chosen 'librarian' charged with guarding important artifacts, such as Excalibur and Pandora's Box. The Serpent Brotherhood showed up and stole one-third of the Spear of Destiny (the spear that stabbed Jesus on the cross). The other two parts were hidden in other places; for context, Hitler only had one piece, so imagine how powerful the Serpent Brotherhood would be with all three. Luckily, the clues to the spear were left in a book, written in the Language of the Birds, which is what we (and the birds) spoke before the Tower of Babel. Even more luckily, Noah Wyle was able to decipher and learn the whole language in seven hours without any comparative/Rosetta Stone-type assistance. To top it off, there was a hot girl sent to protect him, and they ended up falling in love, of course.
I will ruin the ending for you so that you aren't tempted to catch it on TNT when they show it again next weekend--even though only Noah Wyle was the only one who could find the pieces, and so you would think it would have been better to leave them alone than to lead the Serpent Brotherhood to them, they found one piece in the Amazon and the other piece in Shangri-La (oh, it's real). Of course the Serpent Brotherhood took both the pieces. But the only way to merge them back together was to use incredible power, some ridicuously high electromagnetic field--which supposedly, improbably, inexplicably, could only be generated by the full moon shining down on the Great Pyramid back when its original capstone was in place. Of course, some mad professor had just built a model, and the 1:100 model was apparently still big enough to pull off the necessary magnetic field. Just when all hope was lost, Bob Newhart busted out some nifty martial arts skillz and took out an entire regiment of Serpent Brotherhood members. And the bad dude got smashed by the capstone. And the Spear of Destiny returned to the library.
Isn't that special?
And aren't I special for a) staying up until 2am to watch it, b) staying up an extra five minutes to tell you all about it? I'm so stupid!
Tonight, Terry and I went shopping and grocery shopping, then came home and I tried a new cookie recipe. The recipe: jam thumbprints (shortbread cookies w/jam in the center). The verdict: decent, but won't replace my chocolate chip chewies as my favorite easy cookie. I need to figure out what I'm making for a cookie exchange at work next week, so maybe I'll experiment some more in the coming days.
Tomorrow, Claudia is coming over for dinner, and I'm making the garbanzo bean and chorizo soup that I had in Sonoma. The winery that served it sent the recipes out, and I really want to try it. So, we're having soup and wine, and I'm making strawberry shortcake, which Vidya may join us for (since she can't eat the oh-so-meaty soup). But first, I have a meeting at 8am tomorrow. That's in 7.5 hours! Damn. That means I should go to bed.
Luckily, 'The Librarian: Quest for the Spear' isn't on tonight; Sunday night, I ended up staying up until two because I got sucked into this awful made for TV movie starring Noah Wyle in a blatant ripoff of Indiana Jones. However, Noah Wyle wasn't a professor; he was the newly-chosen 'librarian' charged with guarding important artifacts, such as Excalibur and Pandora's Box. The Serpent Brotherhood showed up and stole one-third of the Spear of Destiny (the spear that stabbed Jesus on the cross). The other two parts were hidden in other places; for context, Hitler only had one piece, so imagine how powerful the Serpent Brotherhood would be with all three. Luckily, the clues to the spear were left in a book, written in the Language of the Birds, which is what we (and the birds) spoke before the Tower of Babel. Even more luckily, Noah Wyle was able to decipher and learn the whole language in seven hours without any comparative/Rosetta Stone-type assistance. To top it off, there was a hot girl sent to protect him, and they ended up falling in love, of course.
I will ruin the ending for you so that you aren't tempted to catch it on TNT when they show it again next weekend--even though only Noah Wyle was the only one who could find the pieces, and so you would think it would have been better to leave them alone than to lead the Serpent Brotherhood to them, they found one piece in the Amazon and the other piece in Shangri-La (oh, it's real). Of course the Serpent Brotherhood took both the pieces. But the only way to merge them back together was to use incredible power, some ridicuously high electromagnetic field--which supposedly, improbably, inexplicably, could only be generated by the full moon shining down on the Great Pyramid back when its original capstone was in place. Of course, some mad professor had just built a model, and the 1:100 model was apparently still big enough to pull off the necessary magnetic field. Just when all hope was lost, Bob Newhart busted out some nifty martial arts skillz and took out an entire regiment of Serpent Brotherhood members. And the bad dude got smashed by the capstone. And the Spear of Destiny returned to the library.
Isn't that special?
And aren't I special for a) staying up until 2am to watch it, b) staying up an extra five minutes to tell you all about it? I'm so stupid!
Sunday, December 12, 2004
...it must be taken deep into mordor and cast back into the chasm from whence it came...
I'm watching 'The Fellowship of the Ring' on TNT right now, which is v. nice, even though it's four hours when you add all the commercials. However, commercials give me a chance to do the things that I need to do, like putting away my laundry (which I folded meticulously during the first hour). And, since I've seen it so many times already, I don't have to concentrate on the movie too hard, which means that I can do work, which is a little sad because I would rather be writing, but I had stuff for work that I had to do tonight. Too bad, but these things happen.
The movie just finished the Bridge of Khazad-Dum sequence, which I think is one of the most amazing sequences in the history of film. That's the non-expert opinion of someone who tends to like trash, of course. In fact, the other day Claudia told me that she preferred the redemption of Boromir at the end over the bridge scene, and I openly scoffed. We're still friends, but it may have caused an irreparable breach.
Anyway, this weekend...Friday, I took Claudia to Outback Steakhouse, because I desperately wanted steak and I wanted her to try the famed Bloomin' Onion (a whole deep-fried onion, for any of you who don't know). Then, we came back to my place, drank mudslides, and watched 'Dodgeball.' Donde esta la biblioteca, Pedro?
Saturday, I went up to the city to have brunch with a couple of my coworkers, which was v. entertaining. I came home, tried to do some Christmas shopping and failed, then had dinner with Zach, Claudia, and Geoff. We went to this Afghani place in Sunnyvale, and I was pleasantly surprised; it was really v. good. Today, I slept really late, then saw 'Ocean's Twelve.' I was mildly disappointed; the story focused far too much on how attractive and witty the stars were, and far too little on heists and robberies and hot, brilliant planning. The first part was entertaining, but then it started to drag, and it seemed like they were just filming it on a whim, which I guess is what it was. There were a few supremely funny shots, and I liked Matt Damon's character, and of course Brad Pitt was beyond attractive, but it didn't have much redeeming value beyond that.
Then, I went coat-shopping, and talked to my brother, and did laundry, and had dinner with Terry, and now I'm working and watching TV (and writing in my blog as a break). Isn't that exciting?
This week promises to be a trial by fire--two of the people I work really closely with both found out over the past week that they're transitioning to new roles in the next couple of weeks, and one of them is on vacation this week, so I basically get to figure out if I can handle everything they do myself. Yippee. We'll see how that goes--I'm sure that I can increase my efficiency levels if I try, and I'm pleased to have new growth opportunities or whatever, but I also like being able to go home and not have more work to do. So, we'll see what happens.
But, I go home in less than ten days! And, I will be there for eleven days, which will be amazing.
The movie just finished the Bridge of Khazad-Dum sequence, which I think is one of the most amazing sequences in the history of film. That's the non-expert opinion of someone who tends to like trash, of course. In fact, the other day Claudia told me that she preferred the redemption of Boromir at the end over the bridge scene, and I openly scoffed. We're still friends, but it may have caused an irreparable breach.
Anyway, this weekend...Friday, I took Claudia to Outback Steakhouse, because I desperately wanted steak and I wanted her to try the famed Bloomin' Onion (a whole deep-fried onion, for any of you who don't know). Then, we came back to my place, drank mudslides, and watched 'Dodgeball.' Donde esta la biblioteca, Pedro?
Saturday, I went up to the city to have brunch with a couple of my coworkers, which was v. entertaining. I came home, tried to do some Christmas shopping and failed, then had dinner with Zach, Claudia, and Geoff. We went to this Afghani place in Sunnyvale, and I was pleasantly surprised; it was really v. good. Today, I slept really late, then saw 'Ocean's Twelve.' I was mildly disappointed; the story focused far too much on how attractive and witty the stars were, and far too little on heists and robberies and hot, brilliant planning. The first part was entertaining, but then it started to drag, and it seemed like they were just filming it on a whim, which I guess is what it was. There were a few supremely funny shots, and I liked Matt Damon's character, and of course Brad Pitt was beyond attractive, but it didn't have much redeeming value beyond that.
Then, I went coat-shopping, and talked to my brother, and did laundry, and had dinner with Terry, and now I'm working and watching TV (and writing in my blog as a break). Isn't that exciting?
This week promises to be a trial by fire--two of the people I work really closely with both found out over the past week that they're transitioning to new roles in the next couple of weeks, and one of them is on vacation this week, so I basically get to figure out if I can handle everything they do myself. Yippee. We'll see how that goes--I'm sure that I can increase my efficiency levels if I try, and I'm pleased to have new growth opportunities or whatever, but I also like being able to go home and not have more work to do. So, we'll see what happens.
But, I go home in less than ten days! And, I will be there for eleven days, which will be amazing.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
smack my bitch up
I saw 'Closer' tonight with one of my coworkers...I can't decide whether I liked it or not. It was somewhat depressing, not in a crying sort of way, but more an uncomfortable sort of way. It did open up a lot of internal questions for me, which I suppose is what art is supposed to do; but as someone who likes questionless films like 'Troy' and 'Dodgeball', I don't always like films that make me think.
The biggest question is how I deal with forgiveness. Or rather, how I don't deal with forgiveness. I really have a high level of acceptance for things that other people would probably not accept (ill treatment, selfishness, etc.), and I have been nice to a lot of people far longer than I probably should have. However, there is a point of no return...beyond which things will never be the same.
'Closer' dealt mostly with the bad parts of relationships, rather than the good ones, as evidenced by the fact that the plot skipped forward, sometimes more than a year, to get to another one of the moments that redefined peoples' lives. And when you see only the bad parts, it's so easy to say that some things just can't be forgiven, forgotten, moved past, ignored. Like, had I been in any of the relationships in the movie, seeing only the things that we saw, there's no way that I would have forgiven anyone. But, when there are tons of good memories sifted in with the bad ones, everything gets more complicated.
Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with this, or rather, I totally know where I'm going with this, but I don't know what conclusion it leads to and I wouldn't document it here anyway. Sorry, kids.
Hopefully I'll find time this weekend to write; it's been over three weeks. Sadness. Work has been really hectic, but I shouldn't have to do anything this weekend for work, so writing is possible. I also just want to relax and sit around, so we'll see what happens!
The biggest question is how I deal with forgiveness. Or rather, how I don't deal with forgiveness. I really have a high level of acceptance for things that other people would probably not accept (ill treatment, selfishness, etc.), and I have been nice to a lot of people far longer than I probably should have. However, there is a point of no return...beyond which things will never be the same.
'Closer' dealt mostly with the bad parts of relationships, rather than the good ones, as evidenced by the fact that the plot skipped forward, sometimes more than a year, to get to another one of the moments that redefined peoples' lives. And when you see only the bad parts, it's so easy to say that some things just can't be forgiven, forgotten, moved past, ignored. Like, had I been in any of the relationships in the movie, seeing only the things that we saw, there's no way that I would have forgiven anyone. But, when there are tons of good memories sifted in with the bad ones, everything gets more complicated.
Anyway, I don't really know where I'm going with this, or rather, I totally know where I'm going with this, but I don't know what conclusion it leads to and I wouldn't document it here anyway. Sorry, kids.
Hopefully I'll find time this weekend to write; it's been over three weeks. Sadness. Work has been really hectic, but I shouldn't have to do anything this weekend for work, so writing is possible. I also just want to relax and sit around, so we'll see what happens!
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
wait...they don't love you like i love you
Nothing exciting happening; it's another fun-filled week of working, but I have some social plans that will make up for it. I had lunch with Vidya in Santa Clara yesterday, and then I worked until eight, came home, made mashed potatoes (w/sour cream and garlic) and a steak that was so bloody that it was merely warm inside, not hot, and there was a puddle of blood on my plate at the end of it. This amused and horrified Terry, who likes to cook her steak to the point of ruination, apparently. What an abomination :)
Today, Terry got hired full-time! That's very exciting, since it means that she will definitely be here for awhile. She took me out to dinner to celebrate--we went to Pasta? in Mountain View, and I had a surprisingly good spaghetti with mussels and calamari. Then we came home and watched 'Bottle Rocket,' which I rented a week ago and never got around to watching. It was really funny, in that offbeat way typical of Owen and Luke Wilson, and I'm even more psyched to see 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' when it comes out.
So yeah, that's life right now. Exciting, eh? Now if I could just find time to write my romance novel...
Today, Terry got hired full-time! That's very exciting, since it means that she will definitely be here for awhile. She took me out to dinner to celebrate--we went to Pasta? in Mountain View, and I had a surprisingly good spaghetti with mussels and calamari. Then we came home and watched 'Bottle Rocket,' which I rented a week ago and never got around to watching. It was really funny, in that offbeat way typical of Owen and Luke Wilson, and I'm even more psyched to see 'The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' when it comes out.
So yeah, that's life right now. Exciting, eh? Now if I could just find time to write my romance novel...
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