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April 19, 2005

PRMRP Hell

Sadly the weather in Italy for next week is not looking so good.

Also, I just realized that I don't have enough camera memory for Italy.

And is it just me or is the new Pope a little scary looking?

I've managed to get myself in about the worst mood possible here at work. In order to save my poor roomates the terror of dealing with me in this awful mood, I'm going to begin breaking in my new running shoes before I head home.

I'm now occupying myself with making up other things that PRMRP (our big meeting in two weeks) can stand for:

Please Rip My Retna to Pieces

(that's all i got so far)

Will this day never end?

My Authentic Career

So I have a voucher for a free session here. I called up the lady who runs it and she seemed very nice. Basically, you meet for 3 hours and I guess she asks you questions and then assesses what your career options are as well as gives you some insight into what type of career you'd be best at and enjoy the most. I've been thinking about doing something like this for a while but never got inspired enough to really look into it. But yesterday this voucher basically fell in my lap and I figure I'd be an idiot not to take advantage of it. So I signed up for tomorrow night at the Founders Restaurant & Brewing Co.

At best I could leave this meeting knowing exactly what type of career I want and at worst I at least come out with a good meal and one or two good beers. I figure either way I'm a winner. So if anyone else is interested there's still probably a chance to sign up or ask me about it on Thursday and I tell you how it went.

April 15, 2005

A little pick me up

So that last post left me feeling so negative that I decided I have to write another one in order to counteract the effects. So here it is:

5 Things I love that other people in my group of friends or peer group don't understand.


å. Olives
I absolutely love olives, I can't get enough of them, given an unlimited amount of water and bread to offset the saltiness I would eat olives all day long. Jalepeños too, those things rock and they just about go with everything (or at least I think they do).

∫. Irish music/Silly music
If you know anything about me you know I enjoy a good Irish song or two (preferrably with a beer in one hand). Also, silly, happy-go-lucky songs. Triplets by Danny Kaye, Rainbow Connection by Kermit, and Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport by I don't know who, just to name a few.

ç. Old Movies
AMC and TCM are a couple of my favorite TV channels. Anything with Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, or Cary Grant, I guess I'm just a sucker for the suave sophisticated man of yester year.

∂. British Humor
Ok there are a lot of people that do like british humor but there are so many that just don't get it.

é. Funny Hats
I'm not sure why this is myself. But for some reason I think it's hilarious, after a drink or two, to take out all of the funny hats in my room and force people to wear them. If I had a collection of funny glasses I'd probably make people wear them too :-)

What is a meme anyway?

Naomi has passed this meme thing to me. And as far as I can figure out that means I'm supposed to post an answer to this topic:

List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over.


Ok this should be easy!

!. Reality TV
That's right I pretty much hate reality TV. Loathe it actually. I have been known to get sucked into a show once in a while but I'm stuck with a feeling of guilt and selfloathing for at least a week afterwards.

@. Music Concerts
I think I'm just about the only person I know that simply doesn't like concerts. Even bands that I know and love. The exceptions are concerts where I get to sit down and apparently concerts where Carbon Leaf is headlining. Not that I don't like music, I love all kinds of music. Music can get you through anything, be it a tragic life experience or merely a rainy day slump.

#. Clubbing
Ok, I love to dance and sometimes I enjoy dressing up (although admittedly very rarely) but I am never able to justify paying $10 or more merely to cram yourself into an over packed, over noisy, under lighted, usually dirty, cesspool of hormone drenched and drunken 20 somethings. It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. You can't carry on a conversation with anyone and so I usually spend the night staring alternately at the ceiling and the floor and trying to position myself so that I'm not in danger of making accidental eye contact with the group of skeevy guys lurking in the shadows behind my friends.

$. Pro Sports on TV
I usually make an exception for soccer here but in reality, I don't much enjoy watching soccer games on TV either. I know that there are a lot of girls out there that share this inablity to see the big fuss about spectator sports but I thought I'd put this in anyway. Feel free to lump sport based video games into this category too.

%. Melons
Watermelons, cantaloupe, honey dew if it's of the melon variety I don't like it.

I guess I've changed the intent of this meme slightly, sorry, it somehow became, "Stuff I don't like that others do" but oh well. Also, how did I get so bitter this morning?

April 14, 2005

Belated Blossoms

So my Cherry Blossom pictures from Saturday are finally uploaded. The shutterfly album is here.

Naomi's have been up for a couple days. Enjoy!

Perhaps Alfred Hitchcock commuted on the W&OD

Did I mention that I love riding my bike to work? I pass all sorts of childhood memories such as the creek that my brother and I used to play in as kids, the soccer field I once got my poor grandmother completely lost on the way to, the community center where I used to take gymnastics lessons and behind which are the annual Vienna 4th of July fireworks, and of course my first elementary school, Vienna Elementary.

Also, biking to work reinstills your belief in the compassion of Virginia drivers (I must admit that this happens somedays more than others). I cross about 15 different streets in the middle of rush hour and there's always someone willing to come to a dead stop just to let me pass, one car today stopped and waited for me before I'd even gotten to the intersection. It's really, you know, heart warming.

Somewhat less heart warming and bordering on terrifying are the amount of birds that buzz me along the W&OD trail. What's up with this? I'm convinced that they lurk in the bushes just waiting for a biker to come by so that they can fly exactly at head level straight across the trail about a foot in front of you. Most of them are cardinals too so frequently all I see is a blur of bright red speeding directly at me from the corner of my vision. Cardinals are evil.

Now, I'm sure that they are recruiting rabbits and chipmunks. This morning a rabbit dashed out from a bush right near the border of Fall Church and Vienna, I was so surprised I swerved and the rabbit seemingly unphased ran along the trail for a couple feet before disappearing back into the bushes. A chipmunk did the same thing only last week. It's a vast conspiracy of rodents and birds, all of them trying to kill me!

It's ok though I guess, as long as they don't recruit the Deer and the Groundhogs, I think I'll be able to keep my sanity.

April 12, 2005

Freaky Flexibility

I haven't uploaded pictures from this weekend yet, but I will soon enough. In the mean time, I was just talking to my coworker who has an exercise ball instead of a chair in her office. She's so funny, she sits all day at her computer rolling around on an excercise ball. Anyway, we were looking at the different stretches you can do using the ball. While I'm talking to her, I all of a sudden remember part of a dream that I must have had recently. It's the weirdest feeling, suddenly remembering part of a dream like that. Anyway, in my dream I was amazingly flexible. I could fold over perfectly and do the splits and everything. I've never been able to do the splits in my life. When I was a kid trying to get the Presidential Award for physical fitness, I passed all of the challenges easily except for V-sit and Reach. It was the bain of my young existence. I did get Presidential every year but I'm convinced that my gym teacher cheated for me and said I made the V-sit when I was probably at least an inch off. So I tried to find out what this extreme flexibility could mean but I didn't find it in any of the online dream analyzer programs. Any ideas?

April 08, 2005

84 people are killed every year from exploding maple trees

NPR has a rich history of great April Fools stories. Here's this year's joke on exploding maple trees. My dad heard this on WAMU April 1st and having forgotten which day it was, was almost taken in by it. It's definitely worth the listen, I especially like the song that little kids sing about the exploding trees, and the interview with the Samoan girl.

April 07, 2005

Did I have to turn 25 this year?

Today started just awful. I got ANOTHER speeding ticket. But it sucks cause the only reason I was speeding was to get around this stupid ass white car so I could get into the right lane and turn right. Damn you white car! Anyway, I half expected the cop to take away my license right then and there and tow my car away. I've gotten way too many speeding tickets in my 8.5 years of driving and I am not happy about turning 25 when I will be kicked off of my parents insurance and will probably get a huge payment increase, even though it's supposed to go down when you turn 25.

Why is that that I can never get out of a speeding ticket? I was in a car once with a friend that got pulled over for speeding, she didn't say a word and cop took one look at her and let her off, and before you say anything, it was a woman cop. The worst part about this ticket was that I was seriously thinking about biking to work today. But no, I had to decide to drive so I could run this afternoon. Damn you, marathon, and making me actually want to run!

Surprisingly enough though, the rest of the day has been quite nice, I've gotten a lot of work done and I've had time to browse Amazon.com, cause spending more money always makes me happy. I decided that I needed to buy something to facilitate my bike commuting and discourage my speeding-ticket-getting car commute. So here it is:
(for some reason it's in the "Lawn and Patio" category)
Anyway, it's basically a Camelbak only not so ridiculously overpriced and hopefully it will make me never want to drive to work ever again.

April 06, 2005

"Drrrnnk, Feck, Girls" Father Dougal becomes Pope?

This is hilarious and maybe a bit sacreligious but oh well. Basically there was an article in the Washington Post on Tuesday about betting on who will be the next Pope. The company they report on is Irish based betting company (Paddy Power). As a joke someone has entered Father Dougal McGuire from Craggy Island at 1,000 to 1 odds. And apparently the post staff reporter, Stephanie McCrummen didn't know that he is fictional. Just about anyone from Britain or Ireland is familiar with the very popular TV Series Father Ted, a hilarious spoof situated on a small island off of Ireland. The series is now in reruns (as the lead actor, Dermot Morgan, died sometime in 2001 - I was in Australia at the time and it was big news for my English friend, Zany) but, I believe that you can still catch it on BBC America. My parents absolutely love this show, and I've even forced my roomates to watch one or two episodes, it's great. My dad even owns the printed scripts to all of the shows and reads them for fun.

For any of you that have seen the show, can you imagine Dougal as Pope? Here's what they say about him on this website:

Dougal is the thick one. He loves Byker Grove and Buckaroo. In his own words, if he had a cup, he'd be very happy.


Here's a sound file from the show that illustrates Dougal's character. Needless to say the show is british humor at it's most refined.

Too bad the "Drrrnnk, Feck, Girls!" quote from Father Jack isn't working.

Registration Blues

This sucks! I finally make up my mind to run a marathon.I figure hey, I want to do it once in my life and I'm only getting older and more out of shape, right? Also, no offense marathon running friends, but I'm sick and tired of going down to The Mall every halloween and cheering for 5 frickin' hours. Hehe, just kidding.

Anyway, so I wait up last night to register, since the registration opened at midnight last night. I wait up til about 1:00am and am still unable to get to the form page, meanwhile Brian has gotten there twice, he graciously offers to sign up for me, thanks Brian! Now here's the problem, after he hit the submit button, all he got was a blank page, this happened both when he registered himself and me. The Marine Corp Marathon website tells us that we will get an email within 24 hours, but what if we don't and what if registration is closed by midnight tonight? What to do, what to do. I'm currently on hold with Active.com Customer Support, and there are 1 persons in front of me. Let's hope they can tell me what to do.

Update: I'm in! I finally got ahold of a very nice person from Active.com customer support and she seemed to have gotten a lot of the same call already, but amazingly she was still way too happy and cheerfull for 9 o'clock in the morning. Anyway, she said that I was probably not already registered and that I should keep trying until I get the confirmation page. So I went back to the website and presto! I got to the form on the first try, it was so easy! Now I wish I hadn't stayed up so late last night.

April 05, 2005

"Stand Your Ground" in Florida

I'm all for self-defense and all. I loved learning that little trick in Judo class 4th year at UVa where you can totally take someone twice your size down and make them beg for mercy. That was awesome, I would have described myself as most enthusiastic. However, just about the first thing that they teach you in every self-defense class is that if you can get away, do it. Only resort to physical defense if it's absolutely necessary. Florida, however, does not believe that people should have to take that wimpy-non-killing way out. They think that a persons life is less important than the "shame" of running away from a fight. It doesn't matter that the person is threatening your life, YOU ARE KILLING SOMEONE! Come on people, if there is an alternative, I don't give a rats ass about your male pride!

April 04, 2005

Alexander in Alexandria (the one in Egypt)

I just spent about the laziest weekend ever, it was wonderful. The rainy yucky weather kept me inside and in my bed most of the time watching either AMC or the History Channel. I'm currently obsessed with the mystery behind the Tomb of Alexander the Great. I know, I know, I'm such an nerd. But, I really do find this stuff facinating for some reason. The more I learn about Alexander the Great the more I am amazed at the brilliance of Oliver Stone. I mean it really must take a genius to make such an awful film about arguably the most facinating historical figure ever. That movie was so bad I nearly wept.

Anyway, I also find it interesting that Alexander the Great was nearly a mythical greek god of legends until some time during the Renaissance when historical accounts of his life were rediscovered and he was placed back into the pantheon of actual historical figures. It gives that romantic wanna be archeaologist in me a warm fuzzy feeling at the thought that other mythical legends have a real historical root that just might not be that far off from the legend after all.

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