I think I’ll remember my own LIFE

I am in a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mood. 

My computer is the biggest piece EVER!  I have to start and restart it FIVE times EVERY FREAKING MORNING to get the damn thing to boot and actually start.  Sometimes, it will start without this.  But then my mouse and keyboard don’t work so I have to restart it again.  I then usually have to start and restart it an additional five times…leading me to turning my computer on and off TEN TIMES before I can do any work.

It takes an average of 9 minutes from the time the computer starts actually working right to  when I can actually do anything on it (as in it takes 9 minutes for my computer to “load my personal settings” and install, uninstall, and reinstall all my programs).  According to our IT department this is NORMAL????? 

Once my computer is on and working, it then takes an additional SEVEN minutes to open Microsoft Outlook.  This goes up to about ten minutes if I attempt to open Internet explorer at the same time.

An average morning requires approximately 45 MINUTES to be able to start doing anything on my computer. 

This is NOT NORMAL, I don’t care what the hell my IT department says.  And seriously, if this IS normal for the company…we need to do something about it. 

Then, I have a hole in the stairwell office (literally…my office is a little side room off the 2nd floor in the stairwell…this office is the ONLY thing off the stairwell in the 2nd floor…there is no real second floor over here.  Only a 20 x 20 room shared with 5 other people).  We do not have real internet connection.  We have a co-axial cable that connects all 6 computers to the internet and each other.  If one computer goes down…we all go down. 

I am having major issues staying connected to the internet this morning.  So far I have been disconnected 10 times in 20 minutes.  I’ve had to restart my computer an additional 3 times this morning (going through the entire process all over again) in order to get my computer to work. 

I’ve been here since 7 this morning (it is now 10 AM).  I haven’t accomplished a single thing other than turning on and off my computer.   Literally. 

And lets not even get me started on how often this thing freezes up for no reason.  Last week I lost an entire report because the computer froze.  Best part, I was saving the report every two pages or so.  But, when the computer froze, it decided to ignore all the saves…and recovered the file back at the FIRST PAGE and the so called “saves” I was doing…apparently didn’t really save.  ARGH!

I am so grumpy right now that I honestly want to throw my computer down the stairs (the ones right outside my door) and claim I need a new computer.  Sigh. 

Please tell me you have some good news for me today?

Ugh…this weekend football has been terrible. 

Eagles sucked the big one.  I’m pretty sure the football fairies were decimated (as of now I’m losing 202 - 69), however, I still have 6 more players to play.  But yeah, I’m gonna just chalk that up as a loss.  I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make 202 points.  Sigh.  And the pretty pink princesses are too close to call right now.  Either way…not a good football weekend.  Only happy note…both the Giants AND the Skins lost. 

Sigh. 

I also saw that three people died in the Detroit marathon.  How sad.  And two of them were really young.  It’s crazy…it wasn’t even hot during the race (yes, I realize heat is not the only reason people die during marathons..but three seems like an awfully high number for such a cool marathon). 

I didn’t go running this weekend…I’m seriously sucking at the whole running this lately. ..however I did bake some yummy cookies.

So…schedule this week:

Monday: Run 4.5 miles

Tuesday: Gym

Wednesday: Run 4 miles’

Thursday: Gym

Friday: Run whatever I feel like 

Anyways, hope everyone had a more exciting weekend than I did.

I was driving to work this morning and flipping through the radio stations since my MP3 player decided to take a break from working (thank you very much Starbucks coffee for spilling all over the inside of my car and soaking the player.  I hope it works after it dries out…).  I accidentally flipped to a  morning show which I DESPISE. 

The two DJs are pretty much everything I despise about southern conservatives (I would like to state for the record that not every southern person that is conservative  is also a southern conservative and there are some people that live in the north that are southern conservatives).

SOUTHERN CONSERVATIVES are the people that become irrational about ANY OTHER POINT OF VIEW that differs from their own.   They think Obama is a muslim terrorist out to destroy the country and planning to set up death panels to kill their grandmothers.  They set up billboards along the highways that say “Ex-Gays prove change is possible”.  They talk about how religious and awesome they are at the same time they are saying that they are scared we have a black president because now other black people may feel like they have the right to step up and better themselves (this is an ACTUAL word for word quote from someone).  These are just a few examples…they go on and on.

Anyways, I can honestly say I don’t think I have EVER agreed with anything this radio show has talked about until this morning.  They were discussing the flu vaccines and how employers of certain institutues are making them mandatory whether or not the employee wants to get them. 

Personally, I hate flu vaccines and I don’t believe in them.  I especially don’t believe in a flu vaccine that was developed and rushed to market in a few months.  I don’t have an issue with other people wanting to take a vaccine…but I have a HUGE issue with people being forced to take the vaccine.  I realize some people really think they are great, and they may even be helpful for people with compromised immune systems, but I personally don’t believe there is a benefit to me taking a vaccine.  Yes, there were some initial tests that showed no side effects, but what about effects that could possibly show up in 2-3 years?  How many medicines have there been that they claim are perfectly safe…and then a few years later they are pulled off the market due to adverse side effects. 

Anyways, it was just a weird shock to actually agree with these people even if it was over something as small as a flu vaccine. 

So…moving on.  I’ll end the week with some more knitting:

My latest fingerless gloves.  Just a small, light weight glove perfect for wearing and typing (and ignore my short and stubby fingers…I hate my fingers haha).  The cuff is only about 1.5″ long and the palm ends about 1/4″ above the fingers.  My co-workers make fun of me and call them my driving gloves…but I love them and they are exactly what I wanted. 

Here’s a picture of the two of them side by side. 

Everyone notice my ugly gray plastic desktop, and I swear the gloves are the same size…it was just the angle I took the picture at

Anyways, hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

Ok…as much as I dislike baseball…YAY PHILLIES!!!  Way to almost blow the game…and then come back and have a FANTASTIC last inning.  I’ve never seen 50,000 people shut up so QUICKLY in my life.  Awesomeness!

And not that I care…but yay Miami for using the wildcat offense a ridiculous number of times in one game and totally confusing the Jets.  I didn’t really care either way who won, but the game amused me so I was happy. 

Boo doing something stupid to my neck last night, making it hurt to turn my head past a certain point.  And holy crap touching it.  I practically spasm it hurts so bad.  Stupid stupid.  What is wrong with me lately?  I’m falling apart!

Another boo having to give my first presentation in over a year tomorrow.  Yet another group of people that will discover how ridiculously fast I speak and having no idea what I’m saying.  Super!

But yay for my boss thinking I’m smart!  (I am so smart…S-M-R-T).  I gave her my slides and did a quick run through with her to make sure I was covering all the points (and not saying anything I shouldn’t) and she LOVED it!  Go me. 

I also gave her a rough copy of the final report I’m doing and aggain she was so excited by it.  I missed feeling this smart and doing fun engineering type things.  So glad I’m done my FLL rotation. 

Another yay for my new business card holder.  It’s not really a business card holder, but I didn’t want a boring plain one, so I found a notebook thing at Barnes and Noble and just took out the notebook.  Now it holds business cards.  See:

I had a wonderful weekend…I hope everyone else had as fantastic a weekend as I did. 

I went to see Bruce Springsteen in the last concert ever to be played at Giants Stadium (the new stadium looks super nice from the outside…but I still like the one in Philly better). 

Seriously, the concert was awesome.  Bruce rocks pretty hard for a 60 year old man (and he just gets better looking the older he gets…).  I had such a great time and I’m glad I got to go with my sisters and dad.  Wouldn’t have been the same with any of my friends (who are not really Bruce fans…so sad). 

Only bad part…he didn’t play Thunder Road.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE that song…and really wanted to hear it…but it wasn’t played and I was sad.  Come on…any song with “you ain’t a beauty but hey you’re all right” as a line has to be awesome.  But he did at least play Born to Run and ended with Jersey Girl (my favorite piece of cheese song ever!) so it almost made up for it. 

Then, on Sunday I was baking and managed to lose my balance (stupid inner ear) and fell against the oven and burnt my leg.  I have blisters on my thigh now and it really freaking hurts.  Stupid clumsy me.  I do not rock right now. 

But at least the cookies rocked!

Then I got to see LL who I haven’t seen since her wedding so that fun. 

Um…oh yeah and my fantasy teams both SPANKED the competition.  So I do rock there.  :-) 

Anyways, 4.5 miles planned for today. 

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Enjoy the week!

So I cheered for the Vikings on Monday night…and I even liked it :-)  That was such a fun game to watch…and both my fantasy teams won so Go Me!

Unfortunately, I was also sick with an inner ear issue that is causing me to fall over when I turn too quickly.  It’s almost humorous if it wasn’t so annoying. 

However, I’m hardcore and went running yesterday anyway.  And I saw the WEIRDEST thing.  I ran around a curve in the path and there was a girl there.  No…seeing a girl on the path isn’t the weird part.  The weird part is she was dressed in a deerskin dress, she had no shoes on, was wearing a head band with braids in her hair and was shaking a bush and picking up the berries that fell from the off the ground, and putting the berries in a reed basket that was full of other reeds and plants.  I have NO idea where she came from or why she was dressed like an Indian…and I was kind of scared to ask.  But seriously…it was just bizarre. 

Then, I saw bear poop on the path and I got a little freaked out and was paranoid I was going to run into a bear.  I think I need to find somewhere else to go running for a while.  Sigh.

And…I also decided that I’m NOT going to run the half marathon this November.  I was doing a 10 mile run yesterday and I realized I was completely resenting having to run and I was miserable.  I haven’t had fun running in FOREVER and I just want to be able to enjoy running again. 

So, I’m dropping down to only running the 8k.  That means I can drop my training runs down to 4-6 miles (which is my happy distance) and hopefully get back to enjoying my running instead of dreading it.  That was kind of a hard decision to make because I feel like I’m so wussing out when it comes to not running the half, but then I realized it’s stupid to do something for fun…that’s just making you miserable.  Obviously…it’s not fun right now.  So I’m not doing it. 

And maybe I’ll try to do another one sometime next year.  I just need a break from training. 

Anyways, hope everyone is having a great week!

Ok…so I want my dog to look like this for Halloween:

Where do you think I can buy this creepy thing…or how do you think I should make it?  Seriously.  SO FUNNY!

The lovely race report…this time as a volunteer and not as a runner…Go me!

Anyways, my Saturday morning started out with me waking up at the lovely hour of 4:30 AM (yet again I went to bed WAY too late on Friday night and got MAYBE 2 hours of sleep).  But I figured it wasn’t like I was actually running that day so it wouldn’t be awful.  I could always just take a nap after the race.

So I head downtown and seriously this place sucks.  There are NO 24 hour places that sell coffee other than some gas stations (and their coffee is terrible!).  I finally sucked it up and just bought some nasty coffee at the Exxon on the way.  Worst coffee ever.

Other problem, Google maps sucks in this area.  I don’t know why I didn’t think to verify the directions against mapquest this time, but I didn’t.  Luckily I printed out the actual map and was able to use that to get to the water stop…but seriously.  Google maps had me taking an exit that didn’t exist and going the wrong way down a one way street and going in the wrong direction when the highway split.  It was kind of ridiculous.  I finally just took one of the main exits and back tracked my way to where I was supposed to be.  I’m glad I had added in an extra 15 minutes of time to find my way. 

We set up the tables and started filling up cup after cup of water.  I filled about 350 cups of water before the race even started and the other table had about 300 as well.  After that, we started making the gatorade so it would be ready on the return loop (we were the water stop at mile 2 and 8). 

The first half hour was super boring.  Just handed out water and cheered on the people…but at two miles in nobody was really dragging.  They were all super excited to be running so it wasn’t that necessary. 

Coming back was a little more interesting.  People were definitely tired, and there were NO mile markers on the race (ugh I HATE that) so they kept asking us how much farther and we were cheering everyone on (the neighbors must have loved us…we were LOUD). 

I also felt like I was part of the movie Waterboy because half of us were handing out water and the other half handed out Gatorade.  But, we had to yell out what we were giving so people could get what they wanted.  So we had a nice chant of “water…gatorade…water…gatorade”.  I kept thinking in my head, “Gatorade not only quenches your thirst better, it tastes better too.  Gatorade, H2O! Gatorade, H2O!  Water sucks…It really, really sucks.”  It kept me entertained for a while. 

I’m also really glad I didn’t attempt to run this race.  I’m pretty sure I would have come in last place.  The slowest person had a 12 min/mile pace.  That’s probably close to what I run…but not when I’m running 10 miles.  Then I usually slip to a 13 min/mile.  So…I would have been the lone runner left on the course. 

And the race coordinators  removed the cones before the last person had even finished yet (there was no time limit set for this race so they should have left the cones out until the last person finished) and the poor lady had the cop inching along about a foot behind her bringing up the end of the race.  I probably would have cried if that was me. 

After the end of the race I headed back home and slept for about 4 hours and completely messed up my sleeping schedule for the rest of the weekend.  Go me. 

Sunday was then spent watching football (Yay Denver beating the cowboys!) and since the Eagles didn’t play I wasn’t really that concerned about anybody in particular winning and it’s always fun to watch games when you don’t care who wins.  :-) 

Both my fantasy teams played well this week and I’m pretty sure I won both games, but I guess we’ll see how the other teams players do tonight.  Go vikings!  (Actually, I really just want AP to play well and I could care less about the rest of the Vikings). 

Anyways, have a lovely Monday!

I feel like posting some fun pictures today, so here we go:

When I left my last job, one of my operators in the bay gave me his awesome lunch box.  It’s an old school construction worker lunchbox that is plain gray and ugly but super cool.  I love it and I used to joke that I was going to steal it when I left.  But I never got the chance to steal it because he gave it to me as a goodbye gift. 

So…me being me…I jazzed it up a bit…

Yay pretty lunch box!  My favorite side is the end with my name on it and the pretty pink tiara.  I rock. 

Next up.  K went home for the weekend and went shopping and saw this awesome plate/cup set and thought of me and bought them as a gift.  And it’s two things I love most.  Pirates (Arg!) and SQUARE plates AND bowls!!!!  (We know of my weird circular hatred).  Anyways, coolest dishes ever!

  

I had a TERRIBLE run y esterday.  And by terrible I mean worst run I’ve had in a really long time…and it sucked big time.  Even weirder…it was the most amazing weather and I totally should have had a great run!  Sigh. 

Hopefully today’s gym visit will be better. 

I also watched that weird show I didn’t know I was pregnant (or whatever it’s called).  Seriously.  The lady was pregnant and had her baby in a freaking TOILET (thought she was just having a REALLY BIG bowel movement!).  So freaking weird.

Then her family kept saying how she was acting really weird the past few months with irrational mood swings and crying for no reason.  They kept saying, I thought she was just depressed and getting fat.  So awesome. 

Most bizarre show ever!!!!

Seriously.  You have to watch it.  It was so weird. 

Anways, work has been super busy which totally sucks…I had to work on Saturday…and had a really creepy time with the contractor…but I don’t even want to get into it.  But let’s just say I’m still flypaper for freaks…and I really need to work on attracting the NORMAL people. 

I have a doctors appointment on Friday so I was going to be coming to work late anyway, but my manager just told me to take off this Friday to make up for Saturday.   And then I have off  next Friday to go see Springsteen (Yay Springsteen!) with my dad and sisters.  Super excited!

Anyways, have a fantastic week!