Today I got to spend time with my mom and a couple of her friends. It turns out that my mom took a little mini trip this weekend in my neck of the woods and so we met up for lunch.

After lunch we hit up Paseo Nuevo where much money was spent by all—including me. I needed a new outfit for Melany’s wedding in 2 weeks. I mean, I have stuff, but it’s all old and been worn to a million places. I initially wanted a dress, but apparently dresses are not “in” this season, as none of the places I went to had dresses.

Ok, that’s not entirely true. Express had exactly 2 dresses—both strapless, and Macy’s had dresses that would be perfect if I was attending a Winter Formal. If I had to guess, I would have to say that pants are the new dress this winter.

I managed though to find a cute skirt and shirt at The Limited. The shirt IS sleveless though, so I have to hope that the outdoor wedding doesn’t get too cold. Ah well, all in the name of fashion, right? The outfit is all black, with a hint of lavender accent in the skirt—so hopefully that doesn’t make it morbid. :)

Anyway, I had a nice afternoon, and it was nice to actually have family come visit me—even if just for an afternoon.

Posted at 9:44 PM | (3)

That’s right, I WON THE PUMPKIN CONTEST!!! There only turned out to be 3 other competitors, but I still beat them. I won a See’s Candy container filled with chocolate balls.

There were a lot of people who dressed up—and three departments went all out in decorating. One department did a Wizard of Oz theme—complete with hanging flying monkeys, a house falling on Munchkin land, a Yellow Brick Road, a curtain where the Wizard was hiding, “poppy” cupcakes, and of course people dressed up as Dorothy, Tin Man, Scarecrow, Glinda, and an Oz Guard.

The other department did a Hell theme. They had cobwebs everywhere, a Hell Newsletter, I Love Hell stickers, Pin the tail on the catastrophe, food that looked like fingers, a slideshow presentation, Rosemary’s Baby, and lots of other stuff that I can’t remember.

The third department did a Pirates of the Carribean theme, with smoke machine, talking parrot, lines on the ground to make it look like a map, at the end of which was a treasure chest filled with chocolate gold coins, and of course people dressed as Pirates and the obligatory Jack Sparrow reference and computer desktop background.

So that was pretty cool. I think it motivated our department to try to do something next year. Hooray for me though for winning the pumpkin contest! The first two departments wound up tying for best decorations—the judges couldn’t choose between them.

Posted at 11:21 AM | (3)

For those of you who are interested, I finished carving my pumpkin last night. It took me over 2 hours to clean and carve the thing!

Anyway, I’ll let you all know if I win or anything. Might take me awhile though—many festivities are planned today, including costume contest, pumpkin contest, snacks, seeing departments that decorated, and a treasure hunt!

See below for the photo of the finished pumpkin.

Posted at 7:42 AM | (3)

It’s a rainy day and I don’t feel like working, so I’ll do this book meme that I found on Leonieke’s site.

Hardback or Paperback?
If I’m purchasing, then paperback. If I’m borrowing from a library I prefer hardback (they are less mutilated)

Highlight or Underline?
OMG, I would NEVER deface a book with ANY markings!

Lewis or Tolkien?
Umm never really read either. I own the whole Chronicles of Narnia series, but never even made it through The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And I’ve only seen the LOTR movies! *gasp*

E.B. White or A.A. Milne?
E.B. White I guess. I liked Charlotte’s Web, and Pooh makes me angry with his stupidity (although that could just be the Disney version)

T.S. Eliot or e.e. cummings?
Haven’t read too much of either, but I guess I’ll say T. S. Eliot because Cummings’s lack of capitalization in his work (and his name) distresses me.

Stephen King or Dean Koontz?
Haven’t read either—not my genre.

Barnes & Noble or Borders?
Borders—they are bigger and have more locations near me—although one is across from the Barnes & Noble!

Waldenbooks or B. Dalton?
B. Dalton I guess, for nostalgic reasons—they used to be in the crappy Whittwood Mall.

Fantasy or Science Fiction?
I don’t read too much of either—I guess I’ve read more Fantasy though, so I’ll go with that.

Horror or Suspense?
I don’t know what qualifies as suspense, but I hate horror, so I’ll say suspense.

Bookmark or Dogear?
People who dogear should be shot! It totally messes up the book! I bookmark, or stick a random piece of paper in there.

Hemingway or Faulkner?
Anyone who knows me knows the answer to this. I detest both IMMENSELY. Please don’t make me choose who is the lesser of the two evils.

Fitzgerald or Steinbeck?
Haven’t read Steinbeck—can’t get myself up to read the depressing Grapes of Wrath. But I loved the Great Gatsby, so Fitzgerald definitely wins.

John Irving or John Updike?
Don’t think I’ve read either, though I’ve thought about reading some of the Rabbit series.

Homer or Plato?
Homer—I dig the mythology.

Geoffrey Chaucer or Edmund Spenser?
Chaucer—more entertaining reading—and I read it in Middle English!

Pen or Pencil?
Pen—even when doing crosswords (I’m so hardcore). Does anyone even use pencils anymore?! (Besides me at work, when I stab myself in the wrist with them by accident.)

Looseleaf or Notebook?
Generally notebook, with the perforated edges, so you can take a page with you if need be.

Alphabetize: By Author or By Title?
Author then title.

Dustjacket: On or Off?
Usually on—I like to keep my books as they were meant to look. But if it keeps falling off, I’ll take it off while reading, but put it back on when I’m done.

Novella or Epic?
Novella I suppose—the epics tend to get to be too much.

John Grisham or Scott Turow?
Never even heard of Turow, and haven’t read Grisham.

J.K. Rowling or Lemony Snicket?
Haven’t read either, but since Rowling is on my list of books, I’ll go with her.

Fiction or Non-fiction?
Fiction.

Historical Biography or Historical Romance?
Depends on the person(s) on which the historical work is based, though I’ve read historical biographies and not romances…

A Few Pages per Sitting or Finish at Least a Chapter?
I try to always end on a chapter, but it depends on the length—sometimes I just don’t have time.

Short Story or Creative Non-fiction Essay?
Short story.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?
Once upon a time.

Buy or Borrow?
Borrow. I used to own all my books, but I just don’t have that kind of money or space. So now I borrow—hooray for multiple branches of a library where they ship books to the location most convenient for you!

Book Reviews or Word of Mouth?
Word of mouth I suppose, since I don’t read reviews. I’ll generally want to read it though if it’s new and somehow gained enough attention that I’ve heard of it.

This afternoon I bought what will hopefully be a prize-winning pumpkin, when painstakingly carved. I am lucky that the nearest pumpkin patch is only a few blocks from my house—at a nifty little farm nestled in suburban housing tracts.

The farm actually looks pretty cool—they have animals and carriages you can rent for weddings, and they were giving horse-drawn carriage rides for people when I went. You can also buy things like strawberries and corn and squash there, although for obvious reasons pumpkins were all around as far as the eye could see.

It’s actually quite amazing that so many people go through all the trouble to buy real pumpkins—they are messy and go bad and it would be a lot less hassle to just buy a plastic light-up one. But I suppose half the fun is carving it—especially when you are a little kid. I still like the carving part, although the cleaning part thoroughly grosses me out. Why do pumpkins have to have such disgusting strings and seeds inside them??

Ahh well, I guess I’ll just have to brave it out. I know I can get through it, I’ve done it once before. It’s just, well, gross! After all this effort I better win a prize at my company’s carving contest on Friday!

Posted at 10:23 PM | (3)

…for Halloween, that is. Next Friday my company is having a bunch of contests for various things.

Prizes will be given for:

Individual costumes
Themed department costumes
Department decoration
Best pumpkin carving

I already intend to do my nifty “Happy Halloween” pumpkin (even though cleaning out pumpkins is totally gross), but I am debating if I should dress up as well. A lot of people seem to have dressed up in the past, and whole departments have been turned into haunted houses and such. Hehe what a change from my last job, where they have essentially banned any sort of fun or festivity—especially if related to a “holiday”.

So anyway, should I dress up? If so, as what? Based on photos from previous years, most people seemed to pull together their own outfits, as opposed to wearing some premade store-bought costume. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Posted at 1:57 PM | (10)

Ok, I realize that I already posted an entry about Storm Watch 2004 earlier this year, but I’m just going to assume that most of you skim my entries anyway and don’t realize that I’m repeating titles/topics.

Anyway, this storm watch gets a mention because it’s been raining for 5 days. Not 24/7 or anything, but enough to get some notice. For most of the day there will be light little sprinkles, but then there are the times when the sky just opens up and pours water down on us. I just looked on some weather pages and see that the massive storm front is now over LA, but I hear that another one is supposed to hit SB today.

Santa Barbara, not wanting to tarnish its image as a mildly-temperatured, sunny paradise, did not create adequate drainage here. As a result, whenever it rains, it floods! The water has nowhere to go except rise up to the level of sidewalks. The flooding has subsided a bit since it hasn’t rained much for at least a few hours, but give it 20 minutes of hard rain and it’ll be back.

Sorta reminds me of New Orleans that way….

Posted at 9:37 AM | (1)

Woohoo, my business cards have finally arrived! Never mind that I’ve already worked here for 2 months and have had a few instances where including my card for a new freelance person would’ve been nice. The important thing is that THEY ARE FINALLY HERE!

If you know me personally, you will probably get one of these cards thrown at you now. Get them while they are hot! I am so excited by this—makes it feel like a REAL job, you know? Not to mention all the free lunches I could potentially win now. :)

Posted at 4:05 PM | (4)

Ok, so there’s no water being dropped incessently on my forehead, but there is the drip-drip-drip sound of tiny drops falling in a constant stream into a bucket.

We got our first rain of the season this weekend, and it’s still raining off and on today. As a result, there is water leaking from an open ceiling tile near my desk. This tile has apparently been open for awhile, until the maintanence people work on it, which it would seem they have yet to do.

Anyway, the dripping sound has been going non-stop since I got here, and I think I may be driven to madness if it keeps up for the entire day.

Posted at 10:23 AM | (2)

This quarter I’m taking a class to learn how to use Flash. So far, the class is a lot of fun. I’ve learned how to do a lot of stuff—including basic animations, interactive things, and websites with buttons. The instructor is also quite nice and helpful.

He is also a photographer and brought along his Canon 20D (omg how I wish I had a 20D—hell, I wish I had a 10D!) to class today to have his assistant take everyone’s picture. The idea was to take a series of shots of people and have them use the pictures to do something with them in Flash.

Anyway, one of the shots of me came out so totally cute, which is kinda surprising considering that I was having a funky hair day. So anyway, if you would like to see me and all my cuteness, look at the extended entry.

Posted at 8:29 PM | (10)

OMG, I totally just stabbed myself in the wrist with a pencil right now.

The pencil was sitting at the bottom of my keyboard, and my wrist managed to snag it and make the writing tip dig into my wrist. Now there is a little circular dent sitting right on top of one of the veins. If I was trying to off myself, I guess I just found out that this way isn’t effective (unless it’s just a very slow death and the graphite is poisoning me as we speak). It hurt, but luckily didn’t pierce the skin, as the pencil was no longer newly sharpened.

I’m such a dork—my desk is hazardous to my health!

Posted at 2:33 PM | (6)

Ok, I know the show is no longer on the air, but I don’t receive the movie channels, so cut me some slack! I am finally making my way through the first 5 seasons of Sex and the City. I will refuse to attempt to watch season 6 until the second half is out this December.

Anyway, I guess the show is kinda addicting—maybe because these people can manage to be so successful professionally, but just suck when it comes to making personal decisions.

It’s hard to relate to any one character fully, because obviously I’m not in my 30’s or successful, and I don’t have anything close to a close group of female friends, but I think I relate to Carrie the most. Sans the shoe obsession and smoking of course. I’m a writer (if you count this blog!), have had the sort of on again, off again relationship thing, and like to think I’m smart and funny, in a quirky, semi-neurotic sort of way.

Charlotte is a bit of a closet whore. She’s so adamant about certain Victorian principles, and yet she has just as much sex as anyone. Besides some of her facial expressions, I don’t think I have much in common besides her lack of swearing.

Miranda I probably only relate to in terms of her pessimism and somewhat off-putting demeanor. Samantha I think I have nothing in common with. :)

Anyway, I’m only 3/4 of the way through Season 3 (so no ruining it Martin!) Does anyone relate to any one of the women more than the others? How do you feel about Aidan vs. Mr. Big??

Posted at 12:48 PM | (9)

Got my car back yesterday. They drove my car all over town to make sure the light wouldn’t come back on. I drive it for like 10 minutes and it comes back on as soon as I come to a stop. WTF man?!

I’m tired of taking it in and waiting, and taking the bus and waiting, and making sure I have exact change to get on the bus. The other day I had to skip lunch because I didn’t think to order delivery on time, didn’t have a car to drive anywhere, and didn’t have enough single bills for the vending machine. Actually, I did find someone to break a $5, but all I bought was some cookies and a soda.

So, I’m going to wait. The guy at the dealership tells me that the light is mostly emissions system stuff—it’s stuff that doesn’t affect how your car runs, it’s just there because of newer emissions standards. So as long as the light doesn’t start flashing (a sign that the problem IS serious), I’m going to ignore it until I take it in for my next oil change, which is about 2,000 miles away. At that time though, they better fix it so that it stays off!

Admittedly, I think the light being on constantly is going to drive me nuts, but I guess it’s better than losing my freedom every 2 days when I take the car in to be “fixed”.

While taking the bus several times this week, I have made an observation. I think you can tell how “normal” you are based on seating arrangements. This is especially true if you start out sitting on a relatively empty bus.

Think about it. When you get on a bus, you usually take a seat that is not directly next to anyone else, whenever possible (This of course doesn’t apply if you’re traveling with friends. You’d probably sit right next to your group). People always leave a space between seats, or go sit in an empty row. My theory comes into play when no more “safe” seats are available.

When you are forced to sit directly next to someone, you take a seat next to the person who looks the most normal, right? You sit next to the cute one, the nicely dressed one, or the one with all his/her teeth who isn’t mumbling to him/herself. Basically, you sit next to the ones who don’t creep you out. So my theory is that if no one sits next to you until you’re the absolute last option, then you just might come across as a little “off.”

This isn’t a hard and fast rule, of course, because it is dependent on many factors like where you are sitting, when the other person will be getting off the bus, etc. But it does seem like, given the option between a non-descript person and one who looks a little dodgier that people usually go for the safe bet.

And I don’t know why, but I sometimes find it comforting when people choose to sit next to me before some of the other normal looking people—unless of course they are creepy themselves…

Posted at 10:32 AM | (6)

My car is having issues. Thankfully, these are not expensive issues, nor are they ones that noticeably affect the day-to-day driving of my car, but they are issues nonetheless.

For the third time in 1 1/2 months, the malfunction indicator light has come on in my Jetta. For anyone counting, I took my car in back in mid-August, where they replaced some coil or something. Then this Monday (TWO DAYS AGO!) I took it in and they replaced some oxygen intake sensor. And now, not 24 hours after I had it back in my possession, the light came on again.

Luckily all this stuff falls under warranty, so the only cost to me is the $2.50 roundtrip busfare needed to get to work and then retrieve my vehicle. I hope that this isn’t the beginning of the end for my car—it’s been pretty problem-free since I got it back in April 2002 (barring the very first time the MIL light came on, probably a result of me using lower-grade gasoline).

I’m hoping that when I get it back this time that the light manages to stay off for at least 6 months! Otherwise, I’ll start to get the impression that the service guys just want to see me come in twice a week! The guy who helped me this morning remembered my last name from Monday and joked that they set the lights to come on so that the nice customers will have to come to the shop. I thought it was just a joke, but maybe there’s something to it….hmm…..

I guess I’m just irresistable this week! ;)

Posted at 10:30 AM | (4)

I needed to break up some of my larger bills, so I decided to go buy a sandwich for lunch. There I either encountered the most flattering service or else just met a guy with the world’s worst memory. Personally I prefer to imagine that it is the former, but odds are it’s the latter.

So, I go order this sandwich—a small #2 on white bread, which is a turkey and cheese sandwich. When he grabs the bread I tell him that I only want the meat and cheese, so he then spreads mayonnaise all over it. Then he asks if I wanted mayonnaise, and when I say no, he grabs another piece of bread. He looks slightly flustered and then asks me again what sandwich I wanted. I repeat that I wanted a number 2.

So then he asks what I want on my sandwich, and I reiterate that I only wanted meat and cheese, to which he seems embarrassed and says “oh, you already said that.” Repeat this process with the cheese, where I tell him I want American, but he’s still putting on the meat. By the time he gets to the cheese, he has to ask me again.

Then comes the drink. He asks if I would like anything, so I say a medium coke. He grabs the correct cup, and I start to rummage in my purse to find my wallet. I look up to see him staring at me. “What did you want to drink?” he stutters. “Coke,” I say.

I manage to get my lunch correctly prepared, and charged at the correct price. He then politely tells me to enjoy my sandwich.

I’d almost be upset by this encounter, except that I DID wind up with the right food, and he COULDN’T REMEMBER ANYTHING—I mean, it was just beyond any level I’ve ever seen! He might just have been new, but see, I’d like to think that he was just so taken aback by my stunning beauty that he was unable to retain anything in his memory, save for the image of my lovely visage etched indelibly in his mind.

Posted at 12:34 PM | (2)

I have to tell you all a secret. I’m in love….with my paper shredder.

I bought it months ago, but I have to say that it is the best $20 I have ever spent. Who knew shredding paper could be so much fun, even almost 1 year later? I shred anything that is even remotely paper—old bills, envelopes, scrap paper, etc. There is just something so cool about sticking in a piece of paper, hearing the blades start whirring, and the sound of the paper being cut into hundreds of teeny tiny strips.

When the basket is full, you have a large collection of colorful shredded paper, perfect for using as confetti, or creating a mess all over your floor as you try to put it in a plastic bag to dispose of it, thus making you vacuum for 20 minutes just to get every last, microscopic piece. Not that I’ve done that, mind you.

The best part is, there is ALWAYS something for me to shred! I get tons of useless snail mail. Sometimes I admittedly get a bit overzealous and jam my shredder. One time I got paper so stuck that I had to resort to tweezers to dig down into the blades and pluck the clumps of paper out of the machine. Don’t worry, I did remember to turn the machine OFF before attempting to stick my hand near the blades—just like the cute little icons show on the top of the machine.

Anyone else out there share my obsession? Anyone……anyone at all??

Posted at 2:33 PM | (7)

This morning I didn’t have time to spend a half hour messing with my hair just to have it look crappy like it does half the time anyway. My hair has grown quite a bit since I got it cut in July, and I noticed that I can now put it in a ponytail.

So my hair is in a ponytail today for the first time in months and all I can say is that my hair hurts! You girls out there know what I’m talking about. Anyway, it’s an annoying feeling, and I can’t do anything about it right now. My hair has been up for so long already that if I take it down, I’ll have a stupid crease in my hair, which will look totally weird.

Only 2 more hours until I can let my hair down! *Pun intended?* :)

Posted at 2:02 PM | (4)

Today we have bagels again at work. I think I figured it out—the first friday of the month is Bagel Day! This place rocks! There’s a lot of cool little things that this place does for its employees, which is nice. The only thing that I can complain about this morning is that they only had LITE cream cheese, and no regular! I suppose most of the staff is probably grateful for that, but I say bring on the calories, bring on the flavor!

Posted at 8:34 AM | (6)