Monthly Archives: May 2005

May 2005 Books

41. Fer de Lance by Rex Stout [audiobook]
42. Swift as Desire by Laura Esquivel [audiobook]

Only two books, both audio. I listened as I painted my apartment, if I recall correctly.

my car story

I had posted a while ago about my big boss borrowing my little car and I never followed up with the rousing conclusion.

Maybe because the conclusion, she is not so rousing.

I got into work that day and waited and waited and waited for news from the big boss. He didn’t come in until 10Am, and by that time I was sure that 1. he flaked or 2. it was canceled or 3. I had stranded him without a car by flaking on some kind of meeting that was vaguely and forgetably scheduled.

Turns out, he forgot to tell me that they cancelled the visit.

Which is really too bad, because I had removed all of my friends, and even washed all the windows:
my animals on the dash

pittsburgh moving

had a good strong weekend moving michelle’s stuff to her new apartment and cleaning out or old one.

I am SO tired of lifting boxes!
but I feel totally strong and tough, and though I was sore yesterday imagine the horror if I hadn’t been working out at the gym!

it’s sad to leave our old beautiful apartment, but enough yuck has happened recently there (like, dog poop in the front entrance way, discovering a potentially hazardous mold colony in the basement, new holes in rotton floorboards) that I’m not seriously mourning having to move on.

PLUS, now michelle and I both have new apartments, the better to explore our individual creativity in!

highlights also included:

a just ducky tour of pittsburgh, which was way more family oriented than I had thought and involved some kind of youth-oriented family reunion. But also, lots of cheesy cheesy jokes, goofy operators, and pretty pittsburgh (who stopped with the raining long enough for us to sight-see)

pgh skyline

also: hanging out while moving with strong friends and their bulging biceps,
dinner with mariss and kelly and michelle and koray,
busting in on a bbq, returning tools, seeing some pals, and liberating some deviled eggs before hitting the road,

and look at pretty friend kelly!
are your eyes blue?

ebay shame

after all my high-falutin’ anticonsumerist feelings, and the surety that I could take the lessons learned from pittsburgh to new jersey, I accidentally dropped $100 on ebay.

here’s a little background: when I first learned to knit, I spent a lot of time and $ on ebay buying yarn and knitting needles. It was great, I felt sucessful, etc. I won things but quite cheaply and to tell you the truth I still have a lot of that yarn/wool roving unused at home. A little later I started shopping again — this time for glass insulators that were used once on top of electrical poles. I got some of those, and somehow I got side tracked into buying a macreme handbag — #1, I don’t use a hand bag, #2, Macreme?? So I swore off ebay! didn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. And I was very sucessful at that until this month!

At least it’s all stuff for my home, and it IS stuff I’ve wanted for quite some time now, but still. It’s a good thing that it’s all so pretty, or I’d be really down on myself!

here are a bunch of refrigerator dishes and a jadeite batter bowl:
ebay booty to date

and here’s a better view of the pyrex, because some of it was hiding:
pyrex refrigerator dishes

I’m still waiting on 2 sets of nesting bowls. And then, I’m swearing off ebay AGAIN.

Geez

Well, the Pharm-spam found me again. I had a blissful month of no comments to delete, and today I had 245 to delete. YUCK. you know, I’d like to think that the pharm. companies would be pissed at all the bad advertising they’re getting from spammers, but I guess they probably figure any advertising is good advertising.

so hungry

yesterday I thought to myself “happiness is feeling starving in the morning, remembering that you have cereal for breakfast and discovering that the milk is still good.”

today I tried the happiness is… route of eating breakfast before I left for work again but it’s not going to work out. I am STARVING. so hungry. Even though there’s a free lunch in my immediate future, I don’t think I can make it that long! I thought I was hungry an hour ago, so I had some tea and didn’t think about it. But now I’m so hungry that my jaw is clenching and my mouth is watering. It’s time to get the emergency stash of wheat thins out of my desk. At least it won’t be embarassing at lunch if I snack now. I hate being the first one to finish eating!

new digicam!

the camera came yesterday and I took it home and screwed around with it as much as I could without actually having any media on which to store the pics. I’m v. happy with it, the shutter lag is not too bad, worse is the recharge period after you take a photo with flash. here’s some gems:

My blue blue [unpacked] living room, with the “lovely” faux panels which made it a real trial to paint:
blue!

fancy split screen photo capability! this is so funny and cheesy. I can’t wait to use it at inappropriate times. (no flash for this one, so it’s pretty dark)
fancy split photo capability

and this very romantic photograph of me. It’s all fuzzy, like James T. Kirk is in love with me and the director smeared vaseline over the camera lens and the camera guy is getting pissed off because he HATES cleaning vaseline off of his camera.
very romantic self portrait

man, wait until tomorrow when I post a picture of all of the pyrex refridgerator dishes I bought on ebay!

owie!

I’ve gone to the gym 3 times this week — wednesday was my trainer/get to know you option, and then I went last night and tonight. With my membership I got a real live trainer session where they set me up with a routine, and talked to me about strengthening my bad knee! So last night when I got there I pulled my card and followed the directions for the upper body. This morning I wanted to try out the whole “going to the gym in the morning” thing, and I did my lower body. And I have a few observations:

* elliptical trainers are freakin’ hard! yo, people who do them (like kelly!) you are seriously punk rock. I can do them slowly for 15 minutes no problem, but if I go any faster I don’t know how long I could go for, maybe only 10 min. WOW.

* my abs are seriously out of shape. I don’t know how I’ve avoided back injury! and today, after 3 days of doing crunches, they are TIGHT. like, I find myself hunching over so I don’t stretch them out. That’s no way to live!
(because I’m a gym dork, here’s what I’m crunching: straight crunches, 15 slow and 10 fast. on either side, 15 slow and 10 fast. On a ball: 15. Which means I’m doing, no kidding, 65 crunches, which makes me feel POWERFUL. and also, in agonizing pain!)

But all in all, I feel really really good working out. Like, all tough and junk. That’s a good feeling, totally. Very very good. And the gym is so great, very supportive, and I love seeing lots of normal everyday-type women working out and having a good time and chatting and being healthy. I love it!

gosh so pretty

a friend of mine pointed out the new loop-d-loop book by Teva Durham, and BOY is it gorgeous. As she said “I never want to do anything ordinary again. if i don’t love the pattern AND yarn, it has no place in my life. ” And while I’m sure I’ll keep plugging away on my little projects, I have so many things that I have half started that I don’t love enough to work on obsessively. Maybe that’s my problem with finishing?

I am going to look this book up in the library, fershur. There’s a great review here for those knittingly inclined (JOY). And if I can’t get it through ILL than I guess I’ll have to track down my local yarn shop, hey? Oh, the “awful” things I will do for knitting! What “self-sacrifice!”

gym-bore-ee

I joined a gym and today is my first official day. I have a date there for the walk around/intro “personal training” session, so I guess I’ll get into it. I am kind weirded out by the whole “belonging to a gym” thing, but it is obvious that with my knee injury and full time job and commute I will never get off my keyster to get moving. So I need to pay someone to help me with that.

Although: this webpage makes me want to seriously begin lifting weights. she’s amazing! and they say that weight training is one of the best exercises for women, too.

Oh, here’s the dirty secret about the gym: it’s right next door to an ice cream parlor. No, really, it shares a wall and everything. How the heck am I going to work out and NOT get an ice cream cone on the way home? at least I have to walk to and from the gym, I mean, it’s SO CLOSE to my house that it would be silly not to. And that’s a good set up.

project management

learning how to do financials is HARD. I mean, on the one hand, it’s good that I don’t have a lot of experience b/c the system here seems really complicated, and I’d hate to have to remember how to do things after learning another totally different but equally complicated.

on the other hand, heck, I need to ask someone how exactly these dag-gum mupltipliers are calculated! good night!

granulation

last weekend birdie drove down from NH, picked up matt and I, and we kicked it out to pittsburgh for the graduation ceremonies. I had a great time, highlights including:

* spending $1.85 on rummage sale items including: 5 charming glasses, 3 packs of cards, a bridge scoring pad, a milk glass vase, and a pad of writing paper.
* porch time at mariss and kelly’s with some of my nearest and dearests.
* sumptuous buffet reception at granulation.
* picking up in person my monstrous diploma (it’s VERY BIG. Will come in handy when it’s winter and my tar-papered shack lets the wind blow in, I can seal a large area of the interior with it).
* saw a whole-lotta people that I haven’t seen for a while and who I miss seeing all the time. What a great community they’ve got out there.
* car-pooled
* spent nice times with michelle.

And the weather back was BEAUTIFUL for a drive. And Birdie? is a rockstar trucker mama for her abilities to drive and drive and drive. The mister? the sultan of sleep for crashing out in the back seat, but I don’t have a leg to stand on b/c if I weren’t up front with Birdie I would have pooped out too!

office space

so I just mapquested the new office vs the current office and apparently, new office is only 1 minute further away from my apt. than current office! When I said I wanted to pick a place right in the middle, well, I had no idea that I actually WOULD. NICE.

I went ahead and said I’d start working from Edison. Silver linings are:

1. there’s a food coop in new brunswick that will be convenient to me;
2. my girlfriend gabulo works in the same area, maybe we can have lunch occasionally; and
3. it’s not any further, apparently.

Also, they gave me a laptop! so I’m mobile! I can probably come to either office when neccessary.

and now on my list of things to do: not entirely related but not UNrelated — put name on list for 2006 honda civic hybrid. It’s not out yet, but heck. I hear that this is the last year for the sweet $2K federal rebate on purchase of a hybrid, and I don’t want to potentially miss out on that just because of limited hybrid supply! and of course, it all comes down to this: if I’m going to be driving for at least 1 hour every day I need to drive a super efficient car. mine is quite efficent, but the clutch is going and the bumper is falling off and etc. etc. I have to start really planning ahead.

In other news, I bought a digicam. So if that arrives I’ll start taking pictures. I’m bummed that I missed the dogwood flowers but maybe next year…

weekend plans and office locations

This weekend I’m graduating from CMU. I wasn’t going to go for the ceremony, but I heard the food at the reception is really good, so…

no, that’s not true. Graduation is a great excuse to go back to pgh and see my buddies. And also help michelle out with packing because she’s a moving super star.

Official word came through, they’re going to be staffing the new office in central NJ next month. My Project Manager will be working from there and I’ll be working mostly on his projects, so it makes sense to move there also. It’s a little crummy b/c my commute is nice and easy now: if I leave at 7 in the morning I’m at work by 7:20 or 7:25. Of course, the drive home takes a little longer, but it goes through paramus, which is where my CSA box will be for pickup! If I’m working from Edison I will have an easy but longer drive TO work and potentially an easier and just as long drive home. That’s the theory, anyway. I have a feeling that going north from Edison in the AM and south TO Edison in the PM is NOT the right way to go, and that’s just what I’ll avoid.

I gambled that it would take them longer to find this office than it really did — but truth be told, I couldn’t have spent another 2 months at the Misters despite our overwhelming and smooshy love for one another. And the whole “boarding house” thing didn’t work out either (I didn’t look for one), and actually, with michelle finding an apartment in PGH (even though she did that b/c I moved for real) the timing would have been pretty awkward. I’m happy with my town! I’ll find a way to get my CSA on back roads and Wednesdays I’ll ALWAYS have to leave work on time. No problem.

HA!

The big boss is borrowing my little car to drive to a site. Hee. there are several funny things about this, including:

1. major rust damage
2. bumper falling off, held on with tyvek tape.
3. bad clutch
4. speedometer doens’t work.

I wonder if he’ll give me a raise after seeing how the other half lives? I don’t need a raise, but I do anticipate some friendly ribbing about the car.

OH HECK. I have little bug and animal trading cards stuck all over the dashboard. Informal poll: should I remove these before handing over the keys?

digicams

I have a gift certificate to overstock.com and I’d like to spend it on a digicam, the better to endlessly document my life on the internets. as always, I’m THRIFTY and don’t want to spend too much cash. Here’s my criteria, in vague order of importance:

1. response time. I take a lot of snapshots and digicams have always REALLY frustrated me in the past with their very slow response time.
2. camera size — small is better!
3. picture quality

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

stressors

I thought I’d make a list of things that are stressing me out:
1. Painting. I need to finish painting so I can;
2. Unpacking. I have a friend who may be staying with me overnight on Sunday, and I need to unpack an area large enough for 2 people to walk around in by Friday afternoon when she picks me up for our PGH trip.
3. Work. I feel like I’m not pulling my weight. This is due to several items, including
3a. I am getting familiar with the managment systems and programs available here.
3b. I am getting familiar with the people I’m working with, and how they work.
3c. I am getting familiar with the projects — it’s really like I’ve changed careers, because lots of the technology I am using now I’m not very experienced in. and
3d. The woman I’m taking over for is still here, and won’t be on maternity leave for a couple of weeks. On the one hand I’m really really nervous about what it’ll be like when she’s gone, on the other, She’s still doing a lot of the work, so what am I supposed to be doing?

Anyway: to counter that, I sleep through the night every night, and the only person’s alarm clock that wakes me is MINE. and also: if can’t sit in a chair it’s because MY things are in it and I always throw garbage away virtually immediately. So, I guess while I may be stressed, there’s a certain calm that comes from switching my living situation!

mothers day

Because I’m the best daughter in the world, when my mom offered to do hard, manual labor day I accepted. Because mother’s day is all about doing what MOM wants, no?

I took the train up to albany on friday night and had a nice denny’s breakfast with dad+co. I wish sometimes I could order off of the senior menu, because some of the regular breakfasts are just too freakin’ big. I have really hard time with a 3 egg omelete! 2 eggs are plenty for me, thanks very much, esp. when accompanied by THREE MEATS.

Then mom arrived at my stepsisters house and we (with my brawny brother’s help and my adorable nephew’s support) loaded her old couch into mom’s truck, then tucked it in with my great-grampa’s table, strapped everything down, and took off for NJ. The mister met us there and we unloaded the couch which fits PERFECTLY where I wanted it to, yay! Mom is the first person other than the mister/his roommates/our friends who found the place to see the apartment. It’s a good one, really. when I’m done painting and unpacking, I’ll take pictures or something. We had a lovely dinner at a local greek resturant, and then we passed out just after 9PM. The next morning we braved the mothers day rush at the diner, and then she headed off down the road home.

It was really fun to spend so much time with her — it’s been a long time since we were able to. It’s always fun to show people something that is so new and exciting to me, and my new town and new apartment are definately still very new and exciting. Even though she couldn’t offer an objective opinion on my blue paint options, I’m very glad she came. And very glad she helped me! Yay Mom!

hard work!

yesterday I painted for 10 hours straight. When I woke up I was actually surprised that my shoulder hurt so badly — I don’t know why, but I thought it would be much less painful. Yeouch! I painted my kitchen a pale pale pink, and it’s beautiful and bright now instead of dingy and dull. And I put the first coat of white over my gunmetal grey trim and painted the walls of the living room a beautiful peacock blue (it’s a behr color, if you want to look it up), which is a strong clear blue color. I love it. it’s going to look so fantastic.

the difficulty, of course because there is one, is that I have faux recessed walls in the living room which basically means there’s 3x the trim of a normal house. And the trim has been painted over a zillion times, so I’m pretty worried about my ability to have a strong straight line on the edges. I started painting around 2 PM and I did the 1st coat on the trim in 3 hours, and then it only took 1 1/2 hours or so to do the kitchen (because I’m not repainting the trim), and then it took me the next 5 hours to do edging and the walls in the living room. And I have to do another coat! it’s terrible. But if I’m good, it’ll take 2 more days of hard applied labor: one more marathon stint for the 2nd coat of the blue, and another evening for the trim. I can’t WAIT to be done so I can really unpack — my deadline is this week. my informal deadline, of course.

art

I went to see a dear and old friends senior show today at CU. His work is amazing, precise, exact, gorgeous. It was good to see, because we’ve known each other for 7 years and he’s been very good at dodging questions about what he ‘DOES.’