Foto Friday: Slacker

I’m a slacker. I’ve been out of town, and then jumped right back in to life and forgot about blogging for a bit.  I’ll get back to it shortly.  

Here’s to starting off the holiday season in style.  Cheers!

The gang in Missouri, Dec. 07

Foto Friday: Work Hard, Play Hard

 

Lisa & I, Nashville 2006

Traveling for work is hard– long hours, stale Convention Center air, lots of “on” time, etc.  At the end of the day,though, we get a chance to relax and hang out with co-workers.   This photo was taken at the end of a super long day in Nashville two years ago.  Cheers!!

Wordy Wednesday: Words of Work

Since I’m getting ready for a 5 day work trip, I thought I’d choose words this week that remind me of work/pertain to my job.  I’m running out of time, so you’ll have to look the definitions up yourself!!

Pragmatic– It’s the ultimate compliment from me. I admire pragmatism in people, mostly because I lack it.

Purposeful- I say this a LOT at work.  I think it sounds better than meaningful or intentional.

Schlep– This word is *never* used in my everyday life.  But, while at a trade show, there’s lots of schlepping to do!

Evoke– not originally on the list, but still a good word.  I also enjoy evocative.  I use it a lot when talking to authors/designers about book covers.

And the #1 word of the week… which has nothing to do with work..

Flexting– to flirt over text messaging!

Procrastination is Expensive

So, I’m leaving for San Antonio in the morning, right?  And, as usual, there are a number of things on my last-minute to-do list, some of which ended up costing me a fortune!

Item #1:  Dry Cleaning    
Cost of procrastination:  Approx. $10  

I had a bunch of clothes I needed dry cleaned.  The dry cleaners by my house has online coupons and they take competitor’s coupons.  Generally, I’m not a coupon-clipper, but it’s a good deal.   Anyway, I forgot to print the coupons off at work on Friday before I left for Chicago, so I decided I’d take them in on Monday.

Monday, I print off the coupons and conveniently forget that the dry cleaning is in my car until I head to the gym.   I head to the cleaners at about 5:45 and the lady tells me that if I can get my clothes to their OTHER location by 6:00, it will be ready the next day.  (This is crucial since the dry cleaning I had to drop of consisted of most of the stuff I planned to take on my trip.)  I ask the lady where the other location is, and I’m off.

Lo and behold… I hit every flipping stoplight on the way there.  And when I get there, it’s not at the intersection the lady told me.  So, I drive a little bit further, realize it’s 6:01, and stop at a different dry cleaners.  One that doesn’t accept coupons.  So, I paid full price instead of getting $2 off for each of my 4 pairs of pants and an additional 20%.

Grrrr….   And then today when I go pick it up, I realized I was just a block off.

Item #2:  Laptop bag   
Cost of procrastination: $80

I’ve had my laptop for almost a year now.  I’ve taken it on 2 or 3 trips, but since it’s so big (17″), it doesn’t fit in a conventional laptop bag.  I’ve had to take it in a duffel bag, which is awkward.  After each trip, I vowed to look for an adequately-sized laptop bag.   I never got around to it.  I even have a $75 gift certificate from Dell that I’ve been saving for such a reason.  But, I waited too long and decided to just drop by Best Buy on my lunch hour and pick one up from them.   BIG MISTAKE.  There were only 2 bags in the whole store that would fit my laptop.  And the cheapest was $80.   EIGHTY DOLLARS!!   I knew it would be a pain to carry around the duffel bag once again, so I caved.   The worst part?  The bag isn’t even cute!!

Item #3:  Haircut/color  
Cost of procrastination: $70 + tip

I’ve needed a haircut for a while.   And I’ve really needed to get my roots touched up.  I usually go to a friend of mine in Tuscola.  She’s really good and charges dirt cheap prices, but is really hard to get in to.  So, yesterday, I decide I need to do something about this hair before my trip.   I call a local salon (not my friend) and get an appointment today… SCORE!   Unfortunately, the local salon charges twice as much as my friend, so–once again– procrastinating does not pay off.

Total Cost: About $160  I’m not likely to stop procrastinating anytime soon, but MAN is it tough on the pocketbook!!

Foto Friday: Papillon

 

Roxie w/the butterfly ears

This is one of my favorite pictures of Roxie.  She’s a Papillon, which means butterfly in French.  Not only is she looking straight into the camera, but you can see her butterfly ears.

Here’s a word I don’t like…

Gays.  As in this headline:  After Calif. loss, gays get right to wed in Conn.  I also don’t like using “blacks” as a noun.  How ’bout “black voters” or “gay couples” or “gay Americans”?

I’m not sure why this bothers me so much but it does.  Every time I see it.  There are plenty of other words I don’t like, but it’s still Wednesday and this couldn’t wait.

Wordy Wednesday, part 3

Wordy Wednesday is back, after a brief reprieve for some election-related vocabulary.  This week’s list features a synonym for fat that doesn’t come off as mean, a Princess Bride reference, and proof that I know what I’m talking about (at least sometimes!)

Indelible– One of these days I’m gonna leave an indelible mark on something.  I’m just not sure what yet.

Zaftig– Another z word.  Also nicer than saying: fat, chubby, or curvy.

Fanboy– wonderful descriptor. It evokes a specific image in my head that’s more or less correct. Plus, there’s a reason you never hear of fangirls.

Inconceivable– Makes me think of The Princess Bride.

Edifice– This word is on the list just so I can prove I have mad vocab. skills.  I was talking to a friend about something work related and he used the word edification.   I knew what it meant in context, but I wasn’t sure it was the right word for the project, so I said

Me:  Does that mean to build something?  

He gave me a WTF look.  I started to doubt my mad vocab skills

Me:  You know… like a building… an edifice

Him: Edifice?

Me:  Yeah [seriously doubting my vocab skills, but faking confidence]  Look it up.

Him:  How do you spell that?

Me: E-d-i-  oh, I don’t know…please tell me it says “building”

Him: Building (in shock and amazement)

We then discover that edification (meaning to instruct or improve, especially in religious knowledge) is actually has the same root as “edifice.”  Apparently building buildings and building one’s moral character are linguistically related.  And we were both right.  Which is incredibly important to me!!

Election Reflection

I wanted to blog about the election the minute Obama was announced as the winner.  I was so overcome with emotion that I just *had* to get out.  I wanted to get my thoughts out in a well thought-out, cohesive, manner.  But after staying up all night watching the returns, and talking about it with friends, family and co-workers over the next few days, I felt a bit election-ed out. 

So I never wrote the killer blog post.  But I feel like I need to record my thoughts for posterity, so I offer a collection of thoughts sent to friends over the days after the election.  I’m still in a bit of a “pinch me if it’s real” haze. 

—————————–

Initial Reactions…

I cried when the announcement was made, I cried during McCain’s speech and I bawled through Obama’s.

Of course I’m thrilled about the outcome.  But I’m also ridiculously PROUD– there was record voter turnout, there weren’t riots, there weren’t widespread reports of voter fraud. People participated in the process like never before… and, regardless of the outcome, that’s amazing.  Way back in the primary season, I had sincere doubts that America was capable/ready to elect either a woman OR an African American for President.  I’m thrilled that I was wrong.

I’m also thrilled that, for the first time since I’ve been able to vote, the outcome of the election was determined ON election night.  It was good to wake up this morning and not have to worry about court cases and hanging chads and stuff.

On Obama’s Appeal. . .

Obama played a different game than John McCain.  He played a different game than John Kerry four years ago.  What Obama was able to do that no one else could do was to impact people on an emotional, almost spiritual level.  People believe in him, regardless of race or political affiliation.  He has the power to inspire people and get them to act. It’s quite impressive, but could also become quite a burden once he takes office.

There has been a lot made about how Obama is “half white” and I actually think that’s part of his appeal/success.  People identify with him both because AND despite of his race.  The pundits will pick this apart in the next couple of days but one of the most telling statistics of the exit polls was that people who said that race WAS a factor and people who said it WASNT a factor voted in essentially the same numbers.  So this wasn’t as much about race as we had originally thought.  

Oh, and most “half-black” people identify as African-American.  Regardless of lineage, it’s still about the color of one’s skin.  Lenny Kravitz is half-white yet everyone thinks of him as black.

On the Swing States . . .

Indiana and Virginia are both traditionally red states that “switched” this time…. Virginia was the first capital of the Confederacy and hasn’t gone for a Democratic candidate in 44 years.  It was really monumental.

On John McCain . . .

McCain’s  concession speech was gracious and respectful.  I have always admired him (I think I’ve even called him my “favorite Republican” on occasion) and I appreciated what he had to say.  He was a good sport and I really think he’ll be an asset in the years to come.

I’m not sure what else John McCain could’ve done with his campaign.  Yeah, people will argue that he had a crappy campaign staff, or that picking Sarah Palin was the kiss of death.  Even though this is probably true, I don’t know if it would’ve helped.  McCain was playing on a completely different plane than Obama.  He was working from the old playbook whereas Obama invented an entirely different game.  It will be VERY interesting to see how the Republican Party re-groups after this loss.

 

On the Work Ahead . . .

I’m glad the election is over as well. But I hate to tell you– the “political crap” is no where near over. To use a sports analogy, winning the election is like MAKING it to the World Series, not winning it…. you still have to win once you get there.  And, unfortunately, politics is much more complex than sports, so there really never is a true “winner.” 

The Democrats got the presidency and BOTH houses of Congress, but (as they say in Spiderman) “with great power comes great responsibility.”  It’s not going to be easy to get the kind of change Obama promised.  He’s not going to single-handedly “fix” the country, but he’s also not going to destroy it.  We’re at war, the economy is crap, there are serious environmental and social issues.  No matter who won last night, it’s going to be a tough row to hoe these next four (hopefully eight) years.

The results are in…

According to this poll, the majority of my blog readers think I look like Jennifer Irwin from Still Standing.  I guess I can see it.  The first time someone told me that, I had to look her up ‘cuz I’d never seen the show.

I’m a little surprised that Jewel didn’t get *any* votes. I might not have picked the right photo.  I don’t think I look like her at all, but I’ve heard it more than once.  Is this more convincing?  

No?  Okay.  

ONE person told me I look like Elisha Cuthbert.   I really don’t see that one, but Wow-zah… I’ll take that comparison any day :)

Thanks, everyone, for humoring me.  It was actually a pretty interesting experiment.   I’ve always wished I had big, deer-in-the-headlights eyes.  But if these girls can rock the small eyes, so can I!!

Searching… Searching… Searching…

I’m obsessed with my blog stats.  I like to see how many people are coming to my blog every day and how they get here (don’t worry… As much as I’d love to know exactly who is reading the blog, I don’t get that kind of information).  

One of my favorite blog stats is the Search Terms.  It tells you what words people put into Google (or yahoo or wherever) to find your blog.  Although some of them are pretty obvious, some are HILARIOUS!  Who would’ve thought, for example, that exercise is the #1 search term for my blog or that someone got here by looking for sonogram magazines or sex cyclists.

Here are the top search terms for my blog over the last month and the posts where I think they probably landed. (Note that the entries marked “image search” are likely just people looking for an image that I embedded in the post… almost always an image that I “borrowed” from someone else using the same “search and steal” method)

exercise	Any number of posts about boot camp, running, etc.
the soup	My Own Personal Soup
bored	Image search (?)  I think they probably ended up here:  Still Bored
office space	Someone Has a Case of the Tuesdays!
carich blogs	People searching for me by name!!
carichblogs	And Again!
yearbook yourself	Website Wednesday: Yearbook Yourself (one of my all-time fave posts)
bad morning	Friday Freewrite (image search)
workout posters	Fit/Fat Camp: Day 1  (image search)
poetry	April is National Poetry Month: And I don’t care!
joel mchale	My Own Personal Soup
nirvana smile	Randomness, for sure (funny b/c the image is gone from this post now)
silver heels	Website Wednesday: Zappos.com
pauly bleeker	You Know…Juno
yearbook yourself similar site	Website Wednesday: Yearbook Yourself
yearbook	Website Wednesday: Yearbook Yourself
suck	”I”ll take things that suck for $100, please”
the soup joel mchale	My Own Personal Soup
yearbookyourself similar	Website Wednesday: Yearbook Yourself
exercise pictures	I’m not 100% sure, but probably Fit/Fat Camp: Day 1  (image search)
exercise images	Fit/Fat Camp: Day 1  (image search)
same of yearbook yourself	Website Wednesday: Yearbook Yourself
chris tucker off friday	It’s Friday, Craig
yearbook yourself similar	Website Wednesday: Yearbook Yourself
pretty girls suck	NO CLUE.  Maybe Things that Suck?  But it doesn’t mention pretty girls (?)
be productive at work photo	Friday Freewrite (image search)
mad men	Mad about Mad Men or I Love Mad Men
ragweed leaving tennessee	Musical Xanax
couch to 5k	Couch to 5K
things that suck	I’ll Take Things that Suck for $100, please
chris tucker movies	It’s Friday, Craig
joel mchale the soup	My Own Personal Soup
best weed movies	It’s Friday, Craig
sonogram magazines	Weirdest.Search.Ever.  The only place the word “sonogram” appears in this blog is in the Juno post.
fat people watching tv	Not sure.  Best guess:  Weight Loss TV
gym posters	I’m not 100% sure, but probably Fit/Fat Camp: Day 1  (image search)
sites similar to yearbook yourself	Website Wednesday: Yearbook Yourself
foto happy birthday	Ahh… this is why Foto Friday: Happy Birthday Granny/ie is popular!
so fuck you, and fuck nashville, i’m lea	Musical Xanax
maxine funny rude images	Freewriting Frenzy (image search)
old bike	Not sure. Probably one of my biking posts (?)
maxine dieting cartoons	Freewriting Frenzy (image search)
jennifer irwin sexy	Election Day Poll: Which Celebrity do I Resemble?
i need a vacation really bad	Not 100% sure, but maybe the Summer Staycation post?
foto granny	Foto Friday: Happy Birthday Granny/ie
old workout poster	Fit/Fat Camp: Day 1  (image search)
halloween american foto 2008	Foto Friday: Happy Halloween
sex cyclist	No clue, but this is the funniest one to me.  Probably a cycling post!!