The Myth & The Majesty

Right, so work was absolutely HILARIOUS today. The Easter bunny? He was in the cubicle next to me. And as he pointed out, his dignity took a serious hit today (although it was closely followed by a lot of people calling him brave, so I think it all balanced out). Now, I continue the tradition started by Ashli, Bri and me ... I am going to sit in my living room, drink wine, and watch "Phantom of the Opera" while waiting for trick-or-treaters. Who may or may not appear ... It's a bit of a guessing game in an apartment building. The smart kids will at least attempt it. And if they don't, I will join the hordes of people tomorrow bringing candy to work and trying to pawn it off on everyone else. Have a good night, folks!

I looked down to the end of my cube row and I saw ... a Storm Trooper drinking coffee. That's when the giggling started. Since then, I've seen the march of the Imperial Army (including a baby Trooper), a rather elaborate cat, a penguin, a buggy alien, a witch, a Southern belle, the Grim Reaper, a mad scientist, a cowboy, a hula man, an engineer (that is, a train engineer) ... and both Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. Two Santas, actually, both done by guys named Brian. And the costume contest doesn't even start till lunch.

Hi. I'm really not sure why I'm here. I'm kind of bored, and while there are eight or nine things I should be doing, I felt like blogging. Some things going on: -Work's picked up. We'll see where this goes. -I'm trying to decide whether or not to take a big trip next summer. The benefit: hanging out in Europe with Darren. The cost: not taking any of the other trips I was planning on (or only one or two of them). -I still love winter. Kind of wish it would get here. -My friend Bri just got the news that she's moving to Georgia ... in two weeks (that's something of an "oh by the way" to a handful of you). She made me rather grateful for my uneventful life. -You should check out some of my links (on the left). -I have added two more books to my reading list since my last post. B&N is not a safe place for me. -Plane tickets are expensive. That's about it, I guess. Have a good week, everybody.

I love winter. Love it. I know I've expressed my feelings about certain seasons and holidays, but for my newer readers who haven't had the boredom to peruse my archives, let me get you caught up: I am overly enthusiastic about most holidays. I don't like summer heat. I am just as likely to be found sledding as the city's 10-year-old population. The first snow will have me outside playing, regardless of what my feet are wearing. Winter tends to align with so many other of my favorite things: tea, coffee, hot chocolate, cozy blankets, nighttime, warm woolen mittens ... The second it got cold enough for frost, I started thinking about Christmas (which worked out well this year -- so did ShopKo) ... Blame it on the fact that I have very little else to do with my time, or the fact that for the first time ever I have an apartment of my own to decorate (that I will actually be IN directly before and after Christmas). This means I've actually been Christmas shopping -- or

It was totally worth it. I mean, yesterday I felt human again for the first time in a couple of weeks. Great people (twice!), good conversation, bad conversation, good food ... Alas, when I woke up this morning, my body objected. Strongly. It probably would've objected even more loudly if it had realized that I would be spending the day going through piping diagrams. Argh.

Note to self: Try to refrain from talking to yourself at work, at least audibly. If you mumble, you appear angry. That's okay. If you talk in a normal fashion, you appear crazy. While this might be true, it's much safer if you keep this to yourself.

You know those days where you're not really sure what would solve all of your problems, but you're reasonably certain that it would be overly dramatic and very messy? I'm having one of those days.

Listening to: Christmas music (yeah, you heard me) Thinking about: how unexcited I am about work tomorrow Just remembered: a bottle of wine in the freezer to "chill" (uh-oh) Hoping: I can sleep tonight Relieved: that the wine isn't slushy Right, so this post wasn't supposed to start with a ridiculous list. It was supposed to launch right into pictures. Went and screwed that one up, didn't I? How about if we see how badly inserting pictures messes with the layout instead? (Grumble, grumble, grumble.) Okay then. Now that I've destroyed the opening, we'll see how the rest goes, eh? After a week of rain and general dreariness, the forecast for the weekend involved sunshine and September-esque temperatures. So on Wednesday I decided I was going to get out of Dodge for a bit, and on Thursday I got the rather inspired suggestion to go to Devil's Lake State Park. I'll admit that at 4:30 Saturday morning, I wasn't thrilled with the guy that suggested i

I don't follow sports, but I'm a little confused. The Red Sox and the Rockies??!

I spend roughly 3.4% of my waking hours driving to and from work. It doesn’t sound like much, but that equates to about four hours a week of “alone time,” which is plenty of time to catch strange things. For instance, when I get out of my apartment at the right time, I can see no less than three short buses on my trip to work each morning. Given their respective locations they even have to be three separate vehicles. Now, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that many in one town, much less in an under-20-minute drive. That’s a lot of short buses. I’m not a particularly speedy driver. Not to say I’m slow; generally, I just go the speed of the traffic around me (about 5 over the limit). Regardless, there are always a few cars that pass me as though I’m standing still. And, not surprisingly, these are the same cars day after day. Since this is such a regular thing for these people, I’ve reached one conclusion. They’re probably not running late every single day -- at some point that would

I'm back. It was a great weekend. After two late[r] nights, I can't sleep. I wish I had something inspiring and/or thought-provoking to say, but the truth is that all of my deep thoughts came and went on the drive back. For whatever reason, I was in a serious thinking mood for those three hours ... It was good. But the mood has passed and now I'm just wishing for sleep and a quiet brain.

Wow ... I was almost a daily blogger there. This email thing may be the key to what I've never been able to pull off before. We shall see. Not this weekend, though. I'm off to Minneapolis for some shopping and quality girl time with my sister. Who knows what kind of stories will come out of this one. (Minneapolis is great.) Have a good weekend, all!

In the Yahoo! headlines today: “N. Korea agrees to disable nuke plant.” Now, read that like I did -- too quickly and accidentally leaving out the world “disable” -- and you might feel the same reaction I had. Oops.

So I had this meeting at 10:30 to look at the pilot plant studies done over the summer and figure out the plan of action for the next month or so ... and I just now got back to my cube. Which means I haven't eaten lunch yet. And I'm behind on my own timetable for this other project (wanted to be done with the basics by tomorrow at noon, but I managed to lose a little too much time ... except I'll probably stay later tonight.) And I missed beating up on Brian during sumo wrestling. And I'm cranky because I doubt very much that I needed to be there in the first place. And I sat in a patch of sun the whole time and got too warm. COMPLAIN COMPLAIN COMPLAIN COMPLAIN. One funny observation. You can tell exactly how long the meeting has been and exactly how comfortable the attendees are with each other by the severity of swearing going on. Although (and this was mildly refreshing) some of them still refuse to swear in front of me. I'm going to eat my lunch now.

It's funny. I did some manic posting (well, for me) over the weekend, but yesterday when I sat down to write nothing came. I had fifty ideas over the course of the day, but when I had the chance? Blank. The same thing happened when I got home this afternoon. And fifteen minutes ago, when I tried again. All I could do was sit and stare at the screen. So here I am, telling you about that instead of whatever it is I intended to say earlier today. But not for long. I'm finally tired at a "normal" time ... or at least normal since I joined the real world ... I've been plagued by insomnia for a few days, the kind that keeps me up until at least 2AM just thinking. It's enough to drive me crazy (if only because it's extremely awkward to drift off at my computer at work -- first because there's no comfortable way to do it, and second because those two minutes will inevitably be the only two minutes during which someone decides they need to chat with me), but lu

Listening to: The “Garden State” soundtrack Thinking about: My upcoming weekend in Minneapolis, heat & material balances, Christmas-related stuff (yeah, you heard me), and when I’ll have to get an oil change. Eating: Lunch I remember the first time someone called me bubbly. (Ashli and Bri just started giggling. They were there.) It was my junior year of college in Tech Comm 2 and my professor was commenting on my speech. And for one reason or another (probably because I was), she described me as bubbly. Which, considering I was giving a speech, was something of a compliment. I was a little surprised. I’ve been called a lot of things – sarcastic, dry, quiet – but until then, never bubbly. Granted for most of my life prior to then, if you had called me bubbly it was probably because you were hallucinating. It wasn’t until college that I ever gave a hint of bubbly. I was also a little insulted, possibly because I associated “bubbly” with “airhead” and that just was