KirstenL4W

Inspired by a post on This Young House, I decided to take an online quiz that tells you what your creative type is. I was curious and wanted to see if it could shed some light on breaking free of this creative block I seem to have. Check this out:

About Me:

You have a great appreciation for creativity in all its forms. You really admire talented artists and will always find time to seek out a new exhibition or show. When it comes to your own creativity, you take inspiration and ideas from the world around you. Your eyes are always open for new sources of information. You like to see creativity as something that is free, without boundaries and rules - you’re a rebel at heart!

How I Create:

You like to embrace new thinking and techniques. Technology can help you create work that really has an impact. It’s all about form; man-made just can’t beat the beauty of nature. You’re the type who thinks best in the wilderness. Your strength lies in your unique perspective, meaning you have the eye for taking something old and turning it round to offer something fresh and new.

How I Think:

Deep down, you have a playful spirit and take pride in putting your own original spin on things. Your creativity is fresh and honest… the ever-present childlike element of your character shines through.

So…

All of that sounds pretty accurate to me, though I wonder how accurate it would be if I chose different elements. But what I get out of that is that, to fully open up my creative side, I need to get out more. I need to stop and smell the roses, so to speak. If I didn’t need to get so darn early (it’s no secret that I’m not a fan of mornings) to go to work so that I could pay the bills, I might be able to do just that. So long story short, in order to unleash my creativity I need to be independently wealthy with few to no obligations on my time.

Isn’t that always the way?

I’ve been trying to simplify things a bit.  We all live hectic lifestyles, myself included.  Lately, though, due to some personal stuff, life has been getting the best of me.

The first thing that always gets to me is cooking.  It’s not that I don’t like to cook.  I just don’t like the chore of cooking a proper meal every single night, after I’ve been at work all day.  I dislike that so much that it affects my grocery shopping.  Partly because I’ve been so overwhelmed, and partly because of the habits I developed while I was single, I got to where I was stopping at the store nearly every night after work to pick up something for dinner.

Mister pointed out to me that my methods weren’t working.  We weren’t eating healthy (because half the time the “store” ended up being fast food of some sort) and despite my desire to not have any food waste, I wasn’t reducing waste or saving money.  But it took me a while to see that I had to change my thinking on things.  According to Mister (bear with me, I’m still learning this), I do not have to have a perfect meal plan for the week when I go grocery shopping.  Nope, it’s ok not to have that.  That’s what got in the way of me shopping properly.  My desire for perfectionism in planning our meals kept me from doing anything at all.  So this week I tried something different.  I went to the store and just threw a whole bunch of stuff in the cart that looked good.  I had a bit of a list to work with, since Mister wanted to show me that pot roast can be good, but other than that I just bought whatever I felt like.  While the total was a shocker, Mister helped me see that I didn’t spend any more than I usually do over the course of a week.  And I still have enough food and a few ideas to feed us through the weekend.  I’m not sure that the stuff I bought is exactly healthy, but not a heck of a lot of it is processed, and cooking at home is a step in the right direction.

The other change I made this week was to reduce my lunch time at work.  I have the choice between a 30 or 60 minute lunch, which is automatically deducted after I’ve been clocked in for 6 hours.  This has 3 benefits: 1. I get to leave work 30 minutes earlier, so more me time.  2. I don’t have to use up personal time since I’ve been having to leave work early a lot lately for personal reasons, and if I do decide to make up a bit of time I don’t end up being there way past my melting point.  3. With only a 1/2 hour for lunch, I don’t have time to go out so I am forcing myself to think ahead and pack a lunch out of leftovers, saving me money and making me eat better.

I’m only day 3 into these changes, but so far I think it’s going well.  The past two days at work have been pretty busy and stressful, but I’m not freaking out over it as much as I usually do.  The true test will come in a couple of weeks when I usually turn into a raging hormonal bitch.

Elsewhere on the interwebs, go ahead and enjoy this amusing complaint letter that has been making the rounds.

Most nights, I surf the net, rapidly clicking the Stumble button, looking for some sort of inspiration for a blog post.  Most nights end up slumped over my keyboard, still stumbling, no closer to to inspiration than when I started.

Tonight was different.  After finishing up the rounds on my usual hangouts, I clicked the Stumble button just once and happened upon this gem.  It spoke to me.  You see, I used to be a supermarket checker.  A beepeuse.  It was a job that no matter how hard I tried, I kept going back to.

The grocery store was not my first job.  That was in a popular ice cream shop chain at the mall when I was 15.  That was hard work, and towards the end of the summer, when I realized that I totally misunderstood how the whole tip reporting procedures worked, screwing myself out of quite a bit of money, I decided that I was never going to work a tipped job again.  So when I was 17 and the babysitting job I had fell through, I went to the local supermarket - one of the major chains in New England.

I was hired right away, and got to work learning how to bag groceries.  It’s not as easy as it looks, but eventually I got into the groove.  There were all sorts of rules to bagging: pack a square bag so things don’t roll all over the place (this bit is kinda like playing Tetris), pack like items together - no soaps with food, packy leaky meats separately, etc.  Once in awhile you get the customer with a special request.  There was a regular customer who would buy quite a lot of stuff, and want it all in one paper bag, double bagged.  After awhile I think he sought me out because I was the only one who could fit it all in properly.  Another customer would buy about a million of those tiny cat food cans, and wanted each flavor bagged by itself.  At least she was nice and put them up on the belt by flavor so we wouldn’t have to sort through them.

After a few months of bagging, it was on to cashier training.  To prove my worth, I had to take a math test.  It was simple enough - basic arithmetic questions that I could have answered correctly when I was in the third grade.  Then we learned about all the buttons on the registers, codes, and produce.  We had to learn to identify all the produce and pass a 20-item produce test before we were let loose on the customers.  One thing I remember learning, that no cashier seems to know how to do these days, is count back change.  You can’t just tell the customer the total of their change and dump it in their hands.  Count it back to show the customer that you can count and that you’ve got a handle on this cash thing.  Plus, it shows them that you’re being honest and meticulous with their money.  In over 10 years of running a cash register, not once have I had a customer get upset for counting back their change.  Ever, even though it’s a bit slower than dumping their cash at them in one big pile in their hand.

Anyway, I like cashiering, for the most part.  I like scanning - scanning’s my favorite.  (Said with all the enthusiam of Buddy the Elf.)  Customers don’t always pay attention to the bagger, but they will definitely notice how the cashier handles their stuff.  As a cashier, I took more notice of the strange things that people would buy.  For example, older people love bananas.  Put bananas on sale at 19¢ per pound, and watch the frailest old woman in the world buy 30lbs of bananas, along with two bottles of prune juice and a single can of cat food, store brand.  Then, when their order total ends up needing 4 cents in change, they’ll pull out the biggest change purse you’ve ever seen, rummage around in it for a good five minutes, and declare that they haven’t got the change and just take it out of their $100 bill.  Good times.

After a few years, I got promoted to being a checkout assistant, or as Officer Friend liked to call me, The Bitch With The Keys.  Now I was someone!  I got to make change for the checkers, help the managers schedule breaks, make sure we had enough lines open for the number of customers we had, and of course take the brunt of customer’s complaints.  It was stressful at times, but I learned to appreciate the mangement hierarchy.  As a Key Bitch, I’d tell the cashiers that if they ever had the smallest issue with a customer, call me over.  That’s what I was there for.  And I knew that there was only so much I could do, so I would be able to call in the store manager (or manager on duty) to take over for me.

I also got to learn the service desk.  This was interesting because people come up to the desk for all sorts of stuff.  Returning chicken that doesn’t smell right (that was allegedly purchased yesterday and has a sell-by date of 3 months ago).  Western Union.  Check cashing.  Lottery tickets.  Yeah, those were fun.  Especially the Christmas Eve $314 million Powerball.  Do you know how many people got losing lottery tickets in their stockings that year?  And then there was Claire.  Claire (aka “Coupon Claire”) would come into the store and immediately have to make a phone call, using the store phone of course.  She had to call her 90-year-old mother to see if she needed milk.  We’d see her coming and call the checkout just to keep the phone unavailable for her.  The coupon part of her moniker referred to her penchant for coupons.  She’d scour the reduced rack to find things we might possibly pay her to take off our hands and hope for an inattentive cashier.  I was not that cashier, much to her chagrin.

So bagging, cashiering, being the Key Bitch, and working the service desk.  I did a lot at that supermarket.  I also got sick a lot, because a supermarket is the one place that everyone has to go to, and can’t always skip when they get sick.  We’d get customers buying lots of cold remedies and other illness accoutrements, coming in looking like death warmed over.  They can’t stop coughing, and they cough into their hands before handing over their cash.  Can I just say that hand sanitizer is the best thing ever?  When I stopped working at the supermarket, I stopped getting sick every other month.

I kept trying to quit working at the supermarket, but the fates had other plans for me.  I tried other retail jobs, but honestly I didn’t like any of them as much, and the pay was usually better at the grocery store.  I even quit in an effort to get into office work - regular hours, weekends off, a real wardrobe instead of a uniform - and that worked for awhile until I got laid off in late 2001.  So back to the store I went, and because the economy sucked, I had a hard time finding another office job until I sold my house, quit the store for the last time and moved here to Vegas.  I put in over 10 years at various stores in that chain.  And I learned a lot.  Here’s a few things to remember:

Customers:

• Lottery tickets make lousy gifts
• If you are deathly ill, please try not to go to the store and get the staff sick.  Pay someone else to do it for you.
• If you have no intention on using exact change, please don’t go looking for it.
• Spend a little time reading shelf tags.  They all have the item and size listed on them.
• We won’t pay you to go shopping, so watch your coupons.
• If it’s unusually busy (as in, right before a storm), it’s darn near impossible to get extra staff to come in.  Please be patient with us.

Supermarket workers:

• Learn to count back change.  And hand the customer the coins first - don’t just pile it in their hands!
• Pay attention to what you’re bagging.  Do not put a customer’s cake frosting-side down (this actually happened to me when I was shopping once).
•  A smile and a friendly greeting can go a long way, and don’t carry on conversations with your co-workers as if the customer doesn’t exist.

Has anyone else worked in a supermarket?  What did you learn and tips can you pass on?

Everyone’s been talking about how social networks are all the rage.  They’re the latest best way to promote your blog, business, whatever.  Before I go any further, I do have one thing to say.  Are these new “social networks” any different than old-fashioned networking?  I mean, besides the fact that they’re online.  Networking, by definition, requires that you get out there and socialize with others, with the purpose of promoting whatever you’re there to promote.  So “social networking” is a redundant term, IMHO.  Is there such a thing as anti-social networking?  I don’t think so.

Ahem.

Anyway, I’ve been using social networking sites a bit more lately, specifically Facebook and Twitter.  Of course, being the dork that I am, I’m not using them to their fullest extent to promote myself and my blog.  Sure, the links are there, but I’m just popping in to say hi and see what everyone else is up to.  I have a day job, so being on these sites all day to yell “Look at me!!!” is just not possible.

Facebook is one that I resisted signing up for.  I have a MySpace account that I rarely check, so the idea of signing up for a similar site didn’t appeal.  That is, until more and more friends started sending me invites.  It was slow at first; I had a small handful of friends and that was it.  Then came a surge of my Imaginary Internet Friends - friends from a site I’ve been frequenting since 2001, the same core group of people who keep that site alive and some of the best friends I’ve never met.  After that, old classmates started finding me.  That one freaked me out a bit.  I’m still trying to block out the whole middle school experience, and high school wasn’t my favorite time either.  I wasn’t exactly what you’d call “popular.”  Now, I am friends with more people than I was back then.  It’s just weird, but at the same time it has been fun seeing what others are up to.

Twitter is what is known as “micro-blogging.”  You’re limited to the number of characters, so it’s basically blogging by text message.  I really didn’t get the point of it, but I signed up to figure that out.  I’m still not sure I understand the point, other than you can’t always be at your computer to blog.  I can tweet from my cell phone using ordinary text messaging.  I had a few people I was following, until just like Facebook, my IIF’s suddenly appeared.  I still have a lot to learn regarding how to use Twitter, but I’ve been enjoying it thus far.

Now, if I can actually delurk myself and participate a bit more on those sites, I might be able to promote my blog a bit better.

There are times when I really don’t have a lot to say.  When I just don’t feel like talking or socializing.  It happens, oh, about once a month.  I don’t really replace the talk with more thinking, like it would seem to some.  I’m not any more introspective during these times than I am at any other times.  I just don’t feel like talking.  Of course, during this time I get all sorts of comments.  It’s assumed that I don’t feel too well.  I must be sad.  I must be feeling lonely.  I must have a lot on my mind.  All those assumptions are wrong.  I just want to be quiet, to take in the world around me, and not feel forced to flap my gums for the amusement of those around me.

For some people it’s really hard to be quiet.  Someone I am related to, who shall remain nameless, is very well known for not being able to zip it for even a minute.  After a meeting of friends and family last year, I heard that a friend of mine was asking if this relative was on speed, due to the fact that said relative did not seem to come up for air at all.  I don’t know about this relative, but for everyone else, hearing one person talk that much is tiring.  I’m not only referring to the way we joke about our ears ringing because of the constant gabber.  One barely has time to collect their thoughts enough to even follow what the relative is saying before the conversation is miles away and our ears and minds are left in the dust.  There’s having the gift of gab, but listening - not just to other people, but the world around you - is an art.  I think that we should all take some time to listen once in awhile.  You never know, it just might enrich your life in ways you never expected.

I’ve felt a general dissatisfaction with my blog theme lately.  While I do like my theme, I find myself wanting a bit more from a theme.  I mean, I have a free theme so it’s pretty easy to tell when another blog has the same great taste in themes that I do.  But I’ve been growing restless lately.  I’ve even been considering a premium theme, but I won’t commit to something like that unless I’m 1,000% sure that it will give me what I want.

I’ve also been thinking about my old space, the one I had before I switched to WP.  I’m pretty satisfied with what I was able to do there (just not satisfied with the abilities of Blogger, which is why I switched).  Here’s what I like about the way that space ended up:

• The headers for the date and sidebar widgets.  They’re bold, and do a great job of delineating the sections and highlighting the text at the same time
• The proportions.  The sidebars are slightly wider than the ones here (195px vs. ~175 here), and at 950px the entire thing is 50px wider than this one, which means it doesn’t feel as cramped.
• The thin double line between the body and sidebars is a definite marker between the spaces, yet remains delicate and unobtrusive.
• The same double line border is around both the header pic and title of my blog.  On the new one, the KirstenL4W title (there only so a name shows up in your readers) just kind of floats above the header pic.
• The symmetry!  I almost forgot about that one.  I’m the kind of person who likes symmetry, so having a sidebar on each side appeals to that sense of balance.

And for the WP blog:

• The calendar like date stamp.  It keeps there from being too much text at the top of a post, what with the post title, author, and categories.
• There’s a white text area and I can have something else for a background.  It leaves open the possibility of having a patterned background.
• The menu bar.  The fact that I have one at all is one of the big reasons I switched to WP.
• The header image.  This particular theme supports a custom header image, which means I just upload whatever pic I want and move it around within the box for an instant, decently proportioned header image.  It’s easy to do and makes changes easy, if I wanted to do that.

A few must-haves for any theme are:

• 3 columns.  I really like having dual sidebars and I’d really feel like something is missing if I didn’t have them.
• I must be able to have a header image without a lot of tricky coding to make one work with the theme.
• The proportions need to be right.  Things should line up to the exact pixel, and there should be proper spacing where necessary to make things easier on the eyes.  Sorry, but after working for a few years as a receptionist in a graphics studio, I’ve learned to recognize and appreciate these often-overlooked design details.

I could go on to list the things I really don’t want in a theme, but if I start looking then this list might get too long, so I’ll just leave that alone except to say that I don’t want a magazine style theme.  I think magazine style themes are too business-like for a personal blog, and I don’t like seeing them on other personal blogs.  If the elements I really like and want are in place, then I would think that the theme will do a decent job of omitting the don’t wants.

I’ve really not seen any free themes that are condenters right now.  I’ve uploaded a few and tried to work with them, but once I started trying any customizations, they quickly fell out of favor.  That leaves premium themes.  The two I’ve seen that have promise are Thesis and WP Remix.  Does anyone out there have any experience with either one of these themes?  What about them do you like and not like?

In the meantime, I’ve done a bit of sprucing up.  The blue-gray was getting old, so I created a new header image from a photo taken during the recent vacation that Mister and I took to the east coast.  This was taken at Salisbury Beach, MA.  I was looking out towards the ocean (trying not to get blinded by the sun) as the sun came up.  It’s a bit more colorful than the last picture, and I complemented it by changing the background to a soft seashell color and defining the borders around the image, body, and footer with a deeper color.  The menu bar looks a bit sparse because of the borders everywhere else, but I think if I tried to put a border around the menu bar buttons, then it would look a bit crowded.

So quit hiding behind your feed readers, stop by and let me know what you think of the new image and colors.  And if you have any experience with the above-mentioned paid themes, I really want to hear from you!

Just a few minutes ago, as Mister was playing Silly Little Game, I hear one of the guild members say, “Hey, we’re having an earthquake right now!”  What she was talking about was this.  Not a huge one, but big enough to cause a commotion.  As for me, not being from a seismically active area, have only felt an earthquake once in my life.  This quake occurred pretty far from where I lived at the time, but I we still felt it all the way on the MA/NH seacoast.  I remember waking up because of the noise of my window rattling.  It was a window that was cracked and a bit loose in the frame, so it made a bit of noise.  I woke up and felt my bed shaking back and forth a little bit.  Even though it was my first experience with quakes, I knew right away what it was.  I said to no one in particular, “Cool!” and went back to sleep.

There’s something funny about how people react to quakes.  I watch disaster shows on tv, and they’ll show footage of quakes in various places around the Pacific Rim.  The Japanese barely react at all, unless it’s somewhat severe in which case they’ll nonchalantly take cover from falling objects.  West Coasters are similar.  Mister says he won’t wake up for anything less than a 5.0, but then again he was at the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta quake.  East Coasters, on the other hand, act like the world is ending.  When a quake occurs back east, news reports are overflowing with stories of how 911 call centers are bombarded with calls.  “I think I just felt a bomb!”  “A large truck just drove by my house really fast and it shook the whole house!”  Yeah, we get excited and/or freaked out when the ground shakes.  Give us a major nor’easter and we can handle it, but a little hippy hippy shake and forget it.

So, have you ever been in an earthquake?  Tell me all about it!

I made a ham for Christmas, and since it was just Mister and myself, we had a lot of leftovers.  Today, with some of those leftovers, I made pea soup.  I have to admit - I’ve never in my life eaten pea soup.  I had no idea if I would even like the stuff.  And since I’ve never had it before, I’ve also never made it before, nor seen it made.  So here I was, with grandiose ideas on making something that I didn’t know how to make and didn’t even know whether or not I’d like it.  Quite a commitment, eh?

I saved the ham bone specifically for this, and it had a lot of meat left on it.  A LOT.  Then I went online for recipes.  I wanted to do this in the slow cooker, because crock pots are a lazy cook’s best friend, so search the interwebs I did.  I finally came across this recipe, which was simple in its ingredients, prep, and technique.   I got up this afternoon morning, and got to work.  I rinsed the peas and sorted them, not knowing what exactly I was looking for during the sort, so I just took out some yucky looking ones.  Then I chopped the rest of the ingredients, plopped the ham bone in, poured in some water, and turned the pot on.  A few hours later I went to look at it, and it smelled divine.  Heavenly, I tell you.  Finally, around 7pm, I could take no more of the smell.  I was hungry, and I’m sure Mister was too.

I went over to the crock pot, took the lid off, and with some tongs lifted out the bay leaves.  Then on to the ham bone.  I lifted it out and had a fork ready to take the rest of the meat off, but the fork wasn’t really necessary.  The meat fell off the bone and plopped into the soup.  I stirred it up, thinking I’d need to add more water like the recipe said, or use the immersion blender, but that was not necessary.  The thickness was perfect, and because they’d cooked so long, the peas took care of themselves.  The carrots and chunky ham looked so good that I just left it alone.  Besides, pea soup is a hearty soup, and in my opinion hearty soups should be chunky.

I served dinner with some fresh artisan bread, and took a bite.  Hey, Mikey likes it!  This is really good stuff.  You should have some.  But make it yourself, because between Mister and me, there won’t be much in the way of leftovers.  Enjoy!