Sarcasm with a side of optimism.

Wake up Creativity!

Something occurred to me this evening as I looked through old bins that I brought back from my parents house. I had a lot of art supplies that I used "back then", which begs the following question: What the hell happened?

Where did my creativity go? It crawled away while I wasn't attending to it, curled up into a ball then shriveled up and died due to neglect. Great.

Fan-freaking-tastic.

I found a half finished watercolor that I started ten years ago. Tonight I decided to start filling in the gaps when I realized I was severely self monitoring myself. Yeah, it's not going to flow if that's how I'm going to be. Need to relax and go with it. I think when I used to do art projects, I would head in a direction and keep adding over several weeks until I arrived at the destination. I had no idea what that was going to be when I started, just a notion to get me started. I guess I was a lot more flexible then.

Sitting in a cube 8 hours a day (if you're lucky) doing work that is important to other people but not to you is a great way to stifle yourself. Think I may pick up a small sketchbook tomorrow and keep it in my giant purse. You can sketch out inky wonders with a pilot pen and a sketch pad.

In other news, I did maybe 5 minutes of real work today. Then, I went for a walk outside for a half hour, got massive blisters on my feet since I was taking advantage of wearing flip flops and shorts to work, but got to listen to a blue jay and a cardinal for a while. They have very distinct and different songs. It was nice to stop for a second and take in what was going on around me. It then occurred to me that I really didn't know what either bird sounded like until this moment. You learn something new every day!

I intended on going to the gym after work, but I just felt worn out. I brought all my stuff with me, but then I realized that I forgot my towel and started to freak out. I hate it when parts of my body touch the shared equipment without the safe barrier of my towel. The strange thing is that there are probably only 5 people I see with towels and they're usually women who aren't sweating on cardio machines since they're working out at such low intensity.

Well, my hypochondriac behavior kicked in, and there was NO way I was going there and touching things without a towel. So I went home instead. I'm going tomorrow though...with a TOWEL!!

posted by v @ 9:51 PM 0 comments

Condo Association

I hate the condo association. What a bunch of overly self-important morons!

Here's the latest: I get a letter in the mail from the condo association. This is never a good thing. It's always about some new fee or sanction, and is usually an annoyance. If you saw who was on the board, you would understand. Apparently, there's some drama going on with the president of the association. She got her car towed, went to the pound and demanded that it be released without charge. When they refused, she threatened to end their contract.

When we got our car towed a few months ago, it was $115 to get it out. I checked their log book, and they come anytime between midnight at 6am several times in one night. You can't predict when they will be here. Two weekends ago when I was loading up the car for me and Kara's trip to PHL to see Melissa's regatta, the tow truck was here at 5:15am. They roughly got the car out of the spot, and dragged it until they could tow it properly. Then, they accidentally set off the car alarm. Once that happened, they jumped back into the tow truck so fast you'd think the ground was on fire. Yeah, that's not a suspicious event... you know, laying in your bed at 5:20am and listening to a car DRIVING away while its alarm is going off.

Thanks to the apathy of the community, nobody who could make a positive impact dares to infiltrate the circle of idiots because it's a circus. Who has time for that?

I dropped off some mail and the mailbox area is like the community watering hole. There were copies of the towing company's advertisement which claimed "courtesy services for property managers and board members".

FUCK THAT!

If you're going to impose these rules and restrictions on the community, you better damn well follow them too!

But, I'm sure that's the carrot that the towing company offers. An incentive to get the building managers to sign up with them.

Hmm....if you can't beat them, join them? There's an idea!

posted by v @ 2:43 PM 0 comments

Carnival

Most schools have Homecoming which is the highlight of the year. We have Homecoming, but nobody cares. Our Homecoming is Carnival. Better to tell stories with photos. (This post is going to take a while.)This is SigEp's winning booth. It was incredible. The outside was incredible. The inside was incredible, and the games they made were very cool too. This is on every single nerd site right now, and is the talk of the town.
This is the booth that won the Independent category. It helps that ASA (Asian Students Association) is made up of basically half the campus. They pretty much always win every year. Ah, those industrious asians!
We stayed with family friends who live very close to the university. They have a beautiful house built in 1908 with real stained glass and crown moldings and lots of luxurious details. They just don't make them like that anymore.

On the way home, we took a detour and went to Fallingwater for a guided tour.

There's a lot more stuff we did, but no photos. :( The Warhol Museum, Strip District, and Mt.Washington to name a few. It was a fun time. Maybe we'll go again next year.

posted by v @ 8:47 PM 0 comments

Underwater.

Craig's underwater right now on a giant submarine. It's weird not to be able to talk to someone. I'm usually pretty good at not talking to people, but that's usually by choice. It's different when you can't. I don't like it.

He's supposed to be doing support for the tactical systems, but if everything goes well, it means a lot of thumb twiddling.

I was thinking about going home for easter weekend, but instead, I'm staying put here. Believe it or not, we're supposed to get 2" of snow overnight. It's APRIL, people. What's going on? Granted, 2" of snow is no big deal, but it's still weird for it to snow in spring.

Work has been going well. I don't mind being there still, and today marks two months on the job. It went by very fast. I've done a lot over there so far. Definitely more than I've done my entire time in this industry. The people are cool, and I'm settling in more. I'm going to pop in for a little while on Sunday to get some tedious documentation done (user's training guide), and a couple of my teammates are going to come in too for a short while to foil our teammate's office. He's been in Cancun ALL week while we were slaving away during FAT.

Soccer season started up again. Our first outdoor game was Wednesday. We lost by 1. It was fun, but freezing! The temperature had already dropped by the time our game time arrived, and the wind was gusting at 35-50 mph. I couldn't keep warm, so I kept jogging around the perimeter of the field not in use, and I felt like I was running backwards with the wind. I'm supposed to play again tomorrow, but there's a good chance the games will be canceled. Unfortunately, they start at 9am, so I'll probably have to get up at 7am and be out of the house by 8am at the latest. I'm wearing pants tomorrow if it happens. (Oh please please please let them cancel the game!)

Craig left on Tuesday, and every day since then I've been running errands and going to the gym after work rarely getting home before 9pm. I'm so thankful we don't have a dog right now. I dropped off our watches (after they've been sitting around dead for over a year) for a replacement battery at the mall and it's $75 a piece! At least it's only once every three years this needs to happen. Actually, it's probably more like two years. The last year of sitting around doesn't count.

My exciting news for last week is getting Guitar Hero II! I can't tell you how many times I hear a GH song on the radio and think, "I can play that!!!" Wait a sec. No I can't. The guitar controller with 5 buttons is one step up from an air guitar. And I do have two real guitars, but I'm talking about immediate gratification here! Everyone is recommending that we get a Wii, but given that we *just* picked up a used PS2 that came out 7 years ago, it looks like we may wait a while before entertaining the idea of getting a Wii. I don't even think I could get one if I wanted one now. They're always sold out around here.

I made the mistake of watching HGTV while relaxing today. This always leads to some sort of criticism pertaining to the condition of the house. After an hour of Design on a Dime, I was all wound up. An hour later, I have 5 garbage bags sitting in my kitchen waiting to be taken to the dumpster. The best part is that I was only in the kitchen and dining room. Three more rooms, and two bathrooms to go. Toss, toss, toss.... Good thing Craig is gone this week!

Got a busy day tomorrow. I'm thinking, soccer, birthday present hunt for mom, get upholstery stuff (for dining room chairs), and then legs at the gym. I know, my life is so exciting!

posted by v @ 9:22 PM 0 comments