Cyclists

I'm all for sharing the road.  I go out of my way to slow down and move over for cyclists.  I am glad you are out there, getting your exercise on, unlike so many fatties just sitting in front of the television.

What enrages me about cyclists, are those that do not obey the traffic laws.  I am looking out for you, you should also be looking out for my bright ass blue car coming at you when you are breaking those laws. 

In the past 24 hours, I have almost hit (and by almost, I mean I'm glad I got new brakes on my car last week) two cyclists.  The first instance occurred yesterday evening.  This awesome guy came screaming out of a parking lot, attempting to cross 3 lanes of a feeder road.  Feeder roads here in Texas are roads that put you on and off the interstate.  People do not drive slow on these roads.  I hope he made it to wherever he was going.

The second instance happened this morning.  I have added a picture to help explain.  Here I am with a green light, turning right on my way to work.  This douche bag on a bike is in the middle of the lane (my lane, opposite lane of where he should've been riding), coming towards me.  They had a red light.  He should have been in the other lane (on the side, not the middle of the lane), stopped, with the rest of traffic.  Again, glad I have new brakes on my car.  I'm also glad the guy behind me had good brakes on his truck, because he came close to rear-ending me.  Pretty sure it scared him as much as it scared me, because he almost fell off of his bike.  All I can do is hope he learned his lesson.  Or, if not, at least heard the choice words and gestures I proceeded to give him.

If you are a cyclist and don't obey the traffic laws, eff you.  Eff you hard.

Boom Goes the Dynomite

I plan on voting for Obama, again.

I stopped eating at Chick-fil-a.  It was never about freedom of speech.

I believe marijuana should be legal.  I believe it's 100 times safer than alcohol.  To quote Bob Saget in one of my favorite movies, "Have you ever sucked dick for weed?!"

There always needs to be a separation between church and state.  Always.

Pregnant ladies:  I'm super excited that you are with child.  Please stop making the 3D ultrasound your profile picture.  It's frickin creepy.

I don't think that using cuss words to express yourself is a sign of ignorance.  I do believe that poor grammar and spelling is a very good indicator of ignorance.

My dogs are still cooler than most people.

The End.

Heebie-Jeebies

Today's events have succeeded in giving me the heebie-jeebies.  It started while at work.  I've seen roaches at work before, but nothing to this magnitude.  My best guess is that someone sprayed the building today.  I saw at least 6 dead and 3 live roaches before I left today.  Granted, I was there later than usual, but come on.  I don't handle roaches well.  I felt like something was crawling on me the entire way home.

Next, we took the dogs for a walk not long after I got home (around 9:30).  We've been leaving the front light off because the June bugs have been horrendous.  Somehow, I see a small snake slithering by the bottom crack of the door.  I'm so thankful we have good insulation around that door.  So I yell for Ben to stop, there's a snake.  He takes a look and the little dude is now sitting on the mat, looking at us like, I dare you to try to go through this door.  So we walk around the back of the house where I see the largest spider I have ever encountered.  WHAT THE HELL TEXAS?!  STOP IT.  STOP IT NOW.

Got to the front door in time to see the snake slither away between the side of our driveway and the rock that surrounds our landscaping.  That butt hole is going to be in our garage tomorrow.  I just know it.

Time for a hot shower and some liquor in hopes this feeling fades and I can get some sleep.

The Honeymoon.

The night of the wedding, I think we went to sleep around 2 am.  There was a little bit of drama.  Cell phones and wallets were no where to be found.  We had to evoke some help to search for said items.  Once those items were returned, we went to bed and woke up to a 5 am alarm call.  Yup.  I heard we barely missed some of you guys in the lobby.  I heart you guys.

Bojangles in Sarah's hand (Ben was feeling a little vommy), we make our way to RDU airport.  Halfway there, we had to pull over so Ben could dry heave on the side of I-40.  No worries, we made our flight.  Let me paint this picture.  Ben is green, I still have somewhat of a "wedding-do" and am decked out in workout pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt.  We look awesome.  We take a 2.5 hour flight to Chicago and begin the chaos.

The original plan was to activate Ben's cell phone for the duration of our trip to Thailand.  His phone was dead to the world and after several failed attempts of trying to charge it at the airport, we discover it is done.  Upon closer inspection, the phone reeks of beer.  I called to see if I could activate my phone, but the guy I spoke with was a total retard.  Hence, we had no means of communication on our way to a foreign country.

We opted for Korean Air to take us on our merry journey.  Ben had taken a few trips to Asia for work in the past and said, and I quote, "Korean Air is the tits."  Korean Air would take us on a 13 hour flight from Chicago, to Seoul, Korea.  We'd have a 2 hour layover in Seoul, then board another 6 hour flight to Phuket, Thailand.  Korean Air was nice, we had our own personal TVs where we could choose to watch several different new blockbusters, TV sitcoms, documentaries, view our in flight status, or play games such as tetris or pacman.  It was a long flight.

We arrived in Phuket at 11 pm Phuket time.  After going through customs, we step outside the airport to be accosted by no less than 50 taxi drivers trying to screw us  take us to our hotel.  After getting harassed for what seemed like 15 minutes (it was probably 5) some guy felt sorry for us and phoned our hotel to pick us up.  Another picture to be painted.  We have now been awake for 24 hours, traveling for 20 of those hours.  We had enough sense to get some Baht out of the ATM in the airport, but have no means of calling anyone, some things are written in English, and some people can speak English.  Thank Buddha/Allah for the guy that called our hotel.

 Our shuttle arrives and we take a quick, 5 minute drive to our place to sleep for the night.  It's not a bad hotel.  This is where we get introduced to a bidet for the first time.

We're up early the next morning so we can make an 8 am ferry.  This ferry takes us from Phuket to Phi Phi Island.  On Phi Phi, we board a different ferry to Koh Lanta.  This takes around 3 hours.  The views from the ferry are absolutely breathtaking.  We arrive to Koh Lanta and take a tuk-tuk to our final destination.  A tuk-tuk is basically a motorcycle/scooter that has a covered seat attached to the side of it.  It's very easy for one to flip over.  Here we are, on this tuk-tuk, zipping past other tuk-tuks, motorbikes, trucks, people, and cows.  Oh, and they drive on the left side of the road.  Welcome to Thailand.

We stayed at a place called Long Beach Chalet.  It was a really nice place.  The chalets were basically a studio room up on stilts with a thatched roof.  The bathrooms were located across the stairs.  They were open air, but they had fresh hot water, so no complaints.  We had a/c and a pool to lounge at when we got tired of the beach.  Long Beach Chalet also had its own restaurant called Three Mums.  Everything these ladies whipped up was absolutely delicious.  Actually, all of the food we consumed while there was so freaking awesome.  I do have to admit, I did get a little tired of nothing but Thai food and ate a cheeseburger once, followed by a slice of pizza the next day.

The first couple of days in Koh Lanta, we just lounged around.  We were exhausted and jet lagged.  It was a 12 hour time difference between Koh Lanta and Texas.  So at 2 pm, we were pretty sleepy.  That Tuesday night, we ended up sleeping close to 13 hours and managed to get somewhat back on track.  During the lounging, we came across our first "ladyboy."  He was the bartender at the beach bar.  Speaking of beach bars....you have to be a very brave soul to use the bathroom at one of these bars.  Just go use the water, or go back to your room.  Another thing we had to get use to was all of the stray dogs on the island.  I became pretty fond of this one dog that would always greet us along the path to the beach and "show us the way."  She did piss us off one evening by trying to bury a bone while we were watching the sunset.

We tried booking a snorkeling or diving trip through Long Beach.  After 3 days of them telling us they weren't running that day, they told us they were closed for the season.  During this time, we rented a motorbike so we could explore the island.  Neither one of us had ever driven one of these things, so Ben learns in about 5 minutes by taking it up and down a dirt road beside the chalets.  Then we hop on and off we go.  It's a pretty terrifying experience being on the back of one of these things.  Not to mention an inexperienced driver on roads that have completely different traffic patterns and laws than the US.  There were lots of times during this trip we both turned to each other and said, "We gonna die!"

On our first excursion, we hung out in Ban Saladan, played with some monkeys at Lanta Monkey School, stopped for tea at a place with a beautiful view point, and ran screaming from a place we were hoping to go kayaking.  The monkeys were cute, but one of them was a butthole.  He kept jumping onto our heads and trying to steal my sunglasses.  Also, my friend Judi yelled at me afterwards because we could've contracted some pretty nasty illnesses from those monkeys.  Thanks, Thailand.  The drive from the view point back to Long Beach was pretty long, so we stopped at a kayaking place, hoping to kayak through some Mangroves.  We drive up to the place and a guy stops us before we're even at the "booth."  He wants to know what we're doing.  We tell him we were hoping to go kayaking, but I was starting to get a really funny feeling from the whole situation.  Dark clouds were rolling up and I didn't really care to be out on the water during a thunderstorm.  When I tell Ben, "Hey, let's just go."  The guy starts trying to convince us to stay and kayak.  "It's the best time to go, it's low tide," he says.  Since we are still stopped in the middle of the road and there are no boats to be seen, I affirm that I do not want to kayak at this very moment, but tell the guy we'll be back.  We need to turn the motorbike around and head in the other direction, but as we're trying to turn around, another guy stops us asking what we're doing.  We tell him we're just trying to turn around and leave, so he watches us do so.  We never did see any kayaks, nor did we return to that place. 

We rode an elephant and got to feed her pineapples.  We took a hike through the rain forest to a bat cave and waterfall.  Both the guide and I busted our butts...Ben managed to stay upright.  We tried taking the motorbike to the national park one day, but it got to be way too terrifying for me.  We went from sea level to a 19% grade on a bike that had crappy brakes.  Nope.  Then, 3 days before we leave, we found a diving shop while out to dinner.  Guess what?  They had been taking people out scuba diving and snorkeling every single day we had been there.  Of course, we booked a scuba trip the next day.

I still get pretty nervous about scuba diving.  This was our first dive outside of the open water dives in class.  I'm still learning to control my breathing and buoyancy.  I manage to keep my shit together to enjoy diving at two different locations.  We saw all kinds of coral, fans, fish, lobsters, star fish, and pointy urchin things.  It was a really neat experience.

I'm sure I'm leaving all kinds of things out, but this is getting way too long.  I thoroughly enjoyed our first trip as husband and wife.  Maybe one of these days we'll get to go back.

I got married and went on a honeymoon

Well, I'm sure you noticed that I got married.....there's been pictures everywhere!  It truly was a dream wedding for me.  Before I get into those boring details, I'll tell you what you really want to hear about.  Did I freak out?  Did I become a bridezilla?  I freaked out on two separate occasions.  A couple of weeks prior I paid a visit to my doctor, because I needed some malaria pills.  While there, I asked if there was any way possible to get something to calm my nerves a little.  Off I left with 4 prescriptions (I did not see my regular doctor, and this whole situation deserves a blog itself.  Seriously, this was the most moronic doctor I've ever experienced).  I decided to get two of those filled, malaria pills and anti-anxiety.

Yes, I know, I like the alcohol.  Which means I only took the anti-anxiety pills when they were absolutely warranted.  My boss decides it'd be a great idea to schedule us for 24 surgeries the two days prior to my departure to North Carolina.  Surgeries require a great deal of prep, time, and concentration.  I really do thank him for deciding that April 23 and 24th were the best days to get this done.  So, yep, one of the pills was taken on the 23rd.  On the 24th I rushed home so we could teleconference with two different vendors.  Then we started packing.  I already stress about packing when I'm only going away for 3 days.  Having to pack for the wedding and our honeymoon maxed that stress level out.  So freak out #1 was when I realized they gave me a bag to take my wedding dress as my carry on for our flight to NC.  Tears were shed.  Ben was great about it....I guess he was happy that so far, this had been the only thing to really upset me.  Pill #2 was taken the morning we left for the airport.  Expecting the worse, I was fully prepared to be kicked off the plane or out of the airport over putting someone in their place over my wedding dress.  But you know what?  It all worked out....just like Ben said it would.  It wasn't a full flight, so the overhead bin that contained my dress was only accompanied by one roller bag, belonging to a lady that got the worst stank eye I have ever laid upon a person.

Freak out #2 commenced on the Thursday before the wedding.  We met with our wedding director (who was the tits) and I left with a few things to do.  Instead of having a relaxing Thursday afternoon, I did last minute wedding stuffs.  I didn't shed any tears over it, but I wiggled a lot and popped my 3rd pill.

Friday, the day of the bridal luncheon, rehearsal and rehearsal dinner arrives and I am calm as a cucumber.  I didn't even pop a pill.  Everything went by in a flash.  We're at The Pit, having some good ole NC BBQ, fried green tomatoes and banana pudding.  Flash, Manning and I are buying flowers for the rehearsal dinner.  Flash, we're getting pedicures at this snazzy place that served us alcohol.  Flash, I'm at the rehearsal holding an awesome bouquet Manning made for me out of tissue paper and ribbon from my bridal shower.  Flash, we're at the Caffe Luna eating.  By the way, we had all intentions of meeting friends after the dinner ended.  I was so exhausted and suffering from the worst gas of my life, so unfortunately, we had to return to the hotel so I could fart and pass out.  Seriously, it happened.

Saturday.  Gah, I'd love to hear all of your accounts of Saturday.  I got my nails done at 10 am.  Was able to hang out with my sister Treva and old roomie Kim before I left to get all made up.  Still calm as a cucumber.  We get to Landmark around 12:30 and start to get all did up.  Mimosas and sandwiches are shared.  Before I know it, it's 3:30 and time to get into my dress.  Then Brad is interviewing me, wanting me to say something to Ben before the ceremony.  I lost it.  Sorry, Brad.  The remaining moments prior to the ceremony involved me getting myself together and peeing.

Yay, neither Ben nor I cried during the ceremony.  Although, the first 5 minutes was hit or miss.  It was overcast and 65.  Our guests were cold but I was loving it.  I thought the ceremony was awesome.  Guess I need to get everyone's opinion on that, but what other wedding ceremony has mentioned Mike Tyson's Punch Out and Bojangles in the same paragraph?

The reception also flew by.  The next thing I know, Kim (Ben's dad) is telling me he paid for an extra hour to keep the party going.  I tried to speak to everyone, but I feel like I did a crappy job.  The most I could say was, "It's so good to see you, thank you so much for coming."  Like everyone says, I wish I could do it all over and be a guest at my own wedding.  I mean, it's everyone I would ever want to party with, all in one spot, but I have to be Miss Manners.

Everyone ate, they wobbled, they drank, they were merry.  It was my dream wedding.  I married my best friend and am living happily ever after.

(The honeymoon will have to be a blog in itself.  This one is already far too long).

This Happened to me Today

I was the first person in the office today so I decided to be nice and start a pot of coffee. Silly me didn’t realize the stupid pot still contained coffee (we have these huge stainless steel canisters, hard to see how much is in there). Anyway, I start the pot and come back 10 minutes later to find this:

Coffee had overflowed from the pot, all over the water cooler below it, underneath the entire contraption, and had seeped onto the carpet (not shown in drawing). Then, I guess what could only be explained as splashes of coffee, covered the wall and nearby counter. So many splashes, in fact, that the coffee had started to pool on top of the counter and drip down the cabinets.

So, I spent the first 30 minutes of my day cleaning up coffee. Guess I really needed that cup.

11 Questions

I have to tell you guys about my friend Courtney. She is absolutely hilarious and writes this blog:
where she keeps us up-to-date on the joys of being a stay at home mom. We go way back. I mean, come on, we did Disney together, I've eaten her father's Catch O' the Day (remember that beach trip, Courtney?), we played softball together and her mother was my 5th grade teacher. She has guilted me into talking about myself, so here we go:

First, 11 random things about me:

1. I am getting married in 4 weeks. In order to have enough days to go on our honeymoon (Thailand) I am working Saturdays. I thought I would have more free time to do some planning here and there at work. Nope, I'm spending that time teaching new techniques to grad students. Now is the time for you guys to place bets on whether or not I have a meltdown. Vodka is my friend.

2. My toes make a loud snapping sound when I walk. It is absolutely impossible for me to sneak up on someone barefoot.

3. I work out at least 3 days a week, but find it hard to stick to an actual program. The vodka (see #1) counteracts all of this. However, I am bound and determined to complete a full marathon in the year of the 30.

4. I drive to Galveston everyday for work. The more time I spend in Galveston, the more I hate it...and the people that live here and think it's great. I found out yesterday that there have been people who picked up that flesh eating bacteria from swimming at the beach in Galveston. I thought this only happened in lakes. I'll take my chances with the neighborhood peepee pool where I don't have to deal with stinking seaweed and rip currents.

5. Courtney- I also have an irrational fear of tornadoes. I have nightmares about them. I think it comes from having to stay curled up in the hallway of my elementary school for 45 minutes when a rash of storms broke out. There was another time I was on I-40 in Durham and traffic came to a complete stop. It started hailing and a funnel cloud formed. I called my parents crying. Luckily, the cloud dispersed and the sun came back out in a 3 minute time span. Bad storms make me anxious. Every building I spend time in, I plan out my tornado hiding spot. Oh, this past week I discovered that they don't do tornado drills in Galveston. "We've never really had them here." Hurricanes spawn tornadoes, ya dipshits. See #4. However, I guess if it's hurricaning, they have other concerns.

6. When I am having a bad day, I like to look at pictures of boxers on the internet. It cheers me right up.

7. I became an excellent parallel parker while I lived in PA. Whenever I'm looking for a spot now in the city and someone suggests, "You can't fit there," I think to myself, "Challenge accepted." This may be the only talent I possess.

8. I have a hard time with 7s and 8s. I still use my fingers to subtract these numbers from larger numbers. However, I do complicated math at work. Sometimes I impress myself. Other times I feel like a huge moron.

9. I have a super sensitive sense of smell. People gross me out a lot. Like this morning at the gym, I could smell the lady's feet that was working out beside me. Handle that, ok?

10. One of these days, I will convince a group of adults to play duck duck goose with me.

11. I have had two, TWO, separate encounters with a dead bird in less than 24 hours. I feel like I should be disturbed about this fact.

Now to answer Courtney's questions:

1. If you could re-do one decision in your life, what would it be? Well, every decision I've made has shaped who I am today, so that is a tough one. I allowed someone to treat me pretty bad for quite a few years. I should've ended it at the sign of the first red flag. I missed out on some pretty good times with friends during that stint of my life.

2. What's your all-time favorite scent? Not perfume, but.. like.. smell.
Freshly mowed grass right as it starts to rain.


3. Do you remember your first kiss? Lol. Just take a minute to bathe in the awkwardness...... and then regale us with it.
Technically, I think my first "kiss" was initiated by a sibling b/c someone took a picture of it. We must've been 4 and I was kissing his chin while he kissed my nose. But, the awkward one that everyone wants to hear about, occurred in 6th grade at Gray's Creek Elementary. Pretty sure I just stood there with my lips pursed out while he awkwardly licked my lips.

4. Speaking of, what's the most awkward moment that you can ever recall?
My mother decided to have a "sex talk" with my brother while I was in the backseat of the car. Asking him if he was using protection. I'm sure it was waaay more awkward for him, but I still wanted to melt away.

5. What the worst trouble you ever got in in school?
I got detention for letting a friend copy my homework. Seriously, I tried to be a good kid. I think that particular teacher had it out for me. They hate it when you're smart but don't participate.

6. If you could go back to a place you've visited, where would it be?
It has been way too long since I have visited the NC mountains. I don't have a particular spot in mind, it would just be nice to go back. Preferably during mid-October.

7. Describe the most perfect day of your life so far.
The day I left Raleigh, met Ben in Atlanta, and we spent 4 days in Aruba. Everything about the day we left, and the 3 days that followed, were awesome.

8. Do you have a firm handshake and do you think that matters?
I try to use a firm grip while shaking hands. Lately, I've only had to shake hands while meeting people at work. In that case, I guess it could matter. I mean, I'd probably judge someone who limply shakes my hand like I'm diseased. Usually what matters most to me are the words that come out of their mouth immediately following the handshake.

9. What size bed do you have? Validate your decision. Especially mention if it's a super tall bed. I do not understand the logic. What if you fall out? Wouldn't it hurt way worse?
We have a queen sized bed. I'd like to upgrade to a king sized. When it's 100 degrees at night, you want to sleep as far away as possible from the one you love. I feel like our bed is normal height off the ground. I don't need a running start to get into it.

10. What would you buy right now if I gave you $100?
Most likely something wedding related. We still need to buy our toasting glasses and cake cutting utensils.

11. Complete this sentence: I feel strongest when I . . . .
.....have ran any distance longer than 3 miles.

My questions:

1. What is your most favorite article of clothing? The one thing that you can't bring yourself to part with, regardless of holes and stains?

2. What is your earliest memory?

3. Do you have a close relationship with your parents or siblings?

4. Give me your best, "Hey y'all, watch this," story.

5. What are you currently reading? Do you recommend it?

6. Beach or mountains? Pick one or the other and explain why.

7. What's one thing that grosses you out that would surprise others? For example, with the work I do, it takes a lot to gross me out. However, I cannot handle snot. By this I mean the green, stringy, nasty kind. Or the sounds snotty people make . When we have kids, Ben is on snot patrol.

8. Is there anything that causes you irrational rage? (Cue someone who never attended UNC dissing NC State. We shall rise again).

9. What is your most favorite thing to eat?

10. Do you consider yourself a patient person? Why or why not?

11. What is the top thing on your list to do before you die....or get too old to do it?

Feel free to respond to the questions in the comments, or create your own blog!

Weddings for Tomboys

For those of you who don’t already know, I’m a tomboy. Shocker, I know. I like playing sports, getting dirty, watching sports, rolling around with my dogs, and running from farm animals. I prefer wearing blue jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers. I have absolutely no sense of fashion. I’m extremely thankful that I have curly hair because it looks good most of the time without having to put any kind of effort into it. I’m amazed that I actually wear makeup to work. My rationale is I’m not going to impress anyone with the way that I dress so I have to show some type of effort in my appearance. So you may be even more shocked when I say that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing planning a wedding. Someone should write a book entitled, Wedding Planning for Tomboys. Perhaps it exists already, I haven’t checked. Here is my advice for other ladies like me who are lucky enough to have snagged a guy that wants to marry them.

Rings: You should probably know about these. There are different cuts, settings, and types of metal. And people expect you to know all of the answers to the million questions they ask you while trying to choose a ring. Good luck.

Wedding gowns: There exists such a thing called tulle. When I went to try on wedding gowns for the first time the lady asked, “Why type of fabric do you like?” I’m pretty sure she heard the birds chirping in my head because I had no idea I was going to have to mention a specific fabric. After I replied with, “The shiny kind?” She decided to list off all of the types of fabric I could choose from. All I knew was that I didn’t want to go with lace. I am nowhere near girly enough to wear lace. Then they ask you about style. So it’s probably a good idea to be familiar with these alien terms they throw at you and know what style you want to go for before you go to the store. The internet helps a lot, and bridal magazines which I feel silly carrying around.

While getting your dress, save yourself a trip and go ahead and pick out a petticoat. Yep, I had to google that one. No one mentioned a petticoat while I was trying the dress on. You’re going to need one of these bad boys, a little something called spanx, and the shoes you plan on wearing for your first fitting. Bee-tee-dubs, that petticoat needs to have been purchased and allowed to poof out to its fullest potential before the fitting.

Bridesmaid dresses: Your bridesmaids will probably hate the color and dress you pick out. Mine have been nice enough not to complain about either (but hey, they got to pick out their own dress). You have to make a lot of decisions here too, like what shoes should go with it, accessories, and for the love of god, accent colors. The words, “What the hell is an accent color?” actually came from my mouth.

Flowers: Luckily I have a favorite flower, but other than that I know what roses look like. The florist is going to want to know what flowers you like and what colors you were hoping to have at the wedding. It’s a good idea to do a little research and know what’s in season before meeting with them. Also, go with a budget so you can be like, “Do magic with this figure.” Our guy sent me a collection of 800 pictures of his work and I was able to point at stuff. I love it when they make it easy for me.

Food: Food is pretty much self explanatory. Just keep in mind that this will be your largest cost….and will make you want to punch anyone that complains about the food. Your caterer isn’t just responsible for food. They’re going to want to know about plates, napkins, cutting the cake, serving your alcohol, toasting champagne, etc. Again, good luck.

Invitations: You pretty much need to know how much information you’re going to include in your invitation before you go order them. For example, will you need to include a direction card and a card for menu selections? Would you like to order thank you cards with your invitations? Also, make sure you word it right. I learned that you can pick out invitations at Michaels and Party City and have them print everything and save a lot of money (after we ordered ours).

There’s a difference between a wedding planner and a wedding director.

Be prepared to make another million decisions on seating arrangements, timing, music, hair, cards and courtesies. I could go on and on but I would turn this blog into a novel.

Just don’t get lost and bogged down by it all. In the end, you’re marrying your best friend (who loves the fact that you don’t know what tulle is) and that’s all that matters!

Random Ramblings

I think there is a correlation between intelligence level and how blatantly obvious some dudes check out females. Here’s an example:




The typical congressman/congresswoman did not grow up with the internet. Therefore, they do not properly understand or know how to use the internet to its fullest potential. So why is it up to them to determine what rights we have as citizens to use said internet? In my opinion, it’s the same as letting a chimp teach a teenager how to drive a manual car.

Should those marines have pissed on those corpses? Umm, probably not. Am I going to sit here and condemn them for doing it? No, because luckily I’ve never experienced what it’s like to be in a war or had to witness what enemy foreign soldiers have done to the corpses of my comrades. You never know, they could’ve had a very good reason for doing it. (Sorry, this was brought up again this morning).

Getting married is expensive…..we’ve had to tighten our purse strings. Just because I can’t go out and spend money on the same silly things I did a couple months ago doesn’t mean that I don’t want to hang out. The past few weeks have really made me realize what it must be like once you have your first child.

Has someone backed sprints as the new go-to exercise? Like, have sprints been a hit on some reality tv show? Have they been endorsed by some new workout regimen? Just wondering, because on both Monday and Wednesday of this week, I’ve had someone get on the treadmill next to mine and do sprints. This was two separate incidences at two different gyms. These people could have been trying to do intervals (which I have heard endorsed) but their routine was quite confusing. It went something like this:

1) Step on treadmill, start running at a fast pace without any kind of warm up.
2) Speed up treadmill and run really fast for 30-60 seconds.
3) Don’t slow treadmill, stand with feet on sides of treadmill straddling the belt, bend forward with hands on knees and pant heavily for 1-2 minutes.
4) Hop back on treadmill at ridiculous speed. Repeat steps 2-3.

I was concerned for the well being of both these people during the bent over panting step. WTF is going on?

It’s very awkward having rotational grad students in the lab. I feel the need to keep them entertained, which kinda sucks when you have to teach every little thing. That and I feel like they judge my laziness.

I would love to wake up at 7 am everyday and be home by 5:30 pm. If I hear one more person complain about having to wake up at 7, I’m going to need my own soapbox. I get up at 5 am to work out and get everything else done before getting to work at 8-8:30. I usually don’t get home until 6:30 pm. Count your blessings…it could be worse…and you could have a child that wakes you up even earlier.

For awhile, I thought it would be cool to see how many friends I could get on facebook. Recently, I’ve started deleting people based on retarded posts. I’ve decided that I’d rather not be associated with stupidity. For example, I had to delete a girl in December that posted a false news article (haha, if I say that fast enough it sounds like Fox news article) stating that Obama banned Christmas trees at the Whitehouse. You can’t believe everything you see on the internet folks!

This concludes today’s ramblings.

Bad Day

I had a bad day. It wasn't that anything extremely terrible happened, or that any one particular person was an ass to me. It was just one of those days. You know, where you end up having to wait to walk the dogs because it starts pouring rain. Then you're already running late for work just to re-discover that you don't have enough gas to get to work. When you finally do arrive to work your boss is sitting right there noting that you're an hour late. Then you drop your birth control pill into your purse and end up having to dump every single thing out to find it, cause we don't want no babies! Then your boss keeps annoying you about the grad students and what you have planned for them to do all day (seriously, calm the eff down, I got this). Then thanks to an illy (wait is that a word?) timed fire drill and your boss interrupting you several more times you discover that you only accomplished one thing today. Just to end the day with pouring rain on the way home (thanks to the drought people in Texas have forgotten what that liquid substance is and are terrified of it when in a vehicle) and getting behind someone on that last stretch of road doing 30 in a 55 mph zone.

It's ok though. I got a kiss from Ben and picked up two forties of Olde English and two scratch off tickets on the way home. With a few more kisses and some more cuteness from the dogs, these worries will melt away.

New Year, Same Old Bathroom

Yay, it's 2012! So many exciting things are happening this year! For instance, getting to marry my best friend =) I didn't really make any resolutions this year....but I'll try to blog a little more frequently. That being said...first post of the new year:

Sometime last year I blogged about the bathroom we use at work. Some of those problems have been taken care of (haven't really noticed the smell creeping out of the drain lately), but one thing in particular has really started to grate my nerves. The handicap button on the door.

Now, let me go ahead and give a disclaimer. If you are a dude and hold the bizarre belief that girls never fart or take a dump then you should stop reading (and you should probs stop being my friend). I mean, come on, everybody poops.

For those of you who are still with me, we have a handicap accessible bathroom. Which is totally fabulous, I'm all for equal opportunity. However, we seldom get handicap people in our building, in particular, using the bathroom on the third floor which requires two separate card swipes to be accessed. All of the contempt I hold is for the women that work on said floor.

Anyway, there's this handicap accessible button on both the outside and inside of the bathroom. Meaning, when that button is pushed, the door opens on its own and stays open for a few seconds before slowly shutting. A few times I have ran into this scenerio:

Me thinking to myself (as I clench and make my way to the bathroom): Wow, I really shouldn't have tested out my lactose intolerance by drinking that glass of milk with breakfast this morning. Great, boss is standing in hallway having a scientific discussion with two other people. I hope they're almost done and don't notice how long I'm about to be in here. Crap, someone is at the sink, they should be making their way out soon though. Yay, I made it to the stall, now only clench it together until this person leaves.

AND THAT ASSHOLE PUSHES THE HANDICAP BUTTON!

Me sweating: Oh God, my gut won't let me hold this together any longer....

Then all hell breaks loose and I can only hope that the conversation in the hallway had ended and people were no longer standing there.

I don't understand the thrill of using the button. While using it from the inside of the bathroom, it's just as dirty as if you had pushed the door with your hand. Is there something wrong with these people's arms? Are they just that lazy? Is the door too heavy for them and it causes them physical pain to open it? Regardless, it annoys me that several times a week, the hallway is subjected to whatever I've got going on in the bathroom.