Category Archives: Blah-blah-blah

starting a new routine

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Yesterday marked my very first day at the Giant Software Company. It looks like it’s going to be really good – I like the people on the team that I’ve met so far, my boss is really cool, and it involves lots of fun writing stuff, which I enjoy doing. So that’s good. Adjusting to office life again, however, is kicking my butt. I spent the last 6 months at my previous job working from home, which meant I’d usually roll out of bed around 9:00, work in my PJ’s for a couple of hours, then take a break for “lunch” (actually breakfast for me), and get dressed. Now, however, I’m up at 6 a.m., and putting my make-up on is something I do within the first half hour of being awake. I am so not used to this. My eyes ache from having gunk slapped on them from the second I wake up. And before any of you guys offer helpful suggestions: yes, I must wear make-up. I am a southern girl, and I was “brought up right,” and that means that I have not left the house without at least a little powder & mascara since I was 13 years old. Don’t waste your breath telling me that I look fine without it, I know better. I am a girly-girl, and I am proud of it.

Anyway, the point is: I’m tired. Really tired. The kind of tired where you go to bed at 9:30 at night, and you still feel beat the next morning. Dave and I are carpooling because he works less than a 1/2-mile away, and since we have to drive past our gym on our commute, we’re making an effort to keep our gym clothes in the car so we can stop & work out on our way home in the evenings. We didn’t go yesterday because I was so beat, and we needed groceries, so we just went to the store & headed home. But today, I am determined to go. We’ve been pretty lazy about it for the past couple of weeks, and my hope is that I’ll have more energy if I start working out regularly again. We’ll see.

Back to the work stuff: I have an officemate, who seems nice. She talks to herself about whatever it is that she’s working on, but I have been known to do the same thing on occasion, so it doesn’t bother me. I’m pretty good at tuning people out when I know they aren’t addressing me. I’m just grateful for the fact that I have an office and not a cubicle. And there’s free soda here, so I feel that I have officially found my Promised Land. Ah, diet coke, how do I love thee…

In other news, I’m getting married exactly 2 months from today. Yay!

change is good, right?

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This year, 2005, has been pretty amazing for me so far. I moved in with Dave. I turned 29 – my last official year in my 20’s. I got engaged, which is something that I think most people (including myself) thought I would most likely never do. I started planning my wedding – yet another thing I never quite saw myself doing. And then today, I got offered a job with the Biggest Software Company in the Free World, who I’ve wanted to work for since before I moved to Washington four years ago – and which just happens to be about a 30% raise from my current salary. Holy crap! And it’s only February. What on earth do you have in store for me, 2005? It’s simultaneously exciting and scary, because with all of this great stuff happening, I keep waiting for something bad to happen so things will even out. The universe has to have some sort of balance, doesn’t it? Or is this the payoff for a whole bunch of bad years past? It’s sort of strange to be elated and worried at the same time. I suppose I just need to relax and go with it, but let’s face it, how many of us humans are really all that adaptable to change? I put myself only a slight notch above my cat on that scale – I won’t lick myself bald when my routine gets thrown off, but it frazzles me nonetheless.

Totally switching gears: I got the pictures from our trip to Sun Mountain this past weekend posted online. There’s a whole other drama going on right now about how we’ve had no heat or hot water since we got back from our trip on Sunday afternoon, but that should hopefully be resolved within the next hour or two, so we’ll just leave that story alone.

P.S. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, our wedding date got changed. We really wanted to have it in this one place, which wasn’t available on May 7th. So now we’re getting married on Sunday, May 15th. Still less than 3 months to go!

irresponsible pet owners

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It appears that we have acquired semi-partial ownership of a dog. Dave mentioned to me before that there’s a brown lab that sometimes shows up at the house, and if it’s cold and/or rainy, he lets her in to hang out for a while. Apparently that was the case at about 5 a.m. this morning; I vaguely remember him telling me that the dog was here, but I was half-asleep at the time. When I went downstairs at 8:30 a.m., she was sleeping in the living room. (The cats, meanwhile, were keeping a safe distance upstairs.) She’s very sweet and friendly, but I noticed there was an I.D. tag on her collar. It says her name is Rose, and there was a phone number. So I called the number, got the answering machine, and left a message basically saying that I hope they aren’t worried about Rose, but she’s at our house, left our number, and that we’d like to know where she lives so we can take her home. I didn’t say, “And you should build a freaking fence,” even though that’s what I was thinking. I gave Rose a turkey dog, which she gobbled down in about 1/2 a second, and then I put her outside so I could make breakfast. She has since wandered off – hopefully she’s gone home, but who knows.

In other news, the job drama continues. It occurred to me that I’ve never mentioned the name of my company on here, so I’d probably be safe to talk about what’s going on. In short: They wanted me to go to California every week for 3 months. I don’t know if y’all remember how depressed I got when I did that last summer, but it was awful. I really don’t want to do it again. Nevermind the fact that I’m in the middle of a move, and if I’m gone 5 days a week, all I want to do on the weekends is collapse, and there’s no way I’ll have the energy to pack. It’s more about the fact that I hate traveling for work, I hate airports/flying, and I’m getting settled into this new life routine here with Dave, and I don’t want to get immediately yanked out of it. And 3 months? Is a damn long time. Plus, who knows if the project will end up getting extended longer than that, or if I’ll immediately get put on a different project that requires me to fly somewhere else every week, etc. So Dave & I talked about it and we decided that I should quit, and we could get by on one income for a while. (Which is very scary for me, since I’m not used to being dependent on anyone.) I told this to my career manager, and he’s going to see if I can possibly get a spot in the company’s internal IT group, which would keep me based in Seattle, rather than being a consultant for the western region. Meanwhile, I’m on the job hunt, just in case. So even though it’ll most likely work out fine no matter what happens, it’s still a very stressful in-between time right now.

Also, I have a Microsoft certification exam tomorrow. This is the re-take of the exam that I flunked 6 months ago. I usually re-take them immediately, while the material is still fresh in my mind. But at the time, I was planning to go to Atlanta to say good-bye to my cousin, who died a week later, and somehow studying just managed to slip off of my to-do list. But I’m doing it now. So Friday around 2:30 p.m. Pacific time, send lots of smart vibes in my direction. Much appreciated.

As for last night’s Project Runway, there’s a great recap of it over on Catoptric, so I’ll defer to that rather than repeat what’s already been said.

I am 29.

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Today is my birthday. There isn’t a whole lot to say about turning 29, it’s not really a landmark age, it’s just starting to sink in that I’m about thisclose to 30, which isn’t entirely happy. But hey, I’m still officially in my 20’s, at least for the next 364 days. (And I haven’t decided if I’m going to turn 30 next year, or if I’ll just turn 29 again.)

Yesterday, Dave went shopping for my birthday present(s) while I played video games at the house. (I am addicted to Paper Mario.) He called about 10 minutes before he got there, and told me to leave the house because he had to make preparations. So I went to the supermarket to kill half an hour. When I came back, I found that the coffee table in the living room had a balloon tied to each leg, a cake on the table (complete with number candles, which he reversed so it said I was 92 instead of 29), and assorted presents and goodies. Whee! That was so cool, I really wasn’t expecting a big presentation like that at all.

Gift-wise, the boy did good again: I got a Henry Rollins DVD (not the one that was filmed last year in Seattle, this is a different one), a video game, the soundtrack to “Garden State” (happy sigh), a cookbook (which I wanted, it wasn’t some “get in the kitchen and make me dinner” kind of gift), a coffee mug, a teddy bear… oh yeah, and a mountain bike! That was my big surprise gift. Dave hid it so I thought I was done with presents, and I was damn happy with what I had gotten. Then he told me that I should come see something cute that Greta was doing in the laundry room, and when he opened the door, this was waiting for me. How cool is that? I had been talking about getting a bike for a while, because I really enjoyed it when I borrowed Krissy’s roommate’s bike a few months ago. So what do you know, now I have a bike. Now if only it’ll stop raining long enough (and if the temperature would rise about 20 degrees) to allow me a chance to ride it…

The big news for the weekend, which I think I can safely blog about now since our families know: Dave and I are moving in together! Obviously, Test Week went really well, so we had a big talk on Thursday night and decided that this is what we both want. We’re really happy and excited about it. I have to talk to my apartment people tomorrow to find out how soon I can move, since I’ll be breaking my lease. I’m pretty sure this means that I can kiss my deposit good-bye, but it looks like I should save enough money by living with Dave that I’ll make up for it within the next two months. My parents, being the lifelong Southerners that they are, aren’t too thrilled about it. They both think that Dave is great, but they don’t like the idea of us living together before we’re married. I tried explaining that in my generation, living together is a pretty standard phase of courtship, but I don’t think they’re buying it. But they acknowledge the fact that we’re both adults, and they’re glad that I’m happy, so they’re keeping their disapproval to a minimum. Although my mom did say that I shouldn’t tell anyone in the family about it. (Hi, Cat!) Dave’s mom is thrilled for both of us, so at least we have support on that side.

So yeah, it’s been an exceptionally good birthday. I look forward to turning 29 again next year.

waking up with a bang, quite literally

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This morning, about 5 minutes before my alarm went off, I woke up suddenly when there was a loud explosion outside. It was enough to make Teenie, who had been sound asleep in the crook of my arm (her usual spot) jump up too. A couple of seconds later, the electricity went out. Great. It was totally overcast outside, so there wasn’t much natural light coming in when I pulled back the shades. I lit a bunch of candles, and tried to think of things that I could still do with no electricity:

1. Work – Well, the laptop will run on battery power for a while, true. Without an Internet connection, however, I can’t do anything. I could play Freecell for a while, but that’s about it.
2. Laundry – nope
3. Heat some water for a cup of tea – no stove, no microwave, no go
4. Shave my legs – by candlelight? No thanks.
5. Vacuum – ha ha
6. Call Dave (who I was sure hadn’t left the house yet because it was still early), and tell him to leave a key so I could go to his house & work from there – I think the electric garage door might put a dent in those plans. (Or in my car, if I tried to drive through it.)
7. Go for a walk around the neighborhood to see just how far-reaching this blackout is – my building’s front doors run on an electric security system. I could get out, but I wouldn’t be able to get back in.

So finally I gave up, got back in bed, and read old issues of “People” magazine by the overcast morning light. Two and a half hours later, the power came back on. And that sums up my morning.

In other news, I’m on hour 18 of a 24-hour fast. It’s no major secret that I have a lot of food issues. I decided to do this to get myself out of the “eat everything in sight” habit that I seem to have developed over the holidays. Not that I really expect my appetite to change that much in 24 hours, I know it takes a lot more than that to make one’s stomach shrink. This is more to break me out of the mental cycle of munching on food when I’m not really hungry. And you know, it’s really not so bad. I wasn’t at all sure I was going to make it, but I’m drinking protein shakes, which are pretty filling, and a lot of green tea. I’ve noticed that if I have something hot in my stomach, I don’t feel as hungry, so tea works. And I’ve made a point of not putting anything in it – no sugar or honey or anything – because I thought that would defeat the purpose.

And it’s odd, I’ve been psyching myself out mentally, like “well, maybe I’ll stop at hour 20, that’s still pretty good.” And then as I get closer to that time, I start thinking “You wimp, you’re not even really hungry, you can do better than that. If you want to chew on something, have a piece of gum.” Then I start wondering if that broccoli-cheese soup that I got at the grocery store deli the other day would count as a liquid, and I immediately berate myself for even thinking about it. Because really, if you have to question whether or not it counts as cheating, it probably does. The funny thing is that I have this same sort of back-and-forth mental argument when I’m at the gym. “Maybe I’ll stop after 20 minutes on the treadmill.” “Come on, fat ass, you can do thirty and you know it.” Am I the only one who does this? I’m trying to decide if I’m crazy or not. Input is appreciated.

The Fly

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Today marks two important occasions:
1) Dave and I have been dating for 4 months, which for those of you who don’t know my romantic past, is a record for me.
2) It has officially been 3 years since I moved to Washington state. That’s longer than I’ve lived anywhere since my hometown in Mississippi. I guess I’m over my nomadic phase – I really love it here, I think I’m sticking around.

In other (unimportant) news, there is a HUGE fly in my apartment that I don’t know what to do with. It’s just a housefly, but he’s at least the size of a nickel. And he’s aggressive, he keeps dive-bombing me when I don’t expect it. It’s totally freaking me out. But I can’t kill him because (a) he’s so huge that I know it’s going to leave a mess if I squish him, and the thought totally grosses me out, and (b) he’s too fast for me to catch him anyway. It’s funny when he dive-bombs Teenie, she’ll swat at him in the air, but then when she doesn’t catch him, she loses interest in about 2 seconds. Useless little huntress, she is. I tried opening my patio door and shooing the fly out, to no avail. He just dives at my head with his loud “Buzz-buzz-buzz!!!” until I scream and run away. I’m not even scared of flies, but the thought of this huge son-of-a-gun landing on me is freaky. And flies carry germs. Ick.

Teenie and I are taking off in a couple of hours for Dave’s house, where we’ll be doing floors all weekend. Whee! Hopefully Mr. Fly will be dead by the time I return to my apartment.

Oh, and in totally unimportant news, I’m getting a haircut this afternoon. My usual lady has the day off, so I’m taking a chance on one of her colleagues. Wish me luck!

slacker

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So, tomorrow night, Kris gets to town. Kris, as in my best friend in the whole wide world, former college roommate, the person who can read what I’m thinking better than anyone on the planet, the woman who would be my soul mate if only we were both gay, Kris. She’s flying in from Memphis, and I have been excited about it ever since we booked the ticket back in April. Now that the time is actually here, I almost can’t believe it. There’s so much that I want to do while she’s here, and I don’t know how I’m going to fit it all in to 4 days. (She gets here late Thursday night & leaves early Tuesday morning.)

Now, the only problem is that my apartment is a disaster with a capital D, and I can’t seem to motivate myself to clean it up. Kris hasn’t seen this place yet (obviously, I’ve only lived here 4 months & I haven’t seen her since Christmas), so I want it to look nice when she gets here, but for some reason I can’t seem to get off my ass and tidy up. I know that if I just spent 2 hours on it, it would be done and I could stop worrying. But I’ll probably put it off until the last minute, as is my usual tendency.

In other news:
* The foghorns on the boats in the Sound have been crazy loud today. And constant. They keep making me jump every time they “huwhaaaanh!!!” out there.
* Teenie has apparently fallen in love with my dirty clothes basket, she seems to be sleeping in it all the time. Perhaps this is because the basket is in my closet, and it’s dark and shady (and cooler) in there. Or maybe it’s because it smells like me (or at least my b.o.). Who knows.
* Speaking of Teenie, I left her hairball medicine at Dave’s, and as a consequence, she left a nice little present for me on my comforter. And the floor. Ick.
* I found out that one of my cousins and his wife are pregnant. He’s 3 years younger than me. Sigh. No comment.
* I downloaded customized ring tones for my phone. Among the most notable: Kris is “Toxic” by Britney Spears (hee!), Dave is “Take On Me” by A-Ha (80’s new wave seemed appropriate for him, for some reason), my mom is “Superfreak” by Rick James (don’t ask), my brother is “Bohemian Rhapsody” (the classic rock guy), and my sister is “Electric Avenue” by Eddy Grant (because that song makes me think of Times Square, which makes me think of NYC, which makes me think of Tracy – plus it’s a cheesy 80’s tune, which fits her). Aww yeah, I’m cool.