Recap

I got lazy again and haven't been updating my blog. Here's a recap of the last few days in my life.

Christmas: It snowed! For a few hours! None of it really stuck to the ground (except on the barkdust in our backyard), and it turned to rain later, but... it snowed on Christmas! We didn't go skiing. We were complete bums.

26th: Back to work. It was dead most of the day.

27th: All hell broke loose at work as our customers decided to start the year-end blitz a little early this year. Thursday and Friday were insanely busy.

28th: Happy hour at Monteax's instead of Chili's. It was a nice change of pace. Pete and Court came out, as did Jess and Craig, along with a few regulars from work--Greg, Rey, Jason. We were supposed to go back to Pete and Court's house for some hot tubbing, but they didn't have a filter they needed. Bummer. We went over there and watched Bad Santa instead.

My disappointment this year is with the USPS. They've always been good to me, but this year they kind of failed me. On the 19th, I shipped one box of presents to Ohio and another to Alabama for our nieces and nephew. I ponied up the extra bucks for Priority (2-3 day) mail so that they'd get there before Christmas (4 shipping days away). The box to Alabama arrived on the 21st. Perfect! The box to Ohio arrived on the 28th. WTF? Until 2 days ago, the online tracking said that the box still wasn't even in their system. I'm sure glad I paid extra for that...

Christmas Eve

I had to work today. Of course, the day started out hectic with our knowledgebase crashing to a halt. But the good news was that they announced when we got in that today would be a half day, so we only had to stay for 4 hours. Awesome!

Let me back up though. I made this breakfast concoction last night to cook in the crockpot overnight for our potluck today. It had hash browns, eggs, tomato, and sausage as the main ingredients. I woke up this morning at 2:30 to a weird smell. Since I was groggy from just a few hours of sleep, I couldn't diagnose the source at first. After thinking it was BO from me or Marc for about 10 minutes, I came to the realization that it was the smell of burning eggs. So I had to get up and check my food, which was, indeed, burning and boiling in the crockpot. I turned the stupid crockpot down to the "warm" (instead of either high or low cooking settings) and went back to bed. It was still boiling and burning when I got up again at 6:00. Oh, well. It was still pretty good, I think.

So I got off work early and Marc and I watched The Ex. It was pretty good. I like Jason Bateman. Then I took an hour long nap. Nice.

Tonight we went to the "misfit toys" party that Kathy hosted. It was a lot of fun, and Marc and I had a great time talking to Dave and Edna--a couple my parents' age who Kathy bikes with. We had fun taking pictures with what we thought was Kathy's dad's camera, only to find out later that it was one of her friend's who we didn't know. Haha! We also got to see Denise and Brent and 6-week old Jace, along with a bunch of other folks we met for the first time tonight. It was a really good time with lots of yummy food and drinks.

Tomorrow we're debating on going skiing/boarding. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Why Christmas rocks when you're an adult

Marc and I are grown up (by the numbers, anyway). We have no kids. We have few traditions left around Christmas since Grandpa's gone. The result of the combination of these things means that we can open presents whenever the heck we want. So today, when a crapload of boxes was left on our porch by the mailman (or am I supposed to call them "postal carriers" now?), we immediately opened them. That's awesome. Honestly, I was one of those kids who always peeked at the presents under the tree. I'm not good at handling suspense.

I ended up getting my enV today. And Marc had to one-up me by replacing his barely year-old Palm PDA phone with a slick new XV6800. Figures. I should have pushed for the Voyager.

New cell phone consideration

I think I want a new phone. I hardly use my phone, but I have this fancy idea that I want to use it more--or at least text message more. I feel like the old lady who's trying to be young and hip, so I'm looking at the LG Env. We're going to stop by one of the 10,000 Verizon stores in our neighborhood sometime this weekend and check them out in person.

Judge Judy prank calls and how I've been adopted at work

Several months ago, a coworker from another office introduced me to the absolute hilarity that is celebrity soundboards. You can find a bunch of them on Ebaum's World. (Yes, I know there's a movement against that guy for being a sleazy theif, but his site is still flippin' hilarious.) I've answered a few phone calls only to have some celebrity (usually Arnold) talk to me. We joked that we should set up a weekly phone call where we use soundboards to converse. But I didn't have computer speakers.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

I started poking around the soundboards again this week, and I found an awesome Judge Judy one. I warned him that he might get a call from her soon. Yesterday I delivered.

It was the end of my day, and I was brain-dead from editing HTML on our KB articles. So I planned out a 19-click conversation from Judge Judy's soundboard to leave a message on his voicemail (since he was gone for the day). I practiced it for a couple of minutes and then made the call. It was all I could do to not immediately send him an IM saying something about checking his VM. I restrained.

I got to the office this morning... and nothing. All morning long, I waited for a response. Nothing. I was scared that maybe the volume wasn't loud enough or that the VM had cut off or something. Finally, after lunch, I couldn't wait any longer and I sent him a message. He claims he thought it was awesome, but I'm totally depressed about the lack of a reaction. Boo.

Today was fun at work. The Payroll support team has kind of adopted me and the rest of my team as part of their social activities. My team is spread out all across the floor in separate offices, so we don't plan things like potlucks or white elephant gift exchanges very often. So this afternoon, the PR team invited us to eat pizza with them, and later we had a gift exchange. I tried to steal a funny calendar, but it got stolen from me. Then I opened a bag of mini liquor bottles. That was promptly stolen, too. I ended up with some funny, artsy ant knick-knacks that I've decided will be traveling ants (I'll put them at random people's desks). On Christmas Eve, those of us who are stuck working are going to do a potluck. I'm going to try to make my mac and cheese and then stick it in a crockpot. Hopefully that'll work out.

One week before Christmas

I'm lazy, and I'm a procrastinator. I didn't send any Christmas cards this year. Actually, last year is the only year that I have ever sent cards--and I only did that because I hand-made them. I put most of my shopping off until the last minute. I still need to get something for my mom. Just tonight I wrapped all the presents I have bought so far. I still have to get them boxed up to send off to Kentucky, Ohio, and Alabama. But I have until Thursday to ship them through priority mail, so I'm sure they won't get mailed before that.

Yeah, I'm a slacker.

We met up with Adam and Shelly again on Sunday for an introduction to Rock Band, dinner at Russell Street, and further Rock Band antics at Aaron and Robyn's house. Craziness. If we hadn't just emptied our wallets at Columbia, I wouldn't have been surprised to buy a stupid Xbox 360 purely so that we could also buy that game. I loved playing the drums, but I kinda sucked at it. I need more practice.

It isn't Thanksgiving, but I sure am thankful

Another busy week went by without me even thinking about writing blogs. One night this week Marc and I went to a small business mixer at the WaMu branch up the street. Another night I went with the group from work for our monthly volunteering at the Oregon Food Bank. Last night was our token happy hour at Chili's. Greg didn't have a good time, though. Work has been busy; Kristin's in Mexico so I've been alone again. At least it's only for a few days instead of several months. :)

Today we went to the Columbia employee store as guests of Adam and Shelly. That was really bad for our wallets, but we got some screamin' deals. Then we went to Slimey's for homemade fish chowder. We watched Bourne Ultimatum, and I think I liked it even better this second time around.

Then we came home and opened the package that arrived earlier today from my brother Tom and his family. It's a gift basket full of all sorts of Ghirardelli chocolate treats and other sweets. YUMMY!

All of this makes me feel like a very lucky person. Having a warm home to live in, plenty of food to eat, the ability to get medicine when we're sick, and generally not having to worry about our survival is a true blessing.

At work, we had giving trees set up with tags that people could claim with gift requests from kids. I had fun shopping for Hello Kitty toys for a 4-year-old I'll never meet. In my department, we also adopted a couple of families. The first tag I claimed for them was for cleaning supplies. When there were still a few tags left with only a day remaining, I picked up another and got some food items for their holiday dinner. Getting these most basic and essential things for strangers in need really makes me appreciate the great things and people I have in my own life.

New Clothing Haiku

We went to the Gap.
Bought lots of new clothes. Now what
to wear tomorrow?

Okay, so technically, I don't think I'm supposed to break a line in the middle of a sentence, but it's poetry. I'm claiming artistic license to break the rules.

Christmas Celebration #1

We went over to Matt and Tam's last night because Dad and Julie were in town and we all wanted to do a Christmas dinner together. We ate salad, roasted potatoes, and awesome steak--plus lemon cranberry cake for dessert. Yummy! It had been months since we've seen Dad and Julie, so it was good catching up with them.

Before dinner was ready, Marc and I were starving, so we all started munching on some chips and dips. Tam brought out some Doritos. We rarely have any kind of chips in the house, and when we do they're never Doritos. But when Marc and I used to meet at Grandpa's house once a week for lunch, he always had Doritos. Eating Doritos last night reminded me of Grandpa... and made me wish that he was still here with us.

(Very Delayed) Excessive Rain Pics

Wow. A week went by without me writing any new blogs. Marc expressed his surprise about it last night, so I figured I should at least get off my butt and post a couple of the pictures I took on Monday. If you're not living in the northwest, you may not be aware of how much rain we got on Monday. I don't know the exact number of inches, but it was somewhere in the 3-5 range. A little north of here, I-5 has been shut down since Monday because of extensive flooding. (But there's a 200+ mile detour you can take to get around it! That's convenient!) Anyway, there wasn't a huge effect from the rain in our immediate vicinity--except for the lake that formed at work where we usually don't have a lake. Okay, maybe it wasn't a lake, but it's got to at least be a pool. Here are a couple of pics I took from my office window. Sorry about the poor quality of the first, but I liked it better than others because it captured a really cool reflection of my leg lamp. Haha!


Usually there's no standing water in that area at all. I'd estimate that it was at least 12-18 inches deep. In the next one, you can see how full the creek is (behind the picnic tables). Usually I can't see any water in it at all. All of that water is draining from 26 (which you can see in the first picture above). On Tuesday, the water in the creek wasn't as high, but all the standing water around the cattails remained. By Wednesday, it was all gone.


I guess I haven't written much else this week because I haven't had much to write. A few friends have started playing Texas Hold 'Em on Facebook lately. It's fun. If you're on Facebook, look me up. I'm easily spending more time there than on MySpace now.

Last night we did our typical happy hour that turns into happy 3 hours. Sometime this weekend we're going to the GAP outlet (YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!) because Marc's lost enough weight to warrant buying new jeans (25 pounds since the end of August!). I MAY have to pick up a few things for myself while we're there. I do have gift cards to use up...

First valley snow and possible new computers

I woke up (way too early) this morning to find a very light dusting of snow on the rooftops. We might get a little more this afternoon before it warms up later and turns into rain. I love snow. Fortunately, since we're in better physical shape this year than we have been for a long time, we're planning to do some serious skiing/boarding this season.

Marc's laptop has been acting up on him. It likes to randomly shut down when he picks it up. He told me the other day that he's considering a Mac as a replacement. What? A Mac? When I was a kid, we had an Apple IIe that was great for playing Qbert, Lode Runner, and the Olympics. I remember using Apples in school to play Carmen Sandiego and other games (where each of us had to wait for the 5.25 floppy disk to get passed around to boot up the programs). In high school, I took a graphic design class where we used Macs. But that's the extent of my Apple computer experience. So, we're doing some research and poking around the possibility of picking up a couple refurbished MacBooks. We'll see how that goes.