evidence of continued exuberance

sometimes I wonder if I'll ever become one of those mature people, those people whose careers are more important than their personal lives, those people who act all serious all the time, those people who shower every day before work.

sometimes I worry this will happen and then other times I know that it won't. for example, I just spent the past 45 minutes searching for a "let's hear it for the boy" ringtone for my cell phone to use when Boy calls. (it's perfect but btw, I wasn't able to find a good one so if any of you know where I can find this, lemme know.)

however, on the job front, it seems I'm going to be moving into a new position at work, one that's more in line with my "career goals" (wait, do I have those?) and more in line with the stuff I like to do. rumor has it, some time in June I'll be moving to the marketing department to become the "content strategist" for the websites for the new joint venture company that IBM is forming out of my department. this sounds important. and I think it may turn out to actually be important. but most importantly, I think it will be fun and creative and I'll get to make lots of creative (and non-creative) decisions and then tell other people to make them happen. it's the perfect job for me!

but still, I'm saying "rumor has it" because 'round here, one never knows. anyway, back to the ringtone search!

flickr scares me sometimes...

okay, so as we all know, I have a flickr account and mostly, I love it. it's pretty interesting to share your photos, check out other peoples', communicate with friends, etc.

but recently... I was notified that someone added one of my pictures to his/her "favorites" list. the picture s/he chose was a closeup of my right foot on the black sand beach in Hawaii. I clicked on the person's link to learn some more about him/her. s/he had no photos to display and no profile info. and (here's where things get a little strange) all of the pictures in his/her "favorites" section were closeups of feet.

so... um... I don't even really want to say it but, well, I couldn't help but think foot fetish.

two things ho related

#1 - Don Ho died and that makes sense because when I saw him this past October, the man was pretty much on death's door.

#2 - HoHo's are celebrating their 40th birthday and did you know that Pittsburghers consume more HoHo's than anyone else in the world. that's kind of strange.

and I guess this one should be like #2a. people in Chicago consume more Twinkies than anyone else in the world. also kind of strange.

because of the HoHo conversation, my friend B. went to the vending machine and bought some DingDongs. they are not HoHo's but they're close. he was unable to eat the DingDongs once he saw how many calories they contained so he gave them to me(he is a volunteer fire fighter and his goal is to make it into the fire fighter calendar, you know - shirtless.)

I have to tell you, the DingDongs look good. however, I can't quite bring myself to eat something that contains "beef fat" yet is not a beef product...

Tuesday, 2:36 pm.

okay, this is actually an important question: I'm wearing some of those "noise reducing" headphones right now and, for some reason, it seems like I'm breathing with a little difficulty. why might this be?

Tuesday, 12:44 pm.

okay, I'm still bored and so I decided to just randomly search blogs and see what came up and I discovered that Jesus has a blog and it's aswesome. :) (see, the emoticon lets you know that I really mean it!)

Tuesday, 12:09 pm.

okay, in case you're as bored as me you can read this article from the New Yorker about email style (or eStyle, as they call it). I'm definitely usually a lower-case non-punctuators, even at work. I'm also glad to see that exclamation points are catching on. and emoticons, as well. the thing is, the more people use them, the more people expect to see them and so you could be burned if you don't include a little winky guy from time to time.

anyway, I once dated a guy who almost always used the "respond in portions" method which is just so icky, even when done by a lower-case non-punctuator. ;)

Tuesday, 12:03 pm.

I'm at work and I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored.

Interestingly enough, this morning I made the comment that I don't really get bored. Goes to show me because I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored.

pictures, phase 1

friday I "worked" from home and finally got my pictures from the Grand Canyon/Moab trip uploaded to my flickr account. hopefully you've bookmarked the link to my account but in case you haven't, here it is again: my flickr account.

I plan to get my monterey pictures uploaded tomorrow, or at least before I leave thursday for my next trip. this weekend I'll be in longboat key, florida , hanging out with boy and his parents.

technically, I've already met his parents but that was before we were dating so at first I thought it was no big deal to make a trip across the entire country to hang with his peeps. however,it's kind of a big deal, making a special trip to hang out with the parents, isn't it? is this too big of a deal or am I just maybe having a small freakout moment and making too big of a deal out of this deal?

well regardless of the deal, 80 degrees + sunny + beach always = good.

For the second weekend in a row, I was away - this time in Monterey, CA visiting my cousin, Jen and her husband Noble, an occasional guest commenter to my blog. It was a fantastic
weekend - the weather was great, we did tons of fun stuff, ate tons of
yummy food, and the Easter Bunny was even able to find me on Sunday
morning!

For the first time ever, I felt like an official Colorado resident. We did a bit of hiking in Big Sur
on Saturday. The hike was pretty much uphill the entire way and I
didn't feel it at all. Guess I'm finally adjusted to this altitude
thing...

Again, lots of pictures and I promise to have them
uploaded some time this weekend but probably not tonight because a) I'm
exhausted!!!! and b) I'm going to a hot yoga class with friends J. and
C. I've never been to hot yoga before and I'm a little worried that I'm
going to have the song gonna
make you sweat by C + C music factory stuck in my head the
whole time. Then again, I think I'm too tired to do yoga and think at
the same time.

On a slight side note, I thought this
article was kind of funny but I'm wondering if that's because
I'm tired and giddy. Thoughts?

moldy muffins

upon returning from my trip, I realized I had no food so yesterday, I bought some english muffins from the crappy little market down the street from me. I had one yesterday and it tasted a little funky, kind of like dirt. I thought maybe it was just me. but this morning, when I opened up the package I noticed copious amounts of mold. gross.

so the dilemma is do I take the muffins back or just through them out? I debated over this for a few minutes but then decided to just through them out and then never buy muffins (or bread products) from the crappy little market again.

anyway, I'm back from my trip and I had a great time. we put close to 2000 miles on our red, rented ford focus in about five days. here, basically, is what we did:

Tuesday night: loaded up the "car" after "work" and drove south toward the "land of enchantment" (a.k.a. New Mexico). didn't make it. spent the night in a days inn somewhere south of pueblo. oh, also got pulled over in some dinky little town but the lady cop said she just wanted to make sure we were okay and let us go without even checking id's.

Wednesday: said good bye to Colorado and hello to New Mexico. spent some time in Taos and I have to say that I'm not sure I understand what all the hype is about. it was incredibly touristy and consumer driven. though I did have the best carrot cake I've ever had at this artsy little coffee shop where boy kept bumping into the table, eventually spilling about half of my americano. tried to make it to Flagstaff by Wednesday night but got stuck in a random snow storm thing that caused an accident that caused the highway to be shut down for an hour and a half so we ended up staying in Winslow, AZ instead. no biggie.

Thursday: finally made it to the grand canyon. it was snowing and boy hadn't brought any cold weather clothes, despite my caution of "in the 40's and snowing on Thursday..." our conversation over lunch went something like this:

boy: I can't believe it's snowing...
me (dressed in winter coat with hat and gloves): um, yeah well I looked at the forecast before we left and saw that it was going to snow so I told you that we'd need to pack warmer clothes.
boy: you did?
me (with cocky, I-told-you-so look on my face): yeah, I did.
boy: well to be honest, I'm only listening to you about 50% of the time you're talking.
me: hmm... that's probably for the best.

the weather being what it was, we hung out at the lodge, drank beer, and tried to get reservations for the sky walk but couldn't probably because of the mass hysteria that thing is causing. the sky walk was also about four hours away from so it didn't happen this trip.

Friday: better weather! hiked three miles down into the canyon and, after being scared by all of the "it takes a billion hours to get back up from here" signs we decided to turn around. found out that living in boulder, you often forget how in shape you are compared to normal folk but quickly realized this fact as we smoked people left and right coming up the trail. boy was pretty much running which I think was partly to blame on the fact I told him about the theory that everyone you pass becomes your slave in hell. made it out of the canyon in about an hour (faster than we had gone down). picked up a butt load of slaves that day and were claimed by no one.

Friday night: headed to Moab. drove through Monument Valley at sunset to get there (probably the coolest part of the trip). got a room at a motel 6, which is boy's favorite cheap motel chain. however, being in Moab, it was not so cheap. and I was not so impressed.

Saturday: ate an incredibly yummy breakfast and then went to Arches NP.hiked around. again, felt physically superior to the "others" but were passed by two incredibly in-shape, younger looking guys. drat. hung out in Moab. drank beer. ate ice cream. decided another night at motel 6 wasn't needed so headed back to boulder. got back late and happily drifted to sleep in familiar surroundings.


I took tons and tons of pictures on the trip which I will eventually upload to flickr. however, it won't be today because I'm going to opening day at Coors field where I will be doing my best not to drink any Coors.