karina jean

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?

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!

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.

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.’

last weekend I moved my stuff to NJ. I flew out to PGH on Sat. AM and very good friend mariss picked me up at the airport. I expected extra security because I had a one-way ticket, but nonesuch! Mariss brought me to my old home and we got michelle and went for lunch (happily joined by kelly partway through), and then I didn’t have any excuse but to go pack.

Here’s something: Michelle? is a superstar. She packed up at least 1/2 of my stuff for me. She totally did all of the kitchen and most of the living room, and it made it SO MUCH EASIER for me to know that I didn’t have to worry about those areas when I was packing. She’s amazing. Really truly amazing.

So because of all of michelle’s hard work the packing went pretty well. we took a longish dinner break so I stayed up kind of early but it wasn’t too bad. I got up at 7:30 to do more packing and then got the truck and bagels. I finished just as everyone arrived to load the truck (because they were late, I had plenty of time!) and that went alarmingly fast.

I had told everyone that michelle had all of the furniture, and that I didn’t have much. Not really true. I have at least 1/2, I guess — but michelle’s furniture is the USEFUL stuff. that you sit on and eat off of. So I was a little confused. I apparently only notice useful stuff!

the gang did a superbangup job of the truck loading, and my 15 footer was comfortably empty. Not really empty, but not embarrassingly full. That’s always key. after some quality time I drove off away from the sunset. My drive was pretty good, not too sleepifying, and I listened to current popular music on the radio and ate bacon horseradish chips. Classaay.

I pulled into NJ around 9:30 and the mister, one of his roommates, and our friends nick and elly (neighbors!) all helped unload. It only took about an hour, which was good, because it was very late and I didn’t want to wake up everyone in the building.

And then I locked the door and drove back to matt’s. I was too tired to deal with setting up my bed, plus, there is a lot of important things (like work clothes!) at matt’s still. I’ll move in for real on wednesday, I bought cleaning supplies yesterday and will head there after work tomorrow and get everything settled. at least enough to sleep there, I hope!

I’m awfully excited, I have plans to paint the living room and to put fabric up in the bedroom. It’s a good sized apt. for the area (although it’s a patch on a PGH one-bedroom!) and it’s in a great part of town. I’m excited to really move in and to get familiar with everything around there. Of course, it’ll be easier to do that when I have a weekend to spend in the area, but it’ll happen sometime. I have a lot of travel plans: next weekend is mothers day, so I’m coercing my mom to help me move a couch from albany. the weekend after that is my granulation and I’m just going to go for the reception, and to help michelle pack. after that is a potentially free weekend but there’s a few little things penciled in. At least it’s a LOCAL weekend, that’s important. And after that is memorial day weekend, and I’d like to go back to pgh to sweep out the apartment.

All in all? not bad. Super busy. I wish I could say june would be better, but now I’m remembering what summer is all about: overcommitment!

I’ve had two big thoughts so far this morning. and by big, I mean, that I thought about for a few minutes and decided to share:

Remember when Dial had the slogan “aren’t you glad you used dial? don’t you wish everyone did?” for their deodorant soap? I wonder if american’s didn’t use deodorant as much back then, or if they were seriously concerned about smelling bad.

and

I wonder when we started to, as a culture, worry so much that people were going to take advantage of us. I was listening to a radio report this morning about congress voting on the REAL ID act, which includes elimination of the right of habeas corpus for immigrants before deportation (removing their rights to have a court review of their case and immigration status, which is a check on the INS). They said “there are a few terrible criminals who will take advantage of this.” A few? what about a few? After all the chest puffing about the minority using filibusters in the senate to disregard the rule of the majority with judicial nominations, now they’re worried about a few bad eggs screwing things up? so they’ll take away the rights of the many to CATER to the few?

It drives me crazy when people think that others are inherently Out To Get Them. Or to Scam the System. Really, I think there are a lot fewer inherently evil people out there than people think. And I think that the huge number of people who are afraid the system CAN be scammed is really an indication of how untrustworthy “The System” is, and not an indication that the system needs more intrusive power. And it burns my britches to think about the kind of country we want and have historically portrayed ourselves to be: that welcoming, inclusive, fair country where anyone could pull themselves up by their bootstraps, the great melting pot but also a great equalizer — and now we’re afraid of a couple of people taking advantage of us? Who cares! It’s no skin off of our backs, we’re a GREAT NATION! Remember?

Today is THE MISTER’S birthday. He is a superstar standup rock’n’roll kind of guy and I heart him.

shout out! happy birthday Mister!

KELLY!

happy birthday lady, to one of the most gracious and sweet and interesting ladies I know. Yes, dear, you are a LADY. we should get big hats and wear them out to tea one day. and spike our tea with whiskey, and I won’t let the whiskey make me cry, either.

Man, but I had a great trip. It was beautiful there, lovely weather, lovely wedding, and I can NOT emphasize enough to you how fantastic it was to be in a place that values public transportation and bicycling and very small cars. I felt so much at home. Except for the whole being zillions of miles away from my family and not speaking the language thing.

The mister has the digicam with him so hopefully I’ll be able to get photos off of it once he returns home tonight. There probably aren’t a lot of genius beauty ones but still, I’d like to see them!

Highlights:
* missed the first flight due to awful traffic and a brush fire.
* slept in the next morning so was not terribly exhausted on the flight over.
* flight over was good and also I watched the House of Flying Daggers on the flight, and cried at the end. The mister laughed at me because I cry at ALL pretty kung fu movies. They’re not just about fighting, they’re beautiful love stories!
* had a nice acclimation to the Netherlands by walking the scenic route to get to our friends apartment. Then had breakfast.
* I love dutch coffee! it’s so good.
* The Euro is easy to spend because it pretends like it’s a dollar. A shiny, colorful, pretty dollar that’s worth 1.3 dollars, that is!
* I ate a lot of chocolate. European chocolate is so much tastier than American chocolate.
* Our hosts are the most wonderful, thoughtful, well prepared, sweetly accommodating people in the whole world, probably. It was so easy to travel to a foreign country and not feel like I was travelling blind because they took care of EVERYTHING for us and still made us go sight seeing in the city and to take public transportation. Wonderful!
* Flight back was good, I was solo, and I watched Spanglish and Bride and Prejudice because I couldn’t sleep. And at least 3 people vomited on the bumpy landing. Yuck. I am so glad I didn’t join them!

I was kind of blue about missing a whole day on the flight back because I left at 9:30 and returned at 11:30, so that was essentially 8 – 12:30 in airports and airplanes, but when I got back home and sat on the couch for a few hours and then just went to bed at 7PM US time I realized it is an AWESOME way to travel. I woke up at 6AM for work today feeling not exactly fresh, but not terrible. Not like the way I felt when I woke up on Sat., with my head foggy and full of cotton, and the spinning when I closed my eyes — I guess that’s what it’s like when non-morning people wake up, hey? how TERRIBLE.

NJ is beautiful this week. Everywhere I go there are flowering trees. The setting sun this evening was like an icing or a glaze over the flowers, turning everything pink and violet.

I’ve really never seen so many flowering trees — I mentioned how pretty NJ is this week to the beau and he said:

“It’s the Garden State, Baby! Showing it’s Garden State colors!”

I got an apartment! yay! today is the best day ever! my passport came, and I got an apartment!

here is a time line:
* 2 1/2 weeks ago: friends saw apartment sign, gave me number
* 2 weeks ago: called and called and called but no one would call me back. sad. Gave up on apartment. grew vaguely despondent
* 1 1/2 weeks ago: talked to someone! got an appointment to see the apartment! drove over during sunny friday afternoon rush hour traffic, was very late, was very impressed with the apartment. Nice location in a cute town that is very reminiscent of pittsburgh with the main street/shopping area model, near train station, library, and post office, not exactly ON the main drag, but very close, laundry and storage in the building, big bedroom, decent living room, small kitchen, was thrilled, put in an application straight away (feeling very weird about handing a stranger $30 in cash and my bank account number) and drove to pittsburgh for the weekend.
* 1 week ago: went away on field work for 4 days. Called on tuesday, got the impression that I was bugging the heck out of the woman I spoke to. Yikes! resolved to not call back, even though was driving me crazy.
* today: got a call — “why haven’t you contacted us?” heck! called back, explained a credit dispute (watch out for the state of washington, if you don’t pay speeding tickets ASAP they send them for collection), faxed over pay stub information, waited waited waited.
* today: GOT A CALL! she said “let’s not drag this out any more. I have enough information. It’s fine. stop by tomorrow! sign a lease!”

so now my informal schedule goes thusly:

wednesday night –> next monday: go to netherlands
the weekend after that: to pgh, pack, move to northern nj.
week after that: unpack. put my feet up. Be happy with the state of events.

YAY.

it’s a glorious glorious day outside, in the tradition of other fine days like “yesterday,” “day before yesterday,” etc. Another wonderful monday of working indoors.

Of course, it’s going to be like, 70+ degrees today. And I’m wearing tights b/c I am TOO LAZY to shave my legs and while I agree that I shouldn’t have to if I don’t want to, I think I’m pushing it already in the biz caaash atmosphere to not wear nylons (despite this new fashion, I am old school!) and to not wear nylons with hair up to an inch long on my legs may be a little TOO MUCH.

Tomorrow it will be 80ish, so I’ll go ahead and shave.

Here’s my exciting news, in a nutshell. May return and detail later:
1. Saw a v. nice apt., put in an application for it, am waiting with bated breath.
2. Went out to the ra-cha-cha area for field work, got some rest and a cold.
3. Had a very super birthday involving low key japanese food, birthday songs on my voice mail, virtually running out of cell phone minutes (I have 4 left! through the end of tomorrow!) and having my taxes totally completed.
4. Also had a v. super second bday with a pedicure and lunch,
5. and then a v. nice third birthday which I shared with my beau and HIS parents, b/c we’re all April Babies. Or Babes. your call. We all sang happy birthday to each other and blew out candles across the cake, and I didn’t blow as hard as everyone else and got a faceful of smoke! boy howdy!
6. Most exciting: I’m going to the netherlands on wednesday evening. This is made possible by:
a. my passport arriving on friday and
b. my brother overnighting it to the office for arrivial today. PHEW.
So I will actually be able to attend my friends wedding and will stay through monday. I am super excited, and also a little nervous about what to pack. Can I pack knitting needles for international flights? I know it’s OK in the US, but I need to do some research. Will I have enough books with me? ever since I ran out of books 2 times on one flight from Pittsburgh to NYC I have been crazy about books and have packed in the area of 8. I have saved a couple of non-fiction books, though, which usually take me longer.
7. Anyway. Also exciting: completing my first month at work. They gave me a laptop! I have to keep reminding the dorky engineer part of me that while yes, this MAY mean that I have “made it,” it also means that they’re facilitating me doing a lot more work outside of the office.
8. One other thing — I think that everyone in NJ runs late on mondays, so the traffic/trip up here is pretty decent. That’s alway a plus.

Happy monday!