Baby Bean is Growing

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Thursday, June 30, 2005

Also...

Sorry for the spam. Can you tell I don't have a lot to occupy my time today? =)

But, in happier news, we bought my wedding band last night. =D
It's my last day in the cube. It feels a little odd, to tell you the truth. Very few people here actually know I'm leaving, most of my friends have already left, and the one that is left already had lunch plans. So, my coworker E. and I are going to go have Thai food for lunch. He's a really nice guy and I feel bad for saddling him with the full IT load now. Oh well. I think he should take a page from my book and start looking for a job where he'll be appreciated.

I think I'm going to take off from here around two or three this afternoon and head on over to the PRG for some more training. Hopefully I won't have to stay until 8:30pm like last time. Tomorrow I do a full day there, as it is A.'s last day, and she will be able to walk me through a typical day.

Though, considering they will be moving next week, I doubt very seriously that I will have anything even vaguely ressembling a typical day for a while yet.

*snark snark snark*

Mom, remember that shirt that you bought me that said, "Plays well with others,"?

It lied.

I do NOT play well with others. I do NOT like to share my toys, and I most certainly do NOT like to be told what to do.

When writing the fan fiction The Prankster's Guide to Life, each chapter is written, in sections, by four different authors. We then combine the sections and we pass the combined document between the four of us, each of us editing and providing our own constructive criticisms to the others.

Only some are less constructive and more criticism.

I am not the only one who feels this way. After the first chapter was sent around for editing, I found myself in tears reading some of the comments, and I found out not long after that one of the other Pranklettes felt the same way. We tried to address the problem, but to very little avail.

The problem is that the girl who is making the comments that cut us to the quick doesn't see the problem with them. She thinks they are all in the name of a better product, and what's a little bloodletting among friends? I see them as insensitive, mean-spirited ways of addressing my shortcomings that could just as easily be addressed with a different tone. In fact, the majority of her comments are valid, she just makes them in such a way as to sound like she is completely right, I am completely wrong, and I should be ashamed of myself for wasting her time. She makes me feel like some kind of no-talent hack who only occasionally writes something decent -- and then probably entirely by accident.

(For example, I used the word "inherent" and her comment was, "That word doesn't mean what you think it means. How about automatically or no adverb at all?" I looked it up. It means *exactly* what I thought it meant: basic, intrinsic, etc. If she didn't like the qualifier, that's one thing; but telling me that I DON'T KNOW what I'm trying to say is a little like a kick in the shins. And that's not even the worst of them. She ended one with "for crying out loud" -- 'cos yeah, that's going to make me want to take her advice.)

It's taken me a WEEK to get through the current chapter -- not because it's upwards of thirty pages long, but because every time I sit down to address some of the comments on my sections, I get irritated and upset and have to take a break before I send myself into a funk and start to cry.

Why can't I be a big girl about this and just buck up and take it? Probably because I respect the girl who's saying all the snarky things to me. She's a good writer. I generally respect her opinions. When she insinuates that I'm stupid, it hurts.

I KNOW that I am a good writer. Better than most, at any rate. I think that's why I get so defensive when she acts as though I am not. It's just hard to draw the line between standing up for myself and inciting another "come to Jesus" meeting which nearly tore the project apart the first time.

I would quit this nonsense and spare myself the turmoil, but I really like the end product. I like what we're producing. I like what *I* am contributing to it. It's very well written and entertaining.

I just happen to think it could be equally well written and entertaining WITHOUT the vituperative comments.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Emily, you would love my new job.

Went to my first training session for my new job last night, and it went really well. (In the interests of keeping things relatively anonymous, I'm going to call the company PRG for PR Group from here on out.) I met with A., the girl I'm replacing, and she is very nice, very organized, and very eager to get out of there and on to her new job. Nothing about the job itself seems too difficult; it encompasses a lot of administrative duties like accounts payable and receivable, correspondence, filing, assembling press kits, mailings, and things like that. But, we also worked on one of L.'s articles for The Jewelry Book (a quarterly trade magazine), which was kind of fun. L. is very open to suggestions and several times said, "Just put something about..." meaning we got to make up what the paragraph actually said.

I'm really confident that I can do well in this job. They are so new that they haven't got many of their systems worked out yet. A. was still doing all of the invoices and such in Word instead of using accounting software, and their idea of a customer "database" is a list in an Excel document. Those aren't bad things; it just means that they're going to love me because I know how to do it better. =D

Also found out some of the perks. A. said that she has bought jewelry from some of the companies they represent for cost, and they have a huge box of swag from their recent trip to the Las Vegas trade show -- perfume for the women, leather wallets for the men, poker chips and cards (they represent the World Poker Tour or something), fancy catalogues and brag books... Cool stuff.

I'm really looking forward to the change in scenery. =)

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

two unrelated things

1. As I was walking back to work from my lunch break, a truck drove by and somebody whistled. My first reaction was to look around to see who they were whistling at. There was nobody there but me.

Oh.

=)



2. CRAZINESS ABOUNDS. For the first time in weeks, I have actual work to do at work, probably because I'm leaving and everybody is suddenly saying, "Oh yeah! Can you do this for me before you go?"

Monday, June 27, 2005

what manner of jackassery must we put up with today?!

It is my last Monday at this job, and I can't for the life of me work up the gumption to do any actual work yet. I think I may need serious coffee before any of that nonsense can take place.

You see, I overslept a tad this morning. My alarm clock was still set at 7:45 -- I set it on Saturday morning so that I could get Allison and April up at a decent hour. They stayed with us on Friday night after being stuck in LA traffic for THREE HOURS. Oy. What a way to see the city.

We took them to diner at the Ruby's diner at the end of the Huntington Beach Pier in retrobution for their inordinately terrible trafficular experience and it was LOADS of fun. I think it is probably illegal in some states for Allison and April and I to get together, because we just have obscene amounts of fun together. Brandon, I think, just enjoyed watching the fallout. =D

So, after multiple milk shakes, root beer floats, chili fries, and hamburgers, we got to bed around midnight with April bravely proclaiming that they wanted to be out the door and on the road by eight am.

Yeah. That didn't happen.

But we did have a really nice breakfast together before Abby went swimming in the lake and Allison and April headed out.

After our guests had left, Brandon and I went and bought four new tires and an oil change for Zoe the Toyota. She now has four new feet and a spare that actually has air in it. YAY! We also went grocery shopping and did other important weekend type stuff.

Sunday after church, we decided to take the bicycles and go to the beach. We bought a bike rack for the car on Saturday, so we installed that puppy and headed for Huntington Beach. It was AWESOME. Wide paved trails, LOTS of crazy Californians to watch, frozen bananas and no sunburn. Excellent way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

And, of course, that made us rather tired, so we slept like a log, and it was a very rude awakening when Brandon's alarm went off at 6:20. I flailed a lot and tried to turn my alarm off, only to realize that mine wasn't the one beeping and that I was twenty minutes late for getting in the shower.

An EXCELLENT way to start a Monday morning, if I do say so myself.

Training for my new job starts tomorrow after work. Updates as they come.

Friday, June 24, 2005

Let's recap my week, shall we?

Monday: saw advert, applied for job
Tuesday: interviewed for job (after having massive flat tire drama)
Wednesday: sent references for job
Thursday: was offered job, accepted job, and turned in resignation
Friday: I have a new job.

Woah.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

insane in the membrane

Yesterday was insane.

I'm not talking about the good funny ha-ha kind of insane where your friend randomly goes and gets a tattoo and you yell, "You're INSANE!"

Nope. We're talking the rubber wallpaper, should be committed and taken away from decent society kind of insane.

I went to work like normal, and, on my way to work, I heard a noise like I had hit a rock and it had bounced off the undercarriage of the car. I tensed up for a minute, but nothing seemed to be wrong. I continued driving to work.

When I got to work, my friend Rebecca told me that it was her last day. She turned in her resignation on Monday and her boss apparently said, why don't you just take the rest of the week off. So, we quick like a bunny organized a going away type lunch for her at Wahoo's Fish Tacos. I offered to drive my coworker.

At the appointed time, we helped Rebecca carry some boxes down to her car and then went around to my car where I discovered that I had a VERY flat tire. So, I rode to lunch in coworker's car, came back, and he and I attempted to use my can of fix-a-flat to reinflate the tire enough so that I could drive to a Firestone.

(Some of you may remember that I had a terrible blow-out flat tire on the freeway several months back. I never got that tire replaced and have been riding around on my full-sized spare. The spare wasn't the one that went flat, by the way.)

No dice with the foam. In fact, it started SQUIRTING OUT OF THE HOLE that we didn't know was there. Right. Not bueno.

To top this all off, I found out right before lunch that there was somewhere I had to be at 5:00 and had arranged to leave work early. Now, I wasn't going ANYWHERE.

Called Brandon and arranged for him to come pick me up at 4:00. Also called security and made sure that they wouldn't tow my car if we had to leave it here overnight before we could get a new tire.

Brandon took me home, I changed clothes and went to my thing at 5:00, he picked me up with a brand new tire in his trunk and we headed back to the car in Mission Viejo.

On arriving, we discovered that I had left my keys in my other pants. At home. In Santa Ana.

D'OH!

(This is the part where Brandon deserves a medal for not leaving me in the parking lot in Mission Viejo to fend for myself.)

Went home. Had some dinner. Changed clothes. Went back to Mission Viejo, KEYS IN HAND.

Brandon made ME change the tire. I know he was trying to make sure I could do it and all, but yuck. When there are bigger, stronger, more able people around than me, I'd just as soon let them do it thankyouverymuch. Also, I had changed my own tire before. I did survive quite well for 21 years before I met him, as I very kindly pointed out. He very kindly pointed out that if I wanted to survive the night I'd humor him (not really!).

Thus ends the tire saga. It was ten o'clock before we got home.

I'm buying three more new tires this weekend and getting my oil changed and, undoubtedly, enduring another lecture on preventive car maintenance.

=)

Monday, June 20, 2005

Also, I'm a little confused.

The bike I bought this weekend is a Schwinn and the model says it's a Jaguar. I know nothing about bicycles, but when I googled it just now to try to find a picture for you, all I got were all these posts about vintage Schwinn Jaguars.

This bike is definitely not vintage. It's brand new and we bought it at Target. But I can't seem to find pictures or even a mention of it ANYWHERE -- not on the Target website, not on the Schwinn website...

But I guess it doesn't matter -- I love the bike!

weekend update with kevin neland

(I think I've just dated myself -- Kevin Neland isn't even on SNL anymore, is he?)

Holy cow but we were productive this weekend. We had our first pre-marriage counseling session with Reese at church, we shopped for wedding rings -- and probably found two that we are quite happy with, we cleaned the house from top to bottom and front to back, we went grocery shopping, we shopped for shoes, we went to our first swing dancing class, AND we bought two new bicycles.

*whew!*

I'm exhausted just thinking about it!

I also finished the next chapter of Sect, so BOO-YA! It's at the beta. Expect it within a couple of days. =D

PRODUCTIVITY!

It'll never last.

Friday, June 17, 2005

I can't decide if it's sadder that our first casual Friday in MONTHS has the ability to make everyone in this office so bleeding happy, or if it's sadder that the company obviously doesn't care enough about our happiness to let us have casual Fridays on a regular basis (even though NO ONE in this office deals with customers face to face on any sort of a regular basis).

Either way, I'm wearing jeans and a polo shirt with a pink whale on it. Now THAT is happiness.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

more earthquakes

OK. I'm done with this whole earthquake thing now. It can stop any time it wants to.

We had ANOTHER one just now, literally, ten minutes ago, centered near Riverside of magnitude 5.3. The whole building shook and I got that rolling sensation people talking about (like the ground is moving in waves). This one lasted a LOT longer than the other one -- maybe 15 or 20 seconds -- though the bad shaking didn't last for very long.

Also, when I was looking at the web site (which is going in ALL my bookmarks now), it said there was a little one (2.0) right near our house.

Wonderful.

Really, I'm done with this now. Make it stop!

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

random acts of poetry

I
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!'



II
Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?'
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.



III
'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
Please to be sending positive thoughts to my Brandon at 2pm Pacific time as he does his thesis defense thingy.

Thank you.

What tsunami? Oh *that* tsu--

My Mum called to ask me if we survived the tsunami warning last night.

Tsunami what now?

I love how, even though we were watching TV for a while last night, even though I was listening to NPR this morning, there was absolutely NO mention of it in the local media...

...but aparently they all knew about it in Texas.

Nice.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Updates



Thank you. As you were.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

earthquake!!!!!!

I have just been through my first earthquake.

Well, the first one we've felt anyway.

According to this very cool page it was a magnitude 5.6 located out in the desert somewhere near Lake Elsinore. We felt it and I said it was an earthquake and Brandon said it was our upstairs neighbor falling down, and I googled "live earthquake" and found that site.

Woah.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Hail the conquering hero

Brandon is on his last week of school. I knew he was getting excited when he went out and bought two bottles of champagne for his Friday lab meeting -- normally he takes a bag of store-bought cookies. =)

Commencement (which no amount of wife-to-be nagging would convince him he should attend) is Saturday, and yesterday he went to an awards ceremony where he received an award for his outstanding work as a Teacher's Assistant!

*polite applause*

And, it came with a $600 check attached to it.

*wild racous cheering*

This is mildly ironic, as I'm sure that Brandon's LEAST favorite aspect of attending graduate school was his stint as a TA. However, this is a fairly high honor; according to rumor, it hasn't been given to anyone in the Biotechnology department in something like ten years.

I am proud of my boy. =D Even if he did call his students "sprogs" more often than he actually addressed them by name...

Monday, June 06, 2005

California dreamin'

OK. I'll admit it: Southern California does have a few good things going for it.

We met up with the Niriders this weekend and got to spend some quality time communing with some of the best that So Cal has to offer. That doesn't fall into the category of a theme park. =)

Saturday the Niriders needed a break after spending two and a half days at the happiest place on Earth, so we headed to Crystal Cove State Park. The morning started out cloudy and cool, but it was low tide and perfect tide pool exploring weather. I swear to you, I have never seen so many crabs in my life. =) A very nice lifeguard with nothing to do talked with us for a while and took a group photo, and some squirrels made us feel very welcome by coming right up and taking fruit and nuts directly from the kids' hands.

After Crystal Cove we went to the Shake Shake that Rebecca took me to -- litterally, a shack on the cliff overlooking the ocean which sells sandwhiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, and lots and lots of milkshakes.

With bellies full of turkey sandwhiches and oreo milkshakes, we decided to drive around a bit, take in some more of the scenery, and find another beach. We ended up at the Strand in Dana Point -- the beach which runs directly below the Ritz Carlton where we had our company party a few weeks ago. By this time the sun had made a good showing and the kids got brave enough to do a little body surfing, though not for too long as hypothermia began to set in. =)

A leisurely drive up Highway 1 brought us back to the apartment where we cleaned up and then headed over to Claim Jumper for dinner, a dozen or so rounds of hangman, and a Brownie Finale -- which fed all six of us quite easily.

Sunday the fam came to church with us, and the choir sang a rousing version of "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" which always makes me feel like we should have top hats and canes -- or, alternately, matching bow ties. But we must have done a good job of it because it earned us a spontanious "AMEN!" from someone in the congregation and a round of applause. It is an awfully fun song...

After church Brandon took his leave to get some work done on his final project, and the Niriders let me tag along with them to see the Queen Mary, which I had never done. The ship is ENORMOUS and terribly impressive, though not terribly easy to navigate. We had lunch in the Promenade Cafe overlooking the harbor and then wandered around exploring the ship. We never did find the World War Two exhibit Lee wanted to see, but we did do the Ghosts and Legends tour and went through the Russian submarine (it was only decomissioned in the mid nineties, and there were signs all around saying -- "This sub is still in working order: please do not operate controls!"). Elliot was kind enough to hold my hand and hide a lot through the Ghosts and Legends tour to make me feel braver. =)

Overall, a very fun weekend! Today, the Nirider clan was planning to head to San Diego and the world famous zoo before heading up to Santa Monica where they will stay for the rest of their trip.

And, as if I hadn't had enough fun for a few days, my friend Charlsa and her husband Kevin are in town. They're going to be on The Price is Right today! (They had an extra ticket, but since I was out sick last week, I couldn't quite justify playing hookey -- plus I would SUCK if I was told to "Come on down!") Anyway, we have plans to meet them for dinner tonight, and maybe -- just maybe! -- they'll drive up in....

A NEW CAR!!!!!!

*Price Is Right music and wild cheering*

Friday, June 03, 2005

Hee HEE!

My friend Kris has made a bunch of iCons -- icons for LiveJournal that look like the iPod ads. They so totally ROCK! Look what she made for me:





SQUEE!! They're just so COOL, don't you think? Click here to see the rest of them.

Love it.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Updates

Oh no.

They've changed the code to the doors of the office again. I sit near the door to the back stairs, and every time they change the code, I have to listen to this:

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep.

Because everybody forgets and tries the old code first, and it doesn't work, and then they remember the new code. It's going to be a long day.

Yesterday, they sent out an email saying that the network administrator guy is no longer with the company. That was a bit of a shocker. My coworker went and asked the Boss Man what he knew, and he said that all he knew was that the Network Guy didn't quit.

*duh duh DAAAAAA*

He also said something to the effect of New York doesn't know what to do with us (me and my coworker). Big surprise there. I am waiting for the other shoe to drop and fantasizing about taking a month off to write my book and finish planning my wedding... (Does that tell you how concerned I am?)

* * *

In happier news, I have updated the wedding blog with exciting new stuff. And remember folks: you can leave comments. You don't even have to register with Blogger. You just click on that link that says "comments" and then the one that says "leave a comment" and go for it. It would make this poor blogger's day. ;c)

Haven't heard anything from the Niriders yet, but that is to be expected, as they are supposed to be in the Happiest Place On EarthTM until Friday. Got a nice email from Les before they left and found out that they will be staying down here very near to us, so hopefully we will be able to meet up this weekend. That is, if they don't get stuck in the Small World Ride.

"It's a world of laughter a world of tears, it's a world of hope and a world of fears. There's so much that we share that it's time we're aware, it's a SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL!"

Haha! Got you! Now you'll be humming that for the rest of the day! (Then again, so will I...)

* * *

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep.

*facedesk*