Author Archives: Cindy

I passed!

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The story: I wanted to follow all of the rules for making sure I passed this exam. I had chicken for dinner last night (brain food), and I ate almonds this morning (I hear they’re supposed to help your memory). And I knew it was important to get a good night’s sleep before my big test, but I was really wound up & anxious, so I took tylenol PM to knock myself out. I got in bed around 9:30 and got up at 6:30. That would’ve been great, except for the hour & a half (from 4 a.m. to 5:30) that Teenie decided it was time to get chatty. She would not… stop…. meowing. I’d call her and she’d get in bed with me, I’d pet her and she’d quiet down. Then I’d start to fall asleep, at which point I’d stop petting her (hey, you try to keep your arm moving when you’re not conscious!), which is when she’d start meowing again. As much as I love her, it was almost enough to make me wish I was cat-less.

Then I got up this morning & was completely dazed from the previous night’s drugs. Seriously, there were many moments where I’d just stare off into space rather than proceed with my morning routine. My diet coke didn’t even begin to wake me up (I guess I’ve built up an immunity to it), so I took one of those ephedra-free diet pills that are basically just caffeine. I felt vaguely Elvis-like mixing my uppers & downers, although mine are of the relatively safe over-the-counter variety, rather than the kind that could kill large farm animals. Anyway, the diet pill sort of helped, but I was still loopy & didn’t have much of an attention span. So on my way to the bus stop, I stopped & got a tall vanilla soy latte with a triple shot of espresso. Hell yeah. (Note for all of you soy haters: I’m lactose intolerant, so don’t give me any grief about my beverage selection. It took me a while to adapt to soy milk in my coffee, but I actually like it now.)

I drank my coffee on the bus, and basically vibrated through my whole exam. Legs bouncing, fingernails drumming, the whole thing. But I passed, and that’s all that matters.

So thanks for all the happy thoughts. I’ve now got 3 of the 6 exams done, so I’m officially at the halfway point. That feels pretty good. Upward & onward to the next course…

the career of a transient

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So, I’m sort of homeless at work right now. I was temporarily using the office of a woman who was on maternity leave. But she came back yesterday, so now I have no place to sit. My lead is out this week, so I’ve taken over his office until another office can be found for me. I guess it’s just one of those things about being a consultant, I’m destined never to have a permanent place to call my own at work. Which I suppose is fine. But I don’t much care for my lead’s office, the lighting in here is weird and people keep stopping by to say things like “gee, [lead’s name], you’ve changed!” Ha ha, ho ho. The upside is that he has a window, but the view is just an obnoxiously busy street and an apartment complex across the way. Not much to see, really.

I’m taking another Microsoft certification exam tomorrow, which is one of my 4 remaining tests. I actually took it last week, but I didn’t say anything about it to hardly anyone because I was really nervous about it, and sure enough, I flunked. So I’m doing the re-take tomorrow, and I figured that I’d put the word out so people can send me some good smart vibes. Just think very hard, “You will remember everything you need to know about implementing and maintaining a Windows Server 2003 network infrastructure….”

Oh, and Kris did indeed get some lovin’ from my ex. But she’d kill me if she knew I wrote about it on my blog – not that she ever reads it (neither does the ex, for that matter). But hey, I’m happy for both of them. So I’ll leave it at that.

pimp my friends

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So, my weekend with Dave was lovely. We went to the Seattle Art Museum yesterday because the weather was kind of icky, so we figured it’d be good to stick to indoor activities. I’d never been to the museum before and I had no idea just how extensive their collection is. Right now there’s some rich family’s private art collection on display, and they have a whole roomful of Van Gogh’s. Color me impressed.

After the museum we walked through Pike Place Market (always nice, I love the little old Asian ladies selling those enormous bouquets of flowers) and wandered back to my place. We chilled for a while, then went to Blockbuster, rented a couple of movies, and ordered in for dinner. And of course, at some point I opened my big mouth and mentioned something about my blog (damn spiced rum & diet coke! It’s like truth serum, I tell ya), which seemed to really peak his interest. I wouldn’t give him the address because all I’ve been doing for the past 2 weeks is talking about how big a crush I have on him, and that’s kind of embarassing. But he’s a reasonably intelligent guy, so I’m just waiting for him to Google me & find this site. Oh well, what are you gonna do? Everyone say “hi, Dave!”

Oh, and today I just found out that Kris (this would be my best friend Kris, not insane Krissy or guy friend Chris G., or my little brother Chris) is in Chattanooga for some work training seminar thing, but she was bored because she has nothing to do until tomorrow morning. So I called my ex-boyfriend, Stowe, who lives there and told him to take her out for a drink. She called me from the ladies room a few minutes ago to tell me that she was having a great time. She sounded a little bit drunk. I’m sort of wondering if they’re going to hook up. I know it’s probably weird, but I honestly have no jealousy issues with that at all. I’m totally over him – we dated 5 years ago, for god’s sake – and I know he’s a good guy, so if they want to have a good time while she’s in town, that’s fine by me. Good for them.

Hope everyone had as much fun this weekend as I did.

a quandary

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To follow up on the issue in my last post, when I was wondering when I’d see Dave again, I got my answer. He called me yesterday and we ended up spending the afternoon & evening together. We went to the Folklife Festival, which was nice although it drizzled on us part of the time that we were there. It’s still not my scene, but the people-watching was fascinating. And oooh-whee, the potheads were out in full force. Seemed that every time we passed one of the fields where people were sitting, we’d catch a whiff of incense that was only vaguely masking the smell of weed. Cops were all over the place, I don’t know how no one got caught. (Or maybe they did & we just didn’t see them get caught, who knows.) We passed a stage where some woman was doing a spoken word bit about menopause. I sped my pace to double time to get out of earshot from that one as quickly as possible. Call me kooky, I just don’t feel the need to strike up conversations about menstrual cycles on a 3rd date. Oh, and I found out this morning that we were there at the same time as all this monorail commotion was going on, but we were at the other end of the Seattle Center so we didn’t know it at the time. As we were leaving, I saw people moving the entrance signposts to let a fire/rescue truck go through, but I figured maybe someone had fainted or something, I didn’t really think anything of it. I didn’t pay attention to all of the other sirens either, I just thought that it was a drizzly day so there were probably lots of car accidents in the area. Oh well, good thing no one was seriously hurt.

So, after Folklife, Dave & I got Thai take-out from Racha’s (yum) and came back to my place and watched an Eddie Izzard DVD that he had brought over, which I had never seen before. It was really funny, in that random British stream-of-consciousness way that he has. I also learned that even though the term bollocks is another word for bullshit, the expression “the dog’s bollocks” (literally: the dog’s testicles) means that something is really good. Sort of like “the bee’s knees”, I suppose. I asked Dave if that was seriously an expression that people use, and he said that he wouldn’t say it over here because no one would know what he was talking about, but yes, it is something that people say in the UK. I love that. I’m going to try to start using it in my everyday vernacular.

Anyway, this brings me to an interesting dilemma, and I don’t really know how to deal with it, so I thought I’d get the general public consensus. Things are getting pretty heated between Dave & I – three dates in one week is more intense than I’ve been with anyone in a long time – and I really like him a lot. However, there are a couple of guys from the online dating sites who have asked me out, and I don’t really know what to say. On the one hand I think that maybe I should go out with them because I’m scared of pinnning all of my hopes on this Dave thing. I mean, it’s so early in the relationship, who knows what could happen. It could all blow up in my face tomorrow. At the same time, I know how my brain works, and I know that these guys don’t stand a chance of impressing me when I have such an enormous crush on someone else. And I don’t like going out with somebody after I’ve kissed someone else because it makes me feel gross and dishonest. So what do you guys think? Go on the dates that will most likely go nowhere, or be honest & tell them that I’ve met someone else?

the weekend

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Friday: Scott mercifully offered to take me to see one of my favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg, to distract me from the fact that my date with Dave was postponed. The show was supposed to start at 10:30, so we got there at 10:00 & figured we’d be early. Not so much, as it turns out, because the line was already to the end of the block. At 11:30, an hour & a half of standing in line later, we learned that the show was cancelled due to the fact that Mitch had passed out drunk. This thorougly pissed me off. I realize that comedians have the kind of job that might lend itself to excessive alcohol consumption, but come on, if I showed up at work too drunk to perform my job, I’d get fired. That’s just f*cked. So Mitch Hedberg is now off my list of favorite comedians.

Saturday: The date with Dave the Brit. Mmmmm… Nice, nice, nice. Delicious dinner, followed by drinks, followed by enjoying the view of downtown from the roof of my building. He’s just so easy to talk to, we never seem to hit an awkward silence or run out of things to say. It’s so… nice. Everything flows. And it’s kind of crazy – as soon as we part, I find myself wondering when I’ll see him again, and hoping that it’s soon.

Sunday: I was going to help Chris G. move, but he apparently took care of all of that before I even woke up. So instead, I met up with him & a couple of his friends at the Folklife Festival in the afternoon. That was interesting, but not really my scene. Lots of hippies & their offspring dancing with wild arm gesticulations to African tribal drums and things of that nature. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. So, Chris’s friends took off, he went back to his new apartment to take a nap, and I went to Best Buy to get a DVD player. I was in the store for less than a minute when I saw an ex-boyfriend that I haven’t seen or spoken to in over a year. This is someone who really hurt me when he broke up with me, so I was happy with the fact that I hadn’t run into him since then. I don’t know if he spotted me or not, but as soon as I saw him, my stomach knotted up and I bolted. I went to the DVD player section and I hid there for a good 15-20 minutes, until I was sure he was gone. It seems stupid, I should’ve been the bigger person and walked over and said hi, but for some reason I couldn’t. I just panicked. I don’t know why it upset me as much as it did – it’s not like I’m still hung up on this person or wish that I was still with him at all. Hell, I even have a new crush that should make it easier to blow off the ex’es who hurt me. Maybe if the cute Brit had been with me, I could’ve pulled it off a little more gracefully. Or maybe I still wouldn’t have been able to say hi, but my stomach wouldn’t have knotted up quite so much upon seeing him. I don’t know. In any case, it was strangely upsetting, and pretty much spoiled my entire Best Buy shopping experience. I didn’t stop shaking until I was back on the freeway & almost home.

So, after I got the DVD player hooked up, Chris G. came over & we went to rent my very first DVD from Blockbuster. We got “Love Actually” because Chris said he couldn’t deal with anything too heavy. I liked it.

And tomorrow, I get to sleep late. Again. Hooray for holiday weekends!

I am sad

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Dave the Brit is sick, so our date has been postponed. We’re probably going to go out either tomorrow or Sunday (depending on if he’s feeling better), so it’s not like it’s been postponed indefinitely, but for some reason I am irrationally bummed about this. I played the good sport when I talked about it with him, but… damn. I was just looking forward to it so much. It can’t possibly a good sign that I’m so disappointed at the thought of waiting another 24 hours until I see him again. This just has me getting hurt written all over it.

Anyway, I was trying to think of something to do tonight to distract myself from thinking about the Date That Is Not Going To Happen. I was cleaning out my wallet & I found a Best Buy gift card. I have no idea how much is left on it, but I think I may go buy a cheap DVD player tonight. The Blockbuster in my neighborhood is phasing out VHS, so I’ve come to the conclusion that I really have to get a DVD player. So maybe I’ll do that, rent a movie or two, and order a pizza. That could be nice. And a bubble bath. That’s mandatory.

waterlogged & twitterpated

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This morning I walked to work in the rain. This is only maybe the 2nd or 3rd time it’s rained on my little pedestrian commute, and I’m pretty sure it’s the first time it’s rained in the morning. I had my umbrella, but all that really did was keep my head from getting wet, the rest of me got soaked. Eight hours later, I was starting to feel like I had just finally dried out, and it was time to walk home. In the rain. It’s not supposed to stop raining until next Tuesday. Ick. I think this is an early pajama night for me.

And I learned something else: it doesn’t matter that I had the umbrella to keep my hair from getting wet, or that I used the straightening iron on my hair this morning, or that I also used the goo that’s supposed to keep me from getting those little fly-away hairs all over my head. If I’m outside in the rain for more than 5 minutes, I start to get an afro from the humidity. Lovely.

In much-much-much happier news, I have a 2nd date with Dave the Brit set for Friday night. We’re having dinner. It’s so unusual for me to be this excited about seeing someone, I’m practically counting the hours until Friday. I talked to Kris the other night and she told me I was “twitterpated”. I had forgotten that term, but I think it’s pretty accurate for my current state of mind. Happy happy happy, la la la….