Exercise for your cat

It's an odd day when my mom tells me about something funny on You Tube. I was amazed that my mom even knew what You Tube was.

Anyway, there are several videos of cats on giant exercise wheels--think like what rodents usually have in their cages. They're freaking hilarious. Even better--most of the cats are Bengals, which is what our two psycho girl cats are. Marc's already said that we can't get one. Boo.

Here are two of my favorites:

NCAA Final Four

The 2007 Final Four is set. I haven't watched a whole lot of college basketball since I moved out to Oregon. UK is my team, and not surprisingly, they're not on TV much out here. This year they lost in the second round to 1 seed Kansas. After that, I pretty much stopped watching altogether. My impressions of the Final Four?
- OSU (that's Ohio, not Oregon) - Yay! Pretty much my whole family was born in or is from Ohio. My mom went to OSU. I always cheer for them if they're not playing the Cats.
- Florida - Yay! Yeah, they beat Oregon, but I don't hold any Oregon teams dear to my heart. SEC teams are good once UK's out of the picture. I was also convinced when I lived in Florida as a kid that I would end up going to UF for college.
- UCLA - Hum. I guess it's nice that the team that beat UK got beat, and I'm almost always a fan of the underdog winning. But at the same time, if someone's gonna beat UK, I'd almost feel better if they went all the way and won it.
- Georgetown - YAY YAY YAY! Not because I like Georgetown, but because I love seeing UNC lose. Sorry, cuz. I know you love 'em, but they're right at the top of the "Teams I Hate" list with Duke. :)

Buicks are bad, mmmkay?

I'm at a loss for something good to write about. I could babble about the mundane things that are going on in my life like usual (I'm getting a haircut tonight--wow). Or I could complain about something. Like Buicks. Even though Tiger Woods and Gwen Stefani drive them, they still suck. My dad was the first to point out that it's bad to get stuck behind a Buick. Since then, I've concluded that he's totally correct, which really is no surprise. About 99% of the time, Buick drivers go significantly under the speed limit, make erratic lane changes, and remain seemingly oblivious of other cars on the road. I groan when I get stuck behind one.

No offense if you drive a Buick.

A Wordsmith's Peeve

Okay, so maybe I'm not technically a "wordsmith," but I do favor the appropriate usage of words. The Gregg Reference Manual, a dictionary, and a thesaurus are never far from my desk. Anyway, we've been working on the truck recently (all weekend and this evening after work), and we've been listening to the radio out in the garage most of that time. I'll preface the rest of this blog with an assurance that, though I haven't done any research on this subject yet, I will.

One aside: I'm not a master of verb tenses. Please don't call ever me on it unless you're formally reviewing something I wrote for work. I'm already aware of my flaws in this area.

Is "band" a collective noun? I always thought so, but I'm continually irked by the radio stations out here saying things like:
"The band Silversun Pickups are playing at the Crystal Ballroom next month."

NO! Why isn't it, "The band is playing..."??? I hate this! Would you ever say, "The soccer team are playing a game this weekend." or "The newly married couple are going to Hawaii."? I wouldn't, but maybe I'm just totally in the dark about this. If these aren't collective nouns, what are? Is this some movement to emphasize the individuals in groups and demoralize team spirit? Why, why, why?

Seriously, if you know the answer to this, leave a comment so that I don't have to spend an hour or more researching...

Go Cats!

The Kentucky Wildcats won yesterday! Yay! I used to be a huge, somewhat obsessive fan of UK basketball. Being on campus when they won in 1996 and being a student there for their runner-up status in 1997 and championship in 1998 was awesome. Now that I'm on the West Coast, the number of televised games I catch is pretty limited, and my chances of seeing them in person are slim to none. So I haven't really kept up with them much over the past 5 years. A bunch of us got together at B-Dubs yesterday to watch the games of the day. It was also cool to have another big UK fan there to help root for the Cats. (Thanks, Lisa!) Now let's all take a moment to wish for them to beat Kansas... hey, stranger things have happened...

Surviving L.A. Traffic at Rush Hour

My trip to L.A. went well. My boss and I arrived at LAX around 3:45 on Monday afternoon, rented our car, and drove down to our hotel in Irvine. I was prepared to get stuck in some nasty traffic, but it was surprisingly okay. We slowed down a bit in some places, but it really wasn't bad. A little over an hour later, our 41 mile drive was over. We checked in and headed up to Huntington Beach for dinner at Duke's. The food was great and we got to watch the sunset from the pier.

Our visit to my company's Irvine office was good. I got to put some faces to names and voices. I also found out that one head of the project I'm working on also worked at WDW through the College Program and attended UK. Small world!

We left the office at 3:20 yesterday afternoon, again prepared for horrible traffic. We hopped in the carpool lane right away and got to LAX in just under an hour. Crazy! But I guess when the highway is 12 lanes wide (okay, maybe it was only 6, but still...) and you're in the one lane that's actually moving, things work out pretty well. We were hoping to catch an earlier flight home, but there weren't any. We ended up back at PDX at 9:15 last night. Talk about a whirlwind trip. It was good though!

Going to California

After a nice shopping spree on Saturday and catching up with Aaron and Robyn today, I now have to prepare for an exciting 1-day trip to California. My boss and I are flying to L.A. tomorrow afternoon, staying one night, going to a software demo on Tuesday, and then flying back to PDX that night. I don't think I've ever taken a plane trip for a single night. It's surprisingly hard to pack for this. I don't know why. The most exciting thing about going to the airport is that Coffee People still exists there. When they got bought by Starbucks, every location closed expect for the airport ones. I love their Mexican hot chocolates...

Going back to the shopping spree for a moment, I highly suggest that you (if you're a woman) check out Lole clothing company. They're test-marketing a limited selection of items at REI, but these clothes are available at other stores around the country as well. Nice stuff!

March rolls in... like a lamb?

The weather here in Oregon isn't following the cliche lately. We've actually had some warm, sunny days lately. Of course it's going to start raining again though. I love the nice days we've had though.

Last Saturday, we went wheeling at Sand Lake with our Xterra club. Check out more over at our club site.

Today through Thursday, I'm attending leadership training with 11 other people from my company and 3 others from other companies. Day 1 was long, but pretty interesting. Now I better jet off and finish my "homework" for class tomorrow. :)