The Oscars
I like watching the Oscars. I always have. It's a very shallow event, but I love all the glamorous dresses, I like seeing the clips of the movies I haven't seen. It's like a movie that isn't great or deep, but it's entertaining. The fun part for me is that watching it has become an bit of a tradition for D & I. Normally I would've watched this with a girlfriend. When we moved to DC, and it was just the two of us, he had to take the role of girl-friend. So every year since then we make a fun night of it. Have dinner, make snacks, have wine. And of course I make a contest out of it. We write down our picks for the winners, and at the end of the night see who had the most winners correct. He wins every year. Every year. He's just guessing as well. Has no idea what half the movies are even about but still wins. I love him for doing it though, because I don't know ANY of my friends boyfriends or husbands who would do this. So I don't mind when every year he falls asleep for the last two categories.
The weirdest thing about this year's show was the music. The orchestra kept playing the strangest selections for people to walk out to or when they'd be fading to commercial. At one point they played the theme for "Star Trek the Next Generation". For no apparent reason. Odd. Oh - one other weird moment: Melanie Griffith never disapoints. She had a really slinky pale blue beaded gown on that let her droop and sag everywhere, with the entire back cut out. So the dress and of course her puffed up lips and super tight face alone were giving me plenty to giggle at. But she was walking with a cane and had a foot in a cast. When asked she said she hurt it "...attempting to climb Mt. Everest and only got to the 1600 foot level when she tripped and broke her ankle." That's awesome. You couldn't wish for anything crazier to come out of her mouth.
Water
Why does water having a calming effect? (tsunami's not included) There's a small pond I pass as you leave our neighborhood. No matter the time of year its a pretty blue. I believe it's fed by a natural spring. It rarely freezes, and there's usually a few mallards in it. Today I was thinking I'd love to sit on a bench and just watch the pond for a few hours, how peaceful that would be. Then I wondered, why did I think that? Just because it's water? But then, I love the beach and listening to the ocean, rainstorms, waterfalls. We're always saying the one thing our property is missing is a pond or a stream. I really want to put in a small pond in our backyard somewhere. And I love swimming pools and baths. I love our great big deep jacuzzi tub. Major selling point for me of the house! Alright then, guess I like water.
Looking forward to the weekend. Busy week. I still need to update my bookclub blog, we met for the first time last Sunday to discuss a book and it went really well. Loads of fun and great discussion. Tonight I'm having a sleep-over at my girlfriend's in Pittsburgh. Her husband is out of town and I'm going up to help her hang shelves and pictures. He's not so handy at stuff like that. Plus I get to hang out with her two adorable little girls. Saturday night is a dinner party at one of D's co-workers. He said they've got "Scene-It" which is the MOST fun board game I've ever played. SO much fun, movie trivia with an interactive DVD. I am way too competitive, so I'll have to tone it down around his co-workeres. We might also go skiing Sunday as we've now got about 5" of snow.
The week is ending on a good note. I haven't yelled at any agencies and we just got checks from corporate for profit sharing. Nice.
SonOfSaf
After much cajoling, my friend Saf has started a blog. I've added it to my blog links. Please check it out. He's always been someone who has an opinion on everything, and it's usually a pretty funny, often different take on things. Maybe I should empasize "different" take. Incendiary is a good word as well. I've used that twice this week now. He's one of my favorite conversationalists, so I hope you get a kick out of his blog. He's currently reviewing local restaurants.
Deserted Island
It's 10 am and already I'm wishing I was on a deserted island, or at least had an office with four walls and more importantly a locking door. The end of the month is alway so busy here at work, which I don't mind. Being busy makes the day go quickly. I've just had a few more irritants pop up this week than normal. Already today I've had people standing in line at my cube with people hovering in the background to pounce on me when it's their turn, I have to call an agency to say they've yet again sent bad art, had someone assume I would look up info for them, when it's part of their job. I work with some lazy friggin people. Yesterday I got to spend 4 hours of my day driving south of the Mason-Dixonline to photograph a funeral home exterior, because the client doesn't like the photo they gave us to use. Who decides to use one funeral home over another based on the facade of the builing? Especially when it looks like a post-office? Then I had agency ask for a specific photo to be used - just assuming this exsists in stock photos, and of course not wanting to pay for it or realize that if they want to be that specific, they might need to do a photo shoot. And oh can you pop out four layouts in 5 minutes?
It sounds like I don't like my job. Overall I really, really do. It's a great company. It's just there's a snide look-down your nose attitude that prevails about outdoor advertising. Like I must have gone to a two year tech school, and have no design background, experience, etc. I hate being spoken down to and if one more person calls me an artist instead of the art director I'm going to snap. Not like I'm hung up on titles, but that's about all I've got going for me to keep even the smallest scrap of credibility. Artist I swear is subliminally percieved as, "works with crayons" or "first-job-out-of-college". Yes, there are days when I think this job is beneath me and I wish I still worked in an agency setting. But then I have to balance things like benefits, short commute, pay-checks that don't bounce, working with friends. And also, who the hell am I to think something is beneath me? It's not like I've got a war chest full of design awards. Anyway. Venting over. That helped.
Today's Pet Peeves
• People who type the entire body of their email in the Subject line
• People who leave Caps lock on, because they're too lazy to use proper punctuation
• People in management level who send emails written like post-it notes
• When during your busiest day of the week, you hear a co-worker mention how bored they are
• People who sign-off of their emails like a cat, literally typing "Meow" huh?
• People who think its great when another Dollar Store opens
• People. who have no. conversation. skills.
• People who send work related emails from yahoo accounts without referencing what it is for,the company they work for, what I'm supposed to do with 16 photos of wrecked cars...?
Good Day
I was in such a grump mood this morning - for no real reason. Just grumpy. (Ok - actually it has all to do with ovulating and trying to read a stick with two purple lines and I somehow can't get it to work with me but I don't want to go into details about my ovaries again) On my drive to work I did what I usually do to try to alleviate this - I did my mental prayer list. This is when I go thru and thank god for everything in life. God existing or not, it helps me realize all the things I'm happy for and to not take for granted. My health, my mind, my family, my love, the blue sky, my friends, my dog, the good movie we saw the night before, my ability to say a prayer, and on and on. I almost always come out of it feeling better. And this morning it helped. Then I find out some really good work news, even better. So the day that started out gloomy, became a good day. I even had a friend line up a comment that just NEEDED me to make a sarcastic yet funny remark to. I love that. Oh - AND it's payday! Just keeps getting better.
About that movie. We are really behind with watching movies, so don't mock. We watched "Garden State" last night. What a great movie. Simple plot done well. Something about it had a "Lost in Translation" feel to it. D - who didn't want to watch it because he knew nothing about it, really liked it. Natalie Portman was perfectly wacky -yet you've met someone like her at some point in life. She is so good in this I actually want to see "Closer" now. I already liked Zach Braff from "Scrubs". He just seems like such an honestly GOOD person. Sooo damn sweet. Duh funny, but he's a talented actor and director, and writer. Check it out if you haven't already.
This could be funny..
But I'm honestly not sure...Click this.
Anyone know the song?
UPDATE:
Apparently this clip is everywhere, the Today show even did a bit about. Here's a link to more about the kid behind "NumaNuma".
Valentine's Day!
Wouldn't it be fun if at work we still made "mailboxes" like we did in school? Decorate a shoe box and cut a slot in the top for everyone to go by and place our cards? I loved the kits my mom would buy that had tons of red, white and pink hearts and doilies, stars, etc so I could glue and make my own valentines. I remember this being a big day at elementary school. The homeroom mom always made sugar cookies or cupcakes, and had "crafts".
That segued into carnations in High School. It was a school fundraiser, and you could buy and have delivered to class; white (friendship) pink (secret admirer) and red (love). This could either be a good thing or a really bad thing. Depending on how you remember high school.My best valentines day memory: I was little, maybe 8 or 10. My dad had been out of town and came home on Valentines day. He got my mother and I each a rose floating in a bowl and long cotton t-shirt type nightgowns that had a satin frog on the chest. I loved that nightshirt. And that might have been the first time I ever got flowers from someone.
I hope everyone has a nice Valentines day and everyone at least gets a hug, a kiss and an "I love you" today.
Let them eat cake...
if they could afford it.
With the end of January came the W2's. Something we look so forward to every year. We basically spend January planning how to spend our tax returns. Something to do to battle the post-holiday-cold-weather doldrums. But not this year. Some how, the year we buy a house and should have deductions GALORE, we're* figuring we owe? How the heck can this be? I hate taxes. I hate that the older I get, and the more "things" I own, the harder it is to keep them all straight. Oh the days when I made 20 grand and filed "single". We need to hurry up and procreate. Get that darn baby deduction! (I kid, I kid - I just want one cuz I want one)
And Happy Valentines weekend to y'all. Evening though it's Monday, I think most couples will celebrate this weekend. Someone asked me what our plans were for V-day. I said "Our long standing tradition of pizza and beer, preferably at a mom & pop restuarant". To which my friend said "I love your husband, he sets the bar so low for the rest of us". But this is our tradition, started when we lived in Rockville, awesome little pizza dive near our apartment.
No big plans for the weekend at the moment. And often times - those lead to the best weekends!
*means not me
Ergonomics
I don't know why, but I've had a lo-grade headache for the past four days. I think it's all from tension in my shoulders and neck. And grinding my teeth. Need to go to the Chiro. My wrist has been killing me as well, so I'm wondering if it isn't all stemming from bad desk ergonomics. Maybe it's time to change up the cube. Although I thought I had my chair, etc set ok. Good news along that line is I'm finally getting a Wacom tablet (!). Nice big one too. Hoping that helps with the wrist tension.
I've had really crazy dreams lately, not sleeping good at all, and I think that's from the tightness in my shoulders and neck as well. It doesn't help that April snores pretty loud. So far I've dreamt my legs were caught up in snakes, which I don't mind, but I knew some of them were poisonous so I had to be careful. A friend's dad is in a horrible accident, his head and face smashed pretty bad, I was the first to tell her, and of course she's just sitting in her car along with the friend that is attached to her hip, smoking a cig and its not big deal. Frantically shopping in a store that had very little to choose from, and I HAD to buy something - like or else. I couldn't find anything l liked, then had to go back and look again. It was all older, older women's clothes, with lots of sequins. weird.
A week later
I've finally gotten around to posting a few pics from the ski trip two weekends ago. I swear, I take one day off from work and it's a week making it up. Plus my office hosted the regional meeting last week and lucky me got to give a presentation. So it was way above standard level of busy. When I work late, I have no desire to look at a computer when I get home, and today is the first day I've had a minute to post during my lunch.
The ski trip was a huge success this year! We had great snow conditions, tons of powder, hardly any ice. I skied blue runs the majority of the time - this is a huge step for me. I'm finally getting better at this. (Although now I want to learn snowboarding.)
This past weekend was wonderfully relaxing. Friday night had a girls night, had a great time just drinking and talking and laughing. (found out that we should have done a bit more bar hoping - we never made it to TJ's, where apparently John Corbet hung out all night. Yes, the hottie from Sex In The City is from right here in WV, once I turned around at a bar and walked straight into him - grace I'm not) D left Saturday morning, bound for our friends house in Philly to watch the Superbowl. I had the house to myself! As it was 60 out, washed the truck then took a huge long walk with GrapeApe, went farther out on the farm road than I had before, and found a new trail. (Also found a dead fawn on our property. Really odd. Looks like it had just laid down and died) Puttered around the house all day, then fell asleep on the couch. Why this seems like a luxury I have no idea. But it was great to just lay there and doze in and out while movies came and went.
Sunday went to church and then lunch with my dad (at TJ's - hey, ya never know) and spent the rest of the afternoon finally finishing sanding all the bedroom doors. My hands still feel like they're buzzing. Sunday night I watched the dreaded SuperBowl with friends. It was so painfully close. I feel so sorry for D. Not just because I'm sure he' so disapointed, but becuase it's the end of the season. I am glad he watched it in Philly. No matter what I'm sure he had a good time. Oh, and amazed at the halftime show. Paul McCartney put on an awesome, lip-synch free concert. The stage and fireworks were impressive, as was the sound. Didn't miss the breast at all.
The 2005 ski group.
The view from our cabin one morning.
Top of SnowShoe Mountain.
My honey's hip hemotoma. Black circle shows current size of booboo. Apparently this was from a spectacular mogul wipe-out.
