KirstenL4W

The Beeb

Boyfriend has been spending a lot of time with his new girlfriend, Beeb. How strange it is to find a native Californian, with no concept of a holiday like we have in New England, eating weird foods like sushi and avocado, and yet he has such a fine appreciation for Jolly Olde England. His only caveat about watching it so much is that he is tempted more and more to just sell everything and move there. Now, I’ve been to the UK - 3 times, in fact. I love it there - LOVE it. And I don’t think I would hesitate too much if that ever became a reality. I’d just end up overthinking it - the logistics of moving overseas, the logistics of being American in a foreign country, etc. And that sort of overthinking would stress me out to no end. But it would be a good kind of stress. So, (insert British accent here) dear Boyfriend, keep spending time with Beeb, sweetie darling.

The Post Office

The post office, like all government offices, was closed today for Veteran’s Day. When I have to work, as does everyone I know, on these so-called “floater” holidays (aka bank holidays, aka if you’re lucky you get one or two of these off per year in addition to the big holidays), we tend to forget that things like the post office are closed. I had my latest mix CD to mail out for the exchange, and considering what a procrastinator I can be, I wanted to mail these out the minute I was done with them rather than let them languish in my car for a month. So after work I stopped in at the post office, and for a second I was relieved that it wasn’t crowded. Until I realized that the main post office in all of Las Vegas would never be that deserted unless it was closed. Have no fear, they have an automated postage machine that’s available 24 hours. It’s like an actual clerk without the human. I had 11 packages and no complicated questions, and I was paying with a debit or credit card, so I figured that this would be easy. Until it decides that each individual package is a separate transaction. After swiping my card, entering my pin, and taking a receipt 4 times, I decided to just buy the stamps, since I knew exactly how much they were. This nifty machine lets you buy stamps in any denomination you want. I needed 7 more stamps for $1.14 each. BUT this silly little machine only has the ability to do 5 at a time. Two more transactions later and I was done. I took my 6 receipts, stuck my postage on the packages, and dumped them in the parcel drop. Phew! Next time the post office decides to take one of their bi-weekly holidays, I’ll plan ahead and NOT TRY TO MAIL SOMETHING.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Boyfriend decided after dinner that he wanted dessert. Since we haven’t been shopping yet, we didn’t have anything dessert-like in the house. Boyfriend was asking for cookies, so I went to the store to get the rest of the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, since as far as cookies go, they are the easiest as far as I’m concerned. Now, I do realize that we’ve been trying to eat healthier by shopping at non-crap stores like Trader Joe’s, there’s only one recipe I was considering for chocolate chip cookies: the recipe found on the back of a Butter Flavor Crisco can. Oh yeah, not just lard - butter flavored lard! I just hope the darn things last until I get home from work tomorrow.

Delta Airlines & Orbitz

Waaaay back in February, I booked a ticked to Southwest Florida International Airport so that I can spend time with my sister and my newest niece, Mia, for Thanksgiving. I did my homework and instead of choosing the absolute cheapest flight I found, I took my sister’s schedule into consideration and picked a flight that would arrive and leave at times that were convenient for her, so no late night arrivals or early morning departures. In fact, I’m not even coming or going during Mia’s nap time. I was also watching the connection times. There is no such thing as a non-stop flight from Las Vegas to Ft Myers, so I knew I’d have a connection. On such a busy traveling weekend, I did not want a tight connection, so I picked an itinerary with a 3 hour connection in Atlanta. Not my first choice of airports, but whatever. 3 hours should allow for a delay and still get my on my connection.

Back in June, I got an email from Orbitz telling me that the airline has made a change to my itinerary. I looked over the email, and the new itinerary and old one were exactly the same, so I did nothing, as advised by Orbitz if all was acceptable. Well, today I decided to log into Orbitz to check things over, and there was a change - a big one. They changed not just the time of my flight, but my entire flight from Las Vegas to Atlanta, leaving me with - get this - a 34 minute connection. Totally unacceptable, even if I was connecting in a teeny tiny 1-room airport during the slowest of travel times. So I called Delta India, spent 20 minutes explaining to the guy why a 34 minute connection was unacceptable and I wanted to be back on the original flight I booked, put up with him as he tried to fly me out of Vegas on Wednesday night (to make my connection Wednesday morning in Atlanta), put up with him as he changed my Atlanta to Fort Myers flight, then finally got it right by putting me back on my original flight. Grrr. He emailed me a new copy of the itinerary, and I have a printout of the original flight change email, “new” itinerary, and the email from Delta India with my old new itinerary. I’m not checking any luggage, and I don’t plan on getting all pissed off, I just want to get to Ft Myers. I’ll get there early and with plenty of smiles to make sure I get on the flights I booked. Something tells me I’ll be ok getting to Florida, since most people don’t all fly on the same day going to their Thanksgiving destination. However, they all absolutely must fly home on that Sunday, so something tells me I’ll have issues while connecting in Cincinnati on my way home. I’ll let you know.

So that’s all for now. Time to start composing my post for Tuesday, in which I reveal my latest mix exchange CD.

I had the television on the other day when I heard something familiar. I went to look and was greeted with this:

Bread, sandwiches, whatever. But the song was vaguely familiar. Isn’t it from Ren & Stimpy? I watched way too much of that show when I was in high school. I know all the words for the Log Song, which you can see here. And how about Powdered Toast Man? In any case, it’s just not right that something as wholesome as Sara Lee baked goods is being pitched with a song from the original cartoon for grown-ups.

Why is it that when I’m doing my laundry, as I’m about to bring my clean clothes in from the laundry room the sprinklers decide to spew water everywhere? I usually cut through the lawn between 2 buildings, cutting my walk to the laundry room from a half a mile to about 100 yards. But I can’t cut through the lawn when the sprinklers are doing their thing. I don’t have much luck walking on the pathways either, because the sprinkler heads are constantly being trampled on by kids in the area, which leads to water getting everywhere but on the lawn. So much for water conservation.

I still have a massive to-do list, but isn’t that always the way? I’m really feeling the need to get more organized, and it will come, eventually. (Oh dear, I just hear my neighbor next door fart. Through the wall. Thank goodness the smell doesn’t travel - it’s not the first time I heard that). Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. I’m getting there slowly but surely. I think I need to write my to-do list out so I can see it every day, and then check off things as I get them done. Or go back to writing it on my bathroom mirror, since I still have those markers in there. That’s what I’ll do. First on my list is go back to Curves. I used to work out there when I first moved here, until I needed to work a second job and life got in the way. Now, I only need the one job, and there is a Curves studio right next door to my office, so I won’t have much of an excuse. I like going to Curves, and with all the weight I’ve gained recently, I really need to get off my ass and get it done.

I think that’s about all for now. I still have a bunch of stuff I want to get done online, but I don’t want to be up all night.

I finally went to see Little Miss Sunshine tonight. Thanks, Macoosh, for the recommendation. It was excellent - the kind of excellent that has one scanning the new DVD releases so as to buy it the minute it goes on sale. Here’s the trailer:

A terrific ensemble cast, and Steve Carell has never been better. I can’t say enough good things about this movie, so you should just all go out and see it, unless you have something against smart, independent films. But I don’t, and I thought this was hilarious - funnier than Tommy Boy. Funnier than Elf. Even funnier than The Forty Year Old Virgin. Those movies played up the comedy for the specific reason of labelling the movie a comedy. This movie had such a sense of realism to it and excellent character development, and that touch of reality is what made it so much funnier. Just go see it.

Now for the TV part. I don’t usually like to invite heated discussions by bringing up controversial topics because frankly, I have my opinions, you have yours, let’s just leave it at that. But documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock of SuperSize Me fame has a tv series on F/X called 30 Days, where he tries to, at the very least, get people to open their minds up about opposing viewpoints by immersing them in some type of foriegn culture for 30 days. I do realize that with any documentary, there are editorial liberties taken, but this show is very thought provoking and does its best to show both sides of the issue at hand fairly. If you get a chance to watch it, I highly recommend it.

Now, I want to know WTF is up with my broadband connection. My tv is working just fine, but my internet has been a bit wonky the past few days. I’ll be surfing online and all of a sudden my connection goes out. My modem looks just fine, all the lights are one, but I have to reset it and sometimes restart my computer. It’s really freaking annoying, but I’m hesitant to call the cable company because the modem reset works for at least a few hours, so the not-so-brilliant people at tech support won’t be able to get to the root of the problem. It’s just really annoying.

Well, it’s after 9 now and I still have to eat some dinner. I also thought of a use for the little pineapple snack cups that I bought a while back and haven’t touched. I’m gonna make Pina Coladas! I bought some pineapple sherbet and coconut rum, and I’ll crank up my little single cup blender and makes me a frozen drink. I don’t drink a lot and don’t know what’s in a real pina colada, but this will do the trick just fine. Cheers!

First of all, I’d like to say Happy Birthday to my niece, Messy J. Even though she’s only 7 and has no clue what a blog is and would be bored silly if she ever ready my blog, I hope she gets the good birthday vibes. I did call her, and she sounded soooo sad and then said she wanted to get off the phone, so she hung up on me. That’s ok, it’s only a matter of time before she won’t ever get off the phone. Plus, I get to see her next week - yay!

I came across a woman the other day who made me feel really good about my body image. As I was waiting to exit a parking lot, a woman walking on the sidewalk is exactly the kind of person that someone with body image blues should see. She was about 4 feet wide, wearing a long skirt and red shirt. The shirt in no way would be considered cropped or belly baring, however, her belly was flopped way over the waistband of her skirt, and was flapping about violently with each step. My flab still continues to defy gravity, so it left me feeling really good.

I chatted online with Bubba this morning. It was weird, my mom had him signed in on her computer because his AIM account automatically signs in and she has no clue how to change it. So I was chatting with her, she took a pee break, then I went to say something else to her and all of a sudden was talking with Bubba, who was at home and not at his Amma’s house. Bubba is quickly monopolizing all my vacation time. First it was Canobie, now he wants me to take him to a movie too. I’m sure he’ll think of many more things to do between now and then. Not to mention I have tons of family and friends to visit and only 6 short days to get it all in. Next time I definitely have to take a longer vacation.

I did get up on time this morning, and got to work on time. It didn’t feel good, but not any better than sleeping in. My eyes were still a scary shade of bloodshot red. I never got my salad made last night due to my blogging obsession but I did manage to bring lunch today, so I won’t have to spend money. I’m not working tonite so the plan is to go straight home, blog for a little while, eat dinner, watch Seconds From Disaster on the National Geographic channel, then go to bed. I do love my blog, I keep it up nearly all day long just so I can stare at it and constantly check my favorite blogs for updates.

Ok, time to tear myself away from this thing long enough to get a little bit of work done. I’ll be back later, you can count on that!

I did it! I finally figured out my stereo system! It took me awhile because, well, I’m a girl and therefore not genetically predisposed to understand that sort of thing. Besides, the main thing throwing me off was the fact that I have an RF Modulator to be able to watch DVDs since I don’t have a DVD ready TV. None of my instruction books make any mention of this possibility. In fact, the book for my DVD player specifically says I can not play DVDs if my TV does not have the a/v jacks on it. So you can understand my confusion (Ok, girls, you can understand my confusion). But it’s done, it’s all hooked up and I have SOUND!!!!! Yee-haw! Check it out:
Now check out the electrical spaghetti behind it all:
Now I don’t want any comments from you a/v geek purists chastising me for having my back speakers in the front and not having my surround sound system balanced. My stereo system only came with 6 ft of wire for each speaker, and I’m not about to go out and buy a huge spool of speaker wire and have it running all over my apartment. I have sound, it’s way better than tv sound, and that’s good enough for me. Some day when I’m wealthy I’ll get a nice Bose wireless system with far fewer components to hook up and tiny wireless speakers. Then I’ll have balanced surround sound. For now, it all gets piled the way you see it. At least the right and left speakers are on the proper sides, and my subwoofer won’t bother the downstairs neighbor. And Officer Friend can finally sleep at night knowing that his so-called little sis has sound.

I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to finally be getting my very own place. Of course I can’t help thinking back to all those episoses of the Mary Tyler Moore show that I’ve been watching since I was a kid. I’ve always wanted to live in a studio apartment, and very soon I will be doing that. When I lived in my condo in New England, it may as well have been a studio, since I very rarely slept in my actual bedroom, but it’s still not the same. This will be one room, one single room, 100% me.

There are quite a few differences between me and MTM. For one, I live in a much warmer climate than she does. Thank goodness I don’t have to wear those early 70s miniskirts in below freezing temps, instead I wear them when the temps approach the boiling point. I don’t work in a newsroom, but I do work with a group of people I consider my family. And my studio is in a cookie cutter apartment complex, because really cool converted Victorian houses don’t exist here in Vegas. Check out the comparisons:

My apartment:

Now Mary’s apartment:


Big difference. Mary had cool architectural features such as the tiny balcony with French doors and the sunken living room with the shelves built into the step. I’ll have an alcove and an old sliding window. My kitchen’s in an alcove off to one side, but I don’t have that way cool stained glass window that would go up and down to close the kitchen off. But I do have a big K for my wall. I had to have that when I saw it in a catalog. It’s whitewashed, not gold, but hey, it’s mine - just like this studio apartment that I’ll move into on Memorial Day weekend.

The biggest thing I’m getting out of all this is that sense of independence I feel like I lost living with people out of financial necessity. My roommate and I are talking and things are back to normal now, which makes this last month much easier, but we both agree that we need to have our own space and that 2 years living under the same roof is more than enough. I’ll be much happier on my own - I was in my dumpy condo in back east (at least as far as my living space went) and I will be here. That happiness will transcend all areas of my life, and I hope it will be the start of a very positive chapter. But I’m determined - I’m gonna make it after all.

Photo courtesy internet search 

Why is it that when I have a day off, I sleep anywhere between 8-10 hours that night, with a nap during the day, but when I have to get up for work the next day I either can’t get to sleep early enough or I’m up at an ungodly hour? Yesterday at work I could barely keep my eyes open, had a raging headache from a lack of sleep, then I had to work job #2 last night. It wasn’t busy so I left an hour early, got home, and was asleep before my shift would have ended. Then I was wide awake at 3am. Six freaking hours of sleep is all I got. I’ve been at the computer for well over an hour now and not ready to go back to bed. I’ll have to try that last resort - heading over to the sofa with my comfy blanket and pillow and popping in an AbFab DVD. Sure, the show is funny and exciting, but I’ve seen them all so many times that it’s comforting too, and one of the only things I can watch that clears my brain so I can sleep. I know I’m gonna need to sleep because come 3pm I’ll be slumped over my desk, snoring so loudly that I’ll disturb my coworkers. I’ll suffer through the next 2 days, and of course working both jobs on Friday, then I’ll be up late Friday night and sleep till noon on Saturday.

Thank goodness this insomnia thing is rare with me, I’d go absolutely beserk if it happened any more frequently.