2/26/02
ok so i'm thinking now would be a good time to use the benefits my employment offers. schedule some doctor's appointments. follow up on that IATAN card. what's an IATAN card? it's the International blah Travel Agents blah. it's the card that lets you get travel agent rates on stuff. it takes 6 months to become eligible for the card. it's been 6 months, and i haven't heard anything regarding the card. so i'm following up today. i ask Suz what's going on and she says:

"Dave is in charge of the Iatan card application. You should check with him."

so thirty minutes later Dave comes over with my original enrollment form. "Sorry, Suzie found this while cleaning out her desk and I just received it yesterday. I know you filled it out 6 months ago, we'll see what we can get the IATAN to do."

ugh. i'm not even surprised at this. it's to status-quo for me to get angry about it. however, i'm starting to wonder if the reason the Vision Plan couldn't find me in their system is because those forms weren't submitted to the proper submittal place either. i remember complaining to ivan that the woman who handled all of the HR seemed to have too much to do and wasn't as responsive as i expected. is this my own fault?

2/21/02
i really did not want michelle kwan to win the gold. i'm so happy that other girl did. i dont understand why i feel this way, but i figured i'd share it.

today's funny story comes from the office, where i overheard the following:

"this may sound really stupid but i have a question about egypt. i dont know how to pronounce this word..." i'm expecting the name of some city like "Beni Hassan" or some dead guy like Tutankhamen. instead she says "p-h-a-r-a-o-h? what is that? puh-har-aye-oh?" and i could not believe my ears.

after going to about 15 stores, i was unable to find a new shirt for the "retirement" party tomorrow. my friend isn't really retiring. he's just leaving the company and going on to new things. it's just whenever anyone leaves the company, they throw a party. well, if they had any friends there, they throw a party. it's probably for the best. the last time i went to one of these parties, i spent the evening with computer geeks. the highlights of the evening consisted of a circular conversation about Data Models and just how much a person could fit on the factory-installed-TiVo hard drive. god i hope it this time it's better.

Song of the Day: Come Down

2/20/02
Ok so i had such a bad morning i almost send myself an email full of blog fodder. however, i was too worried about looking stupid so i didn't do it. here's the deal: 75% of the time, when i have to sneeze, i have to have a kleenex or i'm going to projectile snot all over everything within a 24 inch radius. this morning i had to sneeze, had the kleenex in hand, and proceeded to sneeze with such force that my finger sliced through the tissue and continued on to my nose. i could not believe i had given myself a bloody nose. so i ran to the bathroom hoping to see exactly what i had done only to discover two other women primping - one of which happened to be a coworker. so i ducked into the first stall and hung out there until i heard the door open and close...once...then twice.. five minutes later i look in the mirror and sure enough, my razor sharp (yet completely bendable) fingernail had poked a hole the middle part, in between the two holes. nothing bigger than a few millimeters, but damn if it didn't bleed more than the last papercut i had! the day did pick up from there, but now i'm wondering how long it's going to take this stupid scratch to heal, and every time i sneeze i wonder if i'm going to start bleeding again.

that was a dumb story. here's a not-so-dumb story to make you forget it.

so i'm in the locker room after Kickboxing class. i have to walk by this woman who has the locker on the aisle. the woman is wearing her bra, and i notice that she must have just been swimming because she hasn't put her panties on yet. so i precariously walk by, narrowly avoiding her ass touching me because she didn't look before she stepped back, and proceed to open my locker. meanwhile, bra-but-bare-ass woman is having a conversation with a woman across the bench. they're talking about how their husbands responded to massage therapy. Bushwoman (because you can't help but see it...) is slowly pulling on her socks in between sentences. I'm thinking "god, i could never do that"... the woman is completely comfortable facing the woman she's talking to and making hand gestures to imitate the masseuse's touch. she turns around and faces her locker again as i make my way out of the aisle and off to the safety of my car... and i notice that she still hasn't put her panties on...but she's currently putting her big gold hoop earrings on! hello? modesty?

i walked to my car thinking about how i had to share this story. so dinner is on hold while i type this up. now i need to figure out what the song of the day is (it's really the same song as yesterday, but i dont know if it's bad to use the same one twice..in a row...) so i can save this thing and get it up. oh what the hell.

Song of the Day: Magic's in the Makeup

2/19/02
woops. so much for updating this thing regularly. at least i emailed myself once with an update. this one i'm just winging. i honestly cant think of anything worth sharing. so today's entry will probably sound like a bunch of random babble. (how's that different from any other day, i wonder?)

my sister's birthday was last week. i gave her some coupons instead of gifts. no, not like "save .50 on Tampax" coupons. one of them was "free babysitting" another was "lunch and a movie" another was "girls night out" ... also "outlet store outing" and last, but not least "free ice skating session" since we were talking on the phone about the olympics and she said she always wanted to be a figure skater ... the irony being that she's 24 and has never been on ice skates in her life. most figure skaters have retired by then. i still haven't figured out if that was a lame gift or not. i guess i'll have to wait and see if my sister actually uses the coupons. if she doesn't, then i'll know it was a lame gift.

what else? the company will unoffcially move to Portland, OR if/when potential buyers decide to buy it. it won't move until after "the busy season," whatever that means, and god knows who determines what "busy" means. so somewhere down the line, if potential buyers actually buy the company (and nothing's been put in writing or signed, so that's a big "IF") i'll be out a job. again. it's not really a shock - i mean i figured a year or so before i'd need to get out... at least in this economy no one will fault me for only being there a little over six months.

i have a headache. i used the richard simmons "toning uptown" video to do strength training. man, was it lame. i dont know how i'll be able to use it again. he's such a dork, i actually feel stupider just watching it. he's so positive i want to punch him. but i know i need to add strength training to my routine, and i know that 20 minutes of guided activity with the fun-filled toning bands will be much easier to stick to than 20 minutes in the testosterone aura of the weight machines at the gym. we'll see. maybe i'll just live with flabby arms for the rest of my life. oh my god if you want to see a scary website, check this out!

the headache is getting worse now. i'm reading Fight Club. the same one the movie was based on. it's a really fast read - i think i'm about halfway through and i've only spent 2 hours at most reading it. i want to go back to reading it right now - but the headache and the guilt i feel for not updating this thing are holding me back. frankly, it's amazing how the movie closely resembles the book. i didnt think it was possible.

ok the headache is getting the best of me. enough typing. i'm audi.

Song of the Day: Some crappy Phil Collins song that happened to be on the radio first thing in the morning. I quickly forced myself to replace it with Magic's in the Makeup

2/11/02
i've been using ivan's computer for two hours now and i dont feel like turning mine on. because i have a headache that i've had for a few hours now. actually more like 4 or 5. maybe even 6. it's almost 11, and my head was pounding at 5. ugh.

so i'm writing my blog as an email to myself, that i will then cut and paste into the real blog, if i ever get around to doing it. you can tell that i dont really use my computer as much as i used to... weekends are completely neglected in the blog updates, and on monday evening when i get home from work i usually find myself downloading around two hundred and fifty emails. yuck.

so today was a pretty crappy day at work. aside from the right hand not talking to the left shit: we hired some temps to help out our department in getting everything back up to normal after the "technical issues"... the guy in charge of the other department made it clear that he would like to have a few of the temp folks continue working in his department. it also seemed vaguely like he wanted to have them interview for the positions. of course, my boss/department heads seem to know nothing about the interviewing process, and want us to recommend who should keep their job and who shouldnt. this is just stupid. but it doesn't end there! the guy who wants our temp people came over to my desk today and started asking me who we were keeping and who we were getting rid of... a decision we took great care to make behind closed doors. did i mention that the two people mentioned in his conversation with me were in earshot? he basically named the girl we were going to let go at the end of the day, asked if we were going to let her go today or tomorrow, and then confirmed that we were keeping the other girl. keep in mind we hadn't told either of them! anyway, i hightailed it out of there before the "telling" was done because i didnt want to be around for the wonderful display of poor management.

what else? oh, i signed up for the 401(K) that doesn't provide matching. it seemed really stupid to go through the percentage breakdown into X, Y, Z funds...seeing as how i'm going to be contributing approximately $35 a paycheck. and the big bonus we get for getting everything done on time? that'll be taxed as a bonus. i'm so glad i pushed myself for 50% of the money! go ahead, uncle sam, help yourself to the other half of my blood, sweat, and tears.

god, i sure am bitching about work a lot, aren't i? how obnoxious, i know. let's change the subject. i hung out with my mom this weekend, and at one point we were talking about the olympics opening ceremony and how they brought out the flag from the WTC. she was really upset about it - she said that the flag should have been burned because it's tattered and full of holes. meanwhile i'm biting my tongue because as soon as they started marching the flag out, i burst into tears and couldnt stop until they took the damned camera off of it. but when my mom was vehmently arguing about how that particular flag should be destroyed, it got me thinking about how that one symbol can bring out the most diverse feelings in people. i mean, i'm sitting her just writing about it and i can feel the tears welling up in my eyes. meanwhile, my mom would say that it's disrespectful to show it in public, much less for it even to exist. and the fact of the matter is, it's just a piece of cloth!

i wonder how long it will be before references to Sept. 11 stop bringing tears to my eyes. the Budwesier Super Bowl commercial where the Clydsdales bow to the current New York skyline did it. the flag at the opening ceremony did it. the dedication at the end of a rather mediocre episode of "sex and the city" did it. i wonder if the sorrow will ever go away? i'm not sure it's something i want to go away?

Song of the Day: Standing Still

2/05/02
piece of shit internet is not working and pissing me off. i'm so annoyed at my computer that just sitting here writing this is pissing me off. i can see the status bar in internet explorer inching along, and i'm waiting for the "could not load the search page" pop-up window to take focus on my screen and cause me to scream and yell and slam the keyboard drawer back into it's hidden position. (status bar is still ticking... 4 items remaining...)

not much happened today. i got the god-forsaken tax forms. i almost cried doing the dry-run. i dont understand what i'm supposed to do with my 401k rollover. the instructions are too confusing. assuming i did everything correctly (which i dont think i did), i get more than a thousand dollars back from federal, and more than five hundred from state. that means a hefty down payment on my next used car... or i can all-out buy a junker! of course, i have to actually do the taxes with a pen, sign them (forgot that one year), make copies, and send them to uncle sam, all while waiting for them to get me my money. or i could just take them to a tax person. and pay an arm and a leg and let them take a percentage. ugh. this is more work than i thought it would be. and it totally sucks having 4 W2 forms. i feel like such a slacker.

the slacker in me hasn't cleaned the kitchen in a week. the toilet in the master bathroom is growing something that has long since turned from green to black, and the laundry is piling up and i'm starting to run out of clean underwear (nearly impossible because i have at least 20 pair!) so i'm sitting here writing in this blog i know damned well i wont be able to upload (oh, 2 items remaining) because i dont want to go in the bedroom and look at the piles of shit i haven't put away yet. and wont until at least this weekend. getting up at 5:30 in the morning does not make it any easier to come home and do chores. it's 9 p.m. and i'm sitting here wonderig if i should go to sleep after i finish typing this. that's how bad it is. and don't tell me to get some exercise, that will wake me up. i *did* get some exercise - 40 minutes on the elliptical, and although i tried my hardest to make it a nice round number, the machine told me i burned at total of 499 calories. good. it makes up for the 2 oatmeal cookies i devoured before going to the gym.

enough procrastinating. time to go do some laundry. need to restock the lingerie drawer.

Song of the Day: Hands Clean

02/04/02
wow. somehow i made it to february and i haven't killed my computer yet. we still don't have working internet access. we're still using a shared dial-up connection. we still have the stupid computer voice that came with the answering machine on our phone. it doesn't even say the phone number. as we don't have voice messaging so nobody can really get a hold of us during the hours of 7 to 11 p.m.

i've been working like a maniac trying to help the company recover from the data loss. they actually hired some temporary people to re-input the data, and although there are two of us running the department, i sometimes feel like i'm the only one really managing the extra staff. i guess part of it is because i've done it before, so it didn't seem so overwhelming to me. but most of the time it's just annoying - i feel like i'm juggling too many balls at once and whenever i start to complain about it (which my coworker keeps trying to get me to do - "you need to vent more") nobody understands and they assume i'm taking everything too seriously. i don't think i'm taking anything too seriously - i think they don't understand the job i'm doing, much less appreciate how i'm turning a nightmare situation into a miracle. we're supposed to be 85% recovered by March 1. As of 4pm today, we were 86% recovered.

just that little paragraph of bitching about work was enough to give me a headache. i guess it's because i've totally screwed up my sleep schedule. i get to work at 7 am now, which requires me waking up around 5:45. when i need to take a shower, i have to get up even earlier..which will be the case tomorrow. it's only 10 p.m. and i'm completely exhausted. i dont even want to read a book before going to bed - much less take a shower now instead of tomorrow morning. ugh. and my hair is both greasy and full of static. how, you ask? i dont know. i just know it is.

i have a big list of crap to do tomorrow as well. topmost on the list is getting some damned tax forms. i can't figure out how much car i can afford until i know how much refund i'm getting back. no refund money, no money for the new car. to replace the current car, whose lease is up in 90... uh, 85 days. i can see it now. i'm going to end up driving a Yugo.

the gentle throbbing of the headache is slowly turning into an incessant pounding. i'm going to go lie down.

Song of the Day: 257 Weeks