purple and not-for-profit: March 2005

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

testing

please work, new website!

Friday, March 25, 2005

Avoiding packing

Just some bullets as we avoid packing...

Good Friday fasting...I'm upset with the catholic church in so many ways - why am i observing the fast?

Brian is ok - the Peace Corps hasn't made a decision on whether to pull them out, but I got an email from him last night and he's pretty sure they won't get pulled out. But it is still unsettling when you look at the washingtonpost and realize that a COUNTRY where someone you know and love has just overthrown it's goverment.

You can give Brian's school money if you want!

Rain delay....booo...

Yay! Carissa is going to go be on a peace boat!
Ok, must go back to packing

Thursday, March 24, 2005

"Thank you for waiting, your call is important to us, we'll be with you momentarily!"

Snapshots from work...
Mark: dude, those HPs be totally gettin down!
Mark: I seen them with those old sk00l okidatas, just chillaxing with 40s
Me: :blink:
Me: you need a vacation
Mark: probably
Mark: whatchyou think they call them that for? they ho pimpin! HP!

Well, I need a vacation too, if calling IT Client Services is the highlight of my day.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Turning this into a blog :)

Again, I'll put up the disclaimer - I have nothing against all personal or all news blogs. I'm just not sure which side I want to be on (I know which side i've been on for a while :)

But this drives me to comment. I know trust-fund liberals. I am happy to report that I am not one of them. BUT - good God. Conservative commentators cannot fight to defend the estate tax (I looked for one by the same author, but google did pull up one from the same website, at least :) and then attack socially conscious people whose parents tried to provide a better life for them without turning them into blood-sucking vipers. To be honest, as a regular contributor to Dean's primary challenge (never above the $20 per paycheck range) I am VERY insulted. (Thanks to Wonkette for doing it better than me :)

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Purple is halfway between red and blue?

So, this will be one of my last nights in my new apartment without any furniture. As every one of you knows, I'm moving this weekend :). And if you aren't helping me move and you don't have a REALLY good excuse for it, you're no longer my friend. Plane tickets and religious inabilities to travel in moving vehicles are good excuses. Family obligations are not ;).

But being in a fully furnished apartment before I move in is a little odd. Its a little like inserting yourself completely into someone else's life. I don't know why I feel like I'm taking our relationship to a whole other level by moving in with Brenda. Girls who freak out about moving in with guys probably don't spend more time thinking about this than I do. Without subjecting you all (all two of you who read this - and b for that matter :) to the inane details, lets just say I'm reserving judgement on whether or not all of my things and my life will fit in until I, well, actually move in.

Besides, who knows how she actually feels - I'm blogging from her laptop, watching a first-season West Wing on almost-mute. I know she's fine with me moving in - now I just hope all of my small appliances get along with her small appliances. And jenny. She's not allowed to break any :).

(OMG, its the West Wing block of cheese episode - I SWEAR I watched this last week).

In other news, work was relatively pleasant today. I bust my ass, get annoyed at people who don't, and get little credit for it. At least not in the kind that matters. God forgive me for wanting to leave early on Tuesdays. Even after my office has ALREADY made me relocate without compensation. Argh. Ok, all of my positive vibes (which were actually there from work) have all evaporated.

(I totally need to get seasons 2 and 3 - and 4 if out - on DVD and watch random west wings in my room. ah well, birthdays cometh)

So, I talked to Ellie for a while today. Surprisingly enough, her midnight phone call was not the conversation I had today with the person I see the least. I also got IMs from Carissa and Emily Schleicher. It all just makes me feel like I have more than the five friends I actually have :). Em is moving down here for the summer, and probably for more time in the future, and I think this summer I will be more successful with meeting up with her. I hope. We used to be good friends. Carissa wants to man a peace boat. Why did I never want to man a peace boat? It sounds fantastic.

Does anyone else notice that "save as draft" is a good feature to use but tends to really throw off your stream-of-consciousness blogging? No, me neither ;). As you can tell from the post.

I was going to post about Delaware. I like Delaware. I'm going to, before I die, write a story about Delaware.

I want to have a more productive blog. However, I don't really know what to blog about. Now, we're getting meta-bloggy, and thats always bad.

I don't know why I always feel the need to sign off a blog, either.

Finally, I dont know why I always settle down to blog about something and instead blog about ANYTHING BUT!

Sunday, March 20, 2005

If you're going to let one stupid prick ruin your life....

Its amazing how big of a goad to blogging moving can be. So, we get a snapshot of my day instead :).

1. Reading: Every Sunday, I go to Greg and Jessa's and read aloud. It is good practice for when I have kids :). If anyone comes across a nice, ten minute reading that would be fun to read aloud, let me know. We do anything from novels to history to the classics to humor to ANYthing. i've been having trouble finding things to read, so I'm looking for suggestions. Menckles has been reading from a baseball book for example. I'll keep you posted.

2. Mrs Dalloway shops for furniture: YAY FOR STINA!!! I've been counseling a couple people in some surprising advice - just go with it. Don't overanalyze, just let yourself enjoy the moment. Maybe it would be due to this?

3. New template? I need a purple one, but I'm working on it!

4. Moving?: Ok, so I will be moving to my new apartment (with my new roommate!) next weekend. Its really sad that I have to move on easter, but that's what happens when the lunar calendar puts it at the end of the month. Time to reserve the truck, but I've thrown out more than I've packed (yay!) and I'm probably about halfway through? Except for the kitchen. i'm 3/4 of the way through except for the damn kitchen. That's Tuesday night's project. Well, if I can finish the living room and start the linen closet (and maybe even finish in the morning) i'll feel a real sense of accomplishment for the weekend. And eric even helped a bit :).

But I'm going to finish cleaning off the desk (which is empty inside :) while watching the end of legally blonde.

"Hey Warner, do you remember when we spent four amazing hours in the hot tub after formal?

This will be even better!!"

"I just feel like for the first time people expected something more out of me than to be a Victoria's Secret model!"
-Legally Blonde

View each day as a short story, not a chapter

Good sunday morning to everyone. It has been an interesting week.

Thursday-St Patrick's Day
Though I can tell you I did not start drinking at 11am, as I have in some years. Honestly, I am getting too old for that sort of thing - I wasn't even wearing green. (I know that some people decided to go that route and enjoy it, but that is the joy of graduate school :). But I couldn't let the holiday go uncelebrated, so when Liz announced she was making a guest appearance, I decided to go out and see what the fuss was all about. Ah, for St. Patrick's day in a city dominated by young people - You couldn't move in the bar we patronized or any other bar for that matter. So, after debauchery at the Mad Hatter, we graduated to Matt and Denise's, the Wonderland...all I know is that I passed out on the floor at their apartment and awoke on the futon. I did pay for it the next morning, as even though I didn't have to work, I was too awake to go back to sleep and instead just lived through my hangover. Honestly, I'm getting too old for that sort of thing as well.

The rest of the time
Friday was a more mature version of the same. Instead of drinking myself to death, I did pace myself and split it enough non-alcoholic beverages that I managed to keep myself sober. This will be my cutting back method - because i want the socializing of a drunken night out without the drunkenness. So we had dinner, basketball, a drunken boyfriend, and some socializing back in my apartment. Drove aaron home the next morning, and embarked on what was to be a productive Saturday of packing.

Well, it would have been. Had we been out of bed before 2. Or out of Arlington before 6:30. Ah well. I took down the Christmas decorations and packed them in a box of books. More packing will be done post-reading today. I want to fill all seven or eight boxes I brought up with me.

Book Divertissement
We also took advantage of christmas BN book cards to hit Barnes and Noble. However, I need to make a confession. I am horribly intimidated by the Barnes and Nobles and Borders of the world. They have so many books - and I've always had a problem purchasing books. Eric tries to explain to be their dollar-to-entertainment-value-ratio, but all I can see is the initial outlay of money as compared to books that I borrow or pick up used or free. Besides, most of the books that BN carries aren't in the 7-to-8 dollar trade paperback form, but in the 12-to-17 dollar full paperback form. But I had forty-odd-dollars left on a giftcard, so it was time to bite the bullet and just move through and pick up books. So two historical fiction novels, one biography of the wicked witch of the west, one book I had been eyeing for a while, and the Guns of August. Which, as a known Tuchman enthusiast, people (read Eric) were shocked I had never actually read. I guess there is a certain irony in owning both Practicing History and The Bible and the Sword and not the book that made her famous.

In retrospect, I don't know why I freak out so much about those stores. But in retrospect, my brackets were shot to hell, too.

Finally, I want to add more relating the title to a story, but instead I just will end with "Clarissa, just go buy the god-damned lamp!" :).

Ok, not quite end, because this was priceless.

Source of the Quote of the Day
Ruth Jacobs, a physician from Rockville, said the curriculum "puts a lot of pressure on kids to figure out who they are, what they are. And they shouldn't be forced to do that."

Monday, March 14, 2005

Happy Pi Day!

Dear world-

I can't say that I'm back, because to all five of you who read this blog, I've never been away. In fact, the only thing I'll add is "Hi Neil!" Because Jenny/Stina/Storey have gotten updates since I last blogged. If anyone else reads this, let me know :).

By the way, this one is for Storey. I have been reading and studying about the health benefits of laughter for years. Even fake laughter releases endorphins and makes it more likely to pull you from depression. I have researched many different ways to run from my emotions. Laughter is not just the healthiest, but it really is the truest for me. I live to entertain. I love telling stories, and that is a large part of how I define myself.

I also cannot blog fast enough to keep up with what is going on. As most of you know, since I last blogged, I decided to move to Virginia, B found an apartment, and we moved her in. Now we are going through the excruicatingly show process of moving myself. Which would be helped by if I would pack ANYthing. Well, some packing will be done tomorrow night.

Also, work has been CONSUMING me. But...for those of you keeping track, the New SAT is no longer...new. So does this mean I can relax? I should hope so. I'm getting angry parents pestering me left and right. In fact, my cell phone just rang. I don't know why.

But that is a sign that I need to get to work. I'll add some more soon!

purple and not-for-profit