Ok, I’m sorry

I know my post the other day was super lame, and that I didn’t post yesterday.  I was bad mood girl all week, and I would probably still be in a bad mood if I wasn’t going to see Andrew tomorrow (so excited!).  It’s the heat! It is eating away at my soul!!  But you don’t want to hear about that.

I found the most excellent biking blog today.  If you are into biking and the internet at all, I am sure you know about it.  But, if you are like me and was only into biking, then recently was pushed in front of a computer for 8 hours, this is a cool discovery.  Its called BikeSnob NYC and I freaking love the way this guy writes.  He’s really funny and rips on fixie people all the time (which is funny because I ride a fixie and my friends are totally the type he makes fun of).  I can only imagine how bad the trend is over there, because New York is pretty uptight about their style and image.  I like to think that we are a little more laid back here on the Pacific.  Before I bring us into a coast gang war…

I’ve been reading a lot on cyclists being attacked by motorists and/or people with blowdarts lately.  And the funny thing is that the comments immediately turn into an argument about the roads.  These two people were shot with blowdarts and most of the readers are concerned with cars and bikes being on the road together.  It’s like everyone’s life revolves around their car and driving in it.  Sometimes I wish to be taken back to the innocence of my youth, when I believed it was an easy task to take away all the cars in the world.  At the age of 9, my friend Amy and I sent a petition to President Clinton asking to take away all the cars in the United States and replace them with bikes.  Our argument was that it would reduce pollution and make everyone healthy and fit again.  Bless those souls that took pitty on us two young girls and actually signed our petition.  Those were the days.

Back From Vacation

Hello everyone! I am back from my week long boating trip with the family and it is terribly difficult to switch back into work mode.  So I am easing myself into the working state-of-mind by starting with my blog! I had so much fun this last week staying at various ports around British Columbia and exploring the islands.  Here is a picture from when I rented a bike at Ganges:

Well, on to the real work now.  I will probably come back later and update some more for a mental break.  Happy Tuesday

Circulation Appreciation

I don’t know why it takes me getting on a crowded bus or a stuffy airplane to truly appreciate fresh, circulated air again.  Oh, but how I appreciate it now.  I also appreciate circulation in other ways: when in pertains to my blood, or even my blog.  Trying to get the word out about this blog is like trying to hold your breath for an hour long bus ride.  It doesn’t really happen easily.  And although I am not top dog in the blogosphere, one place that has helped me a little is technorati.com .  I don’t know if anyone else out there has found other good sites for getting better search optimization (besides a plethora of tags), but I wouldn’t mind getting some feedback.

Speaking of feed…. I am hungry.  I can’t wait until I leave for lunch to explore yet another food prospect in Pioneer Square.  So far I have found Tat’s Delicatessen (omg amazing), some Thai place (I will look up the name) and Longhorn BBQ.  I love food but I haven’t gone on a run, bike ride or gone rock climbing all week due to being sick.. so no “good” food for me.  But good for me food… yay.  Don’t get me wrong, I love salads and fruits and nutritious yums like that, but I am really craving some cheesy, heart-stopping goodness.  And I would totally nom into some fatty sandwich if it weren’t for the fact that I will be on a boat for the next week and unable to exercise… lame.  Ok, I guess not lame, I’m going on a boat up to Canada and thats pretty neat.

My last note is: I wish I had this door.  My life won’t be complete until I do

The Amazing Ping Pong Door

The sick day has passed but the illness lingers on

Hello readers,

Yesterday I did not come into work (or update my blog) due to being sick.  Well, that is the short and simple story.  Not only was I unable to come in because I was sick, but I was also sick in Spokane (280 miles away).  Here is the full story:

This last weekend I decided I was going to visit my boyfriend at the bible camp he is working at this summer.  The camp is about 1 hour and 30 minutes northeast of Spokane (so that is about a 6 hour drive from my house to him).  So I left on friday and got to see him a have a jolly old time.  But, in order to stay at the camp and earn food and a bed to sleep in, I had to work with him (he doesn’t get weekends off) so I slaved away, helping build a zip line, dig some dirt… etc.  Some of these activities happened to take place in the late evening with cold wind and rain, and me in just a t-shirt and shorts.  By sunday night (the night before I was planning on leaving) I was starting to feel lethargic and did something I had never done before: locked my keys in my car.  I have had this car since I was 17 years old (21 now) and I have never once locked my keys in it.  But now, the night before I need to leave when I am in the middle of nowhere, I do it.  So I call USAA and tell them that I need some service but I will wait until tomorrow.  What I didn’t know was that tomorrow meant 4 o’ clock in the afternoon to them.  Oops.  I tried driving to Spokane and got there around 7ish and felt like I was going to pass out.  There was no way I was going to drive the next 5 hours feeling this sick and tired without crashing and killing me and/or someone else.  So I bummed a couch off of my boyfriends mom and had to miss work.  I am still feeling the grips of the sickness and it is not fun.  It feels the same as when I had mono and I do not like it at all… except there is more sneezing involved in this one.

Here is to getting through the day and getting through traffic (1hr and 30min in traffic this morning). Kudos to all you workers out there, getting things done!

O hai!

Hey there internet world, I know I said that yesterday was sleepy but I take that back.  Today is even more sleepy than yesterday (or so my caffeine-deprived mind wants me to think).  It probably doesn’t help that I went rock climbing and on a run yesterday when I was already tired and then didn’t go to sleep until kind of late.  Oh well,  I can sleep when I’m dead, right?

What is truly exciting is that my friends and I are going out to the bars tonight, which will be my first time going since I turned 21 on the 1st.  AND I will be going to visit Andrew this weekend at the camp he is working at.  I will have to work so I can earn food and a bed while I’m there but I really don’t mind at all.  I’ve worked at a camp before and it can be pretty fun, but I don’t think that I’m the type who could do that all summer.  Children can be very tiring and you always have to have patience.  But it is a good learning experience.

I don’t know if I already mentioned this but my sister is now engaged as of the 4th of July!  It is very exciting and I really can’t wait to help her go dress shopping and plan.  I love weddings so much and this should be incredibly fun!

Sleepy Wednesday in Seattle

The weather outside is the kind of weather that makes you want to get out of bed only to turn up the heat or make a cup of tea, before crawling back in the covers again.  No, it’s not storming or even raining here but the overcast clouds and chilling wind are menacing nonetheless.  Of course, all week I have wanted to stay in bed and not wake up to greet the early morn, but alas I find myself clothed and out the door by 7.  Which brings me to an odd thought.  Ever since I became a college student, anything before 9am, doesn’t exist because it is an ungodly time where no one should be awake.  But when I was in highschool, my first class started by 7:25am.  That is sick, just sick.  I can’t believe I got up that early and was able to function.  No wonder high school kids are falling asleep at the wheel while they are driving to school.  Kids can’t manage time well, especially when it comes to allotting time for sleep (I still struggle with this task).  So why make them attend school before most of us go to our desk jobs?

But with that question, we come back to the classic ping pong game of public school arguments: they need to get out early for after school jobs, they don’t even learn enough already, they need more time in school, blah blah.  Personally, I think that we should be looking at our own business techniques and a new school model in New Jersey for ideas.  First: telecommuting.  I am not saying that kids shouldn’t have to attend class but if you want them to learn more, offer online courses that they can do in their own time.  Experience: Less classroom time, more outside experience.  Give the students assignments that require internships or job shadowing.  That leads me to the new school model from New Jersey.  This school has their students do internships and present “business models” to peers and teachers about their plans for school at the end of each year.  I like where they are going and would be interested to see if this idea can be implemented throughout the United States.  For more on that school system, here is the article: No dropouts from this Camden, NJ, high school

Hello July!

I have a question for Miss Manners: How do you react when there is a crazy man yelling obscenities at you on a street corner? I know that he wasn’t directing all that anger on me or anything I did because there was a whole group of cyclists around me and I heard him yelling before I even got to the street corner.  But how are you supposed to react to that?  I know that I tend to ignore them, as I am sure most of you do as well.  But perhaps that is what made this person so angry in the first place, or they might seriously need help.  Either way, it is a good metaphor for many of the social, economic, and environmental issues we have today.

Moving on to a lighter note, I hope that everyone had a fun and safe Independence Day!  I know that I had a nice relaxing get-together with my boyfriend and some friends.  Swimming, fire, food, drinks and fireworks!  Plus my sister is now engaged, which is incredibly exciting!  I get to be a bridesmaid (I dunno if I am the maid of honor) and help my sister go dress shopping.  I love weddings, probably beyond a healthy amount.  I guess that is what I get for being a die-hard romantic.

This weekend I also did a lot of rock climbing at Vertical World in Redmond.  My arms are killing me today and it didn’t help much that I rode my bike to work this morning.  But hopefully I can work the soreness out by this weekend.  I am going to the camp that Andrew is working at to visit him.  The catch is that he technically works on the weekends and I have to work to earn food.  So, I guess I will kind of be doing volunteer work this weekend.  But I don’t care as long as I get to spend time with Andrew.

Don’t use hitch knots on a balloon with a sunroof

I learned this the hard way yesterday.  But let me start at the beginning: Last night I went out to Eva’s in Seattle for my 21st birthday with my parents.  The food there was amazing! Plus I ordered a weird but delicious mixed drink, it was champagne and gin with lemon and a sugar cube in the bottom of the glass.  Very weird but I liked it a lot.  We also tried a bottle of Austrian wine, which I had never tried before or even heard of wine from Austria. Let me just tell you that it was yum!  But, with so much alcohol in my sleepy little self, I must admit that I became very unaware of my surroundings.  So, in the car ride back home from the restaurant I lazily tied the balloon my sister gave me to my purse with a sloppy hitch knot.  We were riding along for about 20 minutes and then all of a sudden, *bam!* The balloon flew out the sun roof with so much noise and freaked out the driver behind us.  It was funny, but also really scary when it happened, it was seriously loud.

And now it is thursday and I am sitting at my desk in the office.  I rode my bike to work today but just from Lake Union, a 15 minute ride.  I thought I was running late but I got here at 8:20… we don’t even open until 8:30 and I am not suppose to show up until 9.  Now I’m wishing that I had slept more, I am so incredibly tired and I don’t know why.  Hopefully it wears off by the end of the day but I doubt it.  I will probably just go home and go straight to bed.  I do have a busy day tomorrow! My boyfriend, Andrew, is coming from Spokane for the weekend (I am so excited!) and I need to clean my room before he gets here.  I also need to set up the yard for my birthday/4th party on saturday.  AND do my homework for my online class.  My goodness…. things to do.  Sorry for the mundane post but I seriously feel brain dead today, should be a productive day at work, lol.

My Birthday

Well, today is my 21st birthday! Quite crazy, no?  Of course I am not doing typical 21st birthday things this week.  I am working, going to bed at a reasonable hour, and being taken out to dinner by my parents.  I’m excited about dinner tonight, hopefully it will be super delicious!  Sorry, I am focusing on the food because I’m a little hungry at the moment, but because today is my half day, I am just going to wait until I get off work at 1 to eat.  I also have to go to the DOL after work to get a new license.  There will be a massive line, I am sure, but I don’t mind, or I won’t as long as I get something to eat, lol.  I wonder if they will let me eat in line? Hmm, that is an idea.  I should invent a portable tray for standing in line.  It would have straps like a backpack but you would wear it backwards and there would be a little stomach part that would have to wrap around your torso in order to hold up the tray.  it would be cool.  You could eat spaghetti or salad easily while standing!  Think  of the possibilities! People would never have to sit again! well… unless they wanted to I guess, sitting can be nice.

And that was an odd tangent that I really didn’t mean to go off on.  I just popped up in my mind and I just started typing it.  I guess my hunger is taking away my inhibitions, lol.  That little phrase, “lol”, has given me much anguish ever since I joined this internet thing.  I don’t like it because of… well many things, social implications, lowered perception of intelligence, the fact that I am lying (rarely am I laughing out loud, probably just smiling), and it looks bad.  But I use it to convey an emotion in my writing.  I want the readers to know that I in fact am joking or being light-hearted.  I hate to be misinterpreted.  Well, there is my thought on lol, which I am sure you were staying up late thinking about.

PS: DO NOT read Chuck Palahniuk right before bed.  It is impossible to sleep with those images in your head.  I do enjoy his works but they are definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Working on a Wikipedia

Hello!

Today I am working on writing a Wikipedia article for Seattle Publishing and it is proving to be more difficult than I thought.  Not only must I accurately represent a company that I myself just learned about, but I have to impress my boss too .  It is a daunting task but I am resolved to finish it today because I have been putting it off for a couple days now.

I was researching technology not too long ago and noticed that it is advancing far beyond what I thought it would by this time.  Not only can we keep a heart beating outside of a human body for 12 hours (article from The Independent), we are also on the verge of making life easier with phones, honest (article)!  I think that these advances are pretty neat and I am really excited for them.  But on the other hand, it will just make businesses more and more technology driven.  And for those of us (like me) that rather do things in person than on the  computer, well… we will be a minority.  Thankfully some social interactions are surviving the rise of impersonal technology.