Ahhh, that felt good

Those of you who read this blog and also have me as a friend on mySpace will soon see that I have finally gotten around to logging in, for the first time in months. However, the only reason for that is that I wanted to cancel my account, which I have also done. It has come to the point where keeping track of the blog and the mySpace and the Facebook and the LinkedIn while still google-stalking old boyfriends is all just too much to take on. I think I'm going to keep the blog and the LinkedIn and I'll probably leave my Facebook stuff as it is, but I just had to purge something from that list and mySpace was the thing.

Ever since the Great Ailment of 2008, I have learned that even though it burns when you're blowing chunks through your nose, it often feels way better after a good round of soul coughing. And that's what happened to mySpace.

Hello Prezzie

Back when CNKelly went to Japan (still, so awesome!), she asked me ahead of time what I wanted her to bring back and I told her to bring me something Hello Kitty. For those of you who don’t know, I heart Hello Kitty, but it’s the kind of thing I keep to myself for the most part because it seems a little ridiculous for a 29-year-old to be so interested in a child’s cartoon character. In my defense, my interest started when I was in grade school and a little Japanese girl joined our class. She was very shy but she had a great collection of school supplies (I really heart school supplies!!), all of which were neatly compartmentalized in these little containers (ah!! Containers!!) and all of which were Sanrio items featuring Hello Kitty herself (this was before the days of Badtz-Maru, Pochacco, Keroppi and other HK friends). Man, I was so covetous of her school supplies, the tiny erasers and little pencils all covered with hearts and this adorable little cat with no mouth. Anywho, I digress.

CNKelly went to Japan, and brought back this really cool watch for me:

I meant to blog about this back when I did my NaBloPoMo blogs all in 24 hours, but I got tired before I got to this and also the latest gift from Brian and Rob, (which I will eventually post, I promise). A few weeks ago, a woman here at work complimented the watch by saying “Your watch is absolutely beautiful!” I probably should have said “thank you” and left it at that, but instead, I exclaimed, “thank you – it’s Hello Kitty!!”. I wish I could have captured the look on her face as she looked more closely and realized that she had just complimented a cat-headed whiskered watch. Heh.

CNKelly hit another homer this week when she gave me this prize, just in time for Prezzie-dents’ Day:

It is one of those fancy Swiss aluminum bottles featuring Hello Kitty herself, and because Kelly is also the most thorough of gift-givers, she also included the Bottle-Cat strap thingie there that holds onto the lid while it’s unscrewed from the bottle. It is so pretty the picture doesn’t even begin to do it justice.

Ah, it’s a fantastic week already and it’s just now Wednesday.

i love this place.

i know you are all probably getting sick of me talking about how much i love my job, but seriously - it's probably better than all the griping I did about the last job. Plus, there's always stuff like this that makes me keep talking about it.

this is the new robot vending machine. and attached to the robotic-get-your-pop arm? a robotic likeness of our company's owner and president. heh.

Tyra was busy so I'm asking you

I’m wearing a pashmina and pearls today. If you know me, you are thinking right now “it must be Laundry Day” and you are right. But it is also “we are having guests touring the building today” day at work, and the guests are a local group of engineers. And I am hoping that there will be at least one single, geeky guy who is sweet and nice and who notices me just enough for me to notice him noticing and for me to drop my business card in front of him or something equally less subtle.

When I think things like this inside my head, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I really want to meet a nice guy and who knows, maybe date him for a while. On the other hand, it makes me feel like a total weiner that I’m so desperate to find a mate. It somehow runs counter to all the thoughts I’ve had my whole life about independence and self-sufficiency and just general neediness.

But I still really want to meet a nice guy.

About that pashmina. It is beautiful, but I feel like a total idiot wearing it. It actually looks like I took a small blanket, draped it over my shoulder, and am walking around like that all day. So if anyone has any suggestions on how I can put this pashmina on me so I don’t feel like an idiot, fire them up in the comments section. But keep in mind that it’s a one-size-fits-all kind of pashmina and I am not a one-size kind of gal, so knotting and especially double-knotting may be out of the question.

LOST predictions for S4 and S5

Given that there are 2 seasons left for them to wrap this up, and some of these things could stretch over 2 seasons, it’s hard to say what might happen when. But just for giggles, I decided to predict what will happen over the next 2 seasons. Coincidentally, just today, Rob sent me an invite to something called Predictify, which I will be trying later when I get some time to surf.

As for the LOST predictions, here’s what I think.

Ben and Locke get a bunch of the people who go back to the Others’ area to decide to stay on the island and live in the little houses. However, that Jacob guy that Ben is afraid of (the one in the hut that Hurley saw in this past episode) tells Ben to kill everyone again. A bunch of people from both sides get gassed like Ben and pals gassed a bunch of the Others before.

The Oceanic 6 = Jack, Kate, and Hurley (obviously), Sawyer, Jin (+ baby but the baby won’t count in the 6), some combo of Claire/Aaron but I’m not sure what so there might be one more and that will be…Sayid. Maybe.

Desmond, Juliet, Russo(sp?) and those 2 teenagers all make it off too because they weren’t on the flight to begin with so they can get away with the whole “Oceanic 6” thing even though 11 people actually made it off.

Something has to come back around to all those Others and what ever happened to Walt and Michael but I can’t figure out how they will do that. And since they have 2 seasons left, it’s hard to predict because they have a lot of time to work some of this stuff out.

I love this show.

Voting Reform

Rachel had a great post today and I decided to respond on my own blog because I want to be sure to get Darrell’s input on this (and everyone else’s of course, but I wasn’t sure if Darrell read’s Rachel’s blog or not).

Rachel’s post:

I don't like the way we do primary elections. I think they should all be on the same day, like the general election. It seems odd to me that the early states end up having so much more importance than anything that happens later. By the time the states at the end get to vote, most of the candidates will have dropped out, and many people probably won't vote, or will base their vote on who is already winning. This means that their vote essentially does not count, and that does not seem very American! (But it does seem very 2000...) I realize I am not the first person to come up with this idea, but I thought I would share my agreement with it.
Team Obama!

My response:

I think we just need to get rid of the whole delegate/electoral college system anyway. I mean, that made sense when the population size was too large to effectively count individual votes but we are well within reach of electronic tallying for the entire nation and could make it happen if we actually put our minds to it. I just think we should go as close to the one person = one vote model as we can and we could be a lot closer now than we are.

The thing I hate about the primaries and trying to get the party nomination (which is yet another reason I think dumping the electoral college makes sense) is the way that the candidates really tear each other down in order to secure the nomination. I think it's divisive and it's not of any benefit to the parties overall.

Voting reform. We needz it.

Side note: Mad props on your new tagline, Rachel. JB rawks, and so do you!

I love my job

I’ve mentioned before that we have 25-cent pops in our vending machine. I think part of the reason for that is that the vending machine was from the actual era of 25-cent pops. Plus, we had that cooler with all the beer in it, which is nice to see every day even if I don’t drink the beers.

But today, something amazing and wonderful happened. We got a new vending machine. It is the fancy kind with the big glass front door and the little robot arm that goes up to the row you selected, picks the product, and ferries it down to the opening. Way cool. Plus, there’s a light, of course, and I simply adore anything with a light.

The new vending machine isn’t the reason named this post “I love my job”. It’s the reaction of everyone who’s seen the vending machine that reminds me how much I love my job. I mean, I’m sure some of us have seen this kind of vending machine before, and I’m sure some of us don’t really give much heed to the vending machines we encounter on a daily basis. But all kinds of people have been by to see it (this I know because I sit around the corner from the machine), and Cube Neighbor Kim actually called someone from the 2^nd floor and told her to come down when I told Kim that the new machine was here. It has been a lot of fun to watch people getting their (still) 25-cent pops from this fancy new equipment. And the fact that everyone else is so excited about it makes me very, very happy.

I’m about 85% recovered from that wicked ailment I mentioned yesterday. It’s been almost 18 hours since my last, uh, episode. I’m not hungry, but I have eaten some saltines and I’ve been sucking on Jolly Ranchers all day. I have about a litre of Pedialyte I need to finish, though. Even though I know it’s good for me, the stuff is kind of nasty. It’s very thick and sweet. Perhaps I should make some pancakes and use it as the syrup. Anyway, I’m really impressed about the fact that my body makes such an enormous effort to get the gunk out – I mean, I felt like I might die at times, but honestly, it’s impressive that our bodies can recognize the bad stuff and force it out so violently. Also, CNKelly has been dealing with the same thing but she’s trailing me by about 12 hours, so she’s probably feeling better right now but still not “well”. Send her a prayer or a shout-out if you can.

Updations will occur

I am firmly convinced that this is either food poisoning, or a stomach flu, because I have been having, uh, "incidents" repeatedly all day in spite of only taking in water, Gatorade, and flat Sprite as well as 5 saltine crackers that I've spread out since noon.

Because everyone I know works during the day, I actually broke down and called my ARMY boyz and asked them to help by bringing the Sprite and crackers. I could have cried when Matt showed up with them. In addition to building part of a fence, he will apparently bring you what you need when you're sick.

However, nothing compares to the care package Heidi and Randy dropped off which included liquid Pedialyte, Pedialyte pops, Jolly Ranchers, and the latest copy of Life & Style. Thanks, Slocums!! Again, I almost cried when I found the magazine in the bag after they left. Which is a good indicator of how sick I am because I am even more of an emotional baby when I'm sick and will really cry at just about anything. Oh, and the fact 5 crackers were that the only thing I've eaten is really indicative of my current state. We all know that Erin Doesn't Miss Meals.

it's not a hangover

i am soooo sick. i have been heaving and hurling and a whole bunch of other things i don't wanna say. i thought at first that i had just overdone it with the party foods, but as it has gone on and on i am starting to feel like i did during the Mexican Parasite Incident of 2003. if you don't know that story, it's for the better. and if you do know, you may recall that it was about 6 weeks before i was truly back to normal. this is really no good. plus, i hurt. all over. i'm assuming it's from all the heaving and hurling, but regardless of why, it hurts. oh, and it's uncomfortable to do any of the following: sit, stand, lie in bed, lie on the floor, lie on my back, lie on my side, lie on my stomach, think, breathe, or clear my throat.

flowers or bottles of pepto products can be sent to me at home.

Want want want

If you happen to be wondering to yourself "what could I get for Erin that costs almost $400 that she would really like?" the answer is this:

http://www.taser.org/taserc2-2.html

I'm not kidding about this. I have wanted a TASER for years now but until early last year, they weren't available to consumers (via the retail channels, anyway - I'm sure you could get one if you did a little legwork). No matter; the consumer models are actually sleek and compact unlike the clunky law enforcement models. Now, admittedly, carrying it in a purse or pack would certainly slow you down if you need it in a pinch. But I'm thinking it's the kind of think I'd carry in my purse most of the time and hold in my hand while walking in the Wal*Mart parking lot. I would really relish the idea of being able to hit a criminal with a TASER. It's not the kind of thing I like to discuss much because there's a lot of controversy in this topic (Amnesty Intl, anyone?), but I have a deep-rooted belief that if more citizens were packing heat, or at least packing stun guns, we would see a decrease in overall crime on persons. Please don't try to convince me otherwise with your fancy "statistics" though - this is one of the rare topics where I'm firmly convicted in my opinion.

In other news, I have been importing CDs into my iTunes all week and I still only have about 1/3 of the CDs in there. I don't really have that many CDs but many of the CDs I have don't have the song or artist info so I have to keep finding that in order to properly categorize and reference each track. I have been so inspired by all my "mix tapes" that I started my own mix to give to everyone who's given me a mix tape. So if you've ever given me one, look for that coming to your mailbox soon. :-)