man and pigeon have staring contest

The man scooting by on his Razor looks away from a most dangerous contest between man and nature. Lalita Distinctive Thai Restaurant serves delicious food.

dork!

Yep. When I'm busy I get a little stir crazy punchy. I've been this way for a while now. At least I hope it's mildly entertaining for those around me :)

the office

Now that I work in an office, it seems that the episodes of the show are much funnier. Not that I think I couldn't really relate before, but I think I now better understand the context. Speaking of working in an office, I think I need to simply wear earplugs all the time. I get so easily annoyed by all the random noise and chatter around me! Someone in the office has their ring tone set to sound like meditation bells and it's really loud and clear. Which is great I guess, but not for someone who thinks it's time to start quiet reflection. And because of the short nature of the ring, I can't find out who it is (so I can smash their phone). I swear, when I get an iPhone (and I WILL, heaven help me!), my ring tone is going to be set to the sound howler monkeys during mating season and the volume will be at maximum.

happy made up holiday!

I was at Target tonight and it looked like a tornado hit the all pink Valentine's Day section. I have a new theory about why there are so many holidays. Like the answer to many a question, I think people are just bored. Sure companies want to make money, but I think the general populace will do anything to be entertained easily, and a feel good holiday with lots of products being pink or red is a sure fire thing.

The upside to all of the brouhaha though is that we can all take a moment to consider whom we love. I don't think you have to be in a relationship for that to happen, either. I remember many a past V-day spent single. I'm pretty sure I was bummed about being single of course, but it was the best day to commiserate with friends for sure! Bring on the food, drink, and/or games :)

I think I might have been going somewhere with this missive, but the deep thought train just left the station without me on it. Time for bed!

another day, another lunch

So I've discovered that not only does iTunes have a stream for Live 105 (which is FAR less kludgey than the stream from the Live 105 site), they also stream NPR (among lots of other crap that I don't want to listen to - power ballads of the 80's anyone?). So instead of getting the occasional brain building hour or so of NPR on the drive to or fro, I got a mega dose of NPR today for about 3 hours whilst I mucked around in illustrator.

I now know way more than I've ever wanted to know about how nominations are handled, what super delegates are (kind of), and how Obama could possibly win the popular vote for being nominated but still might lose out to Hillary (the super delegate thing).

Beyond politics, they had a very interesting guest come on and talk about her article in the Atlantic.com called Marry Him! It's about "settling" (definitions vary for what's considered "settling") for someone to marry once a woman reaches 40 or so. I heard a couple of really sad callers tell their stories, but also a few people calling in to tell the world to wait for passion plus connection. I haven't read the entire article yet, but I'm sure it's meant more to show a particular point of view and perhaps offer hope or at least discourse a day before the manufactured day of love.

I say, life is hard and often lonely. Even if you're already married, I think having a good group of friends and/or a good connection with family is just as important. No one makes it alone. No one. And if by some miracle they do, they probably wished they had company along the way.

the internet is just a fad

I admit it! I play way too much Warbook. Also, I tend to zone out in meetings. Can't someone just tell me what to do? I guess I'll learn to contribute one day and say stuff like, "maximize", "be the thought leader", and "these pretzels are making me thirsty!". Of course, I can't say anything now because I really don't know what people are talking about. I'm hoping that in a few months I get the jargon down. Plus, I'm working on getting more sleep to stay healthier and get stuff done.

Get this, it's almost 9am and I've done a bunch of small chores (that invariably add up by the end of the week) and I'm blogging (my catharsis). Going to bed around 11 really does seem to help and this could be the full-time schedule adjustment I was looking for. Of course, a lifetime of hating to get up in the morning wont go away quietly, so we'll see how long this will last!

Here's a shot of how the hallway fusebox looked during the electrical work (right now there's a cover over the box, but there are still several large holes in the drywall - sigh). We finally have updated stuff, which so far looks like it has made the dryer work properly once again (test load number 2 coming soon). The electrician, A & Zack's, did a great job. His son is apprenticing with him and beyond really knowing what they're doing, they're quite friendly too. The dad asked me where I worked, and when I told him, he said he'd check it out. It was great because he doesn't really use the internet and gets along just fine. I'm glad everyone isn't like him (because I would have not had much work for the last 10 years), but it's nice to see that you can live a perfectly happy and productive life without Googling anything. Crazy!

I voted! My caucaus for President.

Here are some pics from Cathryn's first hockey game. We went with Merima and John and got to watch the Sharks win it 3-2 in a well paced, well played, thoroughly entertaining game. We got to drink beer, eat delicious pub style food, and even found great free parking!



Here are some shots from our weekend in Marina. It was very stormy most of the time, but we enjoyed the energetic atmosphere and found really good local places to eat. Italian dinners with caiperina (I got special treatment from the owner because he was Brazilian and I happened to be wearing my Brazil Futbol shirt :), fresh made donuts, and micro brews all were had by driving around a bit (thanks to Cathryn's adventurous spirit - I woulda just went to the tourist trap restaurant on the resort grounds). At one point I ended up running around on the beach in shorts in probably 50 degree weather. Got chilled and had a headache for the rest of the day, but boy was it fun! More pictures to come...