~ back to goofing off ~
Feeling a bit on the hungover side this lovely morning. I'm not sure what is up with the weather, but I wish that winter would hurry up and happen already. I want to break out my alpine season pass and have some fun in the snow. Of course, this morning as I was trying to get ready for work, I had to open up my front door to let in some cool air...what with the overheatedness of my apartment. I also had to spend a good amount of time rinsing a lot of garlic off of some dishes. Wow, I love the taste of garlic but I loathe its smell.
Yesterday, I went a bit bananas in the kitchen. I made some tastey marintated mushrooms (lots of garlic), some ginger marinated chickpeas (lots of garlic), and a creamed chicken thing (lots of garlic). A few years ago, my parents gave me a Magic Bullet and I have found it to be the perfectest way to mince a lot of garlic. Which is handy, if you're like me, and you tend to go through a lot of garlic. Anyway, so there I was, going bananas in the kitchen, and I found myself in a temporary state of not-thinking, at which point I grasped onto the metal handle of a pot that had been in the broiler. I don't have an extensive history of burning myself, but this is definately not the first time. And maybe I'm an uber weenie when faced with physical pain, but ouch!, burning oneself really smarts!@
In other news, I had a pretty busy weekend. Busy, mainly doing loads of errands, but I did opt to attend a Roller Derby with Josh and Elizabeth on Saturday. My favorite part of the experience was the break dancers during halftime (or, third-time), though, it was interesting pretending to be a sporting fan. The last round was very exciting, as the two teams were tied with a little over a minute until the finish. And we were all so disappointed that Our Team lost by a single point.
~ pants can't rant ~
And here it is...Saturday December 15th. The day that I've had my sights set on for several months as the day that would be "a very very nice day." As of today, there is NOTHING for me to stress about. aaahhh.... What a nice feeling.
I spent the past three days in Ketchum on work-related stuff. It was cold there and the only time that I had to appreciate the beautiful snow-capped Sawtooths was when we were leaving. The above photo is one I took out of the window of the moving vehicle driving back to Boise. The last night that I was there, I stayed up late watching the final episode of America's Next Top Model. Has anyone seen this program?!? I'm not familiar with current television programs, what with the lack of television ownership, and so I was surprised to find such high quality entertainment. Seriously. On another one of the evenings, I spent some time in the local thrift store, where I was a bit disappointed. Not only was there very very little that was my size, but it was all Eddie Bauer, J. Crew, and Ralph Lauren preppy stuff. Which shouldn't have surprised me, considering that it was in Ketchum, but still. I did manage to find an awesome teal sweater with big buttons running up the side for $5.
Anyway, yesterday I received my paycheck containing all of the overtime and, while that was nice, I am very much looking forward to life without overtime.
~ harangue the marangue ~
This morning, I received notice that one of my photos of Austin, TX is going to be included in a travel guide of the city. Which I think is super neat!
So, wow, the work-life-school balancing act has been out of control. But, the good news is that it's almost over! At this point, I have truly learned the art of 'letting go.' I had about 2,000 aneurysms over the past month and I've decided to just be DONE with stress and worrying. Interestingly, around the workplace, I am being credited with co-authoring a 200 page manual. Perhaps you were under the same misunderstanding as I was when I took this newish job in that I was only going to be laying out the content, assuming that the content already existed. But, oh how you were wrong! Anyway, I sent the manual to print yesterday and, boy, it is wonderful to actually have it completed. Besides working loads of overtime, I have also been trying to not flunk out of graduate school. Although, my standards for flunking appear to differ from that of my classmates, as no matter how little time I have to devote to a school project, I feel (and my professors seem to concur) that my projects far surpass in quality and quantity the rest of the class. You know, not to brag or anything. Tonight I present my final project for one of my classes and, yet again, I feel that it's way better than the majority of the projects that have been presented thusfar. Though, my humility in matters of academia continue to downplay how absolutely Type A I am.
In other news, last week I experienced the MOST INFURIATING AND FRUSTRATING, ANEURYSM-INDUCING EXPERIENCE EVER!!! I had received word from Travelocity that my travel itinerary to Arkansas for the holiday had been changed. As I reviewed the changes, I noted that Josh and I were scheduled to have a 162 hour layover in Cincinatti and that by the time that we made it to Arkansas, essentially five days after we were supposed to arrive, that we would deboard the airplane, turn right around and reboard the airplane for our return trip to Boise. It took me over an hour of being on the "VIP Customer Service" line with Travelocity to correct the plane ticket. I'm getting extremely hypertensive just recalling the experience, but I affirm that it was the WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE that I have ever had. The Travelocity representative ended up telling me that she wasn't allowed to spend so much time with one customer and she just passed me off to the Delta airline person. Anyway, I can't think about this anymore...
In other news, last night while I was at the YMCA, I was on one of the treadmills that overlooks the kiddie pool, when I noticed an adult male who was swimming in his underwear. I'm not sure whether he forgot his swimming suit or if he simply was unaware that swimming in a kiddie pool in one's tidy whitties is unacceptable, but well, I'm sure that you are all aware of what happens when one gets thin white cotton wet...that the fabric becomes transparent. After a while, I noted that two YMCA officials approached him and began to have a heated discussion with the man in which there was much jesticulation towards his see-through underwear. From my impression of the man's behavior, it was evident that he was trying to explain away the fact that he was revealing himself in the kiddie pool, but he was eventually escorted out of the pubilc pool area.
~ pow, pow ~
I am not very talented at bowling. I started out doing alright, but as the beer poured down my throat, my ability to knock down pins became less and less. ...hrm...I wonder if there's a correlation to beer consumption and hand-eye-ball-pin coordination. Anway, right about the time that I was working on my second pint, they turned the lights off, turned on the flashing neon lights, and began playing all of these music videos on the tv screens adjacent to the pin-knockdown area. I found myself feeling more inclined to dance rather than bowl, especially while hit tunes like Kool & the Gang's "Get Down On It" were playing right in front of me. By the end of the third game, my score was an abysimal 52 and Josh's was 123. So we decided to call it good and we went into the next room and threw down several dollars in quarters on the shoot-and-kill zombies arcade game. Now, I don't mean to brag, but I am good at the shoot-and-kill zombies arcade games and I can get pretty serious about killing the zombies. Today, my trigger finger is a bit sore.
