Month: January 2006

I was tagged by Mandi, who’s site I stumbled on while browsing and I instantly liked her. Her little one is cute enough to gobble up for dessert.

FOUR THINGS: For Anna.

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

• “Office Girl” at Reeves Appliance Service. That means that I answered the phones, scheduled the calls, ordered/tracked the parts, made sure the boys were on track, helped do the taxes, cleaned the office, etc. I basically did everything BUT fix the appliances.
• I’m not sure what my official title was at what is now Elite Computer/Fluxar but it really didn’t matter. I had a lot of fun at that job.
• Sold computers at Best Buy. In Silicone Valley. Where most men think that women are just be there to look pretty and smell good. Probably the worst job I’ve ever had considering I knew more about computers than my Supervisor did.
• Currently: Credit Balance Rep at ‘Major Medical University’ that rhymes with Hanford. Pretty decent job making decent money. Free benefits and off at 2:30 to pick up The Princess.

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Gone with the Wind
• Batman Begins
• Love Actually
• Anything LOtR

Four places I have lived:

• A lot of years in Bakersfield, CA
• Pennsylvania in second grade
• With my dad in Escondido in third grade
• Currently: San Jose, CA

Four places I have been on vacation:

• Florida (Disney World!!)
• Emerald Isle, NC (Every summer growing up for two weeks)
• Canada
• Mackinac Island (My favorite so far)

Four of my favorite dishes:

• The dish that almost killed me pictured in the post below
• Garlic Chicken Calzone from Frugatti’s
• Any steak as long as it’s rare. And dripping blood.
• Godiva Chocolate Soufflé from Bella Vista. *drools*

Four websites I visit daily:

• The Superficial
• Slashdot
• MSNBC
• BakersfieldBS

Four places I would rather be right now:

• A nice hot bubble bath.
• My completely painted living room.
• I can’t really think of anywhere else I’m rather be!!

Four bloggers I am tagging:

• Eurcynia
• Kristen
• Jessica
• Traci

P.S. – I’ve been trying on and off all day long to get the main wall that extends through the kitchen/dining area/living room prepped to paint. Spackled, taped, taken down curtains and blinds, removed outlet/light covers… All. Day. Long. I think I might get one coat on the wall tonight. The last wall with pink on it took three coats to cover. I have plenty of before pictures so will snap some of the after. The only reason I didn’t take any of all the prep is becaue I can’t find the damn camera battery. I know it’s in the charger… somewhere. I used it to test if some outlets were “live” or not while installing some new white sockets yesterday. I’m sure I set it someplace “safe” so I wouldn’t lose it.

The blond it me totally lost that battle

Today is our “free day”. Before, when I was doing BFL I’d dream of the free day. I’d long for it. I’d dwell on it. And live in it. And that was completely wrecking the rest of my diet. That was before the Great Stomach Beast though. Now, while I’m excited it’s here, I know it’s going to make me feel like hell so part of me almost just wants it to be a “free meal”. I can’t take that much bad food in one day.

This morning we met my mom and Cameron at the Lost Gatos Cafe. They have, undeniably, the best breakfast in the Bay Area. The place is famous. The wait is alyaws long but they have benches outside and complimentary coffee while you wait. Since it’s on the main drag of a quaint little town and we get to see cute botiques and the Ferrari’s, Ford GT’s and other random super cars driving up the street, the wait isn’t too bad. And COMPLETELY WORTH IT.

I’m partial to any of their hollandaise covered dishes. Mainly Eggs California and Eggs Alexandria. I ate this entire plate of food this morning. We got home about 30 minutes ago and I’ve been to the bathroom twice and feel like something is twisting my belly into a knot and pounding it with a 20 pound sledge hammer.

And I can’t wait till tomorrow when I know that even though my food won’t be as rich, or as pretty, I’ll feel like I don’t have to live at home or within 20 yards of a toilet…

This post is going to be all over and around the corner and up the hill and back again. Stick with me.

*puts the post in gear*

I’ve started to add the finishing touches to the layout. The site section is up and running. I’m adding content slowly and as it’s completed. I feel good about how organized and pretty all the site info looks. Well, now that I look…. there should be bullets in front of the “Software” list. Dammit. Ah well, work in progress!!

I also have started the color change (links, title, etc.) Menu looks different. Still working. Might be finished tomorrow (yeah right), or next week, or next month (which also happens to be…. NEXT WEEK. HA!). The good thing is that I’m coming up on the one month mark and I’m still head over heals in love with kiwi. If it could snuggle with me at night to keep me warm Ben might find himself out of a job.

Kidding!!!

*shifts into second*

The New Girl became and American citizen yesterday. I decorated her desk with red, white and blue streamers and starts and balloons. It was cute and she was really surprised. I’m so happy for her. She really is my favorite co-worker. What’s amazing to me is that I can talk to her about current events. All the American born people there are clueless about politics. I’d bet over half of them didn’t even vote in the last presidential election. *shakes head* AND! She makes lumpia. So she wins COOLEST CO-WORKER EVER by default.

*shifts into third*

I’ve lost an additional two pounds. That’s 8 total so far. I feel better and better every day. I think I’m going on a week+ with no ‘Attack of the Killer Stomach’.

People are commenting now. Like, seeing the difference. It might be that since I’ve started shedding the pounds I’ve become somewhat obsessive about skincare again. Working out will really play hell on your complexion! I have some Mary Kay Day and Night solution on the way. That stuff is fucking fantastic.

*slams it into fourth*

Tonight Cassidy made this face and I had to capture it. This is the face she makes instead of saying ‘You adults are out of your minds.’ She’s starting to master the art of saying such things with body language.

I need to start taking more pictures again. I was obsessed for awhile but I kinda got sidetracked. I’m ready to start the obsession again. One part of it, I’m sure, was that I tend to… take pictures of myself (shut up, Ben) and I was just not happy with what I was seeing. I’m feeing better and better about that now.

*finds fifth*

Ben’s recovery is going quite well. He’s getting around sans crutches and the flexibility is getting better and better every day. He has aches and pains here and there but that’s to be expected when you don’t really use your leg at all for a week straight.

He was able to get into the M3 tonight. So for him at least, all is right with the world.

*engages cruise control*

I don’t usually do this because I find “plugging” people and site’s kinda… trendy-ish but what the hell, right? I can jump on the bandwagon for one post.

If you haven’t already, go check out becca. I’ve become a daily stalker of hers. Sooner or later I’m gonna have to start commenting. Well, commenting more. I’ve gone off track…

She makes me literally laugh out loud and it’s refreshing to see another young mother who’s so real, and a geek, and who takes lots of pictures, and plays video games, and is such a fantastic writer, and has a secret shrine set up to worship her skinny jeans. Okay, maybe that last part isn’t true but since we have so many other things in common I figured I’d throw that in there to make myself feel more non-lunatic-ish. Plus, she has some of the cutest little rugrats ever!!

As of yesterday I’m down six pounds. *is proud*

Typical meals for the day:
Special K w/ Red Berries & Fat Free Vanilla Soy Milk
Lean Cuisine
Fajitas (lean chicken, red and green bell peppers, mushrooms cooked with salsa and taco seasoning)
1-2 snacks during the day between meals: Plain tuna, soup, etc.

So, yes. I AM eating. Some of the girls are work are idiots. They spent about 10 minutes telling me that THEY eat healthy and don’t loose weight that fast so I MUST be starving myself.. PFFT. While they do this they are all stuffing birthday cake into thier mouths.

Anyway, my biggest feeling of accomplishment has come from the gain in fitness I’ve had after jsut a few weeks. Compare:

01/10/2006
1.96 Miles
341 Calories
32.50 minutes
Level: 8

01/19/2006
Eliptical Machine
2.14 Miles
341 Calories
35.00 Minutes
Level 9

When I was at the gym with Ben on the 10th after that workout I seriously felt like I was going to hurl. No joke. Like, I was swallowing it back. Now I’m going almost half a mile farther and upped a level. AND! That workout yesterday wasn’t my best because I’m fighting off the remnants of a head cold. Yes, I got miserably sick while trying to take care of BenTheGimp™.

Anyway, I have a LONG way to go till my goal weight (about 40 more pounds) and I didn’t want to really post about this till because I didn’t want to jinx myself but I’m just so proud and motivated and OFF TO THE GYM! Later!

I’m laying on the couch typing this from the laptop that Ben brought home from work to keep him company while he recovered. This is the first time in a week I’ve gotten to lay on the big couch. I don’t quite understand how this is a BAD way to spend three days!!

We had a bit of a scare yesterday. Ben had been complaining about his left leg, the surgery leg, being colder than the other. I figured it was a mix of the Vicodin and laying on the couch for three days making him delirious but I finally decided to see for myself Tuesday night and it really was cooler to the touch than his “good” leg.

Thursday he ended up at the doctor getting an ultrasound to check for blood clots while I stayed home and wore a rut behind the couch I’m loving so much right now.. Blood clots. The thought of it scared me. A lot. He had all the classic symptoms. Cold, pain in the calf, numbness. I was convinced that the next call I’d get would be from his doctor telling me to meet them at the hospital.

In that 30 painful minutes of waiting and pacing and calling him and waiting some more then messaging him then pacing then calling my mom and pacing… I was just overcome with this feeling of dread. What if something happens to Ben? Ben is my rock. He’s my solid, thoughtful, rational, responsible, completely sane rock. And how would I explain it to Cassidy?

Ben and I don’t have the “perfect” relationship. I realize it can come across that way on my blog because when it comes to him I tend to write about the good stuff. The happy stuff. The stuff that is frosted with goodness and coated in sugar. It’s the stuff that I want to look back on in 3, 10, 25 years and remember.

But we do have hard times. And like the really good times are euphoric and warm, the really bad times are low and powerfully painful. We are two very opinionated individuals. And while we have many similarities, we have just as many differences too. He literally is the Yin to my Yang. Or the Yang to my Yin. I’m not exactly sure how that works.

Anyway, he’s fine. At least he seems to be. They didn’t find a clot but they haven’t offered an explanation yet as to why his leg is running cooler and his calf is so sore. Hopefully the doctor will have the answer we are looking for tomorrow.

The reason I wanted to write this out was to remind everybody to find your Yang and hold on to them tight. Because the bad times pass, and the good times are what make life worth living.

I know that I’ve been slacking on the site. I have the colophon page’s content 95% done. I have the about page 25% done. I have the basic color scheme and background idea ready to go in photoshop so that once all the content is up, I can get the site looking the way I want it to… I just don’t have TIME!

Ben is doing well. He’s getting around on crutches. Over the next two weeks he can start putting more and more weight on his leg and should be off them alltogether at his next appointment. Then he has to do some physical therapy. And THEN(!!) he will not have to worry about his knee bothering him anymore. And he can drive his happy little heart out.

In the first two weeks of the new year with the help of a pretty strict diet and lots ‘o exercise I lost 5 pounds. FIVE POUNDS! Last weekend though I kinda ‘fell off the wagon’ while taking care of The Benjamin and ate like crap for two straight days. Tonight I was up two pounds netting me a 3 pound loss total. DAMMIT! I’m back on track though. That 5 pounds was a total morale booster and I’m more determined than I’ve been in a long time. And really, I figured that I’d have gaind all five back… heh The best part is that after two weeks tonight on the eliptical machine I was able to up my intensity from an eight to a nine and went half a mile farther than two weeks ago.

The best news though is that the demon in my belly is responding well to the new diet. I’ve cut out all red meat and am down to VERY lean chicken and turkey or no meat at all for all my meals. I’ve also cut 95% of the dairy out and I’ve discovered that Special K w/ Red Berries + Vanilla Soy Milk is SO. Damn. Yummy. I went four whole days without an “attack”. Saturday I got a burger from Carls Jr on the way home from the taking Ben to the doctor and I was sick for a good 24 hours after that.

Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that ya’ll know I’m alive and hope *crosses fingers* to have the site back to normal and running smoothly and more regularly in the next two or so weeks.

Ben has had a torn medial meniscus of his left knee. Today he had arthroscopic surgery to repair it. It’s not clear yet if they cut away the torn part or were able to repair it. We’ll find out at his follow up appointment Monday. He said we get to see pictures of it. Fascinating. For the next three days he’s restricted to couch rest. Not bed because he can’t make it up the stairs. I feel bad for him. Stuck on the couch with the Sidekick, laptop, XBox, GameCube and three TV/DVD/audio receiver remotes all within reach on the coffee table… and two girls that love him enough to answer to his beck and call.

In other news, I’m rethinking telling Cassidy she can dress herself and do her own hair in the morning. Also, I was playing with the camera settings the other day and I need to figure out why it will only take blurry shots.

I finally got around to Sears today to use the gift card Ben got me for Christmas. I got all my paint supplies plus a gallon of the green we both agreed on. After two coats we are able to see what the final color is going to be and it’s just… fabulous. I hated that pink. Really, really, really hated it. I’m pretty sure the person who lived here before us was blind and they just used whatever left over paint they could find to finish the remodel. There’s just no other explanation. So anyway, here is a bad pic in bad light of the before and after. Tomorrow after I get the last coat on the wall I’ll take better pics in some real light.

Cassidy had a friend from school spend the night last night. Then I went with my mom to get her hair done (our X-Mas present to her). Then to Sears. Then home and helped Ben isntall his exhaust Then painted. Then fixed my broken gallery. *whew*

Gonna sleep WAAAAAYYYY in tomorrow. After I get a small section of the kitchen painted (want to get an idea of the color agains the tile/wood in the kitchen to make sure we REALLY like it before I cover the rest of the pink) I’m going to finally tackle that purse I gave up on. My mom translated the directions into Blond Terms for me today.

I need to start getting more sleep. For the last week I’ve seen people talking about upgrading to WordPress 2 and I’ve been thinking, “Hello, I upgraded to that like FOREVER AGO! Come on people!”

I was thinking 1.5.2. But they were all thinking WordPress 2. It has a bunch of new bells and whistles and I have to have it NOW!

If anything seems broken for the next hour, that is why.

(EDIT – Painless install. Hrumph. My awsome new gallery doesn’t work. And I have a whole new ‘wp support forums suck donkey balls’ rant that will be posted tomorrow…)

I wrote this post up last week and never finished it. But after the conversation I just listened to it has to be done… Now hopefully you all understand what I deal with. EVERY DAY!

First, the week old post:

I tried all morning to figure out a way to inject coffee directly into my bloodstream. It really doesn’t have to be coffee. Any substance that contains large amounts of caffeine would work. So I’m open to chocolate, also.

The Avon Lady has not been feeling the season. At all. She grumbled through our entire Christmas party. She said she didn’t want to particiate in the elephant gift tradition (because it was ‘stupid’) then decided last minute she would and complained the rest of the afternoon about ending up with denture glue. She’s said at least 434158434 times that nobody got her anything for Christmas. She’s just been a major buzzkill. So I’ve taken to doing what I always do in these situations. Plug both my ears with NPR and hide behind my monitor.

She’s also started this annoying TSK *sigh* habit.

*phone rings*
Avon Lady(AL): TSK *sigh* *phone greeting*
AL: Conversation
*hangs up*
AL: TSK *sigh*

SHE JUST DID IT RIGHT NOW FOR NO REASON! TSK *sigh*

Our printer has been slowly dying. The four of us on the credit balance team share one industrial size printer that spits out 35 pages a minute. We’ve had it worked on three times in the last few months because tray three keeps getting paper jams.

The New Girl(TNG): AAAAAaaaaannnnnnnaaaaaa. Can we just take the paper out of drawer three? Will it still work?
Me: Is it jammed again?
TNG: Yeah! For like the third time this morning.
Me: Yeah, just pull out the paper and give IT a call.
AL: TSK *sigh*
AL: *jumps out of chair*
AL: It SHOULDN’T be getting stuck. It’s been WORKED on THREE times.
AL: TSK *sigh*
TNG: I’ll call IT.
AL: *starts opening drawers and slamming them closed over and over and over and making all kinds of noise and shaking my cube walls since the printer sits against the outside of my cube.*
AL: TSK *sigh*
AL: I can tell you why this is happening. It’s because somebody isn’t putting the FULL ream of paper in there. They just put in PART of it and set the REST of it beside the printer and it’s causing AIR to get in the paper and it’s making it jam. I don’t know who is doing that but that’s why the paper keeps jamming.

(Sidenote: We all know it’s The New Girl doing this. I know The Avon Lady knows this because she’s mentioned it to me at least three times. I told the New Girl once to just put the whole ream in but she still doesn’t. It’s no big deal. And it’s NOT causing the paper to jam!! When I see it I take the whole .25 seconds to throw the rest of the paper in there. Whenever the Avon Lady notices it… you guess it! TSK *sigh* *slam paper into drawer* *slam drawer closed* *entire cube shakes*)

Me: *Good. Lord.*
TNG: Really?
TNG: That seems kind of odd.
AL: TSK *sigh* It’s the paper. It’s bad paper. And it’s being left out. And that’s causing it to jam.
AL: Just leave the paper out of it and call IT.
Me: Good idea!
AL: TSK *sigh*

In the 20 or so minutes it took me to write this between phone calls and other unavoidable work I counted 7 TSK *sighs*’s while doing nothing but sitting at her desk working and 4 TSK *sighs*’s while answering the phone and hanging it up and 3 TSK *sighs* after people greeted her.

TSK *sigh*

_______________________________________________

Now today:

Set up: Nobody ever called IT about the printer. If it’s jammed when I go to pick up prints I just pull drawer three out an inch and let it go. When I’m done I push it back in. The humor of watching the other three girls freak out is far too enjoyable for me to want to have it fixed.

*printer has jammed about 10 times in the last hour*
New Girl: Whoah! The printer just spit out half a page. I wonder where the other half is!?
Me: I’m going to make a very uneducated guess and say.. somewhere in the printer!
NG: *laughs*
Avon Lady (TAL): TSK *sigh* I’m so SICK of people leaving the paper out and not putting it all in! If people would just do that this would stop happening.
NG: *slowly backs off and retreats to desk, snickering*

(Side note: A lady from another dept occasionally uses our printer if she’s printing out big projects because ours goes much faster. We’ll call her Poor Unsuspecting Lady, or PUL for short. PUL walked up as NG was making her retreat.)

AL: *to PUL* If you’re putting paper in here you need to put the WHOLE ream in and not leave the rest sitting out because then the paper gets saturated with air and the computer senses that it’s a different type of paper and makes it jam.

(Sidenote: I swear that’s word for word what was said. I started to type it out immediately because I knew this would have to be posted. Yes, she said “saturated with air”. And yes, she said “computer”, not “printer”.)

ME: *I actually laughed out loud when she said this. I had my headphones on though and I often laugh at talk radio so I think it went unnoticed*
PUL: Really? I’d never heard that. I’m really glad you told me.
AL: Yes. So put the whole ream in there, please.
PUL: Okay!!
AL: TSK *sigh*

Ah, the comedy.

P.S. – I really need to get some stock post banners made.
P.S.S – Site update post is 99% done so it will probably be posted sometime in the next… month? HA!