training (and inadvertantly skiing) update

So I'm still training for The Overnight... that crazy 20 mile walk I'm doing. http://www.theovernight.org/fundraising/yvette

It's going ok - I wouldn't say swimmingly but I'm not failing by anyone's definition even my own (and I'm my own harshest critic). I took a week off when I was working 13+ hr days and I haven't gone out on weekends due to skiing (yay!). I'm finding the gym to be a trying place to walk long distances unless there's good TV on. But it's Seattle and it's not nice out so I'm doing it there since boring is better than dark, wet and miserable. I can't wait for the days to dry out more regularly (and get longer) so I can do more walking outside. I definitely have some plans to walk to the local office (rather than driving to the further away office I actually work in) and to walk to the bus and do weekend farmers market walks (which I do all Spring-Fall anyways). I've definitely spent a lot of my weekend long-walk time skiing - but hey - the snow's been SUPERB! And that's cross training, right? ;) Except I think I want to mix up my weekday routine to have a bit more cross training there rather than always straight up walking.

Walking for a cause

So Cathy requested that I mention how my walking training for the AFSP is going... and here's where I'm giving it!

Background:

When Susan died, I lost it utterly. An old college friend contacted me about the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) and how they have a 20 mile Overnight Walk to raise awareness of depression and suicide. This year it's the last weekend of June in Chicago. We leave at dusk and end our walk at dawn - bringing suicide into the light so people can talk. I thought about doing it for a long time but figured I'd never manage the logistics since it's literally 2 weeks after I get back from my Ecuador / Galapagos vacation. Except then some of Susans other friends decided to do it and form a team in her memory - so one morning I decided to go for it and sign up! Ever since I've been raising money. I need to raise $1000 in donations to be elligible to officially walk and I'm nearly there. My personal goal is $2500. http://www.theovernight.org/fundraising/yvette

So that's the background.

Now I'm working to get the endurance up to walk 20 straight miles through Chicago against my body's desire to sleep. I know I can do it. We have about 10 hrs and there are pit stops every 2 hrs with porta potties and water. In the middle they serve us lunch/dinner/snack/something.

I joined up at the new gym that opened down the street when it was still on it's gaining enrollment sale. I've gone just about every other day - only missing a day for skiing (mmmmm). So I've done a lot better than before.

I'm not a fast walker - never have been - and I hate running. But the difference is I *like* walking. So walk I have been. I can easily maintain a 20-ish min mile which is far faster than I have to go for the walk for a few hrs. I'm not sure yet that I can maintain it for 20 hrs. But I have a plan and I've stuck to it. I plan to walk 350 miles (ish) including the last 20 in Chicago in order to get ready and do this. This is around my vacation. I've walked 14% of that so far - aka 15 miles. I'm behind what I was supposed to be for training - but a big chunk of that is yesterday & today since yesterday I spent the day skiing and today I spent it recovering since I couldn't move my neck after a nasty fall. I expect to get further and further behind due to skiing in the next few weeks (since next weekend I go to Whistler).

And that's how it's going. I'm super excited and glad that I'm doing this - both the training and the actual walk.

Good for ya Cathy? *grins*

The Middleman

There's a new show on ABC Family entitled The Middleman which is bloody brilliant! It makes fun of every scifi and sitcom out there in a way that's seriously not expected of ABC let alone ABC Family.

I watch the ironic, the cheesey and the embarassing when it comes to TV. There are a few TV shows which I recommend including Heroes, Weeds & Chuck, however, the one that has gone unmentioned from pop culture is The Middleman which America's pop culture has left un-named.

I'm amazed by the ability to make me rewind because I missed a single line of dialogue. There are many movies and tv shows out there that make me happy (ie August Rush which made me smile like a silly woman reading LOLCats) and even a few other ABC Family shows that should be deemed craptastic that I still deem worth of a slot in my TiVo recording, however this one is actually good. No seriously, I may giggle madly at post on icanhascheezburber.com but this is better because it seriously makes fun of both hour long soap operas, scifi geeky comedies and punaliciousness all at once.

It subtitles locations in a way that would normally be deemed cheesy and trying too hard, but in context makes so much sense. The puns are punalicious (quoting from the Seattle-ite on Project Runway - yes I'm admitting to my bad tv watching habits); the pop culture references are sublime; and the jokes don't try to hide themselves behind intelligence. They're just funny - they don't disguise the humanity, hillarity or geekiness behinde it. I guess the main thing going for this show is the unexpected embrace for geek-ity along with reasonably good puns and the fact that who the hell watches ABC Family???

I actually recommend it... SERIOUSLY!

my version of skewed world perception

Lately I've been eye-ing a wintertime trip to Australia. The entire thing sounds perfect for me the way I've laid it out - especially given all my constraints.

I haven't booked yet for a myriad of reasons... yet there's one that stands out 'cause it makes me laugh and be aghast at myself (because I like thinking about myself in the third person apparently).

Australia seems too tame and mundane to me. WTF!!! Is this a trophy to be collected? It meets all my criteria for my vacation... but tame and mundane? This is what happens when I become the spoiled well traveled girl who's got a long list and thinks that Australia appears superficially the most boring of them all. All the rest of the reasons for my hesitation are more "normal" (fear, cost, trying to pick the right dates), but thinking it's so much more average than Thailand or the Galapagos or Morocco... I guess it will seem more normal being an English speaking country so there won't be the basic communication barrier, but I have a feeling bits of it will be completely different.

I make myself laugh with the thoughts of "oh how normal" reminding myself that it only seems normal due to my previous travel destinations. And then I remind myself this is the last continent I'll probably ever go to (Antarctica? I wouldn't say no to an all expenses paid by someone else trip there, but it's at the bottom of my list otherwise) And they have dang cute koalas (hopefully not nearly as nasty as monkeys who hide behind their cute faces).

travel bug caught

I have the travel bug again and my list of places to visit is longer than ever... let's see what my brain comes up with on this midnight ramble so I can potentially plan myself a wee lil' vacation since I've accrued nearly 8 days...

Places near and far:

• Galapagos Islands
• Croatia - coasts and hiking
  
• Turkey - Istanbul and around the country
• Tokyo
• Toronto
• Austin, TX
• Hawaii - don't care where - just want a beach break
  
• Germany - the entire country tour
• Carribbean Island - same as Hawaii plus a bit of wondering for some other personal history reasons
• Singapore
• Argentina - whereever Kim tells me to go
• Portland, OR - can you believe I have never been? sacrilege!
• Australia - not sure where in that big beautiful country - but that wouldn't stop me
• New Zealand
• Portugal

I don't have any upcoming travel plans other than those related to work.. Hrm.. Must find travel buddy.

rather than coding, I'm thinking about pictures and my own history

In egocentric attempts to recover memories of times gone by, I started posting my Semester at Sea pics again to my Flickr account.  I realized that all the photos I recovered via teh intrawebz back in Sept 2006 after the robbery didn't get organized correctly and I was missing a lot of pics and data about my Semester at Sea experience.  (I'm also missing craploads of Dartmouth day pics and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they're backed up somewhere out there on CD in my one unpacked room.)

So I started reorganizing my MacBook at home to try to get a handle on my digital library of photos.  And while doing that I'll be doing a country-by-country (re)upload of photos from Semester at Sea.  I took down the old subset of photos so that I won't have dupes and this time I'm labeling as I go.

The amazing thing about this is that even just seeing what's captured in a photo of a moment sometime between September and December of 2000 brings me back to that place.  I can remember where I was, what the food tasted like, how sunburnt or homesick I was, and all sorts of other trivial details.  I'm able to recover data from my brain I didn't know I remembered like what monuments were called, when I saw them, and who that one random person I met for one hour of my life was. 

I'm having my own egocentric "oooo wow that was fun!" set of photo flashbacks.  And yeah, it's making the travel bug rear it's ugly head.  Galapagos Islands seem of great interest to me at the moment as does traveling in Turkey - talk about diverse.

But thankfully I'm on my work laptop and no where near the digital library of memories, so it's time to go back to work so that Sunday when I'm recovering from a day of fun-in-the-sun and housewarming party I can lazily label and post more photos.

Stuff Yvette Likes

Someone else posted in their blog items from the Stuff White People Like blog. I thought it was ingenious and went through the blog again to find all the stuff that applies to me! So here's the list in order from most applicable to least applicable to me from my point of view... The top 10-12 are pretty close - depending on the situation or whatnot. 

1. Traveling (leaving tomorrow)
2. Gentrification (look at my new house)
3. Study Abroad (Semester at Sea)
4. Dogs (puppy!)
5. Outdoor Performance Clothing (I think between K2 and North Face I should own stock)
6. Recycling (yup, I'm a recycler)
7. T-shirts (woe is my closet)
8. Indie Music (anytime)
9. Apple Products (iPod, iPod Shuffle, MBP, MB, iPhone, iMac, iBook...)
10. Bad Memories of High School (therapy please)
11. Netflix (subscriber)
12. Wine (drinking it now - mighty fine)
13. Microbreweries (I live in the pacific northwest - of course)
14. Bottles of Water (goes with the recycling - it's expected)
15. Standing Still at Concerts
16. Living by the Water
17. Irony
18. Farmers Markets (ironic since I don't go that often)
19. Breakfast Places (ironic since I don't even eat eggs in egg forms)
20. Grocery Co-ops
21. Difficult Breakups (hehe!)
22. Modern Furniture (look at my recent credit card bill - then you'll understand)
23. Idea of Soccer
24. Plays
25. Expensive Sandwiches
26. 80s Night
27. Apologies
28. Kitchen Gadgets
29. Arts Degrees
30. Having Gay Friends (but I do!)
    
31. Bicycles
32. Making You Feel Bad About Not Going Outside (I haven't been outside enough today... I even make myself feel bad!)
33. Japan
34. Diversity
35. Organic Foods
36. Being an Expert on Your! Culture

If you haven't read the blog - it's bloody brilliant!  Go read it!  And if you have then you'll know I'm pretty low on the scale with only choosing 36 out of the current 96 possibilities.

toe throbbing to the sound of a tennis ball smacking grass

I was driving home tonight from work around 10:30pm with KEXP blaring on my radio and my possibly broken toes throbbing to the beat of a song I'd never heard before.

I kept thinking about my comment this weekend to a friend about how I'm stubbornly independent... and suddenly out of nowhere there was a flashback. I might have been stubbornly independent putting up a 2 person required for assembly and preservation of one's toes book case this weekend, but dang, I've always done things that are a bit on the ludicrous side of proving my independence... like going to Wimbledon.

I couldn't remember if I'd ever blogged about my Wimbledon experience during the summer of 2006. Apparently I had. Rereading the post I was amazed at how I didn't mention all the points during the night where I freaked out and nearly gave up... at the airport in London, in the tube station, missing the night bus, on the night bus, getting off the night bus at the wrong stop, walking in circles in a dark neighborhood with a scary drunk on the corner... those were all times I wanted to stop and go find a hotel where I could lock my door and hide and give up and cry myself silly with patheticness. Instead I called my mother once or twice for fortification - I figured if she was freaked out for me I could be less freaked out for myself - it didn't quite work, but it was a valiant effort eh? Poor poor mom!! I think I gave her a few heart attacks during my Wimbledon adventure.

I never really knew why I didn't give up - and I still can't fathom what kept me going. I think not having a backup plan was part of it; wanting to get to the dang tennis match since I'd so carefully read up on how the entire thing worked was another; knowing I might see Agassi live drove me on for a bit there too. But part of it was just wanting to do it - knowing that I could do it if I just kept going - even if the going felt like scary trudging - and that was that end of story.

In the end that's the night I slept on a sidewalk for a handful of hours before getting ridiculously sun burnt. I think of the entire escapade and laugh and wish I could do it again. So possibly broken toes or not, I guess I am stubbornly independent - and dang it's fun to feel your toe throb to the radio station as you head to your new home late at night knowing that persistence really is a virtue..... sometimes!

Scrambled Brain

Disclaimer: Since I have a bunch of things I'd like to write about I'm going to start with a bulleted list of all these scrambly thoughts and see where it takes me.

• I really like python. I like python a lot more than perl. And django just seals the deal after learning mason since it's so much nicer. Although I think I'm biased since the perl/mason I was doing was working off of a huge existing codebase of other people's code and most of the python/django I'm doing is brand spankin' new. But I'm going to stick to liking python regardless of my possible biases.
• For the past year I haven't spent hours on end coding until today - I forgot how much it futzes with my brain and makes me feel all scatterbrained to finish up a really good productive day where everything I did was code. Now my job is much more random and although I get to code a lot it's not constant so I jump around more and I think that leaves me feeling less scattered at the end of the day since I was scattered during the day. I've always thought too fast - but now I realize it comes out differently when I'm coding or not.
• The plasma tv I ordered didn't fit in my brand new house's brand new living room on the brand new mantle because the brand new beautiful ceiling was in the way since the dang new fireplace is way too tall. I sent it back with the delivery guys and have a slightly smaller HD LCD tv coming Wednesday.
• I have fewer boxes and I'm officially out of my apartment. This is all due to my mother's good influence.
• I have a shopping list 12 miles long and I'm really really good at spending money. Thank goodness I'm employed. If anyone asks me if I'm ever going to get thing B or K or Z though again I'm going to scream. I may have a job but that doesn't mean I have unlimited resources and I don't want to rush the enjoyment of the hunt for the "perfect" item. I may dislike shopping sometimes but I love love love researching and browsing so I'm going to enjoy it.
• I'm starting crazy travel again. This all comes after making sure my hours are all packed - of course this means I need to go to CA, NV, NY, and who knows where else in the next month - let alone more than the next month. I already know I'll also be in CO, MT and OR as well this year sometime. Oh, thank you alaskaair for having my frequent flier miles. With you my dream of using miles to fly to Hawaii might come true. Now who wants to go to Hawaii? Oh, but before that I need to make my NV/NY trip reservations... I should do that now.
• I told you this list would be a brain scramble - you're even getting stream of conciousness.
• Goodnight.

oh there's not that much all nighter...

Today I took the day off to pack and get some of the more annoying to pack things over to the house (so I wouldn't have to pack them well enough for movers). I was done with my first run to the house by 12:30 today and pretty much cleared out the downstairs other than the dishes in the dishwasher, furniture & books. I don't have much left right?

Ok, so I procrastinate.... and procrastinate.... and suddenly it's almost 8pm and guess what - I went upstairs and holy crap I have a lot of $#!* in my closet! How did it all fit in there and how the heck am I going to get it all to the house and holy crap I'm freaking out.

So what do I do? Well of course I need to write this blog post about it rather than tackling it. And then I'll make dinner and watch some TV. And maybe after that I'll go back to packing packing packing...

I wish I could just leave my car in the alley and slowly load it as I find stuff but instead I have to get everything that will fit in the car packed up then load the car. But it would get towed if I did that which would not be the way to end my night.

While most people are out relaxing on their Friday nights, I'll be making a trip or two over to my new house with crap in my car swearing at my tendency to procrastinate. So raise a glass to me to wish me luck getting an hour or so of sleep tonight and getting past my ability to procrastinate with the best of 'em!

well huh

Today is the Hallmark holiday of Valentine's Day (Happy Valentine's Day all!) and I wasn't even the bitter single girl. I didn't have the energy since I somehow managed to let a flu I had last week turn into pneumonia this week (and I thought it'd just become a sinus infection). It's not horrid - just really ridiculously annoying and tiring and painful - ok, so maybe it is horrid. But y'know, I wasn't bitter a la single-dom since I'm embracing it - I was just a cesspool of germs. And to add to that, someone bought me dinner (including dessert) and gave me chocolate for Valentine's Day. I kid you not. I got my groceries from Amazon Fresh this morning, and they'd thrown in a free bag of chocolate. Then when I finally got hungry after not eating all day (not even my chocolate) I called for a pizza and when it arrived it was free and they'd brought me gelato too.... huh. Happy Valentine's Day to me. Now do cupid's arrows clear up my lungs so that I can talk without coughing? If I don't move, laugh or talk I can go quite a while without coughing....... but! Hehe.....

Puppies, Quilts & Houses

On March 7, 2008 I will be a homeowner if everything goes according to plan.

Today I sat in the home-office of my fantastic real estate agents and initialed and signed so much paperwork my signature started to look funny to me. I was doing this with the cutest puppy begging for some loving with his head in my lap. An hour later my agent called to tell me the offer's been accepted with only one legalese change (doesn't effect me much at all - costs me a whole $20 - so yeah, I'm ok with that).

Today my mom started hand cutting out pieces to the quilt she's making me with her friends. They can't follow any nice pattern pieces to do it and make it easy either. They have to measure and cut every single awkward triangle in this quilt and it'll be gorgeous. It may take her 2 years since it is a queen size quilt of only odd dimensioned triangles, but it'll be heaven in purples and greys.

Today I spent a lot of money.

I want a puppy to love everytime I sign away my life. I want a puppy period!

OMGP0N13S!!11!!!1!!!!!1!

Christmas in the Single Digits

I'm having a lazy Sunday at home - with a lot of emphasis on the lazy. I was flipping through the cable guide and didn't see anything, so I started channel surfing. I saw a snow explosion filmed with the color-tint of TV of the 80's and immediately recognized it as The Night They Saved Christmas.

1984 was the first time I saw this movie. Mom and Dad had to tape it for me. I'd watch it every day from Thanksgiving till Christmas from that year until much later. Mom probably still has the tape that finally dried up and died of overplaying (the only video I ever watched that often).

I've been in flashback land yesterday and today with the familial tragedy that occurred and the snow in Seattle; this just is more reminders of being a tiny lil' ragamuffin watching tv in the back bedroom and playing this movie over and over again.

So now I'm sitting here with a glass of wine watching the movie I grew up on. I'd fall asleep every night before Christmas wishing I could be one of the kids in this movie saving Santa and Christmas. And on Christmas Eve, even the years when I snooped and found the presents "Santa" gave me, I still went to sleep hoping there really was a Santa. I guess there's something to be said for good TV making you believe - this made me believe even when the Nintendo hidden in the back of Mom's closet should've told me there was no Santa.

It's a good night in my apartment remembering how nice it was to believe in Santa and how I later learned I made Mom sick of carrots (apparently they realized I was too smart to put them back or throw them out and knew I was a snoop, so Dad did the cookies and Mom ate the carrots - and I left a few cookies, but one carrot for every reindeer - EVERY reindeer).

Bittersweet memories of The Night They Saved Christmas.

how we justify consumerism

Recently I had to choose between getting a gift certificate and a gadget. And I took a short time relative to others who are still deciding. But the entire thing spurred conversations on how we justify our choices and desires.

I have some addictions in life - quite a few really - but all relatively harmless except for to my bank account and closet space. I just know that I'm really lucky in what I've made of my life accidentally and on purpose because it lets me justify so many things in life I never thought possible (let's just say that I realized this year that insanity might happen)! But I am addicted none-the-less to books, music, gadgets, yarn, furniture/household goods and shoes.

I must say it's an eclectic list, but I'm also a huge justifier. I was definitely more stringent when I was on my teacher-salary-budget with what I could get. I would justify the music and books by using the gift certificates I earned with my credit card-ing rent, auto insurance, groceries and other necessities when I was on the teacher-salary-budget. But then I was only allowed to get what I had a gift certificate for. When I increased to engineer-salary-budget I was able to justify more and in more categories I hadn't ventured into before. Should I have been? Who knows, but I live with consumerism like everyone else and have commercial desires!

I now have ways of justifying every one of my addictions although at the moment I'm not allowed to buy yarn, books & shoes. This list changes regularly and I allow myself loopholes of justification. But I'm cut off due to an overabundance and lack of use on some categories. Yet I can give you justification for how I'd buy shoes, for example: "if I throw out / donate (depending on condition) 3 pairs of shoes, I can replace them with one I've been drooling over for the past 3 weeks." Or books: "it's a small local bookstore and they're fantastic and we need to support them since I adore them so and I found this book I wouldn't have found at Amazon.com so I have to support them right?" I don't currently know of a justification for yarn.

Price is a factor in some things I justify - like gadgets. Space in some. Need in others. So when I was given the option of a gadget without a price point, I honestly didn't know how to un-justify it. It was a gadget I've wanted since it went on the market and I could tell you a million reasons why, but I had 3 reasons why I "wasn't allowed yet". Two of these reasons were technical and one was sticker-shock. Take away sticker shock and I was left trying to figure out if my 2 technical justifications were strong enough to stand up on their own. There was the "I don't need this" and the "it's not perfect" versus the "ooo shiney pretty toy please let me play with it and have it for my very own" factor.

I realized that I let myself splurge with windfalls and normally hold myself to a more rigorous standard otherwise. I have too much crap (heh - need to clean out my closet and craigs list this stuff) already so it's pretty easy to keep myself from overdoing in some areas. But dang, we change our justifications in life so easily.

And that my friends, is why I will be the owner of one shiney gadget I've been drooling over, lusting after and just plain wanting for months - but I'd resisted it... until yesterday when I could "justify" it to myself.

*gigglez*

I keep coming back to this one LOLCat pic and giggling madly.



I have no clue whatsoever why I find this one so entertaining. I think it's those cute kitteh blue eyes staring out at you. But whatever the case, I keep hitting "run" on my tests that I'm writing and then coming back to this picture and giggling.

*lulz*

after you

Ahh - gender differences and being a gentleman or lady (depending on your gender).

I noticed something odd as I was leaving work today. No, the sky isn't falling a-la Chicken Little and I didn't break a finger nail... A coworker who I've seen before but never spoken to was also waiting for an elevator out of the office with me today. When the elevator dinged to announce its arrival as the doors slid open, he made the gentlemanly gesture of waving me into the elevator first. I smiled and entered the elevator first.

Now, this isn't the first time this has happened in or out of the context of work, but it struck me as odd. There's always protocol in who goes first through any door regardless of gender - however, I wonder if being female changes whether people let me through in front of them even if it's not logical due to some archaic gentlemanly notions.

Thank goodness there's a good chunk of the time where the guy in front of me at work lets the door slam in my face or just barely holds it open for me. Otherwise I'd start to wonder if it wasn't just habitual "mamma's boy's good habits" (sue me for stereotyping - I'm the one who got on the friggin' elevator first!) There are also the guys who hold open doors for anyone and everyone (not doorjams, real men) which also dissuade from this oddity, but it struck me today none-the-less.

Generally, I think I'd notice more if the person rushed to get on before me; in this instance I was perfectly comfortable being waved on as I would've been waiting for the logical order of "closest first" for entrance to the elevator. It was only on double-take that it struck me as "huh - yeah, right" and made me pensive. But I guess I've given in to not noticing my feminine right of way status since otherwise you get the awkward no-yous which result in the crash at the door which you thought you'd only see on Saturday morning cartoons until you're the participant in one.

So here's what I'm pondering as I go to bed tonight: ladies first?

knit two; purl two

I've been disgustingly sick the past few days - and this isn't the first time this year I've been really sick. My sinuses really need to not get so easily infected when my body gets a virus. Bad Body!

However, it does mean I've finally made big progress on my scarf. I've had this scarf started for over a year. It's to match my new hat and mittens I'm also making. Ok, so I haven't started the hat yet, and only have 1.5 mittens, but the scarf's getting longer!

My problem with knitting is that I procrastinate and work in spurts. I love doing it, but I'm intimidated by big projects like cardigans or anything like that. So I have A LOT of yarn and projects in my head to do, but my gosh, no progress on any of them.

• Pink scarf for Mom that was promised to her when I was living in Baltimore for her birthday - so that's more than 3 years overdue.
• My scarf, hat and mittens that are my WIP and the project I'm currently working on.
• Big red blanket (unstarted and I can't remember which pattern I was planning on when I bought the yarn).
  
• Black hat (unstarted).
  
• Blue bag (I think that I have a piece of it started somewhere, but I don't know where).
  
• Blue belt (unstarted).

See! Lots!

And then there are all the bits of yarn that have no purpose. I think with one set of them I'm going to start learning to knit myself some stuffed friends. I figure stuffed friends that I knit and can take to the office might be kind of neat. So I'm going to do that with my purple yarn that I originally got to make a blanket but have since replaced with the red yarn.

I'm a knitter without a purpose. All the projects are for me other than the scarf for mom. And that makes them almost harder to do in that when I have enough hats, I have enough hats. And I'm a good knitter technically. I have all the skills other than those that are for fixing mistakes (and I'm taking a course on that in a month). I need a purpose for my knitting so that when I'm picking it up I can't procrastinate cause it's "just for me" (or the impossible scarf for my mother - why'd I choose that yarn???)

Oh well, at least my current projects are gorgeous - the yarn on this project is beautiful and really doing not much is making a great scarf - just knit two, purl two.

Y'know what? I'm procrastinating cleaning my room by being lazy germ girl who knits. But soon I'll need another skein of yarn for this scarf and I won't be able to continue without doing some room cleaning so I can get to the yarn (and hopefully find a borrowed pair of knitting needles!)

Seattle kind of crazy

I'm in Subway ordering my crappy Italian Sub (crappy in it's junk food Saturday kinda way). The guy in front of me says "hi" in that out-of-his-mind kinda way. I smile and say hi in a very distancing sort of way - the way that you are polite to those people you see in the Seattle streets who you can only guess are a wee bit not there - or a lot not there. I order my sub; all's grand. I get to the register make it a meal and the smiling crazy guy says "so when's the baby due?".. "Um, I'm not pregnant. Thanks." "Oh..." and he wanders out of the store. The second he's gone the register boy and I bust out laughing and I manage to choke out "wow, wonder if I'm having a boy or a girl and who's the baby's daddy?"

Welcome to Seattle. You get used to the new kinda crazy on the street. From my reaction my first week here of utter fear when a crazy guy chased me with plastic bags yelling crap at me, to being preggers 2x in 1 year (yes, someone asked me this earlier this year in the airport). Seattle really does breed it's own kind of crazy. If I ever really am preggers, I'm not sure I want the baby to be raised on Seattle water - it makes you nutty - truly nutty.

You see all kinds: the happy talk-to-you-like-they-know-you sorts; the hiding beer in trash cans sorts; the plastic bag chasing sorts; the talk to pigeons sorts... I'm sure other cities have their own forms of crazy, but I know more nutjobs in this city - and you recognize them and there's a naming-convention for them. Everyone knows who crazy whoever is and you wonder when you don't see 'em on the streets downtown where they've gone.

Ahh, the wonders of living in the middle of a city. Every city has crazy, but Seattle is just a bit nuttier than normal.

Happy Saturday!

teh intertubes

I've been surfing all over the web lately - more than normal. I've been a "long time user" of things like IM clients of all sorts, gmail, Cute Overload, Blogger, flickr, rss feeds, and probably some other things I'm forgetting, but lately there's a social networking hype out there.

Maybe it's my current job making me aware of the wacky trends on the internet, or my friends blogging about them. Things like Second Life which scare me for so many reasons but which I comprehend none-the-less. Sites like Facebook where I've become an addict of my own accord. Then there's LinkedIn for business networking. So many oddities, interesting sites, weird trends (i can has cheezeburger? anyone) are out there and are just getting more hype.

So yeah, I don't have any interesting commentary to mention, but if you have any more weird / fun / creative / new sites for me to check out, pass 'em over...

In the meantime, meet my meez! She's the image posted with this entry.

pot + mom + cornbread = funny

Mom and I are tv-aholics. I rented the show Weeds (a Showtime show) from Netflix since it kept getting recommended to me... And this is one of the best tv lines ever written or spoken:

You gave her my cornbread recipe? And she put WEED in it? NOBODY puts WEED in my CORNBREAD recipe!!!

You know you're not mommy's lil' girl anymore when you can watch a show with her that contains that much swearing and is about a pot-dealing-suburban-mother and you walk around afterwards getting ready to go out to dinner repeating "Nobody puts weed in my cornbread recipe."

So, yes, after 3 episodes this show comes highly recommended.