Ears!

I know that I am overdue for a blog post, but I am too exhausted
tonight to bother. Loyal reader, please come back tomorrow, when I
shall update you on the many strange and wonderous things that
happened this weekend. Until then, goodnight!

into the ocean, end it all

I had a good day today, despite the fact that I was at work. I had to present to our all hands meeting, which involved standing up in front of several hundred people and making a presentation, but it went rather well. I was saddened, however, when I ate a lot of avocado on my turkey sandwich today and my lips and mouth started itching/burning; I've been in denial about the possibility that I have a reaction to avocadoes, but I suppose I need to go forward with my months-old goal of getting tested for all of my possible allergies. It just makes me sad, though, which is why I've been avoiding it. After the presentation, I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on email, hanging out with my team, and generally celebrating the end of the presentation until my conference call at 7:30. Then I came home, boycotted work, and spent a couple of hours watching Tivo - I watched the first two episodes of 'Pushing Daisies' (good so far, about a guy who can bring people back to life, but with major strings attached), as well as an episode of '30 Rock'.

Yesterday was good too; I had many meetings, and then I came home and ate Indian food with Terry while watching last week's episode of 'Moonlight' (the new vampire show on CBS). It's really quite terrible, and not even in a fun, schticky 'this is so bad it's good' way - this is just really bad. I'm going to give it another couple of episodes to find itself, but I'm horribly disappointed.

Today was not really a day that I wanted to be at work; while the preso went well and things are actually quite good at the office, I'm tired of how much work is consuming my life. I need to do something about it, even though I also feel the competing need to work this weekend on some stuff. However, the weekend should be good; Adit's staying with me, I'm going up to Vidya's to watch tv tomorrow night, and I may or may not see Emily and some of the other people who are around for Stanford's alumni homecoming this weekend. On that note, I think I shall go to bed and conserve my energy for the weekend. Goodnight!

i wish i knew another way, but we're gonna have to clone you

Well, my friends, Iowa was fun. I got to see all sorts of family members, eat a lot of hearty Midwestern food (including ham, my favorite), and had the pleasure of topping it off with a seventy-mile drive through a thunderstorm at five a.m. to get back to the airport on Monday. Consequently, I was exhausted last night and missed Adit's birthday party, since I was afraid I would fall asleep while driving to/from the city. Instead, I stayed home, watched a bit of tivo, and slept for over ten hours. Doesn't that sound like fun?

Today, I had meetings most of the day, but I stayed at work for dinner and had some delicious steak and mashed potatoes while reading my email, so that was lovely. Then I came home, watched some tivo while doing some more work, and now I'm going to bed.

Based on this pattern, any six-year-old could guess what I'm going to do tomorrow! However, there's a slight variation to the theme - Terry's going to come over and we're going to watch Tivo together (namely, last week's episode of 'Moonlight', that ridiculous vampire show on CBS). Yes, I know, I have terrible taste.

That's all for now - I leave you with a link to my photo album for some of the pics I took while in Iowa: http://picasaweb.google.com/sarawampler/IowaRiggsReunion. Goodnight!

roland the headless thompson gunner

My parents know that I'm alive, which has limited the incentive to blog this weekend - but I thought that you, my small but loyal cadre of readers, might care to verify as well. The post that I wrote on Friday was mostly fictitious - I was actually sitting in the San Francisco airport, waiting to catch a flight back to my native land. My maternal grandmother's four sisters were having a reunion of sorts in my hometown, and I decided to go back and surprise everybody. My brother was in on the secret, by my parents were quite surprised when I strolled into the kitchen around noon yesterday, after arriving in Des Moines and renting a car for the seventy-mile drive south.

It was really good to see everybody; the aunts are all in their eighties, and it's unlikely that all four of them will get together again, so I'm glad I came home. It was also nice to sleep in my room and not spend any time at all sorting or throwing away remnants of my childhood. And, in other news, Minnesota is producing some drinkable wine, as evidenced by the bottle of red wine that one of my mother's cousins brought. So, all in all, it was great, although I have to get up at four a.m. to shower, say goodbye, and drive to the airport to catch my flight back to California. As soon as I get there, I have meetings all afternoon, and then I have to drive back to the evil city for dinner for Adit's birthday. Boo. So I suppose I should go to bed - I'll write again tomorrow!

my crazy angel

I'm so stupid - I really should have gone to bed, but I adore my Tivo, and so I watched all sorts of crap. Granted, it was sans commercials, so it was a more efficient watching of crap than usual. My favorite thing is that I've been tivo'ing various episodes of 'Man vs. Wild' - that guy is insane. He was formerly the British equivalent of a Navy SEAL, and now he does this show for the Discovery Channel in which he thrusts himself into various completely ridiculous wilderness survival experiences. I had the privilege of watching him fill a water bottle with his own urine to use it as a hot water bottle when he was freezing; I also got to watch a rather visceral skinning of a deer that he found dead in the Scottish Highlands. He wrapped himself in the skin directly after skinning it, which seemed to be pretty foul, but I guess that's why he would survive and I would just curl up in a ball and wait for death.

However, I did do various productive things tonight, such as laundry, which means I won't do it later this weekend. That's a good thing - I have tons of work to do, and I have no real faith in my ability to get it all done. That's particularly true since I haven't slept much this week, so I should really sleep now and attempt to regain my stamina. Goodnight!

tomorrow's just a future yesterday

Well, today was miserable. I spent six hours staring at excel spreadsheets, trying to match up various versions of fifteen different spreadsheets into one amalgamated thing with multiple charts and graphs, which made my head hurt. Then I had meetings the rest of the day. But, I had dinner w/my friend Joann, who is a fellow old-schooler (we started within three weeks of each other), and that was fun. Afterwards, I came home and worked from 9pm until now, while watching various tivo'd things in the background. Now, I have to go to bed - sorry that this is one of the lamest posts ever :(

But, that frowny-face reminds me of how I completely lost it by the end of the day. I was sitting in a working meeting and showing a couple of people how you can use formulas in excel to show whether someone is meeting their goal, and I wrote a quick and easy formula that changed a cell to 'yay!' or 'boo :(' depending on the goal. Then we all laughed uproariously, no doubt because we were all insane. Anyway, on that note, it's time for bed!

secret secret, i've got a secret

I'm Kilroy!

No, that's not true. It is a reference to Styx's epic song 'Mr. Roboto'. I went through a serious Styx-loving phase in high school; while I have since moved on to other things, the vocoder and electronica influences in 'Mr. Roboto' are enough to keep me enthused about it despite (or perhaps because of) its ridiculously campy lyrics and sound.

Today was a pretty good day - I had several 'important' meetings (where importance is measured by the relative seniority of the other people in the meetings, not the topics of discussion), and so I fought the corporateness of my life by wearing pigtails. Laura and Alan complimented my 'sassiness' when we chatted for a few minutes at lunchtime; for those of you not in the know, Alan and Laura are both directors and Alan is my manager, but they are both pretty cool. I'm clearly spoiled - I can't work anywhere else in corporate America, given my tastes in colors and hair styles.

I also had an 'ohmigosh i'm so spoiled' moment tonight when I went to the fridge at work to get a drink and I had a vague sense of regret that they've reformed the snack rooms - while we still get ridiculous quantities of free stuff, including high-end beverages like Smartwater, various teas and vitaminwaters, etc., I was sad when I remembered that I can no longer get the apple-shaped single-serving bottles of Martinelli's apple juice. At least I recognize that I'm spoiled, right?

After work, I came home and made myself some danged quesadillas, which were delicious. I also watched last night's episode of Craig Ferguson. Seriously, Tivo has completely changed my life - I should have gotten it a year ago. Craig's monologue last night was really funny - he spent a lot of time going off about cavemen, and made a ridiculously crude/funny joke about the Lascaux cave paintings in France. Which reminds me - in Monday night's episode, he made some comment about how Budapest is really two separate cities (Buda and Pest) separated by a river (which is true) - but he said it to Juliette Lewis, who thought he was teasing her. I think I love him because he clearly knows a lot of random stuff - that and he has a gorgeous accent and an amazing sense of comedic timing. I also love that when he does flashbacks of himself, even if the 'flashback' is to earlier in the day, he puts on a darker wig. He's so strange!

Okay, I should really go to bed - I have tons to accomplish tomorrow. Goodnight!

set an open course for the virgin sea

Sorry that I didn't blog yesterday - this week is shaping up to be truly brutal. I had hoped to go to the evil city to see 'Into the Wild' with Vidius Chandicus (the originator of the daily gratuitous instant message, which I have received both yesterday and today), but I had to work late and go into the office v. early this morning. Today, I worked all day, and then had dinner at Miyake with my friend Kim. She is leaving for India next week on a three-month business trip, and so I let her pick the restaurant - and it was quite amusing. I hadn't been there in years, but even on a Tuesday night, they're still pouring sake bombs for anyone who wants them. Their sake bombs are accompanied by flashing colored lights and overly-loud rap music, although the fog machine was not in use tonight as it was several years ago. Anyway, it was good to see Kim, even though I came home and worked from 9-12.

However, due to the wonders of Tivo, I'm going to go to bed rather than staying up and watching 'Craig Ferguson'. I also watched 'Boston Legal' in the background of my work, but got to skip the commercials. I'm really loving this thing - it's clear that I should have gotten it ages ago. Everyone I mention my Tivo to at work exclaims that it will revolutionize my life, and they ain't kiddin'.

Now, though, I should go to bed - I have meetings almost straight through tomorrow, and I have 144 emails piled up in my inbox that I have no hope of getting through anytime soon. Bleh. For now though, it's time to sleep!

every rose has its thorn

Apologies for not blogging yesterday - as usual, I did nothing on Saturday night and yet didn't have the energy necessary to write. I had written in my journal, which obviated the need for expressing my thoughts online. Yesterday was good, though. I went to Sunnyvale to see part of Roopa's classical Indian singing performance. It was v. good, although since I don't understand the words, I didn't get as much out of it as some audience members probably did. However, it did make me homesick for Hyderabad. Or, perhaps as Vidya pointed out, I'm just 'homesick' for travel in general - I haven't gone anywhere interesting since I went to Ukraine in May, and while trips to Salt Lake, Tahoe, and Iowa were fun, they weren't really classic adventures. I think I'm just feeling a dearth of adventure in my life, which is something that I want to rectify sooner rather than later.

After the concert, I had a late lunch with Vidya and Adit, took a nap, and spent the rest of the evening watching TV. I watched 'Moonlight' (the awful vampire show on CBS which I will of course keeping watching, because I have a secret affection for vampires), and 'Chuck' (surprisingly pretty good - it's on NBC, about a dorky guy who gets all of the government's secrets downloaded into his brain), and well as the season premiere of 'The Office'. All in all, the perfect slightly-depressing but still relaxing Saturday night.

Today, I slept in, took a shower, played with my makeup, and went through my usual Sunday ritual of reading every interesting story on the New York Times website. I talked to my mom for awhile, and then met Vidya at Cafe Borrone. We had intended to work, but of course we talked for two hours instead. It was really nice - I was feeling rather depressed this weekend that I'm losing touch w/my friends (for example, Claude, whom I've only talked to a couple of times in the last month, even though we used to see each other at least twice a week), but seeing Vidya was a welcome respite from my standard crazy go-go-go work life.

After hanging out with Vidya, I went to Best Buy and bought a TiVo. I had avoided it for years, but I finally bit the bullet - I would watch television to relax at night if there were things on that I wanted to see at precisely the time that I wanted to watch. The first thing I did was set up a Season Pass (recurring recording) of 'The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson' - so I will never miss Craig again, and I won't have to force myself to stay up in order to see him! Yay!

So that's all for now - this week at work is going to be brutal, but I might as well stop saying that, because they all are. Now I'm going to finish watching the finale of 'Rock of Love' - ridiculous, since I'd never watched it until now, but I kind of love it. Goodnight!

salaam namaste

In general, today was quite a lovely day. I decided to wear one of my Indian outfits; I hadn't worn a salwar kameeze in a year, and I really miss them. They're so comfortable - it's like I can get away with wearing pajamas to work, even if here I attract far more attention while wearing them than I did in Hyderabad. The consequence, though, is that my desk is situated right under and air conditioning vent and right next to a poorly-insulated window. This made my right arm and hand so cold that I was having difficulty typing, and I couldn't hold a pen properly to write a good note. But, pain i s the price of fashion - and getting to wear a pastel purple tunic, loose lavender gingham pants, and shiny bangles was well worth the sacrifice to my core temperature.

After work, I came home and straightened up the apartment. Then, I went up to the evil city with Jenni, Nick, Arod, and Regina. Arod had set up an expat reunion for us at Heather and Salim's apartment. I had been thinking about the group ever since I had talked to the director of the India office on Wednesday and he had said that the scavenger hunt for my birthday was the 'pinnacle of expat culture' in the Hyderabad office. So, the evening was really nice - we ordered pizza, drank some delicious drinks, and played several rounds of asshole (for those of you who haven't played, it's a drinking game). We played with Salim's naked-lady cards, which was entertaining, particularly since the naked ladies were juxtaposed with the rather tame Indian music in the background. In addition to Nick, Arod, Regina, Heather, and Salim, we also had Rohit, Saamra and Katina in attendance. Everyone was in top form, and seemed to really enjoy hanging out, so hopefully we do it again a bit sooner.

However, I need to start making more time for 'real friends' - they can still be work friends (I can think of a couple of examples), but I need to make it more of a priority to hang out with my closest/oldest friends too. It really goes along with the difficulty I have in setting boundaries at work - I tend to work too much because I don't make firm commitments to myself to get out of the office at a certain time, so I don't manage my time completely effectively because I anticipate that I will have to work at night. Anyway, speaking of making more time for friends, I should really go to bed so that I can go to Roopa's concert tomorrow. Goodnight!

you're setting me up and i'm taking the fall

Tonight was my team's offsite, and it was super fun - to quote Marci, 'this was the first offsite I've been to that wasn't awkward'. Twelve of us went to Saratoga and did some winetasting, and then had dinner at a restaurant a couple of blocks down the street. It actually qualified as team building too - while we didn't do any lame trust-building exercises, we did go around the room and asked questions of everyone in turn. It was great - I learned things about people that I never would have actually asked about in a normal setting, and fun seemed to be had by all. Two members of the team are leaving for Ann Arbor this weekend, which is really sad, but they'll be back in a quarter, so I suppose it's all good.

Working with such a great group of people sort of makes up for the fact that I have no life, although life is something that I want to work on - I have babies on the brain because several of my coworkers are in various stages of childrearing, and while I shudder to think of the implications of having a baby anytime in at least the next five years, I suppose I should be trying to make progress toward that eventual goal, rather than spending all of my time working and procrastinating from doing anything about my future. It's just so easy to procrastinate - I'm very good at it. But then again, I'm twenty-six, which is horribly scary. So, we shall see.

I am going to embrace life tomorrow night, through the timeless tradition of Circle of Death - I'm going up to the evil city for an expat reunion at Heather's, and depending on the mix of people there, I may be able to con some people into playing Circle of Death. Regardless of what we do, I'm sure a good time will be had by all (unless I get stabbed to death in the evil city - Heather and Salim like to say that I don't like the city because I'm afraid of it, so I like to play into their expectations). The rest of the weekend will likely be spent working, and hopefully working on my romance novel. For now, though, it's time for bed!

i lost my heart...i buried it too deep

It's been a fun couple of days, even though I have absolutely no work/life balance. Yesterday, I had meetings virtually all day, and worked several hours last night. But, the misery was punctuated by a white elephant gift exchange in my team meeting - and I walked away with Michael Bolton's super hits. I apparently rocked out to it pretty hard, considering that someone who sits about 30 feet from me was able to hear it. Luckily I wasn't singing...although his songs are definitely croon-worthy. I also came home and watched 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith' - the movie is a little weird because I feel like I'm watching adultery in action (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie allegedly came together on set, although they claim that nothing happened until Brad broke up with Jen - but they had some violently sexy scenes, so who knows). But, I love assassins and crazy people, so I think it's good. It also brings back fond memories of Hyderabad - I saw it in the theatre there, and was having a pretty good time because I had yet to see or feel any rats in the theatre, but then they cut to an intermission just as Brad Pitt was climbing up an elevator shaft - worst timing ever!

Today, I had a reasonably good day at work, followed by several hours of crafting w/Laura, Ziv and Cody - we were making crafts for someone's wedding, which was a little odd. Laura also amused herself by making fun of Iowa for several hours, which is a shame - people are blind to my home state's charms. Then I came home and got some work done, and now it's time for bed.

Clearly, though, I need to rethink this whole work/life balance thing - I took this quiz on CNN.com called 'are you a workaholic?', and I answered yes to 60% of the questions. Turns out that if you answer yes to more than 3 questions, they think you're a workaholic. Well, I think they're wrong! (reminder: first stage = denial). So I shall contemplate that this weekend, and likely not reach any conclusions at all. Oh well. Goodnight, my friends!

all your dreams have fallen down

It's suddenly gotten warm here again, which is almost frustrating - I went sweater shopping and bought more Uggs this weekend, and I want to wear them! Instead, I'm too warm in my apartment, and I don't want to wear any of my summer clothes - I'm ready for sweatpants, and soup, and hot tea, and curling up under a blanket. Clearly I'm not a California girl at heart. However, I do really want to wear an Indian outfit now that it's warm again - I haven't worn one in ages, and it's like wearing pajamas to work, which is always fun.

So I made it to work for my eight a.m. meeting, left work around seven, came home, accidentally scorched my soup while I was reheating it (what is it with me and ruining perfectly good soup on my third attempt to reheat it?), watched some 'Scrubs', and then worked for a couple more hours. Now I need to go to bed, since I have a meeting at 8:15am tomorrow. Bleh. Things really need to slow down at work, but the next two weeks are going to be an exercise in misery - it's the end of the quarter, which is always rough.

Sorry that there isn't more uplifting content to this post, but I really don't feel like pretending right now. Not that I'm unhappy, I'm just overworked and tired. So I'm going to go to bed and take care of at least one of those problems! Goodnight!

stupid

Man, I'm so dumb. Rather than get anything done earlier in the weekend, I opted to procrastinate, and then ended up working from 2:30pm-6:30pm and from 9pm-12:30am today. Bleh. It would have been clear to anyone who knew me yesterday that I was procrastinating from doing something I truly didn't want to do - I dropped off a bunch of dry cleaning, got a facial, went to the mall and bought lipstick (the hot look for fall!), bought groceries, made potato/leek soup, knocked down cobwebs from my ceiling, vacuumed, did dishes, cleaned the kitchen floor, cleaned out my fridge, and generally tidied up my living room. I should have cleaned my bathroom, but I procrastinated from that by reading part of my new coffee-table book on Regency England interior decorating. I also wrote eight pages in my journal and drank a lot of tea.

What was I so unhappy about that I procrastinated that hard, you may ask? Well, it's performance review time (doesn't it feel like it's always performance review time?), and I have to write ten peer reviews plus my own self-assessment, and I hate doing all of those things. I also had a particularly unpleasant task due for work this weekend that I can't disclose here, but it took four hours this afternoon - and any work-related task that takes me four hours is obviously a pain in the ass. But I paid for my procrastination by having to work tonight, and since it's now almost one a.m. and I have a meeting at 8am tomorrow, I'm clearly starting the week off on the wrong foot :(

But, today is otherwise a joyous day - it's Katie's anniversary and Walter's birthday, which makes it v. nice! And I talked to my parents, and they were entertaining as usual. And I made quesadillas w/peppers and onions (my fave), which was great. And now, I'm going to go to bed, since tomorrow is going to come waaay too fast.

then you say, 'go slow'...i fall behind...the second hand unwinds

I left work early today because I could not stand to start on all of the peer reviews that I'm supposed to be writing. Also, I had preordered Robin McKinley's new book, 'Dragonhaven', and received it earlier this week (perhaps even yesterday, but I can't remember - time is running together), and I really wanted to read it. Robin McKinley, as loyal readers may know, has written some of my favorite books - 'Sunshine', 'The Hero and the Crown', 'The Blue Sword', 'Beauty', 'Deerskin' - the list goes on and on. I won't spend a lot of time on plot synopsis, other than to say that 'Dragonhaven' is, as you guessed about dragons, although to say that it's about dragons is the same as saying 'Sunshine' is about vampires, when really both of them are about one person struggling to come to terms with fate and life and all of the weird internal struggles that we all go through but can never quite articulate.

I think what attracts me to McKinley's novels is that many of them (particularly 'Sunshine' and 'Dragonhaven', which are both first-person, highly-conversational, almost stream-of-consciousness) are written in such a way that I feel like I'm walking through a quiet, private labyrinth when I'm reading them. I was not a completely huge fan of 'Sunshine' when I first read it, but every subsequent reading pulls me further down and further in to the labyrinth. I mean 'labyrinth' in the meditative, contemplative sense here - like the elaborate labyrinths in European cathedrals, or even the silly Snoopy labyrinth that Ritu, Maneesh and I walked through at the Charles Schultz Museum in Sonoma, which are meant to be used for meditation.

So as I was reading 'Dragonhaven' tonight, it was not just about the story...it seemed to be stripping away everything that was making me so frenzied at work this week, all of the worries and concerns and thoughts about my future, and helped to ground me. Even though I wasn't a huge fan of the story, I kind of just want to go back and read it again. That's the interesting thing about written forms of 'meditation' - for example, this blog. 95% of the time, I'm writing drivel, more intended to let people know I'm alive than to really get anything out. But the other 5%, I am attempting to tackle something at least somewhat real, even if the real personal development is happening offline in my journal. And with written communication, I often feel like I'm in a labyrinth - that I keep walking in circles, but occasionally get back to a place where I can recognize the intuition that I was struggling to express several days/weeks/months previously, and even if I still can't name that intuition, I am at least getting closer to understanding its meaning in my life. And I suppose what I'm trying to say about Robin McKinley is that she is the author who most helps me to focus my thoughts in a meditative way; romance novels are good for relaxing, much like Meteos or watching 'The Lord of the Rings', but I feel like her books help me to focus enough that I can come to greater awareness of myself.

Anyway, what I shall do with this awareness, I do not know. I think I'm going to take as much time to myself as possible this weekend - I have to do some work, but other than that, I really just need some time to relax and think. That's the other good thing about these books, though - they slow down my mind, which is an amazingly restful feeling, since generally my brain never stops. I wouldn't want to live in this state all the time, since I do typically enjoy the weird paths that my mind races down, but it's nice once in awhile. Now, though, I'm going to go to bed - sleep would probably help more than just about anything right now.

it's not as simple as it sounds to keep your feet planted on common ground

Yesterday I wrote down ten good things that happened; today I shall write down ten bad things that happened.

1) I woke up too late to wash my hair, and despite trying to hurry, I was still five minutes late for a 9am training.

2) The aforementioned 9am training was pretty annoying and rather useless - we spent like an hour discussing how to use a whiteboard. Turns out it's pretty easy - you write on it! But, it wasn't enough to know that - in fact, they videotaped me writing on the whiteboard so that I could watch myself. And given that I hadn't washed my hair, it wasn't a pretty sight.

3) I was really excited to see that the cafe had cornbread - but then it turned out to be jalapeno/pepperjack cornbread, and I'm too much of a purist to enjoy that, so I threw it away.

4) At the end of an all-hands meeting with my entire department, my director took Q&A - and made me get up and answer one of the questions that was asked. The answer itself was fine and I managed to be concise and articulate - but again, allow me to reference my unwashed hair, oversized four-year-old sweatshirt, and Uggs. I hardly looked like a rising star, or even a dim star (although to be accurate, I probably did look like a white dwarf).

5) I'm out of allergy meds and haven't had time all week to fill the prescription, so my allergies are gradually returning. Bleh.

6) I had a meeting from 5-5:30 and had intended to come home and take a nap afterward - but it ended up lasting until almost 6:30, which cut into my sleep time.

7) I received the brand new Robin McKinley book that I had preordered from Amazon - the first one she's written in five years - but I'm too busy to read it!

8) I had to talk to my parents on the phone rather than in person (but saying this may bump me up on the sibling ladder after my disastrous fall last weekend when I had convinced them that I was dead).

9) I ate a bologna sandwich, which is normally very comforting, but I felt like throwing up afterwards when I started thinking about the percentage of fat calories in a slice of bologna and how it's really not that dissimilar from the pure pork fat we had in Ukraine - although I chased this with tea, rather than homemade vodka.

10) I'm not nearly done w/what I should have done tonight, but I'm going to go to bed anyway - I have to be effective tomorrow (and I need to wash my hair or else I'll be a health hazard), so I can't afford to oversleep. Which leads to...

11) I won't get to see Craig tonight!

Okay, that's it - it's interesting that I actually had to struggle to come up with 10 bad things, and none of them were really that bad. However, the training really was annoying - wasting four hours is fun when it's spent on gossip blogs, but not when it's spent in a room with an overly-excited consultant. In fact, I may have offended her because at one point, she described an exercise with such enthusiasm that I laughed out loud, and rather than keeping my mouth shut, I said 'I'm sorry, it's just that you were so excited...'. Oh well, it's apparent that I don't always get along with people. But I get along with my pillow very well, so I'm going to seek it out. Goodnight!

come to my window

Tonight I shall force myself to list ten highlights of the day to remind myself that I will get through this week, even though I feel sure that it's Thursday (actually, it is, since it's 1am! yay!).

Highlights:

1) I happened to catch the rerun of the 'South Park' parody of '300', in which the lesbian club is bought out by a bunch of Persians. I love that they also randomly include some Mexican day workers whom they dress up as Persians. Ha.

2) I'm doing an amazing job keeping my work emails down - I currently only have TWELVE emails in my work inbox. You don't understand what a miracle this is.

3) My team at work did crafting with Laura - it was a really relaxing 'end' to the day, even though the 5-6pm crafting sessions was then followed by a videoconference with Laura, Cody, and someone in Hyderabad from 6-7:30. I love crafting, even though I'm not that good at it and get far far too competitive - I can't help myself, I just have a compulsive need to win that I do my best to hide since my company is all about 'collaboration' and 'teamwork' and crap like that. I'm not evil about my need to win, I just want to win really really badly. Sigh.

4) I had some awesome steak for lunch, prompted by the fact that the line was too long to make my beloved tuna melt. I also had lunch w/my future new manager; she seems really nice, and she was born in Iowa! However, she moved away when she was four, but I still feel that it means something.

5) I 'slept in' until 8:30 and blew off the first meeting of the day in an effort to ensure that I slept for at least six hours.

6) I had Taco Bell! Some of my favorite memories of college occurred at Taco Bell.

7) I wore my glasses for much of the day, which makes me feel alluringly intellectual even if to other people I just look tired.

8) This sort of happened last night, but I'm still happy with the conversation I had with Lauren yesterday - we know each other really well because we worked together for so long, and so it was good to talk to her because it's easy to be open and honest and everything (particularly after when I passed out on her couch in July!)

9) I love the taste of diet coke in the morning - the slight burn when I take the first sip of the day, probably similar to the first cigarette of the day for a smoker.

10) I got to see Craig for like the third night in a row! yay!

Okay, that's it - look around you and think of all the great things that have happened to you. Goodnight!

lately there's a whole lot of leavin' goin' on

My life may be depressing, given that I came home to put on sweats before going back into the office and working from 9:30pm-12:30am, then came home and watched Craig while working from 12:45am-2am. However, it doesn't seem to be as depressing as Hal Holbrook's - he was on 'Evening Shade' and has been married for the past twenty years to Dixie Carter from 'Designing Women', and he's won four Emmys (according to imdb.com), but now he is doing infomercials for Fisher Investments. He just doesn't seem to be into it at all, although he does get to wear tweed and sit in a lovely oversized leather chair. He even laughed just now when what he said didn't merit laughing ('getting good advice is essential') - like he didn't believe it at all.

I actually had a good day today - I've been pretty relaxed recently, despite my overwhelming amount of work. I also got to see my friend Michelle, who is visiting from Dublin, and I had a really good chat this evening w/Lauren, my former manager who is now in Boston. And, I got to watch Craig - he recapped his monologue tonight for his Russian audience by putting on a shapka-like hat and drinking vodka for thirty seconds (actually not vodka, since he's on the wagon after being an alcoholic in the eighties, but still). I think the fact that I get to watch Craig when I'm overwhelmed at work almost (almost!) makes it all worthwhile.

Okay, I really must go to bed - I need to be at work by 9am. Goodnight!

you better run for the hills before they burn

Not only am I still alive after twenty-four hours of silence (shocking, I know!), but I've uploaded pictures for the first time in months. There's one random pic of Claude at the Great Salt Lake (I apparently never uploaded my pictures from Zach and Maggie's wedding, although I don't have any pics of the actual wedding - just me and Claude wading in a bunch of brine shrimp), and per Felicia's request, a bunch of pictures of my parents' new house. Isn't it idyllic? Doesn't it make you wish that you live in the Midwest? Can't you just feel the peace and solitude and insanity-inducing isolation?

Today was a good day; I slept relatively late, was rather productive at work, had lots of meetings, and still managed to get myself down to only seventeen emails in my inbox. Granted, five more have come in since I stopped reading half an hour ago, but this is a new first for me, and I'm rather happy about it. Yes, I'm a dork.

I was going to go to bed, but now that I've stayed up this late, I get to watch Craig's opening monologue! I should really just get ondemand - paying to record his show would probably be worth the extra sleep I would get by not being incentivized to stay up past my bedtime. Oh, well this is a debate for another day. I shall attempt to stay alive for another twenty-four hours; in the meantime, goodnight!

my grandma - i will probably look like her in fifty years