Poppin' Fresh

I just tried using my Blast Off Belly Fat DVD for the first time. Oh man.

First of all, it's ridiculous because I don't really have anywhere to do it. There is space in the basement, but that room is swimming in toxic mold so I don't really want to be rolling around on the carpet or breathing deeply. I'm stuck upstairs in the living room then, in this 4 by 2 foot space I made by pushing the coffee table over a little bit. And then the cat sees me laying on the floor and thinks it's jungle gym time and I have to beat her off me every two seconds.

On top of all that, I am a fat, lazy librarian and I could not really even get through ONE of the ten minute workouts. I am so deeply out of shape that I'm not sure how I can even stand up or do simple tasks like typing or scratching an itch. I could only feel the muscles at the very top of my stomach working; the rest, I suspect, have turned from muscles into thick reserves of frosting that my body feeds off of when it's gone too long without cupcakes.

I was really hoping to see at least some small loss in inches/increase in tone before I hit the beach this summer, but it's not looking good. Maybe I will get lucky and this year's trends will include "soft" and "translucent."

The long and winding road

Man, I feel like no one has been blogging lately, myself included. What's up with that?

So I graduated on Sunday. About freaking time, right? I have been out of college for exactly four years, which makes me feel super, super old. But anyway, I'm very happy to not have school hanging over my head any more, and it feels weird for the first time in 20 years not to have any plans to attend school....ever. I'm sure I will at least take a class or something in the future, but for the most part I think this is really the end of the line for me, school-wise. I am alright with that.

My mom bought me a gift certificate to Build A Bear as a graduation present, which is awesome because I am eight and also because I had been hinting around that I wanted one to about fifty people for quite some time now. I do not care if it is weird to build a bear at age 25, I am going to build one and it is going to make me happy. Don't judge me. As a totally random "graduation present," my dad was also able to fix that horrible "corpse in the trunk" noise my car was making by screwing down a piece of plastic back behind the rear tire. After the Nissan dealership was unable to find the problem despite having the car ALL DAY, that's all it took. So now I don't feel like I'm gonna die all the time. Bonus!

The other big thing that happened is that ONE day after receiving my degree, I had my first professional job interview. I really have no idea how it went. I know there are other candidates out there who deserve the job as much as or more than I do, but I have to say that I think I would rock that job. Rock it like a hurricane.

Touching base

I have not blogged in a while, so here's a token entry for ya. :)

The only major thing that's happened, I think, is going to see Avenue Q, which was awesome. I've also been having fun getting outside more and trying to enjoy the weather, which has been kind of depressing with my new pseudo-full-time schedule. But I do my best. Also, I have a long list of things I want to buy and only a tiny little bit of money. I'm sure no one reading this can relate to that feeling.

That's pretty much it. I hope everything is going good with you. We should hang out more, call me sometime.

A rude awakening

Sometime after six this morning I woke up from a very real and scary dream about somebody coming into my work, taking hostages, and trying to kill a whole lot of customers and staff. It was really intense and actually made me nervous about going in today. Later on I found out that at exactly that same time, someone was getting beaten very soundly and thoroughly in the head with a pipe right outside the back door of my work. A bloody hat, a bloody knife, and video surveillance tell the whole story, but I don't really have all the details.

Say what you will about the coincidence between the dream and the beating; it happens to me a lot, but logically I know that it's crazy to try to draw any really connections between the two. Regardless of all that, though, I find it kind of disturbing that somebody got jumped like that right on the sidewalk at my job, just a couple of hours before we start showing up for work. Most people were kind of making light of it, but it seemed pretty serious to me. Maybe if I work there for a couple more years, things like this will just be normal. I'll let you know, I guess.

Nothin says lovin like my jacked up oven.

You know how some people say they can't keep plants alive, and claim to have a "black thumb" or "brown thumb?" Is there a correlate of that for baking? Because that's what I have. Tonight I had to make a cake for work. I was making a cake-mix cake, because it is easier but mostly because the girl had specifically asked for the Funfetti type of cake. So I mixed all the crap together and put it in the oven; the box said 350 degrees (which I did) for 32-36 minutes for a 13x9 pan. So I set the timer for 30 minutes, just to be safe.

At 20 minutes into baking, I just happened to go into the kitchen and peek at the cake. The thing was totally golden brown and when I opened the oven I even got the faintest whiff of the beginning of that burnt smell. So I pulled it out of the oven, and dudes, that bitch was done. DONE BAKING. The middle was slightly iffy, but the edges were browning, firm, and pulling away from the edge of the pan. The cake sprung back when touched lightly. I don't know what to say. It was insanely early for it to be done. I don't know if our oven temp is messed up (I have never had any other problem with it), or...who knows. I know that I did not do anything wrong, I checked a million times. And yeah, thank god I happened to check it when I did or it would have gotten totally crispy, but it still stresses me out that it might be gooey or gross or something when people go to eat it tomorrow.

Stuff like this happens to me all the time when baking. And I mean, if you can't make a cake mix cake, you should really just quit with the baking. Because that shit is easy, and they test it a million billion times. So, I don't know. It seems like I have finally found one thing that I really enjoy/am interested in, and I have some stupid jinx or something that keeps me from being able to do it at a level above, like, a four-year-old. If I make one more cake that comes out burned, or hard as a rock, or still raw in the middle, or flat as a pancake, I think I will finally snap. Pillsbury can pretty much suck it, is what I have to say. God.

I did make a tasty icing though. I'm good at icing.

I Think I'll Go To Boston

For starters, I just want to say that any time I talk to someone around here who has a British accent, I assume that they are faking. And then I immediately start to treat them like they're insane, because you would have to be insane to fake a British accent all the time. So, I don't know. I have felt that way for a long time and I just wanted to get that off my chest. Stop being pretend British, y'all. It's not funny.

Secondly, work has been insane for the past three days specifically and the past little while generally. I don't want to get into details on this blog, but so far this week has been easily one of the worst since I started working there. To use a totally played out but accurate metaphor, I feel like I am in a huge pool of water and just barely, barely keeping my head above the surface. And when you feel like that day after day it's just like, how long can you keep treading water?

Finally, I have been feeling very overwhelmed lately because I feel like the entire rest of my life is beyond my control. After I graduate I will just be sitting around waiting for someone else to decide where I can work, and I will be moving around based on somebody else's needs, and I have even been planning my free time lately based on what everybody else wants. I just want to call the shots for a little bit. I just want to say "I'm moving here" or "I want to work there" or "I'm paying this much money for ___" without having to consult with anybody else or convince them of my point. It all makes me feel helpless, and kind of worthless, which just makes me feel bad about a million other things.

Pretty much I just feel like running away. I mean, don't you remember what your mom used to say when you were little?

"Running away solves everything."

The Shack of Democracy

I'm sure there are a lot of meaningful things I could say about the democratic process, but my favorite quote from election day comes from Becky, re: finding our voting location:

"I drove back and forth like fifty times, and then finally I was like, oh, am I supposed to go into this shack?"

Hehe! The place was a little gangster, I'll admit, but that train of though just cracked me up. Yay for voting in a new town.

Out in the cold

The good news: I neither crashed my car nor showed up a half an hour late to work today as I've done seemingly every other Wednesday this month.

The bad news: I went out at 8 to start and scrape off my car. I got in, started the engine, and got out. When I went to open the back door to get out my scraper, I realized that the back door was locked. As was the front door. And all of the rest of them. This kind of thing sucks donkey balls for about 80 different reasons, but the worst one is that my car doesn't let you lock the door when the key is in the ignition, and I never even TRIED to lock the door, and yet somehow it still happened. The one saving grace in this whole situation was that Becky had a snow day; if she hadn't been home, I would have been locked out of both my car AND my house with my purse and phone trapped inside of my running vehicle.

So I rang the doorbell 50 times and Becky came down to let me in. I used her phone to call Pop-A-Lock. (I don't have a spare car key at the apartment because I figured that generally if I can't get in my car, I can't get in my apartment either, and Becky's not home all that often. So the spare is at my parents' house. Not helpful.) Pop-A-Lock informed me that they would be at my house in AT MOST 45 minutes, and took my address, name, and phone number. So I waited 45 minutes. And then I waited 20 more. And then I called the company back. They told me that the roads were bad and that there were a lot of calls, and that they'd be there shortly. So I waited another....hour and a half. And called them a third time, at which point they finally contacted the driver to find out where the hell he was. Apparently they had added a silent K to the beginning of my street name, and the driver, unable to find me in his GPS, had been driving around aimlessly for two and a half hours. And no one had called to let me know, or bothered to inform me when I called the first time. The dispatcher said that he did not have the authority to authorize any kind of discount on the service (obviously I asked) and that I would have to speak with the driver about that; he assured me that the driver would be there in 10 minutes.

A half an hour later, the driver showed up. He popped the lock in about 3 minutes, tops. At this point my car had been running with the heat on full blast for three and a half hours. The driver then presented me with a bill for $45 dollars, which I informed him that I would not be paying. He told me that he did not have the authority to give a discount, and that I would have to talk to a dispatcher about that. When I told him that the dispatcher had told me the exact opposite thing, he kind of shrugged and held up the bill. I was all, "Do you take checks?" and he's like, "Cash or charge only." So I gave him my Discover card, and looked at me, knowing I was already so pissed off, and said "Uh...we only take Visa or Mastercard." "WELL THIS IS ALL I HAVE." Heh heh. He wrote down the number anyway and left.

I ended up calling the company back for the FOURTH time that day and basically saying that I was NOT paying for their service. I got put on with a manager who eventually agreed with me. I have never been so freaking pissed off at a company before. I understand that things happen, but to never contact me ONCE when a driver takes THREE HOURS to get here is unacceptable. As is misspelling my street name which I SPELLED FOR THE GUY OVER THE PHONE THE FIRST TIME. I ended up missing a full day of work today, which I have never done before in my life, and I feel really bad about it. Like I said before, I don't even know how the damn car got locked, so it's extra infuriating. I strongly suggest that no one ever call Pop-A-Lock to get your car unlocked. And I will very shortly be making about 900 copies of my car key to keep....well, everywhere.

...Srsly?

I meant to post this a while ago, but now that I've come across it, please find below a list of really inappropriate children's book titles I found while working on a project:

Where Oh Where's My Underwear?

Peter's Package

What's In My Pocket? A Pop-Up Book

Rim job

I was really hoping for a snow day this morning. I got two around this time last year, so it seemed within the realm of possibility. Almost every school in Franklin county shut down, but we didn't even have a Level One Snow Emergency, so off to work I went. The roads were BAD. Nothing in town had even been touched with a plow. I hadn't even made it a mile from my house when I hit a particularly rough patch; my car did a complete 180, skipped up the curb, and landed fully in the front lawn of Westerville South High School. Thankfully nobody was around to witness my idiocy/be killed by my wildly careening (20 mph) vehicle, so I just put it in reverse, turned around, and went on my way to work (1 hour commute today). The freeways were in nasty shape, and King Avenue was its usual almost impassable self. I don't know what it is about that road when it snows, but you should definitely avoid it.

Anyway, when I got to work I saw that my back left rim was all bent up and a piece of the hubcap had broken off. Great. Everything else seems okay, so I shouldn't really complain, but it put me on edge because I had a similar bent-rim situation a couple years back and I ended up with a flat tire by the end of the work day. Luckily this tire has held up. I just have to make it to work and back tomorrow...Thursday I work just down the road, and Friday I'm off so I can take it in to get straightened out. Ugh. Why couldn't they have just closed the damn library? It was a slow day anyway.

Oh, and I also found like 4 dead roaches and their, um, "leavings" in a book today. And yesterday a crackhead told me to fuck myself like, 9000 times in a row. So...not the best week so far.

If I want a rock band, I'll buy a Playstation

Most awesome overheard cell phone conversation ever, spoken by the guy walking behind me in the library parking lot today:

"If you're such a Christian, why are you badmouthing people? Why are you being such a brat? You're supposed to be a big Christian and all you're doing is running your mouth about people. If you're such a Christian, why do you watch Desperate Housewives? Why do you watch Grey's Anatomy? Why are you having premarital sex? Because you're just like most Christians: you're full of it. 'Ooooh, come to my church, we have a rock band and a coffee bar!' If I want coffee, I'll go to Starbucks. Is this a church or a social event? You people are so full of it. I don't need God; I have a Harvard education."

Agree or disagree with his points, it was still hilarious.

A full year late

Well, I don't have much to say except that my graduation process is, at long last, in full swing. I have registered for, set up, and paid for my practicum. I have filled out my graduation application, which is due by Friday (thanks Erica!). I haven't mailed it yet, but I am hoping I can fax it from work. If not I will mail it on Wednesday, and then all I'll have to do is my actual practicum, which starts on Thursday. It looks like I may get a degree after all. I'm sure I would have made a good Pizza Hut employee/stripper (the only two careers you can have if you drop out of library school), but I'm gonna stick with this for a while and see where it takes me.

And our star shines like a miracle

Happy new year!

Well I rang in '08 last night with a bunch of awesome people and the perfect amount of liquor (silly-drunk earlier on but sobered up by bedtime). It really was the perfect end to a year that has been quite good to me, and it hopefully set the pace for a year that will be even better. I am looking forward to a couple of vacations this year and to moving in with Bill at the end of the summer, and aside from that all I can hope is that I get to spend as much time as possible with the people who make me laugh until I [insert embarrassing noise here].

Here are my top five highlights of 2007:

5. Getting Promoted - I was afraid it would never happen, but I did in fact get a promotion, and I'm much happier now than I was in my old position. Now I can look forward to my next new job, which will hopefully be post-graduation in May.

4. Feist Concert - I had a blast at this show, that's really all there is to it.

3. The Birthday Party - My mom: "Your birthday party?" Me: "No, mom, THE birthday party." I got momentously tipsy, got cake smashed all over me, and danced till I was literally red in the face. It was quite a celebration for my two favorite Fucking Birthday Twins of all time.

2. Nickel Creek Concert - I had waited forever to see Nickel Creek live, and I finally got my chance this summer at their Farewell for Now Tour (basically the See Us Now Or Live With The Regret Forever tour). I had second-row seats (OMG!!1!) and somehow, miraculously, it didn't thunderstorm on us despite the bajillion degree weather with like 100% humidity. It was quite the evening, and the first thing I have ever gotten to cross off my "to do before I die" list. Yay!

1. San Diego Trip - San Diego was a great place to visit. We managed to squeeze in SO many activities and restaurants, and the weather was amazing. I was stoked to get to spend so many days hanging out with Bill, and I felt like we were super grown-up flying across the country by ourselves and renting our own car and whatnot. Not to mention flying out on the cheap thanks to Skybus. The whole thing was just absolutely perfect, I don't even know what to say.

So there's my list. There were a million other great moments of course, and I'm thankful for all of them. I honestly have NO idea what 2008 has in store for me or where I will be a year from now. I hope that I'm happy, and I hope that you are too. Thanks for hangin' with me.

Boredy boredness

Um, hi!

This is going to be pointless because I'm just doing it to kill time. But hey. It's a frigging blog. Pointless is the name of the game.

Well let's see. Earlier this week I got to work the reference desk solo for an entire hour; that was the first time I've ever been scheduled for an official reference hour. And it was sweet. I think I answered everybody's questions successfully. It was funny because I always say that I know how to use the "official" sources and answer the scholarly questions but that if somebody wants a bus schedule I'm stumped. Well guess what my first question was: "I live up on 161 and my girlfriend works down on Neil and we don't have a car..." Damn! The one time I tried to take a bus, I ended up walking 4 miles from Bill's apartment to Red White and Boom. But, you know, a trip to the COTA site and repeated disclaimers that "I really don't know anything about how the bus system works" and the guy left happy and grateful for my help.

I hope it's not TOO horribly long before I get to get an actual, adult-type job (like, not five years hopefully). I know that I shouldn't complain about work, and things are a lot better than they have been at other times, but still. It gets so, so tedious put things in alphabetical order for hours and hours on end. Sometimes if I'm working and I think "I'm shelving reserves this hour, and next hour I will be pulling off old reserves, and then the hour after that I have to shelve a couple of carts..." it's just like...I just want to lay down on the floor and stop. Other people don't mind and can do work like that day in and day out, but I don't know. I guess I would like something more challenging, something more creative.

I made cookies just now, from this pre-made dough that my mom bought from one of her kids. They turned out kind of weird but they taste pretty good.

Are you looking forward to Christmas? It still seems kind of far off to me, even though I know it is not. I would like to go see Wildlights and do a couple of other Christmasey type things but I think I may end up being too busy for any of that. I hope not!

It goes down easy

HEY KIDS!

Well I had a kick-ass weekend. Friday I really did nothing during the day, which was awesome. Then later that night was my Chasegiving/Quarterlife Crisis party. It started out kind of lame-ish due to a bad bar/restaurant selection on my part, but it was still a good time and it was much less stressful once we got the hell out of Stripperton. It was really good to hang out with everybody...thanks a lot to those who came, and thanks for the cards/gifts/free food/free drinks as well. Y'all rock it out.

Saturday Bill and I kind of just hung out and watched the game and stuff, then in the evening we went to Pei Wei for dinner (which I LOVE) with Becky, Dan, Jared, and Erica. Then it was over to Casa Jamerica with the above crew (sub Miranda for Becky) for games, gossip, and campfire s'mores. I had forgotten how good real s'mores are. Saturday was really a perfect blend of relaxation and casual fun.

Sunday was busier; I was running late in the morning, but Erica and I still hit up the Tiny Canary indie craft show in Grandview. I actually almost hate going to those things because I want to spend more money than I have, and also because I feel bad chatting with the vendors and then not buying anything from them; sometimes I really love their stuff but it's just out of my price range or not practical for me or whatever. If anyone is shopping for art I would like to suggest Yumi Yumi, who Erica and I are totally retarded-fangirl over. Erica also bought me a birthday t-shirt which I just now remembered to try on (it fits!). After that we clothes-shopped at Target and met up with my mom for dinner at Cap City--delicious. I then hauled ass to get to Bill's so we wouldn't be late for the Feist concert, which gets its own paragraph.

Boys and girls, the Feist concert was amazing. I probably need to get out more, but I will say that it was probably the best concert I've ever been to. We were like in the third row at the Wex's Mershon Auditorium. Jason Collett opened up, and he was great. During one song Bill and I both went through the same thought process of figuring out that his drummer was a girl and then, eventually, that it was Leslie Feist herself. I mean, we couldn't see her face, we're not that dumb. Feist came out and started the show with When I Was A Young Girl, which is a.) my favorite song of hers EVAR and b.) even more totally amazing in concert. I can't even describe the whole thing, I realize that, but just trust me that the concert was at all times both totally cracked out and perfectly perfect. At one point Feist asked for a certain girl in the audience, and then the girl's boyfriend proposed to her. She said yes, everyone cheered, and the band played Sarah Harmer's "Open Window." It was so strange and exciting. I've never seen anything like that happen before. I could go on and on, and really I think I already have.

Today was back to work as usual, but that's OK. It will be a nice 4-day week, and I still have my actual birthday and Thanksgiving to look forward to. I hope you all had equally wonderful weekends, or will soon.

Reading is sexy

Oh man, I don't think I ever posted this. Let me say that this is 100% real and that I actually saved it from Amazon:



Ignoring the fact that this makes it look like I was shopping for crotchless French knickers (I wasn't, I promise), I find this unbelievably hilarious. I mean, really? 6% of the people on Amazon who were searching for racy lingerie were like, "Mmm, nah. I'll just get a copy of Harry Potter instead." Maybe they meant to search for Hairy Pooter. Eww, sorry.

This is not how I imagined my life

Sometimes, at my job, someone will come up to me and let me know that something is amiss in one of the public restrooms. About half the time it's not too bad: out of toilet paper, somebody left something in there, needs air freshener, etc. The other half of the time you're stuck dealing with a clog or an overflowing urinal or the like. The bad news is that there is no designated person to clean up these messes; if you're the one who gets informed of it, you're the one who gets to deal with it.

Today, just after lunch, I got notified by a customer that there was a "situation" in the women's handicap stall and that it was "disgusting." I trudged out there and opened the stall door only to be confronted by a literal shitstorm: a swirling cloud of diarrhea filling the bowl to the absolute top, with a clod of bloody toilet paper floating in the middle like an eye. This was not something that I wanted to deal with, and, more importantly, I wasn't sure how to deal with it. A plunger was my first thought, but I worried about breaking the delicate poo meniscus and trapping myself under a waterfall of excrement. I thought about digging around in there with a straightened-out hanger the way my mom taught us to do when we'd gotten a little Charmin-happy at home, but rooting around in feces when the library doesn't even provide me with health insurance just felt like an over-extension. The longer I stared (why couldn't I stop staring?), the less I could think of anything to do.

Now, people I work with are usually totally gung-ho about these kinds of things; I myself have picked up all manor of unsavory objects and even mopped up pee from the mens' room. I understand that we all need to do our part, but something about that gloppy, choleral toilet bowl was just too much for me. I felt bad. Does not wanting to clean up a strangers diarrhea make me stuck-up? Is this what I'm going to have to deal with for the rest of my life if I stay in this profession? Was the woman who reported the mess also the perpetrator? I may never know, because in the end, I did what I'd really wanted to do all along: I slapped up an "out of order" sign and taped the stall door shut.

Spoiler-free, don't worry

So. I just watched 28 Weeks Later. And I am disturbed. I'm a big fan of the first movie, and while I didn't find either one particularly scary in your typical scary movie way, 28 Weeks Later was almost too disturbing, disgusting, terrifying, and sad. There were, somehow, a few bright spots in the first one, but this one is just so bleak. You don't normally describe a zombie* movie as "realistic," but the infection, quarantines, military presence, rebuilding...it all just seems way too possible. I almost felt sick after watching it.

I mean, it's a good movie though. You should get it.

(*I know they're not technically zombies, but you follow me.)

I could go for a slice of pie

Hey kittens!

What has the Chaser been up to lately, you've been asking yourselves. Well, not much I'm afraid.

The good news is that I got a promotion at work which as been pretty sweet. I already knew how to do most of my job duties, so it's kind of like I'm just getting extra money without having to learn new things or do much more work. I like my new schedule, and I'll like my new paycheck when I get one (I mean, it's still pathetically small, but, like, less pathetically small than before). I'm going to the pumpkin show this weekend, which is always fun (read: delicious). I'm hoping to do some other Halloween things, like a haunted house or maybe even something cheesey like a hayride, but I'm worried that might not happen. I'm also thinking about planning some sort of birthday event on Nov 16, but I always change my mind on that. What do you think? Drinking for the big two-five?

The bad...meh. Nothing too bad. I feel like I haven't been seeing my friends at all. I missed out on all the $10 fares to Florida today, even though they released them at like 4 a.m. and I was up and on the website before 11. I also missed a last minute opportunity to go to the Wilco concert tonight. Lincoln and I both still have whatever messed up thing is making us itch, and I am skeptical that we're ever going to find out what it is.

The ugly: your face. OH SNAP!

I'm gonna try to be more interesting on here, I swear. That's like the bullshit blogger's mantra though, so we'll see what happens.

You want it.

This is hot. Hot! The big plug on my hair dryer is like my number one problem in life.