Author Archives: Cindy

the final countdown

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Dave & I flew in to southern California last night. That was interesting, I’ve never flown anywhere with a boyfriend before. I think we both got to see each other’s less-than-attractive airport-stress behavior, but overall we did pretty well. Good thing for those Mile-High Bloody Mary’s in all airport bars. Once we got through check-in and security, everything was smooth sailing from there. Besides, I think it’s good that we’re learning each other’s negative traits – they all eventually come out when you’re with someone long enough anyway, so better sooner than later. I don’t think we have any deal-breakers between the two of us (so far).  

Anyway, the flight was relatively uneventful. Our baggage didn’t get lost – hooray! And we even opted for the rental car upgrade, so we now have a red Ford Mustang. That’s pretty cool, I’ve never driven a Mustang before. It’s definitely a muscle car, I’m starting to get why people love them so much. Lots of power in that gas pedal, for sure.

So, one thing I learned last week that I’ve been meaning to write about: This will be my last week flying to Santa Ana. This project is just dull-dull-dull, and there’s not enough work to keep all of the engineers busy, so they’re cutting back the team. Which includes me. I’m honestly thankful for it. This means that I’ll hopefully have a little downtime to work on my Microsoft certification exams before my next project. And I’m crossing my fingers and praying that my next project will be somewhere in the greater Seattle area, so I don’t have to fly every week anymore. Yes, frequent flyer miles are nice & all, but I also like sleeping in my own bed at night. With my cat. Surrounded by my stuff. So if any of you want to throw some “get Cindy a good Seattle project” vibes in my direction, it’d be much appreciated.

And I’m psyched that Dave is here for my last week. I’m really looking forward to the stuff we have planned for this weekend, and I think it’ll make a good farewell for my stint in “the O.C.”

vacation! (well, sort of…)

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Next week, Dave is coming down to southern California with me. He’s going to do his own thing during the week while I’m at work, then we’re going to stay over the weekend and do fun stuff, like Disneyland and Universal Studios. Whee!

Meanwhile, work is painfully dull, but I’ll spare you readers the details of my discontent.

Short post today. Nothing else to write about, really. Just… um, hi. I’m bored.

wherever I lay my hat…

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This weekend was awesome. I spent pretty much every waking moment with Dave. I left his house yesterday so I had just enough time to dash to my apartment, unpack, re-pack, and head to the airport. That was the first time I’ve set foot in my apartment in over a week – I haven’t slept there since the 4th of July. I kind of miss it, but I like being at Dave’s house too, so it’s a tough call. My plants are pretty much all but dead, though. I watered them (not sure if it’s a lost cause at this point) and felt slightly guilty, then I took off. 
 
Teenie, however, is faring pretty well at Dave’s. There are still some stand-offs with the other kitties, but they aren’t fighting as much. I let her play outside while I was there, which is slightly worrying since she has no claws to defend herself if necessary, but she seemed to be having so much fun exploring Dave’s backyard, I didn’t have the heart to make her come in. And anyway, it seems to be helping her make peace with the other cats. Outside is sort of no man’s land as far as kitty territory goes, so they can sort things out and maybe start to get friendly with each other. It’s like U.N. negotiations for cats.
 
So, lots of lazy time this weekend. The big highlight was the trip to Home Depot which ended with Dave buying an air-conditioner. I helped him install it in his bedroom. Sooooooo lovely not to be sleeping in the heat with the window open and god knows what bugs flying in & out of the room. Happy sigh. I may not sleep in my apartment again until fall, who knows. (Or until Dave kicks me out, whichever comes first.) Oh, and he got a new shower head, at my insistence. This one won’t fall & bonk you in the head while you’re showering. Hooray!
 
Anyway, I took the same flight this week that I did last week – it leaves at 7:30 p.m., which is easy because the airport is pretty dead on Sunday nights. I got here around 10:30, took a cab to the hotel, checked in, showered, got ready for bed, and got maybe 4 hours of sleep when it was all said & done. Good lord, but I am tired. Today is a coffee day, for sure.
 
Oh, the tattoo has now officially entered the Itchy Phase of healing. Oh god, it itches. I can’t put a damn thing on it, and I’m not supposed to scratch it. Aaahh! The agony!

conference room CRAZY!!

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My little conference room crew is growing. We got a new guy, so I’m now the only girl with 8 – count ’em, eight – guys. There’s one African-American guy in the bunch, I think he’s probably the only one who gets a vibe for how outnumbered I feel. He & I had dinner together last night, he’s a cool guy. He’s shown me lots of pictures of his kids – he has a 7 year-old son and a 3 year-old daughter – they’re adorable. He told me that I better be sure to give my boyfriend “lots of extra lovin'” on the weekends since he’s taking care of my cat, because that is a task that no man should have to do. Dave seemed to like that idea when I repeated it to him. Heh.

Our project manager made a comment yesterday that if things don’t pick up soon, he’s going to have to cut our team back. It took every ounce of self-control in my body not to scream out, “Me!! Cut me back! Send my ass back to Seattle! I wanna go HOOOOOOOOME!!!!” I think he already knows that I’m homesick from previous conversations we’ve had, so I’m hoping he’ll take that into consideration.

I would talk more about work stuff, but it’s really dull and I don’t want to bore you guys with a rant about how I feel like I’ve become the secretary of the group because I’m the sole female. So instead, we’ll do a tattoo update: it’s in the really icky phase of the healing process. It basically turned into a big scab, and now it’s starting to fall off. Kind of gross to look down in the shower, see lots of flecks of purple and red, and realize that used to be your skin. Eww. I’m putting moisturizer on it constantly, per the tattoo artist’s instructions.

After the icky phase comes the itchy phase. More annoying, but less of a gross-out factor. I’m not sure which I prefer.

I should have more to talk about, but I can’t think of anything. Mostly I just wanted an excuse to look busy at my computer for a few minutes. 32 hours and 15 minutes to go. Whee.

tattoo!

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The pictures from my tattoo are posted now. For those of you who see it and wonder what the hell I got inked on myself, I’ll explain: it’s the symbol for Capricorn (done in garnet red, which is my birthstone), and it’s supposed to look like a stained glass window. You can see near the bottom where it looks like light is coming through it. It’ll take 2-3 weeks to heal, then I’ll have to figure out if it needs any touch-ups. At this point, the only thing I notice is that I like the purple background (I chose that color myself), but it may be *too* purple. I might have him go over it with some white to make it a more lavendar-ish purple instead of the dark purple that it is now. But I can’t really make a good judgment call on that until it heals, so we’ll wait and see.

Anyway, this weekend was a lot of fun. A bit of drama on Saturday night, which I don’t want to get into because it’s too long a story and I don’t think I could articulate it here in a way that would make sense. In any case, everything turned out to be fine. Dave and I had a great weekend together, and I flew down to California late last night. Only 81 & 1/2 hours until I get to go home again. I’m counting.

high school haunting

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In just a few short hours, I’ll be getting on a plane headed for Seattle. Hooray! I’ll be getting back around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon, and I am going straight to Dave’s house to see Teenie and to lounge in his big jacuzzi tub until he gets home from work. I have been counting the hours until I get to enjoy those jet-produced bubbles since yesterday. I absolutely cannot wait.

Other news: A couple of months ago, a guy I went to high school with called my mom because he’s organizing a class reunion & wanted my contact information. I had just moved, and my mom (being a total scatterbrain) couldn’t find my new address, so she just got his email address & said she’d have me get in touch with him. This is not a person that I have particularly strong feelings about one way or the other – he was a relatively nice guy for a jock-type. The weird part about him contacting me is that I technically didn’t graduate with him – I skipped my senior year of high school & graduated in ’93, not ’94. But I guess my graduating class was small enough (about 30 people) that he was trying to get as many people as possible. And we did go to school together for 7th through 11th grades, so I suppose that’s close enough. Fine. So I emailed him, said hi, gave him my address & phone number, and told him that I probably wouldn’t be able to attend since I live in Seattle now and only get back to Mississippi once a year at Christmas. It was quick & painless, and I thought that was the end of it.

Then the day before yesterday, I got an email from him, which had absolutely nothing to do with class reunions or high school, it was just some forwarded thing about not using Swiffer WetJets because they supposedly have some chemical in them that will kill your pets (which I’m almost positive is an urban myth). But the email was addressed to everyone in his address book, which includes damn near everyone that I went to high school with. I can’t explain how mixed my feelings are about that. Some of them are people who I wouldn’t mind talking to, just out of genuine curiosity to see how they’re doing or what they’ve done with their lives for the past decade, and a few of them are people who I still actively dislike to this day. I don’t like knowing that I could contact them if I wanted to, or (even worse) that they could contact me. So for the last 2 nights, I’ve been having dreams about people from high school trying to track me down, with me trying to run away and escape. It’s weird because I know that I’m not the same person I was in 1993, and I’m sure that none of them are either, but I don’t want anything to do with them, as childish as that may seem. You’d think that since I’m proud of the accomplishments that I’ve made with my life, I might want to get in touch with them just to show off – like, “look what I’ve done, ha!” But that’s not me. I have never regretted skipping my senior year and not graduating with the rest of my class, and I always thought doing that would make me exempt from these particular types of situations, but apparently not.

More in the other news department: My cousin, who’s four years younger than me, just got engaged. I know I should be happy for him, but… throw up.

Oh, and I’m getting my tattoo tomorrow. Pictures will be posted. Yay!

I think I need yoga

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As much as I hate flying to California every week (and I know I’ve been very vocal in my whining about it – thank you to everyone who’s had to listen to me), work is actually improving. The last couple of days, I’ve actually felt like I’m doing a bit of good here. I’ve actively participated in meetings, I’ve edited documents, and I’ve tweaked our intranet site that we all use to share information. Granted, this doesn’t really feel like an active contribution – it’s more like I do a lot of preparation and talking about what we’re going to do, but I don’t actually *do* anything. So I’m not sure if it’s the work or the travel (or possibly both), but I’ve noticed that I’ve started clenching my jaw all the time. I think I must be grinding my teeth in my sleep, I can’t seem to make my jaw relax when I’m awake. I can do it for a few seconds if I focus on it, but as soon as I stop thinking about it, it clenches up again. It’s giving me a headache.

Oh, and for the record, sitting in a conference room for 9 to 10 hours at a stretch with seven guys isn’t nearly as much fun as you might think. We’re all nerds, we all have our laptops on the table in front of us and no one really says anything to anyone. I’ll hear someone clear their throat and I’ll jump because I realize that except for mouse-clicks and keyboard taps, I haven’t heard a sound from another human for sometimes a couple of hours.

Blah blah blah… I miss Seattle. I miss my apartment. I miss Dave. I miss my cat. I miss Comedy Central. I miss having clothes hanging in a closet instead of stuffed in a suitcase. Whine whine whine. I’ll stop now.