KirstenL4W

This time I was tagged by Robyn. Thanks a bunch.

The rules: Each person tagged gives 7 random facts about themselves. Those tagged need to write in their blogs the 7 facts, as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag 7 others and list their names on your blog. You have to leave those you plan on tagging a note in their comments so they know that they have been tagged and to read your blog.

1. I just moved in with my boyfriend. This is the first time I have lived with a significant other.

2. I’m a total carb-o-holic. I’m trying to cut down though.

3. I am also a chocoholic. That one I’ve got under control.

4. I love cheese, but can’t eat it when it comes to dessert. Also, I like lemons but can’t eat them when they’re involved in a savory dish. Go here for more info.

5. I read lots of blogs every day, and am always looking for more interesting blogs to read.

6. I’m very connected to my music. I don’t make music, but I really enjoy participating in mix CD exchanges.

7. I hate these silly meme things, yet somehow people still think it’s fun to tag other people. I’ll be a good sport about it, but come one now!

I tag no one. Someone has to stop these things.

Last night Boyfriend and I went out to eat. The restaurant wasn’t very crowded, but there was a couple seated in the booth next to us. The woman was very loud, almost as if she was talking to someone who was hard of hearing. The man barely spoke. The conversation was unremarkable until the woman started talking about medicine. She talked in great detail of a colonoscopy she recently had, and talked about all sorts of other tests she had. Gallbladder, kidneys, MRI, more mention of the colon, etc. And yet the doctors don’t know what’s wrong with her.

A bit later in the evening the waiter came by and asked if they would like their food wrapped to go home. This is the first we heard the man speak. He said, "I’m feeling sick." Ya think?

And this damn laptop is really driving me nuts. The damn apostrophe/quote mark key is fucked up. Apostrophes don’t show on my screen until I type the next character, and when I try to type "I, for example, I end up with Ï. WTF? It only happens with vowels. Strange, very strange.

What a week. I quit my job last Friday, which I’m kinda glad about because I was so freaking bored. I mean, you saw the frequency of my posts increase, and they were all posted during work hours. So, needing something to do, I went out in search of a new job. If anyone in Vegas has any connections looking for an admin, let me know.

Saturday Boyfriend and I moved my stuff. Ugh. Next time we hire someone. I’m still not all completely unpacked, but it’s been tough trying to fit all my stuff in with his. I’ve been going thru and making decisions on what can go, and honestly, I feel fine with that. I start getting anxious sometimes when I think about all the schtuff I have, but in this day and age how is it possible to do with less? I mean, I have a computer, and with that goes lots of cords, printer, modem, paper, speakers, blah, blah, blah. Next time I get a new computer, it will be a laptop because at least then I won’t need such a big freaking desk to put everything on. Anyhoo, yeah. Just trying really evaluate what I need and don’t.

And one more thing:

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Thiss time I was tagged by PARLANCHEQ, so here goes:

1. What time is it?

Sometime in the afternoon

2. What was the last thing you had to eat?

Dark Chocolate and Cherry Cordial Hershey’s Kisses and a Diet Pepsi. I like to eat healthy.

3. What is your favorite television program?

I barely have time for tv anymore, and with all the crap on tv, what is there worth watching?

4. You can travel anywhere in the world; one destination per day from Friday through Monday. Where do you go?

Assuming the logistics of the actual transportation don’t take any time, I’d love to visit, in no particular order, Sydney, London, Florida Keys, and, um, well, one really great day of a road trip.

5. Who is your favorite character from a cartoon or comic strip?

How old are we here?

6. What would you like for breakfast?

Chocolate.

7. Who is the first public figure that comes to mind that you think is attractive?

The fact that I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head gives me the sign that I should probably not even attempt to answer that question.

8. Who, outside of your family and “God”, has had the greatest impact on your life?

My friends.

9. You retrieve a bottle floating in the water. What does the message say that you find inside?

5 cent refund CA. Please Recycle.

10. What movies do you select {limit of six} for a one-day film festival?

Whatever strikes my fancy at the moment, but they’d have to be funny or I’ll fall asleep watching movies all day long.

11. Do you have a hobby? If so, what is it? If not, what do you think would be of interest to you?

Blogging! (same answer as Parlancheq, but what kind of answer do you expect from a meme going around the blogosphere?)

12. Given the opportunity to travel back in time, when would your destination be?

Oh, I think I’d choose the 1940s. Or at least 1939 to visit the World’s Fair. My Gram says it was amazing.

13. Vietnam gave us China Beach. M*A*S*H came from the Korean War. What will the name of the television series be that results from our current state of military affairs?

Green Zone

14. What is the last book you read?

It was adult-oriented, and that’s all I’m going to tell you.

15. What five people do you MEET in Heaven?

I’ve never been to Heaven, and I don’t know anyone who’s been to Heaven and back, so how am I supposed to answer that? Guess?

16. What five people do you VISIT in Hell?

I don’t know, because I don’t think I know anyone in Hell.

17. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see the word pleasure?

And not the emoticon, either. I just can’t say here because this is a PG-13 blog.

18. Eliminating price and availability as considerations, what six things do you put on your list when you go grocery shopping?

Fresh Lobster
Gourmet Chocolate
My Grandma’s REAL Swedish meatballs (I say real because she’s a real Swede)
Lingonberries, since they go with Swedish meatballs
Fresh Pasta
The absolute bestest homemade alfredo sauce

19. What is your favorite non-blog related link?

I’d have to go with Google, but I also visit a few message boards regularly.

20. What will the title of your life story be?

I’m only a third of the way through my life, so I haven’t come up with anything yet. Gimme a couple more decades and I’ll have something for you.

21. What three people alive today would you like to have join you for dinner?

My sister and her kids (ok, that’s four, but I can’t leave any one of the kids out)

22. Which candle scent do you find most pleasing?

I tend to go for the cleaner scented candles over the ones that smell like something obvious.

23. What question would you suggest I include the next time we play this game?

None. In fact, take a few of them off. I hate these things. In which case, I tag no one.

I was tagged by Macoosh to answer this, so here goes.

1. I love the chance to express myself. While I don’t necessarily like being the center of attention, this is a chance for me to be as expressive as I need to be, but in a stealth-like way.
2. I can get out all my thoughts the same way I do with my private, hand-written journal, but with an audience, I feel like writing here has a better chance for results.
3. It gives me the opportunity to expand my technical knowlege - pretty much everything I know about html and css is because I wanted to tweak my blog, so I made myself learn it.
4. It wasn’t a reason at first, but it’s a lot of what keeps me going: I’ve made a lot of friends blogging, and those friendships are what make blogging a much richer experience.
5. Because I can.

So there’s that. I’m not going to tag anyone specifically, so if you want to do this meme, go right ahead.

Why is it that when one receives an offer to participate in a 419 scam, the dollar amount is very even? I received one of these offers today, and the amount that has been deposited that needs to get out is an even US$17,000,000. I love reading the creative use of the English language in these notes too. This particular amount has been “domiciled with the Finance/Security Company overseas”. And if this guy’s health is so bad, how is it that he cannot make a bank withdrawal, but he can spend so much time and effort on trying to get someone to participate in his scam? And here’s my favorite: why oh why did this scam offer come by FAX???????????????

Email the spammer - flood his inbox!
y_plotnikov@moscowmail.com
y_plotnikov@mail.ru

I love this stuff, really I do.

An old cabin at a park in somewhere in San Mateo County:

Driving over the Golden Gate Bridge:

Touching the Pacific Ocean for the first time:

Driving home through the Sierra Nevada:

The funny thing about vacations is that although the camera may be carried around constantly (we were never without it), it’s still a conscious thought to stop and take a picture. Even then, some pictures don’t come out the way you want them to. For example, I have one picture of Lombard Street taken when we were driving down it, but as it turns out the best picture of the crookedest street in the world is not taken from the street itself, but below the street looking up, and definitely not in the car - which is where most of our photos were taken. The rest of the photos can be seen here.

Boyfriend and I went to San Francisco this past weekend. I’d been there before, but it was over 10 years ago and I had a really bad cold, which I got the day after I got there. This time was a much shorter trip, but I wasn’t dead tired from being sick. We met up with some of Boyfriend’s friends (he grew up there, and knows people) so it was nice to be social too.

Highlights:

Driving through San Mateo county and seeing the redwoods, ocean, and this place (I had some sort of weird fascination with getting my picture taken next to a sign)

Lunch in Haight-Ashbury

A bit of shopping and socializing with some of Boyfriend’s friends

Dinner in North Beach

Driving over the Golden Gate Bridge

Watching the fog roll in along the coast (and boy, does it ever roll!)

Driving through Santa Cruz, a place that Boyfriend wouldn’t mind living in if money were no object

Driving home over the Sierras

Taking lots of pictures with Boyfriend’s awesome camera that hopefully are still there because the number of photos taken seemed to go down. I sure hope that the card didn’t fill up and decide to start erasing random pictures, because we got some really great shots.

Assuming that the pictures didn’t disappear on us, I hope to be able to post some one of these years. We didn’t get back home until 2am this morning, and right now there’s a lot of caffeine in the fridge calling my name. The best thing about this impromptu trip that Boyfriend brought up was that we were so in-your-face together since we left early Friday afternoon until I went to work this morning, and we didn’t bicker at all. We talked a lot over 1500 miles of driving, and saw me out of my element as he toured his old stomping grounds and visited with old friends, and we didn’t even want to be away from each other for a minute - not even now that we are home. And that was the best part of the trip.

Picture not mine - I found it on the internet somewhere. 

“Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile…initially scared me to death.” - Betty Bender

There’s something that’s been weighing on my mind lately. Last night, I went to my apartment to get some packing done, but also to have a chance to be alone with my thoughts. I love Boyfriend and I love spending time with him, and I really do want to spend every minute of the day with him. But I am one who also needs some alone time, and I’ve been forgetting about that until it gets to a point where it becomes a critical need. So I went to my apartment last night, packed, wrote in my journal, cried, packed some more, and watched some TV that I had saved on my DVR.

Yes, I cried. Not because I am upset at all about the decision to move in with Boyfriend. I’m not, but I will admit to this: I am scared. Yes, that’s right. Scared. I said previously that I have never lived with anyone in this capacity before. My entire adult life I have spent carving out a place for myself, learning not to rely on anyone and creating a comfortable place for myself. I grew so comfortable with my aloneness (not to be confused with loneliness) that in the past few years, I shunned all efforts to find myself a partner. I was not lonely. I have friends, companions, and I made sure that I had everything that I needed. The only thing I did not do to confirm my impending spinsterhood was to get a cat. I was actually worried that being on my own and alone for so long may have messed up my chances for ever being able to have a successful relationship. Yes, my thoughts ran away from me and I actually got to thinking that perhaps I was meant to be alone.

So now, here I am today, on the verge of living with a wonderful man for a very, very long time, and it’s got me scared sh!tless. There are so many things that I need to adjust to, so many habits to relearn, so many attitudes to change if I want to make this work. When I got home last night I broke down and cried again. This has been bogging down my mind for the last few days, and I really debated on whether or not to tell him. I didn’t want it to be taken the wrong way, and I still needed to sit on it a little bit to sort it out in my head and to articulate my feelings properly. But I finally decided that telling him was best. And do you know what? He is having the same feelings. He’s also grown used to having his own space, having things his way, and doing things for himself. His fears are very similar to mine. He just keeps it together so much better than I do.

I am in the middle of a lot of upheaval right now. My apartment is half packed up, and I haven’t spent the night at home in a month. I still only have the basics at Boyfriend’s house - enough clothing for a little over a week, and some toiletries. So it’s not yet been transformed into our space. Living like that for so long now has got me - a person with a seemingly insatiable need for alone time and private space - really freaked out. But I will get through, and this will be so worth it. I’m really happy that the Boyfriend is the kind of person that I can talk through this sort of thing with.

Dunkin’ Donuts is coming to Las Vegas. My life will finally be complete.

It’s spring, my lease is up in 23 days, and I’m never at my apartment anymore. So, it’s time to move. This spring brings a first for me - I’m moving in with Boyfriend. I’ve never lived with anyone in this capacity before. I’ve had roommates, but that was purely out of financial necessity, and given a choice between a roommate and living alone, I’d rather be alone. But, since I’ve been over at Boyfriend’s house pretty much since we met, stopping at my apartment only to pick up more clothes and toiletries and check the mail, we decided that me moving in would be best.

Now, why his place over mine? Well, here’s a comparison:

His Place: Is gated Has a separate bedroom Is closer to both our workplaces Has a washer/dryer in the unit Is newer and therefore in better condition Is closer to the freeway Is quiet

My Place: Isn’t gated Has ghetto birds flying around at night Is on the other side of town from our offices Is only one single room (aka studio apartment) Is older, so I am very good friends with Juan, our maintenance man

So, it made more sense to move me there than the other way around. Now we have just over three weeks to pack my stuff up and figure out where it’s all going to go. Each of us on our own has enough stuff to fill that apartment, so I imagine some compromises will have to be made. But I am a very organized person, and I am confident that I will be able to come up with something to fit it all in without too much being stored in the garage or getting donated.

I do have to admit, though, that the next few weeks until we get all my stuff settled in will be a bit trying. I’ve been living with only the bare minimum of my own possessions, and I can make do on that, but eventually I will have them all again. I also have the feeling that I’ll be able to shed some of my stuff rather painlessly. I do miss my kitchen stuff (one area of our apartment that is in dire need of reorganization) and more of my clothing, even though very little of it fits at the moment (it will again, and hopefully soon). What I really miss is my “office” area - my computer, desk, files, books, music, and all the other things that I like to do. That I think should be a top priority, getting my desk set up.

This is definitely an adventure. I’m in my 30s, and like I said, I’ve never lived with someone in this capacity. We’ve already talked a lot about this change, how we feel about it and on a more practical level, so I’m confident we will be able to get through this on continue on with our relationship, which so far has been absolutely wonderful.

And, friends and family, you’ll be getting address updates soon. My phone number and email address will not be changing, so I’m always reachable that way.