ScaBloPoMo Wrap-Up

Hooray! It’s December 1. Normally, I wouldn’t be all that happy for December and its weather to be here, but right now that means no more being required to post each and every day. The amusing part is the last couple of days of November, blog-worthy things just started happening, such as getting hit on at the gas station, etc. I didn’t even manage to get them all posted, so you’ll continue to see posts for at least the next couple days until I get them all blogged. I can’t guarantee how long this is all going to last though. Like Josh, I had considered seeing just how long I could keep it going, but since I’m traveling to Minnesota for a Christmas party next weekend, I’m doubting it’ll last long.

I ended up with 31 posts in 30 days, though the reason I had two on one day were cause they were both rather small. And since I managed to write each and every day, I even met the true NaBloPoMo rules. Didn’t think that would happen. I even had my highest ever hit count for a day at 24 on Nov. 9. I think I even had my second highest hit count on the 29th, but I can’t tell. Still cool though. I’m gonna go ahead and call the month a pretty good success.

Randomly generated 7

So I didn’t officially get tagged for this meme, but everyone else was doing it, so I felt like I should too. Well, and I actually had several more small post ideas that I wasn’t quite sure how to turn into a post, so I figured this would be a good way to address those without feeling like I was slacking. Yes, this is a hint that it’s gonna be a long one.

The rules are:
1. Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share seven random or weird things about yourself.
3. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. My food can’t touch one another on the plate. Each item gets it’s own little section of the plate and they cannot merge. If, as I’m eating, the food starts falling into one another I have to push them back to their own confines. This is made even more difficult by the fact that my kitchen table leans. We’ve adjusted the feet multiple times but can’t seem to get it level. I wonder if the tabletop is slightly bowed. Whatever the reason, I have to be very careful how I arrange my plate, especially if we have a meat that is dripping juice or vegetables in cheese sauce or dripping butter, so that everything doesn’t end up running together. I had mentioned something along these lines to Dave who laughed at how well this speaks to my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

2. I can’t stand any scrap of fat on food. This is why I don’t eat prime rib, though everyone says it’s wonderful. It’s way too much work to pick all the fat off of it. Mr. B laughs at me as I’m scraping every last inch of fat off of a pork chop, steak, etc. then grosses me out as he shoves a huge piece of meat and fat into his mouth. Eww!

3. I’ve hit my head quite hard on multiple occasions. (No, this doesn’t, in fact, explain a lot, whatever you may be thinking.) I’m not going to go into all the details or we’ll be here all night. If you want more details, I’ll be happy to explain in more detail some other time. Basically, playing line soccer in 6th grade, I tripped at a full run and smacked my head into the floor. I also played on a fall soccer league at that time. I had a soccer ball kicked straight at my face from a close enough range that I didn’t have time to react before it hit me and knocked me over, not just once, but twice in the same game. Both hit me in exactly the same place, right at my eye, so I had a nice bruise. Then, in high school, while attending an all-night skate, a friend and I apparently locked wheels, and I fell headfirst into the floor. I say apparently because I don’t remember it, but that’s what she says happened. All I know is that one minute we were skating around and talking, and the next I was picking myself up off the floor with no idea what happened in between.

4. I have a tattoo on my lower right back. Ok, so I know this isn’t exactly news, though quite a few people were apparently surprised that I had one. But here’s a tidbit you maybe didn’t know. My tattoo is actually of a drawing of a dancing rose done by one of my ex-boyfriends. It’s not the stereotypical story, though. We’re still friends, and I got it a year or so after we broke up.

5. I can’t stand to have anything between my toes. Flip flops, those socks that fit around each toe like gloves, toe rings, and so on all just irritate me to no end. But, it doesn’t stop there. Just getting a thread caught between my toes makes me tense up. I just can’t stand the feeling. I tried a pedicure once and I couldn’t let her put the little foam separator between my toes. She tried using tissue since that wouldn’t be as thick, but any hope of relaxation was still out the window, even though I was sitting in a massaging chair.

6. I’m not a good collector. I have lots of the beginnings of a collection, but nothing that was really followed through to the end. I have a ton of mismatched Tweety, fairy, turtles, stuffed animals, etc. Lately, I think part of the problem is I’ve never collected any of the good souvenir items, so when I want to get a souvenir from a trip, I’m left to pick something that doesn’t match anything else cause they don’t have anything for my current collections. It’s not like Mr. B’s collection of shot glasses that you can find a wide variety of in any souvenir shop.

7. I played the flute in junior high and early high school. At the end of freshman year the band director ticked me off by calling my mom at work to say we should have scheduled the trip for my grandfather’s birthday around the concert band sectionals cause he was upset that one of his 20 flute players, not even one of the top chairs, was going to miss the contest. So I stuck around for sophomore year and the band trip to Toronto at the end of the year, and then I quit.

Now is where the tags should be, but since I wasn’t officially tagged and couldn’t link who tagged me to follow Rule #1, I’m throwing out Rules #3 and #4. If you find this and want to do it, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll check it out. If you’re just looking for some additional reading, check out Debra’s, Dave’s or Josh’s versions of this meme.

Something new every day

After work today, I ran a few errands including dropping the iPod off at DHL. By the time I was finished, I needed to gas up the car, so I stopped at the Kroger near my house. After starting the gas pumping, I turned around and saw the guy at the pump next to me and the following exchange occurred:

Him: I was going to leave, but couldn’t until I figured out who you were.

Me: (Just smiling and wondering if he was trying to figure out if he knew me)

Him: How are you doing tonight?

Me: (Thinking he reminded me of someone, but pretty sure he wasn’t anyone I actually knew, and wondering where this was going and how I could make myself “busy” while waiting for the gas to finish pumping) Fine. You?

Him: Pretty good. My name’s Bill.

Me: Scarab*

Him: (After a little bit of silence followed) Did you have a good holiday?

Me: Pretty good, yes. You?

Him: Yes. You’re probably married, right?

Me: Well, not married, but dating.

Him: Figures. I was going to ask you out to dinner. (Now heading around to the driver’s side)

Me: (Wondering how on earth you actually reply to that) Uh, thanks…it was nice meeting you.

Him: Nice meeting you too.

I’d never been picked up at a gas station before.

*Name changed to protect the innocent

Dave Rocks aka iPod Woes (Part 3)

(Yes, Dave, I just put it in writing and in public, no less. Betcha never thought that would happen. )

After writing the iPod update the other night, Dave called me to say if I would bring my iPod to work, he’d take pictures of it for me. That’s a good thing cause I was having trouble getting pictures that were both in focus and not all reflective or washed out. If I used the flash, it would cause a bright glare. If I didn’t use the flash, I couldn’t hold the camera still enough or get enough light in order to get a decent picture. And I had trouble with reflections getting in the way also. What can I say? I’m not a photographer.

While Dave and I were talking, I asked about lens cleaner so I could get my camera lens cleaned. He told me what I needed to get, then said if I brought it with the iPod, he’d clean it too since it’d take 10 seconds. So today, we met for lunch (special note for Korey: I had a cheese and tomato deep dish at Uno’s cause I know you’ve been waiting all month to hear what I had for lunch today) and I gave him both iPod and camera. Later in the afternoon, he sent me some pictures and then after work, I swung by to pick stuff up. So I’m getting the iPod all packed up, and tomorrow when I run errands I’ll drop it off at a DHL location. Hopefully there’s quick turnaround and I’ll have a working iPod soon. I’m sure I’ll have at least one more update to say how everything turned out.

I don’t make decisions

Yes, I know…this is shocking news to anyone who knows me. OK, so I have made a few decisions here and there, but I haven’t really made many big decisions in my life. I’ve kinda stumbled into things all the way through.

Note: This is gonna be a long one. Consider yourself warned.

One of the first major decisions I had to make was which college to go to. All my life I had said I was going to go to the UW in Madison because that’s where all my family is, and I would always spend some time around campus in the summers. The summer I was there between Junior and Senior years of high school, I went to actually visit with some admissions people. The people were rather snotty and nasty to me because I was from out of state (though I could have arranged to be “in state” over the next year with all the family that lived up there), which left a bad taste in my mouth, so I decided not to apply. I ended up applying to a couple schools, but what made me to go WIU? It was the one we could afford and wasn’t too far away from home.

Then it came time to choose a major. I wasn’t quite ready for that decision, so I went undeclared. Before school started I got sent a letter offering me a scholarship for freshman year if I declared a math major for at least freshman year. I figured, why not? So I declared a math major. By the end of freshman year, I still had no clue what I wanted to major in, but I was through 3rd semester Calculus, my Maple credit, Ordinary Differential Equations, and a couple Math honors credits, and I had no clue what else to declare that wouldn’t put all that to waste. So I stuck with Math. The math degree required some basic computer classes, which made a computer science minor kind of obvious. I mostly enjoyed those classes, and by Junior year, I had some spare credits available, so I considered bumping my minor up to a second major. When I started looking into it, I found out I had to take a class with the professor who taught the only computer class I hadn’t liked, so I stuck with a minor.

At that point, I started trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, but what do you do with a math degree? Well, there’s teaching. So very not for me. The only other thing I had heard of was an actuary, and when I started researching it, I found that an accounting background was helpful. I actually made a small decision and added an accounting minor. I didn’t really mind accounting, but I was really glad I wasn’t a major and having to do all the extra stuff the required from anyone who was a major, which I got a front-row seat as the only non-major in just about every accounting class.

In Sophomore year, I was looking for a part-time job. Out of nowhere, one of the math professors asked if I’d be willing to tutor in the Math Help Center. Not a bad situation, so I went for it. After a while though, I started finding out that it wasn’t for me. (This is also where I learned I couldn’t be a teacher.) By Senior year, I couldn’t take it anymore and figured I’d try going without a job for a short while and look for something else. A few days later, I ran into a friend I used to tutor with, and she said she knew of a job, so I went to check it out, and suddenly, I was doing odd jobs for the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs (IIRA). By the end of the year, this same friend said her boss had asked her to find someone to replace her as a grad assistant for the Rural Economic Technical Assistance Center (a unit within IIRA), and she was going to suggest me if I wanted it. Before you know it, I had a grad assistantship and needed to figure out what I was going to go to grad school for.

At this point, I was somewhat fed up with Math and wanted something a little different. I started looking into what was required to get a Masters degree in Computer Science. I was afraid it would include that one class taught by the professor I didn’t want anything to do with, but by that point, things had changed and I could avoid that particular class and still get the degree, so I applied for Computer Science.

Towards the end of grad school, it was time to start looking for a job. Of course, I procrastinated as much as possible, so I went to a career fair in early April, just before graduation. While there, I ran into my current employer. This wasn’t exactly someone I associated with IT, so I wasn’t searching them out, but I stopped to talk with them. They were doing some information interviews in a few days and suggested I sign up, so I did. After going through that, they asked me to come in for an interview, so I did. I seemed to have gotten pretty lucky in the timing, apparently towards the end of all the hiring they were doing at that time, because a couple days later, they called to offer me a job, and I took it. It’s one of those situations that you just don’t pass up, especially since this was just when the dot com craze was starting to fall apart.

Once I was in the job for a while, I got to the point where I needed to find something else. Even my supervisor said I needed to get to something else with more challenge. Around that same time, there was a re-org and I got a new supervisor. She heard what I was looking for along with some others within the section, saw a need within the section and came up with a pilot, and before you know it, I was in a different role. Not a completely different job, but a different role at least. It got me some more challenge and experience, but unfortunately, it also led me right into my current job.

There was another re-org, and we had switched supervisors. At that point, what my role really was got lost in translation and because I had a certain title, I got moved into another group and into a role I had actually turned down twice in the past. It’s not that it’s a bad role, but it’s not what I want to be doing. So I’m now looking for something else. And this is one of the first times in a long time that I’m not at the right place at the right time to stumble into something. So this puts a lot more pressure on, and I’m worried that making the wrong choice will get me stuck into something I don’t like for another couple years. And I still haven’t quite figured out just what that should be, so the whole idea is making me a bit nervous. And I’m wondering if, deep down, I’m waiting to stumble into the next thing.

iPod Woes (Part 2)

Well, so far I’ve been pretty impressed by Apple’s iPod support. I filled out a web-based form to tell them my iPod was having issues. Granted they said it’d take an hour to get an e-mail response, and it turned out to be closer to 6, but oh well. They said that from their initial analysis, all the work should be covered under warranty, but because it’s past 180 days, I have to pay shipping. Oh darn. The next day I got a box in the mail. They sent me a decent sized box, filled with foam with a little cutout in the middle for my iPod, complete with a bag, return address label, and even strips of shipping tape to seal the box up. Everything I needed to send it back in to them. Then I just drop it by DHL or call them to schedule a pick-up. But, I did notice on the paperwork that they’ve switched my support issue to “Dead Unit” instead of the inaccurate options I had to choose from in their form.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet returned it. As I mentioned before, they don’t give you your original iPod back, and I took great care to keep mine from getting all scratched up. So just in case, I wanted to take some pictures of mine to insure that I had documentation of what mine looked like before. I know it’s probably not going to help much, but I want to have my bases covered. The only problem is, when I’ve taken pictures with my camera, they come out looking like the iPod is all dinged up because of dust on the lens. It really doesn’t look like it does in real-life. So I need to get something to clean the lens and then I’ll take the pictures and ship the thing out. Definitely not going to procrastinate for long at all on this or I’m not going to be able to get my replacement.

So far, so good, though.

I overdid it

I was actually too productive today (well yesterday, but I haven’t slept yet, so it’s still today), and I’m paying for it now. My back is aching, and depending upon how I shift my weight, I get shooting pains up my leg, butt, and lower back. I probably could have handled the raking and picking up hedge trimmings, or the sweeping and picking up leaves on the patio, or the digging out decorations and bending and stretching to put them on the tree (yes, we had to decorate the tree tonight). Unfortunately, my body was not able to handle all three in a single day. And tomorrow I get to help put all the outside lights up.

I’m pretty sure I need more vacation to recover from this one. I’m not really looking forward to going back to work on Monday.

Productive? Me?

Mr. B and I really didn’t accomplish anything else last night. I spent half the evening making sure my kitty cat didn’t start chewing on the new tree and the other half of the evening we spent watching Knocked Up.

Today, however, was much more productive. Mr. B trimmed back all the hedges. A couple look exceptionally awful now because we really hacked them back. I hope they come back OK next year. I followed behind to rake up and bag all the branches and leaves, then he mowed the yard while I cleaned up all the leaves in the back patio. We then put up the new inflatable Santa in the low rider. Mr. B is pretty happy with it, but then again, he’s into cars and figures all of them should end up on air, so there really wasn’t much that could have caused him to be disappointed in it.

I came back inside and had a large cup of hot chocolate. It got pretty cold out there. Mr. B went home to get cleaned up and find his Christmas ornaments. I don’t know what’s planned for the rest of the night, but I’m hoping to take it easy, maybe just watch another movie or something. We’re planning on getting the tree decorated and all the rest of the Christmas decorations put up outside tomorrow afternoon. That is, if Mr. B doesn’t start whining that we need to get the tree decorated tonight.

Headfirst into the madness

Mr. B decided we needed to have some of the items in the After Thanksgiving ads. I hate shopping in the first place, much less when there are that many people out and about, so I really wasn’t interested in going out. Most of the stuff he wanted was part of the 2-day sales, but there were a couple of doorbuster deals that Mr. B just had to have. So, he woke me up about 4:30 this morning to go hit the Black Friday sales. We both got dressed quickly and threw on a hat, and off we went to spend some $.

1. JCPenny’s – We got the very last doorbuster 7.5′ 1000 light (500 clear, 500 multi-color) Christmas tree and they were giving everyone who walked in the door a free Mickey Mouse snow globe.
2. American – We actually didn’t buy anything here. We went for a 42″ Hitachi plasma flat panel TV that was a 2-day special. Unfortunately, they had only had 5 of them, so they were then trying to upsell the nicer Hitachi 42″, but we weren’t up for that.
3. Best Buy – We got a 2 GB Micro SD card that my brother asked us to pick up for him for his birthday.
4. Target – We went crazy here and bought a TON of DVDs. Family Guy: Volumes 2, 3, & 4; Veronica Mars: Seasons 1 & 2; The Holiday; and Ocean’s Thirteen
5. Menards – We went to get the 5-in-1 inflatable loveseat/lounger/bed, and ended up getting not only that, but an 8′ long inflatable Santa in a low-rider car for the yard (it even bounces the front end), a leatherman/utility knife combo, and a tree skirt and some ornaments for the new tree.

We made it to breakfast by about 9:45, and then we came home and went back to bed. That almost made me feel worse. I had so much trouble getting out of bed after that, and I’ve had a killer headache all afternoon. We got the new tree set up, and that’s about all we accomplished and are planning to accomplish today.

The good news: we saved 49% on the stuff we bought and everyone was pretty nice. The bad news: we really didn’t need any of the stuff we bought and a couple of the lines were extremely long. The even worse news: only one item purchased is a gift.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So this is the first year the parents have been close enough that Mr. B and I are doing Thanksgiving with both families, so we’ll be having two turkey dinners tomorrow. I have no idea where we’re going to put all that food. Guess I better wear loose-fitting clothing…

Hope everyone has a great day!