Zooriffic!!

I'm ashamed to admit that I like "America's Got Talent". Even though I'm anti-reality TV, each summer I seem to get sucked into this show when there's nothing else to watch.

This year there is one act that is so retarded, yet so entertaining to watch. They're called "Zooperstars" and they're basically inflatable sports mascots that come out and dance. They remind me of those inflatable punching bags that always pop back up after you deck it.

Slackers!

Don't you hate when people slack at their jobs and it somehow has an effect on your life? No, I'm not talking about MY job, but random people who are there to provide a service to make your life run smoothly, but it turns out backfiring? Case in point, this morning I needed to stop at Pavilions on my way to work because I forgot it was our Admin person's birthday at the office and needed to get a card and a gift card. I was already running a few minutes late, but there were like 5 cars in the parking lot and 4 of them were employees. After I picked out the card (29 seconds) and picked out a gift card (1 Swatch Beat), I waited in the checkout line for oh, I don't know, 7 minutes. There was one checker working and at least 3 standing around doing nothing of apparent importance. Of course the woman checking out in front of me had 47 items and then proceeded to pay with a Visa.. on no wait, she wanted to change it to a Discover card to get cash back. "I'm sorry ma'am, once it's swiped you can't change to a different card. I would have to void the transaction and rescan your items." At this point, I think the woman noticed my eyes burning two holes in the back of her head and she said that wouldn't be necessary. I breathed a concurring sigh of relief. Until she said she would like to buy some gum. Yep, this woman finished her purchase and then decided to buy a pack of gum just so she could get cash back! Now I realize that cash is important. But, if you were in line and you effed up resulting in causing a delay to a busy looking single professional late for work standing behind you in line (that's me), wouldn't you just suck it up and go to the back of the line? I mean seriously. The longer I stood there, the more impatient I got, mainly because of all the un-earned paychecks standing around by the lotto dispenser. What gives?

Beat it

So today was Drew's b-day and a bunch of us met up at Yard House in the Spectrum to celebrate with him. The Yard House is a pretty sweet restaurant/bar that has over 150 beers on tap (count them, I know you won't) where you can get beer by the yard in 3-foot tall glasses. Actually, I think they stopped serving full yards because the glasses kept getting broken. They were quite difficult to wield... people often look like one of those guys wearing lederhosen playing an alpenhorn in a Ricola commercial. WEIRD... that's the second time tonight that lederhosen has come up. Nevertheless, it was a fun group of people to chat and hang with.

I didn't take any photos from tonight, but I do have this pic from Drew's b-day waaay back in 2003 when I was still new and didn't know Bj's would be one of my favorite restaurants and a pizookie would be one of my favorite desserts. Those were fun times. I had to include Drew in my blog tonight because he was mocking the blogosphere. And because it's his birthday.
Cheers!

The other reason for my post tonight is because the subject of Swatch Beats was brought up again (thanks Tammy) and it seems that no one believes that such a thing really exists! Back in 1998, Swatch came up with this brilliant idea (or so they thought) for a new way to keep time. They called it Swatch Internet Time and the time was kept in Swatch Beats. Everyone on the planet was on the same time and there were no time zones. Each day was comprised of 1000 Swatch Beats, with each beat equalling 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. I quickly found that's a bitch to compute all the time. The purpose was to bring everyone together and make it easier to set times to chat or play games on the internet because you could just meet at a certain Swatch Beat time and not be burdened with having to add or subtract hours based on time zones (which everyone figured out wasn't such a chore afterall). Time was written as "@259" meaning "at 259 swatchbeats after midnight". But, the conversion got really confusing, even though the whole point was to simplfy time.

When I was a sophomore in college, I totally thought this was going to be the new 'thing', so I had a Swatch Internet Time application on my computer that displayed the time and also a watch with Swatch Beats. Yeah that did me a lot of good. First of all, it never caught on. Imagine that. Secondly, it never caught on. You couldn't depend on telling your study buddies to meet up @792 and really expect them to show up. Nope, not even at a nerdy school like UMR.

If you want try to restart the revolution, you can download the time application for your computer here: click right here. Good luck with that.

Mmm tastes of ... soap

So in an effort to avoid cancer, I ended up drinking some soap today. Nope, not joking. Remember when I posted how my beloved Nalgene bottles were laden with the latest toxin of interest, BPA, and I tried to order a Sigg bottle from mysigg.com but was denied? I even got a shout-out on Anne's page for the bottle recommendation. Well over the weekend, I bought a Sigg bottle at REI. It wasn't as cool as designing my own online, but it was on sale. Upon getting it home, I followed the directions and rinsed it with warm soapy water. Well apparently not enough water. At work today I filled it up and started drinking from it. The problem with these bottles is that they are opaque and that means you can't see the soapy bubbles frothing inside. As I drank I kept commenting to myself how funny the water tasted and smelled. Even at lunch I asked Andrew and Peetah to smell the pungeant odor. It was an odor that was oddly familiar, but I couldn't place it. By early afternoon I had consumed about 3/4 to 3.75/4 of the bottle and was having a bit of a stomach ache. Fast forward to tonight when I was washing my dishes in the sink and recognized the fragrant scent that was apparent earlier in my bottle. Yup. I now know what purple Joy tastes like and it's not the best. I probably would've been better off drinking the carcinogenic water.

Fresh & Easy

Everyone knows how I like to save money. Tonight I went to a new grocery store chain that is popping up around LA and OC. It's called Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market and is owned by Tesco, a popular store in the UK. Since there isn't one very close to home and I had heard some luke-warm reviews from people I know (except from Sheryl), I hadn't shopped at one yet. In fact people went as far as to say the store was rather 'Stale & Difficult'. In last Sunday's paper there was a flyer with a $5 coupon off a $20 purchase, so I stopped after work. Can't pass up coupons! The market is pretty cool, yet very plain. They are small, they don't have a meat counter or deli counter. They have their own brand of products, yet also sell mainstream brands at a discount, which I like compared to Trader Joe's, which only sells their own stuff. I was impressed by the bargains! It was about the size of my Mom's favorite store, Johnny's Market, but on the downside, there was no homey feeling to it. Even though they call it a "neighborhood" market, I found it to be very impersonal. The checkout was all do-it-yourself, I barely saw any employees whatsoever. What makes Johnny's Market so special is the personal relationships my Mom developed with the checkers, the service counter employees, the butcher, the manager. When I checked out, I felt like I had a lot of items. I would guess that at Pavilions or Albertsons, the same items would easily be $35-40. When all was said and done, the total rang up to $19.50 including the $5 coupon. Not bad!

стрижка! (Haircut!)

Wow this is a record for me posting multiple times in one day!
I just wanted to say that I got my hair cut and colored today. It's a little shorter and choppier than I thought it would be, but to quote my Russian hairstylist, Lina, "Oh baybay, your hair is so thick and bushy! We need to give it sexy movement!" In her native language, that would be "О ребенок, ваши волосы являются настолько толстыми и густыми! Мы должны дать этому сексуальное движение!" And with that she chop chop chopped until there was enough hair on the ground to coat a small dog. I think it will be good, but my ponytail will look wimpy. I usually have a big fluffy ponytail, but I'm afraid with all the layers, it will have suffered greatly.

Here are a couple pix I just took. Let me preface this by saying I did NOTHING to my hair. Lina colored it, cut it, and out I went with no blow dry or style. Hopefully tomorrow I will have a chance to work with it and make it look better. My natural waves are curlier without all the weight, so perhaps I can start wearing it like this! That will save me about an hour in the morning!

Wax on wax off

Yesterday I spent a good deal of the day washing and waxing my car. I know it's odd, but I LOVE to wash cars and give them a good detail. I wax my car twice per year and this was a few months overdue. The reason why it took so long was because someone was already using the car wash port at my apartment complex. Since I wanted to get this done before the marine layer (clouds) burned off, I drove to another complex in Ladera to wash it there, but that carwash port didn't have a hose. Doh. I went to a third complex and they did have a hose, but I had to wait for someone to finish up. Basically by the time I was done, my car's surface temperature was too warm, so I had to park it in the garage for a few hours before waxing.

Here's the end result:

How do old people do it?

I get a prescription every month for oral contraceptives. I used to just pay for them every month at Walgreens and the prescription copay was $20 per month, or $240 per year. This past spring when I went to see my OB/GYN, I asked for the prescription to be written out for 3 months at a time. This would mean that I could use my insurance company's mail-order pharmacy and save some money. The first 3-month supply I ordered cost me $50, which would be $200 per year. Everyone who knows me knows how I like to save money, so of course this makes sense to buy through them. Fast forward three months when it is time to refill the prescription. I logged on to the Medco website and it told me that my same 3-month supply was going to cost $100, or $400 per year. EXCUSE ME? How can it double in price? I spent I don't know how long trying to find a phone number on their site for customer service. Finally, after much ado, I found out that my prescription now has a generic formula on the market, so they are allowed to charge more for the brand-name drugs. Now it is up to me to contact my doctor and have her prescribe the generic drug (assuming she approves the formulary) via fax to Medco. Presumably then, it should cost $20 every three months, or $80 per year.

The moral of this story is that a little extra leg-work on your part can save you some money, but how do elderly people deal with this sort of scam? Nowhere on the site did it inform me that my medicine now has a generic counterpart and explain the cost increase. I bet thousands of people just shrug their shoulders and pay the higher price.

Music in the morning

I was just surfing around on the Sessions @ AOL site where they have live artist recordings and I came across a set performed by the Cure in 2004. This recording of 'FTEOTDGS' from the Wish album is by far one of the best live recordings I have ever heard. The guitars are absolutely amazing. If you have a few minutes, check it out. It's my favorite song, hence blog title.



One of my other favorite songs is 'One Hundred Years' from the Pornography album. This song is on the other end of the emotion spectrum from FTEOTDGS and often appears on my iPod when I'm upset or angry. Once again, the guitar mastery is amazing to watch.



They also had this little gem of an interview on the site. This is Robert talking about the new album (at the time) and also about his appearance on 'South Park'. Whenever I hear him speak, I wish that he would never stop. He's got an adorable personality.



Last, but not least, they had this video from the song 'Let's Go To Bed' posted on the site. Not sure why they have it, but it's a funny video and hard to believe that he looked so different back then, huh? The site has it incorrectly labeled as 1993... the song is from the Japanese Whispers album that was released in 1982. It's easy to see that there may have been a little, ah, illicit drug use going on around the time... ya think?

Baump baump bam boom baum buh baum

The title of this post, ladies and gentlemen, is the theme song for Boston Legal in case you didn't catch that. Boston Legal and Ally McBeal are my two favorite lawyer-based shows, both written by David E. Kelley. This is relevant because I just got off serving as a juror for a four-day trial. I must admit that I was relatively disappointed that neither of the attorneys resembled Denny Crane or Alan Shore. That would've made it totally worth while! (Who doesn't think James Spader is hot?!)


My case involved a person pulled over for DUI. He was single, 35, and fairly well off. He was driving home from a club at 2:00am when he was clocked going 99 MPH by the CHP on the 55 freeway. Upon being pulled over, he told the officer he had only one beer four hours earlier. The officer asked him to complete the six field sobriety tests, which he failed. He also refused to take a breathalyzer test at the scene. The cop arrested him and booked him at the Orange County Jail. Once there, they tested his blood, where his BAC came back at 0.104 and 0.106. The legal limit is 0.08.

During the course of the trial, we learned from the defense that the defendant also had a schooner of beer and a double-shot of Patron tequila about 13 minutes prior to being pulled over. This became a key element of the trial since counsel was providing this information in support of what is called a "rising defense". What this means is that rather than assuming a person's blood alcohol concentration is going down (burnoff) from the time the person is pulled over to the time they are tested at jail (in this case an hour later), the fact that the person consumed a large volume of alcohol right before driving would point to a case where the person is sober while driving, but intoxicated an hour later at the police station once they have absorbed the alcohol. While I suppose this could be plausible, the schooner of beer plus the tequila would only add up to a blood alcohol level of 0.076 using the information provided to us by the expert witnesses. Therefore, this would mean that the defendant had more drinks that he was not admitting to and this cast doubt on his defense. In the end, we did find him guilty.

Being a part of the justice system is interesting and does instill a certain sense of pride in our country. It's easy to forget that not everyone in the world has the right to a trial and is assumed to be innocent. The judge read us rules before going into deliberations and he stressed that if you have two conclusions and one points to the defendant's innocence and the other points to the defendant's guilt, you are required to find the defendant innocent. I would imagine in many places in other countries, this same person would be found guilty.

In the meantime, I'm going to avoid getting caught up further in the wheels of justice!

Alone Time

I saw this article posted on line written by Mindy Kalling from the show 'The Office'... I made a few literary edits, but it's pretty much true!

Pro: Silence when you want it
Con: Silence always. Alone with ... those voices in your head?

Pro: Proudly hung all the pictures by yourself
Con: They're all crooked

Pro: No roommate to steal your clothes
Con: No roommate to steal clothes from

Pro: No one else's crusty, caked-on dishes piling up in the sink
Con: Good God, are all those dishes yours?

Pro: Sleep in! You're never woken up at 6 a.m. by someone else's alarm
Con: D'oh! No one to split the electric bill with

Pro: Programs you TiVo'd don't get deleted
Con: No one to congratulate you on getting that last Wheel of Fortune puzzle correct

Pro: No more pulling your lazy roommate's bottles out of the trash to put in the recycling bin
Con: All those wine bottles are yours

Pro: No pulling your roommate's clothes out of the washer and dryer
Con: No one pulling YOUR clothes out of the washer and dryer and folding them for you

Pro: No one eating all but the last bite of the ice cream
Con: Did you eat all that ice cream?

BodyWorlds part III

On Sunday, Tammy, Sheryl and I headed up to the California ScienCenter (no, that's not a typo and yes someone probably got paid big bucks for recognizing that those two words end and begin with the same letters) to attend the BodyWorlds III exhibit. Since Sheryl has arleady blogged about it here, I am saved from having to type everything up myself! (Thanks Sheryl!) However, I did want to add that before the exhibit, we went to see the Human Body movie in the IMAX theatre. I was thinking that it was going to be a cool 3-D movie about components of the body. Okay, well it did have some of that, but it also had this cheesy storyline about some British family and the whole thing together just wound up feeling like a movie you might've seen in Health Class in 6th grade. Remember that day in class when they showed you the video of live childbirth and half the class couldn't watch and the other half were asleep? There ya go. :) But, it was still fun and beat hanging out at home on Sunday!

The Wheels of Justice

I went to Jury Duty and got selected for the jury panel. I guess I just have an honest face. Anyway, since I can't talk about the trial until it's over, you'll just have to tune back in later to find out what happened. Heh.

I'm gonna move to Kansas

So last week I got this notice posted on my door saying that I was in violation of my lease, specifically section 13, paragraph 1b, sentence 23, for not calling out "Uno!" when I only had one card left. No, seriously, they told me that I could not store "personal items" on my patio such as potted plants, furniture, toys, and barbeque grills, and everything has to be removed in 24 hours. What exactly are you supposed to put on said patio? I can understand if the management would be a little upset if you were hanging your undies and nazi flags off your balcony, but plants and bbq grills? Honestly. So, since I blatantly ignored their directive, I figure that I'm probably living on borrowed time.

Last week I went and looked at some condos for lease in my area and the ones I liked were about $2400/month for a 3-bedroom 3-bath place with a two car garage. Now that sounds awesome if only I could find a roommate who would be fun to live with and not a serial killer. Easier said than done!

I've pretty much relgated myself to the fact that come November 1st when my current lease is up, my rent will probably be increased to around the $1600/month range. That's kind of my threshold for ridiculous. I have a 1-bedroom 1-bathroom place with a 100 SF patio I can't even use. Yes, it does have an ocean view, but c'mon. I could have a sweet house someplace for that kind of cash.

So that brings me to my next dilemma. Where do I want to move? I've pretty much ruled out anything in the southeast region of our country (no offense), as well as any states that begin with "New" or the letter "A". Also, any state that has a north or south counterpart. This leaves me with states like Connecticut, Vermont, Colorado, and the ever-popular Idaho. For the sake of discussion purposes, I've also decided to rule out all states on the east coast time zone because I'm sick of the news starting at 11pm and the late nite TV starting at 11:30. It should start at 10pm. With all these criteria in mind, I think I would most like to live in Kansas. Why Kansas? Why not Kansas? For one, it has the power of K going for it (I like alliteration) and also it has a band named after it. How cool is that? Kansas also has a woman governor and it's the birthplace of Buffalo Bill. But what really tipped the scales is the fact that Kansas City brews my favorite beer, Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat. Kansas just seems innocuous and pure. Plus, you get a sweet plate that looks like this:



I'm kind of at the point where I'm not sure what to do. It's not like I don't like California and the people who I've met and befriended, but I'm also not feeling any roots taking shape. I suppose that could change if perhaps a marriage proposal or lottery jackpot came my way. Anyone have any suggestions?

Ladera Grand Prix

This morning I walked down the street and checked out the Ladera Grand Prix bike race. It was pretty sweet! The streets surrounding Founder's Park were blocked off to form the circular race course. There were vendor booths, an announcer, and a pavilion with music set up on Sellas Street. The race was hosted by our own local bike shop, Ladera Cyclery. I watched for a while and took a walk around the course. Here are the pix I took:

"I'm Covered in Bees!"

What a great way to end a crappy week! I went to see Eddie Izzard on his 'Stripped' tour on Saturday night at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.



I was sooo excited about this because Eddie is by far my favorite comedian ever. The only thing that was missing was my friend Sara. She couldn't make the trip from St. Louis for the show, which was sad because we both love him so much. Instead, I went with my local friends, Tammy, Shelly, Megan, and Gayla and had a great time. We headed to Hollywood & Highland to get some dinner before the show and found everything to be packed. No worries for me though because I was so excited to see Eddie that I wasn't even hungry! This is me goofing off at home while getting ready:



The Kodak Theatre is where they film the Academy Awards. It was a beautiful place and is definitely worth checking out if you have the opportunity. Even though we were in the 3rd mezzanine, we could still see perfectly. Eddie came on around 8:20. I have to say that I was a bit turned off by his political agenda when he started the show. He was talking about the election and how we should vote for Obama. It just seemed a bit one-sided, but I guess that fits the audience he was playing to in Hollywood anyway. I had read online that Minnie Driver, his co-star on The Riches, was in the audience earlier in the week, so we kept our eyes out for other celebrities. We spotted a bald man in one of the private boxes and convinced ourselves that it was Bruce Willis. It had to be, right? :)

Eddie's show was definitely funny, yet definitely not as funny as some of the other stuff I have seen. I guess it's hard to improve upon "Dress to Kill", which was his first HBO special. Although, there was this woman behind us who had the most annoying cackle and she thought everything was funny. The theme of the show was civilization. He talked about creationism vs. evolution and went through the ages of the earth from the very earliest, to the dinosaurs, to the beginning of humans, to the present. He also tied in religion, which he often does, and explained why he does not believe there is a God. While his humor was entertaining, it could make you a bit uncomfortable if you are a hare-core creationism believer. In case you were wondering, and you know you were, Eddie did not dress as an Executive Transvestite. It was slightly disappointing, but he still looked cute. He was wearing jeans, a red shirt with white vertical stripes and a navy blazer that had tails. It was hard to tell for sure, but I imagine he still had his goatee from the The Riches.

During one segment about the Romans, Eddie got side tracked and forgot what he was talking about. He asked the audience for some help and a woman yelled out "Giraffes!" Eddie had been talking about giraffes, but that was about 15 minutes ago. Eddie laughed and said "okay, I'll give you giraffes" and he went into this hilarious bit that was similar to the giraffe bit I had seen from another DVD. I think it was on Glorious where giraffes are eating leaves and then a tiger shows up. Since giraffes can't speak, they start playing charades to communicate. Not laughing? Guess you had to be there!

Here's a clip from Glorious that should make you laugh!

work to live or live to work

I am so burned out at work. I just want to run far, far away and just be free from everything. If you haven't been following along, the past several months have been extra stressful due to some unexpected issues with a project I'm working on in construction. All sorts of things have popped up and dealing with everything has caused me to become behind on all the other stuff I'm also supposed to be working on. It's really a vicious carousel and I'm stuck riding the ugly ostrich looking thing because all the pretty horses were taken. I can't seem to get ahead even though I work late (like tonight) and also work my Fridays off and sometimes on weekends too. All the stress has really affected me health-wise as well. When I work late, I don't get to the gym and then I feel cranky. I've also been having trouble sleeping because I can't clear my head enough to relax. Last week I actually left work early on Wednesday because I started having a panic attack and felt like I needed to get out of my office and be anywhere else but there. It really didn't help when my client contacted my boss on Friday to say that I wasn't being responsive enough on their project even though I spend more time than I should on their stuff. Gee, going over my head to tell my boss I'm supposedly not doing my job is really going to help the situation. Thanks. I appreciate it.

Things have been especially annoying because some others at work aren't as busy and it's distracting when there's all sorts of gossiping going on. I was pretty unhappy tonight because we were having an office happy hour that I missed because I knew I needed to stay and get stuff done that is due tomorrow. I'm not saying that a little extra work here and there is unreasonable, but this has just been unbearable.

To top things off, my supervisor got changed this year and I'm not too keen on my new assignment. I had my mid-year review last week which was the worst review I have EVER gotten. Not so much in terms of things I need to work on, but in terms of not providing a path for career development. I was so turned off that I made an appointment to discuss it with our Office Leader, but unfortunately, he blew me off. I'm starting to get the feeling that I should start considering a move back to the midwest if I'm not appreciated here.

I am the Coupon Queen

I love clipping coupons. I learned from my Dad how sometimes you can get the grocery stores to actually pay YOU to take products out of their store. Today was close to one of those good days. When I got my Sunday paper, I noticed that Kelloggs had a special coupon insert with $1.00 coupons on many of their products. I also noticed that Walgreens had special sales for those Kellogg products where you buy a certain amount on sale and then get $5 off your next store visit. Kelloggs also has a $10 rebate if you buy 10 products. Soooo let's see how I did!

I got:
1 box Frosted Flakes
1 box Fruit Loops
2 boxes Smart Start
2 boxes Pop Tarts
2 boxes Nutri-Grain bars
2 boxes Rice Krispie Treats
2 boxes Club crackers
1 box Cheez-Its

Total price without coupons and sales: $50.87

Price I paid after coupons, sale prices, and rebate: $1.00

Yep, I am not joking. Check out your ad this week and you could get all this loot too!

No water?

The strangest thing happened... I was brushing my teeth to get ready for bed and in between the time I first rinsed my toothbrush and the time the 2 minutes were up on my Sonicare, there was no water! I turned the handle and absolutely nothing came out. It was a very bizarre, unnatural feeling. When you turn out the faucet, there is no questioning going on in your mind whether or not water will actually flow out. You just assume it will! I waited awhile and tried other faucets, the dishwasher, toilet. Nothing, nada. I called the emergency after-hours maintenance number and after waiting about an hour for a call back, I found out that my building had a water main break. The Santa Margarita Water District is currently fixing it, so all should be well soon.

Kinda made me think what it might be like in our drought situation if we don't get more rain soon! Some things I do to save water are:
-- Turn water off while brushing teeth
-- Take shorter showers and turn water off while shaving legs
-- Wash full loads of laundry on the weekends
-- Wash car with a spray nozzle on the hose to control water flow
-- Wash big pots/pans by hand instead of filling up dishwasher

Nuthin' Like Mom's Soup

I was feeling like I could use some TLC this weekend and was thinking of all the ways I could achieve some pampering. Visit a day spa? Get a pedicure? Go to the beach? All these sounded good, but what sounded really good was some of my Mom's homemade chicken noodle soup. My mom makes chicken soup from scratch... and by scratch, I mean by scratch. She starts by cooking up a whole chicken, otherwise gross bits and all, in order to "get the best flavor". She cooks the chicken with celery, onions, and carrots to make a broth. Then she strains the broth over and over and over until the broth is almost clear. After that, the soup pot goes into the fridge to chill. This part, the waiting, was always the hardest part for me. You have to wait for the soup to chill so you can continue to remove fat from the broth. It congeals at the top and can be scraped off. Sometimes it's 6 hours, sometimes overnight. After that process, she heats the broth again and adds an assortment of chopped carrots, chicken, noodles, dumpling noodles (my favorite), and barley. It really is good for the soul.

Anyway, after explaining all that, I am NOT going to make it that way--I'm going to take a few shortcuts. I've bought boneless, skinless chicken breasts which I already trimmed off all the fat. I am boiling water with the chicken, carrots, onion and celery. I am also going to cheat and add some chicken soup base to add more flavor. (Don't tell my Mom). But, it should still be pretty tasty. So, every one grab a bowl and a spoon and come over!!!