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I'm very tired today (see prev.entry), so I shall be brief.
- The Steelers won the Super Bowl AGAIN! This makes the second time in three years, which is freakin' awesome. I bet you didn't know I followed football. Guess what? I don't. I don't understand half of what goes on in that game, and I prefer football movies to watching it live as there are way fewer moments when you're watching some sort of pause or timeout. However I cheer for the Steelers because my Gram & Gramps did, being so supportive that they threw little house gatherings, dressed in black & gold, and shouted very rude things at the television when they disagreed with calls or plays. Since they passed, people in my family either root for the 'Skins, Packers, or Giants, so I root for the Steelers 'cuz they're a good damned team and for cryin' out loud someone in this family should.
- Hey, Nicholas, lookit:
I found it over here. (Also anyone else that feels like making Obama icons of themselves should go there, too.)
- Tonight I get to hang out with Cynthia. She is providing vodka, I am providing stew and we are going to finish An Important Project. It should be assumed there will be much geekery and the occasional, unladylike snort. I am probably going to have to take a nap first, though.
- Boy howdy would I like to make shrimp linguini and apple tarts right now. That is not what I get to do.
EDIT: GUESS WHAT. I just got a phone call from Petunia informing me that she is to have a 7 a.m. inducement tomorrow morning (Henry doesn't feel like coming out on his own because *apparently* he's just that comfortable) which means that tomorrow's to be Henry's birthday, Petunia and A-bert will finally get to meet their son, AND THAT I WILL HAVE A NEPHEW! I'm so excited I could pop, but I won't, because then I wouldn't be able to meet him.
Woohoo!
That is all. More later.
Yesterday was *far* too long a day. I came into work about 8:15a to work on my "To Do" list, but was somewhat unpleasantly surprised with what really ended up filling my schedule. In the end I was only able to complete 2 of my planned tasks and knock 'em off my list, instead spending the majority of my time on last-minute emergency projects that were all due either before I left work yesterday or before noon today.
Didn’t get an actual lunch (this is becoming a more common occurrence), opting instead for working through the break at my desk with coffee on an IV drip & a microwave Bucket O'Ramen from the emergency stash in my supplies cupboard. The latter was supposed to taste like beef & tomato. It did not. I ate it anyway.
5p rolled around *far* before I was expecting it and with it came the desire for real food, so spoke to Nicholas & IM'd/texted the usual crew. Found out everyone was either tired, working late, had other plans or just wasn't feelin' wings. By 5:30p I realized Nicholas & I were the only ones left even thinking about it, and with the amount of work sitting in front of me I decided to just stay put, figure out what to do about food later & keep working 'til my current project was either done or I was too tired to stay anymore.
Was saved from consuming all Doritos snack packs in the office by a co-worker who offered to get me Popeye's while out for herself. After several more hours, I finally completed designing, building & formatting the incredibly complicated, multi-tabbed, backup cost breakout spreadsheet I'd been asked to pull out of thin air earlier in the day. At 10p, completely drained, I finally got up out of my chair for the last time that evening, stretched, packed my stuff & said, "The Hell with this place, I am *out*."
By the time I got home, goofin’ off on my laptop with a beer, from my bed-cocoon, after finally shedding boots & work clothes was my idea of Heaven. While talking to Cynthia last night, she told me she’d accidentally consumed moldy bread recently. She’s fine, it apparently just tasted like college-girl wine apparently and F’d up her hummus, HOWEVER it spawned a discussion.
I started calling the mold Harold (it’s fuzzy, it’s growing, it should have a name) and it was decided he should run for mayor. While she worked on a limerick about him (which turned into haikus, which evolved into a mass haiku effort having nothing to *do* with Harold involving Nicholas, Cynthia *and* me), I started using my grade-school-ghettotastic incredibly impressive MSPaint skillz to draw him. Promised Cynthia I’d post him up today to brighten her day, so here we go.
After briefly searching for a proper picture of Aflatoxin, I finally found this one, thanks to Wikipedia:
...and within about an hour had decided Mr. Harold Aflatoxin should probably look something like this:
He comes complete with promotional pin, power tie, detached eyebrows & sinister, twizzly mustache (that’s how you can be certain he is EVIL). Babies and bread products not included.
Now I get back to work. More later.
~E.
I’ve a lot to do & am re-prioritizing as I type this, so I've got a few minutes. First off, I can't believe it's all ready freakin' Thursday. The Hell? Could someone please tell me where the rest of the week went? Damnation. I need an extra day or so before everyone & their mother comes back to the office. Come Monday, soon as they all walk back in that door, I'll be immediately swamped with last-minute requests and "crises" (which almost never are) and everyone will again be under the mistaken belief that they are each the most important and unique little snowflake on the planet right then, when the only one who's ever really right about that is the über-boss. But I'll have to pretend like they're each #1 on my list (they often are, different list), which means getting a ton out of the way before that starts.
I feel like being quieter for the next few days. Was considering club stuff this weekend, but I've been out an awful lot lately. Even though I didn't go out at all last weekend, I still haven't spent enough time back @ the apt.on personal stuff or just dumb, quiet things I like to do. Think the only plans I'll make will be wings this evening (probably), seeing my family @ some point this weekend, and a friend's b-day party Saturday night.
Aside from those three things, I need to do/would like to do at least some of the following before next week starts:
- ALL of my laundry as opposed to little snippets of it here & there.
Clean the bathroom again.
Vacuum my room (it's been awhile).
Find all of my pajama pants, then wear them (not all at once). I don't have that many, I've misplaced two pair, it's winter, I miss them & I've just ripped a hole in the leg of one of my favorites, damn it.
Spend an entirely unacceptable amount of time on my computer doing things of absolutely no importance whatsoever.
Reorganize files on laptop, delete extraneous crap, and move as much as possible off the hard drive & over to my external.
Use part of previously mentioned, completely ridiculous amount of time on comp.doing nothing but adjusting, renaming, and uploading a bajillion & 1/2 LJ icons, because messing around with pictures and icons is one of my favorite things to do.
Adjust music currently loaded onto my iPod, then acquire more as I do not have enough hip-hop/rap or classical, but I DO have too much 'Blondie' and I don't know how that happened.
Play ‘Guitar Hero’ (I will not get to do this). Staniel taught me how to play bass and even though it’s only a fake, plastic, mini version of a bass AND I have to put it on the “5yr.olds play better than you” level (yes, this means the only thing I do is strum in time with the little clicky thing) I still had fun and felt a little like a very silly living room badass. :)Okay, now I am hungry & have to go back to work. That is all! More later.
~E.
This weekend I went absolutely nowhere. I was really tired from the work week and felt much like a wrung-out rag (especially after pulling 4 hours of last-minute, "Wait, you need this right now? You know I’m supposed to leave in about an hour, right? Um...okay," OT on Friday evening). I realized I probably didn't have the energy left to go home, clean up, change and drive back out to be social after returning to the apartment from work, walking directly to my room, shutting the door behind me, dropping my messenger bag & purse, and just sort of collapsing face-first on my bed, still ensconced in gloves, scarf & overcoat. After 10 minutes of remaining this way (turning my head a little to the left so I could breathe, of course), I realized I was *far* more comfortable than I should be, opted to just stay home & multi-texted as much to people. The decision ended up lasting the entire weekend and I caught up on all the sleep I’d missed the past couple weeks while being a complete pupa. Go me. :)
So now it’s Monday, I’m pretty well-rested, and my brain no longer feels like something that’s either mush, charred, or husk-like. A sizeable number of the staff who usually interrupts me all day long is to be out for at least part of this week, and all together this means I might actually be able to knock some older tasks off my “To Do” list and get things back in order as I prefer them. All I could really ask to make my day a little better would be more snow.
See, it’s all ready the end of January and I wanted more snow by now. Everyone else who likes warm/hot weather ends up having up to 9 months a year in this area where if it’s not downright hot-as-all-Hell and muggy to boot, it’s at least not cold in the slightest. For people like me that actually *dig* colder weather and even some snow, we're gettin’ gypped. Fall and winter are both supposed to be the colder months of the year, darn it, even in this area. Not balmy, not 70-something when it’s freakin’ October/November. It is supposed to be either chilly or cold, NOT WARM, and that's only really happened in the past few weeks or so.
The weather's being a teasing little minx, too. She knows I want it to snow so badly I can taste snowflakes on my tongue and apparently she doesn't yet want to give it up, but she likes getting me excited about it. So, every so often, she flirts a little bit of her white, wintery petticoat at me, bats her eyelashes for a second, then hides it away again. Just like any other situation where one’s being teased without any idea of when satisfaction may ever occur, it’s beginning to go beyond tantalizing and fun and is now stepping into the realm of annoying. Do not be surprised if you find me stopped in an empty parking lot at some point in the near future, car still running behind me as I stand on the blacktop shaking my fist at the sky yelling, "Damn it, woman! GIVE ME A SLICE!"
It's not that we haven't had *any* snow, y'see, it's just that what we've had has only been on the ground for about 2.5 seconds before evaporating again. It started January 8. I was all kinds of excited about the sudden deluge of fat flurries that practically dumped outside my office window, IMing everyone I knew online around 9:30 that morning. No one else saw it due to some freak happenstance that apparently caused it to snow only in Sterling & Chantilly that day, so I left the office on my lunch break (I had to retrieve my lunch from home anyway) & took pictures for proof.
I was able to leave the office & head back to the apartment after 12p. It was snowing heavily enough that it was collecting on the all ready existing black ice in some patches & making things damned difficult to navigate. I even slid a couple times doing 15 mph.
At 12:45p, Sterling looked like this:
Ten minutes down the road, near 28, it had quieted down to this:
At 1:05p, down 28 just a bit, the weather was, rather suddenly, practically non-existent:
And by 1:15p, back in Chantilly, there was absolutely nothing:
And, of course, considering how much the little tart likes to flirt with me, Mother Nature decided to pull this crap all the Hell over again today. Did anyone else see it? Noooo, of course not. However this morning, upon leaving the apartment, I saw flurries falling again. (Great day to wear heels when the weather report said only a 20% chance of precipitation. ::chuckles::) By 10a from my office window, I could see this:
And now what do we have? Nothin'. Absolutely nothing.
Damn it Mother Nature, you trifling little temptress! GIVE IT UP ALL READY!
That is quite enough for now. More later.
~E.
Cross-postin' like a mo-fo for anyone who may not have the pleasure of a Debbar on their friends list, 'cuz it's fucking hilarious.
Because BlogSpot is a bit of a bastard & only permits the tiniest versions of pictures embedded among text, you can check out the normal-size version over here.
:D
More later.
~E.
Today I've spent most of my day working out conflicting travel arrangements, flights, cars, and all sorts of extra crap in addition to my pre-scheduled routine for the day. No big, really, it keeps me busy & I'm prioritizing. While I was booking a National car rental for my boss's stay over in Hawaii, however, something caught my eye during a booking and prompted me to backstep on the site, make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me, then I started giggling, because apparently I am 12:
The image is a bit clearer if you click on this link....hee hee hee.
More later.
~E.
All right, so all the guys are back from the Con today, which means I'm not going to have time for a full-fledged entry when everyone's likely to read it. Instead, I'm making another one of my picture entries. See I've all ready received a few texts/IMs today, one of which was a reference from Nicholas to an abandoned jar of peanut butter in the hallway of his work, which he suspected of being a trap, which then reminded me of bear traps, which of course brought to mind bears and THAT, ladies and gentlemen, brings me to...BEARS WITH CHAIRS!!!
Dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!
I saw this lovely display, which is apparently used to advertise a business called "Bare Woods" (yes, that's the correct spelling) while driving around yesterday during my lunch break. From what I can tell, the bear seems to've been sculpted out of rather pointy pieces of metal that have since rusted, which basically makes it a giant Tetanus Bear. Also, if you look closely, you will note that both the bear AND the chairs have been chained down...for safety. If the bear doesn't get you, the chairs will for damn certain.Now I go back to expense reports.More later.~E.
Last night I was supposed to meet up w/the Wingmen (the catch-all term I mentally use when referring to anyone who makes it out to Reston on Thurs.nights), but ended up staying @ my folks’ house much later than I planned & missing it. Ran an errand or two instead, then came back to the apt.& promptly crashed the Hell out as, for some reason, the minute I walked through the door I was hit w/a wave o/exhaustion.
As tends to be normal regarding my lack of sleep schedule, I was wide awake just a few hours later @ 4a, unable to go back to bed. After tossing & turning a bit I gave up, donned some pants, and decided to do a few chores around the apt. - dishes, trash, gathering laundry for the wash, etc. Could only stretch that out for about an hour and 1/2 before I was left with nothing further to do for the time being. Didn’t want to sit still & didn’t feel like reading, so I decided I would: 1) go get coffee, and; 2) take my camera phone with me in case I wanted to hit the internet with a barrage of superfluous pictures later. I absolutely adore cold weather, and get positively giddy when it’s both cold AND rainy, so this was a good plan. Put on scrubby clothes, grabbed my phone, hoodie, hat, cigarettes & keys, & headed to the car.
Following are a bunch of pictures you may or may not care about. Click on any one of them to see the actual, larger image. :)
Just before I walked to the driver’s side, I looked down on the miniscule length o/grass paralleling the road & realized the first, bright fall leaves I’d noticed this season were laying at my feet. I thought the colors were pretty, so I took a couple quick pictures, then got in the car.
Drove to the grocery store, picked up my coffee, then spent a few minutes over in the bakery, basking in the scent of freshly baked pastries (that smell, first thing in the morning, makes me all warm inside). Then I headed for the exit when I stopped abruptly just before the door, backed up a few steps, and stared. In front of me, for the first time ever, I saw what is apparently called a “TV Kart”. (Yeah, check out the creepy, animated picture behind *that* link.)
I did not know what the Hell this was & had never seen it before, (Has anyone else? Am I alone here?), so I took a couple close pictures & decided to look it up when I got home.
I kind of figured it had to be *something* child-oriented from the Playskool color scheme & rounded, plastic edges here & there, but after a little research once I got home, I found out that you apparently toss $1 in the machine, and if you’ve a kid w/you, they can watch a video of one of their favorite characters while you’re picking things up.
o_O - Okay, seriously? Maybe it’s just me thinking that’s *way* over the top, but whatever happened that classic child-in-grocery-store scenario? No, not the one where they scream. I’m talking about that game the weeyun gets to play while they sit in the front seat of the shopping cart (y’know, the one you use to hold your bag &/all your small things if you don’t have children), legs dangling out of the plastic kid holes, pointing & asking for all the sugary crap Mom & Dad won’t buy for them, and making weird faces @ all the surrounding shoppers. When you have children with you, how long are you *possibly* thinking of spending in that grocery store? I mean, do you *really* need to put on Bob the Builder while you’re getting milk & hamburger? Just seems silly to me. ::shrugs::
Left there, then drove around for a bit when I saw this:
...over by Best Buy. The place was completely barren, with the exception of this one, car-shaped cart. I thought it was cute that something not actually an automobile was parked in a space, very neatly, way out in the middle of the empty parking lot. I like to imagine there was an inebriated toddler roaming about last night, getting rowdy with some friends, who had to leave his cart in the lot & catch a ride home because he couldn’t drive.
Headed over to Wal-Mart to grab a shirt & something else when I passed this in the aisle:
Was anyone else aware that someone out there is now making “gourmet” spray cheese? I...I don’t know what to say about that, really. I am both disgusted & oddly tempted to try it, though not enough to spend my own money on it. ::shudders:: Oh, America! ::shakes head::
Finished up & headed back to the car. The car to my left was just pulling out of their spot when I heard a crunch on the ground before they drove away. I looked down as they pulled off and saw...
...a now broken, mutilated, Lego Batmobile. Its driver was nowhere to be found. Poor Lego Batman. You could not combat the might burgundy Corolla. We can only hope it was a quick death & construct a 586-piece monument on your behalf (now on sale @ Wal-Mart, 50% off, complete with working gears).
On the way out of the lot I remembered the circus was in town (no, really), and decided to try & find the grounds to see if anyone was roaming about. I did, there wasn’t, so I took pictures anyway. I’ve never been to a circus (seriously), so I looked around the outside. This is not a real circus, mind you, it’s just a parking lot circus. Still & all, it was there, so I checked it out.
I didn’t realize it ‘til I reviewed the pictures later, but with no one around, against the grey background & half-light of the early morning, my pictures of the circus look a little daunting.
Dun dun DUN!
I mean really, does this look like a picture you would use to advertise a place to voluntarily bring children? Doesn’t it look like something from the cover of a B-grade horror flick?
Even *this* picture was a little off-putting.
Oh, and in case THAT wasn’t bad enough, check out their idea of “cheerful advertisement” (Linda & anyone else bothered by clowns DO NOT look @ this):
!!! Really?! Now obviously it’s a terribly creepy sign. What is WORSE is that I took this picture on the edge o/the grounds, in the middle of the drizzle. That rain has accumulated on the sign and it looks like horrifying Grampa clown IS SWEATING. Dude, I’m not even bothered by clowns & *I* thought that was terrible.
After that, I left & headed to the dollar store, remembering I came across something previously that I should’ve posted a pic o/then, which cracks me up:
This is the Dollar Store’s “AXE” knock-off. I love the fact that it’s completely blunt w/the name. “Use this and you shall reach an important base!” It *claims* to be the scent of “Cool Excitement”, which brings to mind...well, never mind, that’s just silly. What it ACTUALLY smells like is Irish Spring ground into burnt carpet. It’s kinda terrible, but then again it’s the dollar store.
After this I left & headed home to actually *do* my laundry when I remembered something else I needed to show you guys. See, this apt.complex is a classy joint. Know how I know this? Art in the laundry room. By laundry room I mean single-washer-&-dryer-on-ea.level-stuffed-in-a-barely-closet-sized-room. By artwork I mean...well...
(ahem)
That’s right, inside the laundry closet, over the pay washing machine, mounted haphazardly lovingly on the cinder block wall, just to the right o/the pipe work there hangs a faux gilt-framed painting of a freaking.FOX.HUNT...because we are full of class...and also apparently on a country estate. ::shakes head:: I had to share, it was just too fucking funny.
All righty, I’m off to handle a couple more things. If I were Jon Stewart, I would now sign off by prepping an image (say, like Zena Saunders’ painting, “Playing House”) and saying, “And now, your moment of Zen.”
:)
More later.
~E.
A couple weeks ago I came back to the house after a long day of tromping around outside viewing some rooms & apt.’s, running errands, etc. Took my shoes off, started a pot of coffee, noticed no one else was around, then got on my computer. A little while later I got up, got a cup of coffee, and was returning to my computer when I saw a really tiny dot on the floor. I bent down to pick it up and make sure it wasn’t a stain or some such (it’s a light carpet) when I realized it was *not* a piece of random sumsing...it was a bee. Not a normal size bee, mind you, but what looked like a super-dinky-teeny-tiny version of a common yellow jacket, probably about 1 cm.long. Likely the tiniest bee I’ve ever seen.
Now first off, the thing was obviously either severely stunned or dead (it was just sort of lying there on its side, no damage to the body). Decided after a few seconds on squishing it to make certain of the latter. Said to myself, “That’s weird,” flushed it down the toilet, made sure there wasn’t any mess left behind, then got back to what I was doing. I mean I was wearing cuffed jeans that day, and there weren’t any windows open while I was out, so I figured it could’ve just been stuck in my cuff at some point during the day, then fallen out when I got home. Either way, aside from mentioning it to (who promptly called it a nanobee) & wishing I’d thought to take a picture before I crushed it, I didn’t really think about it.
Early, early this morning I got out o/bed briefly to grab my bottle of water from the kitchen and retrieve my lip balm from the living room when I noticed a dot on the living room floor. Turned on the light & bent down to see...ANOTHER COMATOSE/DECEASED NANOBEE.
What.the.Hell? Seriously? I feel like I’m in some sort of weird, ‘Blair Witch Project’ involving tiny, angry insects. Somehow I’ve pissed off an itty-bitty Queen around here so now, every so often, she sacrifices one of the hive to the living room floor when no one else is about, usually eliciting something along the lines of, “...what the...what the Hell is that?” from yours truly.
This time, however, I grabbed my camera phone & a bobby pin for size reference & took a picture.
Nanobee vs.Bobby Pin. Both are small, BUT WHO SHALL WIN?!
And here are a couple more failed attempts at clearer close-ups that actually ended up fuzzier...
See? Tiny isn’t it? The way it's positioned, with one wee little leg bent & lifted, I kind of imagine it suffering a massive coronary in the middle of can-can practice or a kung fu lesson.
::performed in a very tiny, buzzing voice:: "HIIIII-Y...ECH-!!!" ::clunk::
I don’t know, I’ve looked around the house & haven’t seen any place they could be coming from. We don’t keep windows or doors hanging open, I’ve looked around the house & not found anyplace where they’d really be coming from, and I’m not a beekeeper, so no clue really. Maybe a vent? Either way, should mention it to Freddie, obviously. Could be just a fluke, but just in case...ATTACK OF THE NANOBEES!!!
More later.
~E.
