KirstenL4W

Today is February 29, a day that rolls around only once every 4 years. Gotta love leap years. Normally, February is a financially difficult month, since it’s 2 - 3 days shorter than all the others, it seems that we don’t get paid as much and bills are due a lot more often. But this leap day is special. I get paid today, and since Leap Day occurs on a Friday this year, it makes this February all the more rare. This is what is known in budgeting circles as a 5 week month. There are 5 Fridays this month, so for those of us who get paid every Friday, it means an extra paycheck. Next month there will still be 4 paychecks. I myself get paid every other Friday, so today I get my 3rd paycheck of the month. Yeehaw!

I haven’t forgotten about the follow-up to my previous post. The weekend is coming up and I’m tired from the week. I ended up napping yesterday instead of checking email and blogging when I got home from work, then it was our usual Thursday night out. If I’m not too tired and Boyfriend has nothing planned for tonite, I should be able to get some time then.

Happy Leap Day everyone!

I have been toying with the vague idea to go back to school for quite some time. Years, actually. But it’s hard to come up with some plans without any clue as to what direction one wants to travel in.

Here’s a bit of history: When I was in high school, I was never very academically inclined. I did well in my classes, but overall wasn’t interested. I felt a calling more towards interior design. Rooms were my canvas, and I preferred to shop for sheets rather than shirts. As I was planning the rest of my life, I looked at schools that had design programs. I really wanted to go to a school in Atlanta that I had seen in my mom’s decorating magazines, partly mostly because they had an exchange program in London. But neither one of my parents was wild about the idea. My mother thought I should focus on something more practical like French, since I was doing well in that class, and my father just had that look on his face. That look wasn’t enthusiastic. I was disappointed, since going AWAY to school was a big part of the appeal. But I digress. I looked at schools a bit closer to me and ended up at the esteemed University of Lesser Knowledge Hesser College.

Hesser was in the next town and had an interior design program. Still infatuated with the away at college idea, I took a room in the dorms and immersed myself into college life. Oh, you’re wondering about the comment above? Well, my I found the college prep program in my high school to be more challenging than the course of study at Hesser. But other extra-curricular activities, which found me studying mixology more than interior design, saw me on academic probation and changing my major. I went with the path of least resistance and chose a major that featured classes I actually did well in despite my inebriated state. I focused on small business management the next semester, redeeming myself and my academic standing, but also letting a childhood fear of math get the best of me.

During an English final at the end of the second semester, I was answering an question with a total ass-kissing essay and ended up believing what I wrote. It sure sounded good at the time, and would certainly make a lot of people proud of me. I changed my major again, this time to liberal studies, with the intention of transferring into a 4-year program with a double major of English and education. I graduated Hesser with an Associate of Arts in Liberal Studies, and prepared for more studies at New Hampshire College (known today as Southern New Hampshire University).

Something weird happened when I was at NHC. I threw myself into my studies, but something was off. Something major in a cosmic sort of way. I started feeling like I was on the outside looking in, like I was in the wrong place. Bigger than that, actually - like I was in the wrong life. This life was so not the one I was meant to be living. The feeling became so overwhelming that I withdrew from classes to figure out exactly where I was supposed to be. I took a string of retail jobs, spent some time in Europe, got into office work, and lived a marginally fulfilling life.

In 2003, when I moved to Vegas, I had a bit of money to play with, so I decided to take a course at the local community college as a way to get out there and meet people. While perusing the non-credit courses, I figured why not? Why not take up a course of study? I did come here for a change, after all. But there was this pesky residency thing. Being the cheap shit that I am, I didn’t want to pay an exorbitant fee just because I hadn’t lived here long enough, so I only took 2 classes and took a part time job (Shoe Job). But finish up the core requirements that wouldn’t transfer in, and taking only 2 classes at a time, I lost steam. I needed to work full time, so school fell by the wayside.

That brings you all up to speed of the life of Kirsten, b.b. (Before Blog). As my longtime readers know, I have worked in a variety of administrative jobs, which while not exaclty fulfilling, kept me fairly happy. Until recently. Last year, as I was looking for yet another new job, I was searching for something, but I didn’t know what. I did know that I didn’t want to file and answer phones for the rest of my life. I needed direction.

And right now, I need sleep.  Stay tuned for part 2.

I was going to compose a post about academics, but I burned my finger while preparing dinner tonight.  I have a tendency to be a bit of a clutz in the kitchen.  Anyway, the pad of my right middle finger (the exact part of the finger that touches the keys while I’m typing) has a large and still-growing blister.  I will try to type up something to post tomorrow, but right now I have to try and finish making dinner without cutting my finger off.  That might make it feel better, though.

I have rediscovered joy in the mundane.  I heard it was coming, and even took a quick peek once or twice once it was here.  But today, I did it.  My first real grocery shop at the new chain: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market.  It’s Tesco’s foray into the US market.  I shopped at Tesco when I was in London, and aside from the joy that is shopping in a foreign supermarket, I liked the small store geared for city shoppers who cannot schlep home their week’s shopping on the Tube.

I also used to work for a supermarket, off and on, from the time I was in high school until I left to move to Las Vegas.  Added up, it was something like 8 years, but if you start with my original hire date of 1/1992 until I left in 5/2003, you’ll see that I just could not stay away from the place.  I even enjoyed shopping there.  When I moved to Vegas, I saw that the grocery scene was very different.  People aren’t loyal to a particular store.  How can they be?  No one store will carry everything that you want, like stores back home will.  Here, getting all that you want, all the brands, varieties, and flavors, requires trips to the 4 or so major chains.  Then there’s WarMart and her secretly smart and pretty cousin Kay, only one of which I have found actually has a food section.  We also have 3 chains of soccer mom natural grocery stores - Whole Paycheck, Wild Hay, and Trader Joe’s, where Boyfriend and I have taken to shopping lately.  But there wasn’t as much variety as I like, and I was getting really sad.

Enter Big Bad Mama Detroit.   BBMD lives right next door to a F&E, and loves shopping there.  Boyfriend and I were on our way to her house for dinner the other night, and we said we’d bring dessert.  Since she pointed out the F&E in the directions, I figured we’d stop there to pick something up.  The store is super organized, which appealed to my sense of order.  It’s small, with lower shelves, so you don’t get lost and don’t get whiplash looking for what you need.  And OMG the produce!  Being in the middle of the desert where it’s darn near impossible to grow anything, Boyfriend and I have both commented that we’ve thrown away better looking stuff than can be found in the average supermarket here.  But F&E has super fresh, great looking produce!  The best part is that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.  I picked up some rosemary, potatoes, strawberries, and salad fixins.

But wait, there’s more!  I nearly short circuited myself in the meat aisle.  I’m not a huge meat eater, but I like a variety.  Not only did they have big ol’ slabs of meat, they also had some ready to cook options like kebabs, seasoned meats, stuffed meats, and other delicious meal options.  I wanted it all.  I couldn’t decide, but finally settled on some chicken drumsticks for dinner tomorrow, and a big pork roast that I’ll stick in the crock pot on Wednesday with some BBQ sauce.  Both will give us plenty of leftovers for the rest of the week.  They were marked down because they were both going out of code in like, 2 days, but they looked just as good as the stuff with more recent dates on it.

The store carries a lot of its own brand for the rest of the groceries, but they did have a selection of name brands too.  Boyfriend and I are trying to focus on fresh foods, so we don’t buy pantry items as often as we used to, but they did have tahini, which I know can be hard to find at conventional megamarts.

Boyfriend and I have been spending less at Trader Joe’s than we ever did at a regular store, and even though I didn’t buy as much as we usually do, I found the monetary outflow to be on par with TJ’s.  I stopped in on my way home from work, and other than the quick dessert run the other night Boyfriend really hasn’t had time to explore, so I think we’ll try to stop by next time we do a grocery shop so he can really check the place out.  Even if it’s not a regular thing, it will allow a stop by the free sample bar to try the delicious foods they offer.   I know I’ll be returning.

I’m sure there are a lot of use who like cover music. Some of us find special joy in cover songs sung with an original twist.

Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine is a band that sings songs - not necessarily cover songs - songs that were originally written and sung by other artists. I say they aren’t cover songs because there’s such a humourous twist in these lounge style renditions, that it’s quite obvious that these songs are not being sung for the sake of being sung. This also isn’t a group that takes the songs and puts a whole new meaning to them, with new lyrics to beat, a la Weird Al. I hope you can all follow me. Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine sings these songs in the lounge music style.

You really have to have a sense of humor to appreciate Richard Cheese. Otherwise, you’re just not gonna get why Baby Got Back is so funny when it’s “swankified” (this is the term the band uses to describe what they do to the hits). Also, you really can’t be a prude. Part of the fun of a Richard Cheese concert is the way he “reaches out” to his audience - particularly the female members of the audience. It’s quite funny, actually. Here’s someone singing songs in the style of a washed up lounge lizard, who by definition is supposed to be a repulsive character but doesn’t quite get that. Richard Cheese takes the angle that he has a huge, female-centric fan club. At the concert that Boyfriend and I attended back in November, there was a CD sales table with two sign-sheets: Join Richard’s Mailing List, and one that said Women Who Want to Sleep With Dick.” What a kidder!

Now that I’ve inadequately described the genius that is Richard Cheese, check out this video:

On Monday, Boyfriend and I headed to LA to have lunch.  I know what you’re saying - there are plenty of really decent places here in Vegas to eat, but there was more.  Boyfriend wanted to meet some Silly Little Game friends.  Since LA is a 4-5 hour drive from Vegas (depending on traffic and where in LA you are going), it is on the lower end of reasonable for a day trip.  Heck, I go to LA just to shop at IKEA since they still won’t believe that Vegas is a viable market.  But I digress.  The topic here is lunch with friends.

The friends chose the Monte Carlo Deli in Burbank as the place to meet.  Just hearing that it was an Italian deli had me excited.  I’m from the east coast, and while the deli as a popular lunch spot is more of a New York thing, I just wanted a little individuality, which Vegas is sorely lacking.  There were some tough choices to be made, but I ended up with a bit of a lighter dish - the tuna salad with sides of green salad and pasta salad.  I just didn’t want anything heavy since we were spending a lot of time in the car.

We met the SLG friends outside and all went in together.  One of them is from MA, so we had fun whipping out our Boston accents, much to the amusement of Boyfriend.  I just don’t understand what it is about the Boston accent that turns ordinary speech into a circus act.  But hey, it keeps Boyfriend laughing, and his happiness is important to me, so I just roll with it.  Anyway, we all ate lunch, chatted, chatted some more, had some gelato, and chatted some more before the time dictated that Boyfriend and I get back on the road.  There’s a store in Fullerton that we wanted to get to before they closed, and then get home so that I could get at least a few hours sleep before work in the morning.

I was noticing a few things on the way home.  Barstow is about halfway between Vegas and LA, and provides a really good area to stop in - there are truck stops, outlet stores, and even some people that live there.  On the way back to Vegas I noticed a sign that said “California Welcome Center Next Stop.”  What I didn’t really understand is that Barstow is really the last real town before you hit Vegas, so why oh why would there be a Welcome Center for a state that most people, when passing that sign, are on their way out of the state?  Californians are weird.

There is a town rest stop about halfway between Barstow and Vegas called Baker.  Baker has a few tiny motels, convenience stores, and fast food places.   Baker is the home of the world’s tallest thermometer, which is a pretty neat feature - you can see exactly how hot it is in the Mojave desert when you’re on your way to Vegas or Death Valley.  My mom, when I told her about this, just had to ask, “Is it a rectal thermometer?”  Silly Mommy.  But we did stop in Baker for a reason, and that was Greek food.  Boyfriend is of Greek ancestry, and has gotten me to like a bit of it.  So The Mad Greek was the last destination of our trip.  We both got gyros with yummy rice pilaf and some baklava to go, all of which was yummy.

We rolled back into town around midnight, so I had to get to bed right away.  It was a great day - we got to get out of town, meet some friends, and eat excellent food.  Can’t get much better than that.

‘Splain something to me.  This past week saw me eating way too much fast food, since Boyfriend and I didn’t go grocery shopping.  We ate out, ate fast food take-out and too much junk food, didn’t track points and didn’t exercise.  Yet today when I weighed in at WW today, I was down 1.6lbs.  I do not get it at all.  All the rules were broken and I was still down.  This totally sends the wrong message!

In other news, the computer issue has finally been fixed.  Turns out all I had to do was update the driver for the network adapter.  Lesson learned: stay away from Vista.  Research done regarding my problem shows that many, many people have issues with accessing the internet via wireless even though the actual wireless connection is strong.  It’s unique to Vista.  Save yourselves and get a Mac.

Boyfriend and I went to LA on Monday to meet some of his Silly Little Game friends for lunch.  I was going to blog about that earlier in the week, but the computer issue was more pressing.  I’m hoping to get around to it this weekend, while it’s still fairly fresh in my mind.

This is freaking hilarious, especially considering the recent electronics issues I’ve been having (which, btw, I think I’ve fixed, at least on the laptop.  Hello updated driver!)

Go to Jen’s Blog to view this - she’s the one who sent it to me.  It’s not a YouTube video so I don’t know how to properly embed it.  Alternatively, you can go here to see it directly.  And don’t worry, it’s safe for work and non-offensive, unless you have issues with office machine abuse.

In the interest of just getting a post out there yesterday while in the midst of computer hell, I didn’t quite explain what the problem was.  So here’s an explanation:

I usually use the laptop in the living room, connecting to our home network via a wireless connection.  The laptop has Vista, btw, which is of an important note because it is the only one of our 4 computers running Vista.  The others are XP.  Anyhoo, all indications were that I had a very strong internet connection, and I was even able to get the weather widget to work, but trying to actually access the internet using Firefox or IE was an effort in futility.  If I was lucky enough to get a website, it was after a long wait and there was no guarantee that graphics would be included.  Again, just as a reminder, the laptop was the only computer afflicted with this strange illness.

The computer had been sitting idle since Sunday evening, so it had been close to 48 hours that it was powered down.  There was plenty of battery life left, and everything else appeared to be working normally.  Vista even thought my connection was fine; the diagnostic check recommended that I contact my ISP.  Since Boyfriend was online playing his Silly Little Game, I knew that the problem was not with my ISP, it was in the laptop, somehow.

At Boyfriend’s suggestion, I installed some new anti-virus software. (Side note: I have run a computer for many years without any such software; when I finally did install some it only found some tracking cookies.  In all my years of computing I have never had a virus.)  After the hour or so of updating Vista, uninstalling the Norton that came with the laptop, installing TrendMicro, and doing a scan, only a few tracking cookies were found.  Performance was not improved.  Some more diagnostics ended up resetting the internal wireless adapter, which solved the problem … for about 5 minutes.

Boyfriend did a hard restart, which helped a little, but it was still very slow (not super slow, as it had been), and I was still getting some sites without graphics.  I had already given up by this point and was all by my lonesome in the bedroom on my desktop.  I did start the disk defrag, but as of 5:30am it was still running, so with the screen saver and power saver settings, I don’t know if it stops running when it goes into power save mode.  There’s no way to visually check the progress of the defrag on Vista, either.  However, the internet issues were pretty much gone this morning, since I was able to check my email just fine.  This is so perplexing.

Boyfriend mentioned yesterday that his satellite radio was not able to access a signal.  Since it’s in the truck and there aren’t that many natural barriers to the signal here in Las Vegas, I’m wondering if these events are related.  The Pentagon seems intent on shooting down a wayward satellite, and with a 10 second window to push the button to send a heat-seeking missile to an object that is not outputting any heat, along with the coincidental news coming out of Cuba this week, I’m wondering if the electronic issues of late are a signal that the end of the world is coming.  But don’t listen to me.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anything.

At least my iPod still works normally.  I don’t know where I’d be without that.

I’m having computer issues tonight.  Just with this damn laptop.  I’ve spent enough time trying to fix it, and I just want the damn thing to work already.   This is very frustrating because it only seems to be affecting the new Vista laptop.

I’m giving up before I end up hurling this thing across the room.