December 2002 Archives

ohmygod. i want to go to lebanon. nick just updated his page du jour for the past few days, and the pictures are gorgeous. it's a non-decision; i have now decided that i will go to lebanon someday. i'll make nick come along as my guide and interpreter. i'm sure he won't mind. we can stay with his multitude of relatives!

becca just informed me of something she heard on the radio this morning that made irwin almost fall off the couch laughing. apparently, the houston police are asking people to please refrain from shooting guns into the air to celebrate the new year, because houston has the highest accidental death rate from bullets fired into the air at new years. what kind of crack do these texans smoke??? here's the article, just to prove that i'm not making it up.

work is even more quiet than yesterday, which i didn't believe was possible. another new years eve, another chance to wipe the slate clean, another adjustment period where i will inevitably write "02" on any checks i write, and then have to scratch it out when i remember that is it "03" now. "it's been a long december and there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last..." no matter how good or bad my year has been, that song always floats through my mind this time of year.

all things considered, however, 2002 was a very good year. i got a degree, a job, an apartment, a new experience. i surfed, i hiked, i raced, i helped build a one-door, two-window home of mortar and concrete blocks. i traveled.

in direct contradition to years past (when i have made multiple ethereal resolutions about being happy, overcoming my jealous streak, not overcommitting myself, blah de blah de blah), this year, i have one solid resolution: keep running. it's been almost a year since i started running regularly, and despite the fact that i took a three month break out of pure laziness and lack of motivation back in the summer, i was able to get going again this fall. in just shy of a year i've gone from a 5k time of 34:11 to 30:09, and that's without even pushing myself too hard. i'm proud of myself and i want to keep it up. this time next year i'd love to be able to say i've improved another 4 minutes and can do a 5k in 26:00. :) i don't know about that, because i'm definitely not built to be a runner. then again, you never know.

becca just went home, and now the silence is truly deafening. must put in a new cd. i want a lucky bamboo a la mom, katie, and grandmother to put on my desk here at work. i wonder where i can get one...

(1:04 p.m.)

i was just reading this entry again, and felt that my one resolution is shallow. somehow i always think resolutions should be big and broad and all-encompassing. but i like my resolution. keep running. one foot in front of the other and that's all i need.

i am pleased with our new years eve plans, and how effortlessly they came together. football game at 2:30, movie at 7, fondue around 10, and then midnight countdown. it is a different lineup of activity from my past few new years eves, but i think perhaps it is appropriate, since this year i will be with a different collection of friends. i will be thinking of those in atlanta when it is 11:00 here, but 12:00 for them. james and chrissy will be smooching, christina will likely be laughing as always. carter will probably burst into auld lang syne. kent and chris might just sit and smile. and an hour later, i will laugh, sing, smile myself.

it is nice to be reminded that out of sight isn't always out of mind.

i expected work to be pretty quiet today, but not this quiet. it's almost as bad as the day after thanksgiving, when becca and i were two of something like five people on the whole third floor. our group has the best attendance today it seems: gavin, george, ray, becca and me. it is sad to see laura's desk so empty now that her co-op tour is over.

also, now that i'm back in houston, it doesn't feel anything like late december. i think this is solely due to the weather. it's 72 degrees outside. 72! this is the one time of year--this month between mid-december and mid-january--that i've never experienced in houston until now. my co-op tours spanned the rest of the year at some point or another, but i have never been here for the new year.

but we're doing well with plans. tonight irwin (who arrived yesterday for a week-long stay at becca's house) is cooking the fresh salmon he brought from seattle. yummmmm. and for tomorrow, plans are falling into place. the bowl game is at 2:30, and it sounds like we'll follow the game with an evening movie, then fondue at becca's house, then the countdown to midnight at randy and ami's house with a larger crowd. it should be a fun new years. i hope my friends in atlanta will find a happy medium in their new years plans...it sounds like everyone there has a different idea of what their activity should be.

so over christmas, i found out that i won a free cell phone from a drawing i entered at the dome run a few weeks back. this evening after work i'm going to pick it up. it's a digital camera phone! i'm so excited. i hope it works. the catch is that to get the phone i'm supposed to activate a new account. which i feel is incredibly dumb, i mean, doesn't every company have that gimmick, ooh, free phone with activation? come on, what was the point of having a drawing for a free phone when it's not actually free but just "free."

but i digress. point is, i figure if i can get in and out of the building tonight with the phone in hand without signing anything, i can just take the phone to the t-mobile store and get them to set the sim card (or however it works). crossing my fingers that i can dupe them into thinking i'll just activate the phone later or something.

anyway.

18 days till i go to france...

i sit in my study staring at the computer screen as that silly 80s song drfits through my head. "back to life...back to reality..."

my flight back to houston was uneventful. said goodbye to carter at the house, then waved to him as we exited towards the airport and he continued toward the junction with i-85 and his road home. hugged mom, dad, and katie; said bye to david and brian.

the plane followed the interstate almost perfectly to atlanta. i had pulled out my book to read, but ended up staring out the window the whole time, as it was beautifully clear and sunny between my two old hometowns and i could see for miles and miles. i saw spartanburg, greenville, and the bmw plant. i saw the bridge that crosses the lakes that define that part of the south carolina/georgia border. i saw the giant "welcome to georgia" rest stop and the outlet malls at commerce. it was fun to trace the drive i have done so many times from the air. somewhere along the way, i passed carter down there on the road.

sadly, i couldn't watch atlanta itself because the plane took a turn to the east in order to approach the airport from that side. i had been hoping for a good look at the tech campus.

the flight from atlanta to houston was quiet, and less cooperative to sightseeing. somewhere over alabama or mississippi, a thick blanket of puffy white, sunlit clouds began. i got back around 3:15, met irwin, and jen gave us a ride back to my place. we bummed around until becca got home. and now here i am.

work tomorrow.

a calm falls over my last day at home... christmas break has been good, and short. too short, though perhaps it is just that i adjust to different lives more quickly than i should. a week at home feels less like a vacation, and more like how things have always been. my "real life" becomes fuzzy. it always has.

i think that's why i'm such a big fan of pictures and photographs. it's proof that i lived in california, that i saw another country, that i built a home in mexico, that i knew this person, and that. i think it's why i have a need to keep a journal, to write. to convince myself that i didn't just conjure these things from thin air and imagination.

i have always adapted easily to new situations, at least in the physical, being-there sense. it often takes some time for my thoughts and emotions to catch up, but feeling normal in a new place comes effortlessly.

but tomorrow i go back to houston, and i am already worried that i've forgotten what my apartment looks like! i'm afraid it may be a disaster area when i walk in with irwin (who i am entertaining until becca gets back tomorrow night), as i honestly can't remember how much i cleaned before i left.

and on monday i go back to work, which is a less-than-thrilling realization. i much prefer vacation, and flitting through my days. though i suppose i like it only because it is different, and thus special. if every day was vacation, i'm sure i'd get bored. sometimes i think i must have ADD, as there are days when i actually miss the constant activity that permeated college life.

carter's here, and i am happy to see him. it is a nice ending to my christmas vacation.

my vacation is floating flitting flying by. it has been the calmest vacation since high school that i can remember. no anxiety, no boredom. no missing people heartache, no imposing on friends. a minimum of family conflict, and even brother brian seems to be maturing at last. ;)

i have two more days at home. i don't know that i'll be ready to go back to houston. though i do miss my apartment greatly...

we went up to chapel hill today for a nice family dinner. the six graybeals, plus grandmother, aunt nancy, and cousin casey. our christmas dinners have become full of tiny traditions; we always have english party poppers that snap when we open them, revealing a small toy, a silly joke, and a tissue paper crown. presents all around.

this year my aunt secretly put together a slide show of slides from the late 1950s and early 1960s that my grandfather took; it was a complete surprise to my grandmother (as well as us kids), and it brought tears to her eyes. pictures from their trip out to california when my mom was 8, and my aunt was 11. some pictures from later trips around the country, to the 1964 worlds fair. even some pictures from when casey and david and i were little. it was cool, and sort of poignant to see how much it meant to my grandmother.

tomorrow: returning a couple things that don't fit, and carter arrives for a couple nights.

(12:21 a.m.)

i think i won a free cell phone. cool! i have to check on it tomorrow, but i think the email is legit. i did enter a drawing for a free phone, anyway.

merry christmas one and all!

it has been a great day. morning breakfast, followed by presents. a lunch of leftovers and ham biscuits, followed by a long walk with mom around the neighborhood in the bright sun and brisk winter wind. a matinee of "catch me if you can," which was an appropriately enjoyable flick for the evening. now home to curl up in my pajamas and the new robe and slippers i got from my cousin laura and read my book and sip russian tea.

perfection.

merry christmas eve. i have a few more presents to run out and get for my brothers and muh sustah, but i know what i'm buying them and where i'm getting it so i'll knock it out in an hour and a half. just as soon as i take my shower! i just got back from a run and i stink. also, it is cold and rainy outside and i think my ears may have frozen. a warm shower will fix them.

yesterday was full of activity. i drove (borrowing katie's car) up to durham and back to get my grandmother and bring here down to charlotte as always for the holiday. the drive up was lovely. i sang along with katie's cds and drank in the sunshine and the open road and the trees, oh the trees! i forget how much i love trees of the non-palm, non-warm-weather, non-gulf-coastal variety. evergreens, tall and strong.

most of all, i enjoyed the time alone in the car. just me and some good music and my thoughts.

grandmother and i got back around 3:00, and in the evening i headed out to cayce and dave's house for a night with old high school friends. christina often writes about her high school friends and how nice it is to spend time with people who knew you back when. it wasn't until last night that i realized that i feel the same way sometimes.

cayce, andrew, amanda, and jes. they knew me back when i had such huge stars in my eyes, when working for nasa was only a dream. they knew me back when i'd never traveled anywhere else, back when i was less sarcastic and more naive, back when i'd never had my heart broken, or put back together again. they knew me when i was a north carolinian through and through. before georgia and texas and california, and before europe and mexico left their marks in my head. they knew me back when i hadn't gone crazy, before i rediscovered sanity and peace.

they knew me before i grew up. and they got to watch me change.

last night i realized that my high school friends embody comfort, and all that is wonderful about being content. there is something magical about being with people who have known you for years, who can see the ways that you've changed but don't hesitate to see the ways that you're still the same person that they shared daily lunches on the quad with way back when.

i know that they are proud of me and who i've become and where i am, and that makes me feel good. and i can see their happiness as well, in their marriages and lives, and seeing them happy makes me happy too.

i have a bad habit of thinking to myself that "my life would be better if only..." if only this, or that, or i won the lottery. i need reminding that my life is really good. my high school friends can do that like no other.

they are one of my comforts this christmas.

on friday when my plane left houston, it took the perfect departure path. lifting off into the south, we then paralleled I-45 as i watched ellington field pass off to the left. i spotted the house i lived in as a co-op, the mall, my apartment complex and bayou, the space center, and of course clear lake and the kemah bridge shining in the early morning sun. from there i traced egret bay down to 2094 and then to 518, all the way to the end of south shore boulevard where gavin and jen live, and where becca's new house is. we kept flying south until i could see the end of galveston island underneath, and bolivar peninsula. we finally turned to head northeast towards atlanta when we were out over the gulf of mexico.

it was the best view of the clear lake area i've ever had from the air, and i've taken off from hobby and ellington many times. it was so cool to be able to trace the streets and find the landmarks. and it really felt like i was looking at home. i guess houston is home now. for better or for worse, it's my home.

i went to church this morning with mom and katie. it was a nice service and the music was wonderful as usual. the music is my favorite thing about church in general, and though i've been to many churches over the years, i still think covenant does music like nowhere else i've found.

i also got to see a lot of the people i went to mexico with last summer. i was sort of nervous; i mean, i haven't seen them in six months and i didn't really know them that well to begin with. but i guess the experience sort of bonded us. it was nice to see so many of them again, even if we were just saying hello. i hope to be able to go back to mexico again this summer. i hope so.

today was a great day, right up until the christmas tree fell over. yes, fell over. broke some ornaments, messed up the lights, spilled water all over the presents underneath.

see, we have these glasses that make the word "noel" appear around points of light. mom and i were sitting on the couch waggling our heads back and forth looking at a thousand "noels" when katie walked in the door, took one look at us, and said "hold on, i have to get my camera."

being in a festive mood and all, we decided to put the ornaments on the tree (last night we just did lights). we're happily hanging ornaments when suddenly i turn around to the sight of the tree falling over. i couldn't do anything but cry "oh oh oh!" before it hit the ground. i don't understand why it won't stay up. the screws are all screwed in, and it's resting on the bottom of the stand. i don't understand!

so now my engineering skills have been tested and proven to suck, and i just got online to comfort myself with email, only to find that no one emailed me.

sigh. i'm going to go drown myself in tolkien.

(the reindeer romp went well. katie finished in 29:55, i followed in 30:50. with my life and running outings in houston, i've forgotten what it's like to run a course with hills, but today i was reminded. hills suck.)

i'm here in charlotte safe and sound after quite the airline ordeal. becca was nice enough to drive me to the airport at the crack of dawn (she picked me up at 5:30 a.m.), but i ended up sitting for a while. my flight from houston to atlanta left half an hour late because the crew got in to houston late last night and had to get their required downtime before flying again. no biggie, as i had a three hour layover in atlanta scheduled.

then, after boarding the plane to charlotte in atlanta, they found that the wingtip light was burned out or broken or something, so we sat in the plane on the ground for an hour and a half. i was reading for a while, and then fell asleep. when i woke up and realized we were still on the ground in atlanta, i turned on my phone and saw that it was 2:00! well, at 2:00 i was originally supposed to be in charlotte, so i called my dad and caught him and katie who were almost at the airport. they turned around and went back home, and dad came back later to get me once my plane actually left atlanta.

anyway. i really wasn't bothered because i wasn't in any hurry. i had a lovely lunch at houlihan's in the atlanta airport with carter, who met me there. i like that i have friends i can not see for a long time, and yet when we get together i forget that we've ever been apart. while talking to carter over lunch, i was thoroughly convinced that i still see him every day, even though it's been four months. it was a surprise to remember that i had to go catch my connecting flight, and that being able to have lunch with him was something unusual.

i am really lucky that way.

it is great to see my family. i've seen everyone except david, who's working late. this afternoon i went on a walk and then out to dinner with my mom, and when katie got home from work the three of us went to willie simpson's and bought the christmas tree. it's not as good a tree as in years past...it's sort of sparse at the bottom. but it was the best they had left. most of their trees were too short, so our selection was quite limited.

katie heard an ad on the radio yesterday about the reindeer romp 5k here. it was postponed two weeks ago in the big ice storm, so it's being held tomorrow. fun! i actually went online a while back searching for a race to run while i'm home but had no success, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear about this one. it starts at 10 a.m. tomorrow so katie and i are gonna go register and run. that will make 14 races in 2002 for me, and that makes me smile. if you'd told me in january that i would run 14 races this year, i never would have believed it.

it's official. laura is the best co-op ever. she's been working with us all fall, she's extremely cool, and today she brought everyone in the group their own plate of really yummy cookies. i'm going to have to figure out a way to keep her here. we like her much more than texas a&m does, i'm sure. ;)

so we went to see "the two towers" last night, and it was awesome. thoughts:

• i love the ents. i love how slow they move. i love how they don't want to mess in anyone's business until someone messes in theirs. i love the idea of trees fighting back.
• liv tyler was unnecessary. or maybe i just don't like liv tyler.
• gollum was very well done. there were times that i forgot he was computer-done. i know that an actor originally did all the movements to make them realistic, and that definitely helped. but i was just amazed at how well-done gollum was. as carter would say, if the movie industry can do computer-generated characters that well, why make bad ones?
• comedy. two towers is a serious story, and i thought the bits of comic relief thrown in (gimli in particular) was nice. i laughed hardest i think when he couldn't see over the top of th wall at helm's deep.
• how the hell did legolas get onto that horse without being trampled? and who can surf on a shield while continually firing arrows with deadly accuracy? fantastic.
• new zealand. dear god, i must go there. it's gorgeous.
• viggo mortenson. yum. i like that "been dragged off a cliff by a crazy orc-wolf" rugged look. ;)

in the end, though i felt it took 20 minutes or so for the movie to really get going, i really enjoyed it. i can't believe i now have to wait another year for the final installment.

tonight i'm going to see a few friends in a local performance of oliver and packing because...i head home tomorrow! wahoo! christmas vacation.

i forgot to mention that i posted a few pictures from the whole moving party on sunday. there aren't that many and they're not that great, but i was decidedly busy doing other things. ;)

anyway. last night i went over to gavin and jen's to watch "fellowship of the ring" (the extended version, of course) in preparation for going to see "the two towers" tonight. i'm quite excited about the new movie. yay yay yay.

this morning i went to the post office to mail a gift to my cousin-in-law frank, who i drew in the family gift exchange this year. the post office was a madhouse! i would hate to be a postal worker (or fedex, or ups, or the like) at christmas time; it must be stressful enough just trying to get the sheer volume of mail to the right places, and then you have to deal with annoying customers who wait until the last minute to mail their packages but are unwilling to pay extra to expediate delivery...

today is laura's exit lunch. it's too bad she is going back to school. we will miss having her around. i hope our next co-op is as cool.

also, i signed up to do my first 10k race in february--the rodeo run that ends at minute maid park! cool.

(10:10 a.m.)

	Yuoo ere-a zee Svedeesh Cheff! Yuoo ere-a a guud cuuk, thuoogh yuoo cun't speek Ingleesh fery vell. Bork Bork Bork!
Take the What Muppet Are You? Quiz!

yay! i love sweden!

my computer here at work shall now be known as "stupid bastard crack-smoking piece of crap." this moniker is directly related to the number of that phrase came out of my mouth yesterday.

talk about a frustrating day! it all started, of course, with the dead car battery. that problem was solved easily enough but resulted in me getting to work late. ugh. then my computer decided monday was as good a day as any to act up. when i first logged on, it connected to the network but didn't map to any of the mission operations drives. therefore i couldn't run exceed, which meant i couldn't connect to the flight mechanics lab, which meant i couldn't run any of my sims or get any of my data. nor could i run matlab, which mean i couldn't even make any pretty population maps!

(yes, i know that probably doesn't make any sense to anyone but becca, but oh well.)

so i busy myself with other things until after lunch, at which point i log off the computer, figuring i'll just log back in and my computer will connect to the network drives and i'll be fine. wrong. at this point, my computer decides to arbitrarily corrupt my password file, meaning not only can i not access the network drives, but i can't log on to anything. no email, none of my spreadsheets, no gro footprint document, no nothing. "stupid bastard crack-smoking piece of crap" once again comes out of my mouth.

so i call laz, our computer guy. no answer. i walk down to his office to get carlos (the backup guy's) number, and cheryl says laz is in the building. having nothing else to do, i walk the long way back to the office and spot laz in the dm3 branch office, at which point i give him my most charming smile and tell him "my computer's on crack." he laughed and walked back to my office with me and reset my password, which my computer amazingly agreed to accept. sigh. problem solved.

except then, finally back into the flight mechanics lab and running my heel breakup altitude sensitivity study, SORT apparently decides its just too good to bother with the monte carlo portions of my input decks and starts spitting out junk. aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh! at this point it's 6:00 and i think to myself "aw, screw it all" and so i went home. the only good thing i found yesterday was that apparently i was randomly given 10 hours of annual leave this pay period instead of 6. i have no idea why, but i'm not complaining.

i drove home in silence, too stressed out to even listen to the radio. all i could think of was getting home and going for a run to burn off all my frustration. i walked in the door, opened my mail (which contained the enormous bill for my next 6 months of car insurance, just to top off the day), yelled, threw it in the corner, and literally ran to the closet to find my shorts and running shoes.

one 31:00 5k later, i felt much better.

so this morning i discovered why one should not procrastinate when it comes to needing a new battery for their car.

i've known for a couple weeks now that my car battery was on its last legs. the car was sluggish to start in the mornings, and especially in the evenings after sitting outside in the cold all day...not to mention that the battery was more than five years old to begin with (which is definitely approaching the lifespan of a battery anyway). but i procrastinated.

so this morning i walked outside, hopped in my car, turned the key and...zzzzt. nothing. the battery wasn't totally dead because the console lights came on and my headlights worked (albeit quite dimly), but there wasn't enough juice to make the engine turn over. i quickly realized my weekend error...er, or my idiocy.

see, i spilled some water in my trunk and wanted to let it dry out. so i left the trunk open in my garage all weekend, totally forgetting that this would mean the tiny little trunk light would also be on all weekend. on a good battery, i doubt that a day and a half with the trunk light on would have been enough to drain the power to the point where the engine wouldn't start. on an already weak battery, though...

anyway, i was lucky enough to catch debbie still at home, so she brought her car over, i managed to shift mine into neutral and push it out of the garage so that my jumper cables could reach from debbie's car to mine, and jump-started ol' vic. he was quite sluggish to charge, but finally had enough to allow me to drive to firestone and immediately replace the battery. i didn't get to work until 9:45, which sucks because now i have to stay until 6:15 to get in my 8 hours! yuck.

and batteries are expensive! ugh. well, merry christmas to my car.

it's funny how 7:00 seems really late when you get up at 7 a.m. and spend the next 10 hours driving a uhaul and doing heavy lifting. every muscle in my body got a workout today, and i think every muscle is trying to make me pay for it. and yet it's oddly satisfying. tonight i feel like i could conquer the world, and all i did was move some furniture. ;)

anyway, for all intents and purposes, becca and kennda (becca's new roommate) are all moved into their new home! there are still some odds and ends left in their respective apartments, but the vast majority of their belongings and all of their furniture is now in the new house.

the best part of the whole day was that i got to be the pimpin' uhaul driver. hee hee. it was quite fun to drive the big 14-foot truck back and forth between apartments and the house. becca and i picked up the truck at 8 a.m., drove to lowe's to pick up the refrigerator, got the washer and dryer from the home of the woman becca bought them from, delivered the appliances to the house, and finally got back to her apartment at 10:00. soon there were a dozen people ferrying boxes and furniture from the apartment to the truck, and then from the truck to the house. we made three trips--one and a half to becca's apartment, one and a half to kennda's place.

i have to admit that the day went surprisingly smoothly. i had expected some headaches and problems that inevitably occur during a move, but i think the biggest issue we had was getting the refrigerator through the door. and that was quickly solved by the combined power of our engineering minds and a tool kit. the door came off its hinges and voila, the refrigerator was inside.

it really is a lovely house. it makes me want a house...

sometimes a memory takes me by surprise and leaves me awestruck with its power. it only takes one little trigger.

yesterday i was leaving work bundled in my coat. as i walked through the automatic doors and the cool air hit me and the twilight sky filled my eyes, all of a sudden i wasn't in houston anymore. i hadn't just walked out of drab, beige building 30 into a sea of asphalt...i had just walked out the door of the durand building into a cool california evening. i unlocked my bike, threw my bag over my shoulder, and with a few strong pumps i was coasting down the hill toward the north side of the quad. i rode in, the bike tires starting to rattle on the cobblestone. i cruised past the church, with its stained glass window glowing from the light inside. i rode out the other end of the quad, turned left to go around the library, past the dumpster and hoover tower and serra mall and finally pulled to a stop in front of a run-down wooden building with a sky-blue door with the white shape of an ocean wave. people laughed inside as i fumbled with the beat-up magnetic lock that always took a couple tries to open. inside was a wood-paneled room that was always well-lit but never well-heated. couches in one corner, tables everywhere else, a canadian flag hanging upside-down on the wall (but no one really knew why). someone rang the bell...

and then i tripped over the curb and was suddenly wrenched back to houston. walked to my car. got in, turned the key, put matchbox twenty in the cd player. took a deep breath. smiled. and drove home.

i think living through the bad makes you more appreciative of the good.

wooo, friday the 13th, woooo.

now that that's taken care of...

last night i went out to dinner with the local georgia tech alumni club at a mexican restaurant over on the west side of town. me being the prepared person that i am, i made sure to print out directions to the restaurant, which was at the meyerland plaza mall. well, when i got all the way up there, i realized that while i had mapped out the directions perfectly, i had completely forgotten the name of the restaurant!! really smart, yeah. thankfully i remembered that we were having mexican food, so after two laps around the parking lot i finally spotted the only mexican restaurant in the area. it turned out to be the right one.

dinner was fun overall, not to mention that chrissy and liz were both there and it was really nice to see them. we couldn't even remember the last time we'd gotten together (october, maybe?). we're quite pathetic that way. the three of us are fairly good friends, and we all live in the same city (hell, chrissy and i live within as little as a 5-minute drive of each other), and yet we get together maybe once every couple months. somehow time seems to fly by.

becca officially owns a house now; she closed yesterday. scary, i know. ;)

tonight is kennda's cookie party. i don't really know what this involves except that i'm supposed to bring 4 dozen cookies and we'll decorate sugar cookies at the party. based on this knowledge, i've deduced that there are going to be a lot of cookies floating around. anyway, i have to make cookies this evening after i get home from work, or i guess i'm not allowed to go to the party.

(12:24 p.m.)

i actually did this little quiz thingy yesterday, and today it is making the rounds. very weird. i can't remember where i saw it yesterday but it must have been somewhere that my friends also look...

I WAS A GIFTED CHILD
i had my niche.
intelligent. creative. or artistic.
what kind of child were you?
(brought you by april)

i woke up this morning to the local mix station playing an acoustic version of matchbox twenty's "if you're gone" that they recorded when rob thomas and adam gaynor were in their studio yesterday. happy sigh. it sounded awesome; what i wouldn't give to have been there! i got in to work and immediately figured out how to connect to the radio station via the internet, because a few minutes ago they played the other performance from yesterday--an acoustic version of "disease." it was fantastic. i'm not the type of person that waxes poetic and gets all googly-eyed over some band, but matchbox twenty comes close to making me do just that.

the flight mechanics lab computers have been barfing all over me the past two days. here's hoping they don't crash today, or i won't really have much to do...

well, i didn't end up going to the grocery store last night, so instead of salmon i had spiced couscous and hamburger, which i know sounds very very odd, but tastes good to me (i discovered it one night when i was getting rid of leftovers). perhaps there are some of my dad's weird eating habits in me after all. if i start eating green bean soup i'll know that i'm really in trouble. "one can green beans. one can tomato soup. heat it. eat it. yum!"

i'll have to go to the store today or tomorrow. i just don't like going to the grocery store very much, so i always procrastinate. but my list is getting pretty long and it's been three weeks, so...yeah.

last night i made a last-gasp effort to save my slave hard drive, which died about a month and a half ago. i had gone online to fill out the warranty form from western digital when i saw a little statement saying to please thoroughly check the drive before sending it back to them because they get many returned drives that are actually still in working order. so i downloaded their diagnostic software and hooked the previously dead hard drive back up and voila! it worked. the diagnostic ran and came back and said nothing is wrong with the drive. cool, right? their program magically resurrected my hard drive from the dead!!

well, that was until i tried to use the drive. while it was well enough to let me copy some of the data and mp3s i thought i'd lost onto my good (but smaller) hard drive, it definitely was not well enough to be written to. every time i tried, the computer froze and eventually gave me "cannot write to drive d" on the blue screen of death. so it can be copied from, but not written to. their diagnostic tool sucks!

anyway, long story short, i am sending them their dumb drive back and i am actually quite annoyed, as the drive is only 6 months old and has failed. stupid computer.

in the meantime, the computers here at work aren't dying at the moment, so i'd better take advantage.

i feel better this morning than i have in a while, which is odd, because i really didn't get any more sleep than usual. i dunno. for some reason i feel more awake than i usually do. it's nice.

i was at work until 6:30 last night as my last gasp to earn enough credit hours to take next friday off continues. i really don't have much of a choice in the matter--i have to earn the credit hours because i will be taking next friday off. airplanes don't like to wait for people, as i've discovered over the years.

last night i went over to chris's to have pasta and watch 24. it's becoming our tuesday night thing, apparently, because freaking softball keeps getting freaking rained out. the season is now over, with us having played a grand total of 4 games. sheesh. we'll start again next spring and hope for less rain.

tonight i have no plans, and i like it that way, since i do have plans for tomorrow (gt alumni holiday dinner) and the rest of the weekend (cookie party and housewarming party). so i'm going to go to the grocery store, go home, fix myself a nice dinner (hmm, maybe i'll buy some salmon, yum), and chill out. watch mindless tv and stuff. last night i watched the premiere of a show on bbc america called "what not to wear." it's quite funny. there are two british fashion people who secretly follow someone around for a couple weeks, then surprise them by saying "you have absolutely no sense of style at all...but to make up for having just insulted you mercilessly, we'll give you 2000 pounds ($3000) to go buy a new wardrobe from fancy high street stores!" ok, maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea. in any case, it was amusing. if nothing else, it's better than this show one of the networks is doing where they send 3 people to get plastic surgery. ugh.

hola. this morning i helped diego compare and contrast soccer and game boy. i wonder if his teacher just makes up these assignments as she goes along. odd. anyway, now i'm at work with a lousy parking space as a result of being late because of tutoring. wah me. ;)

so yes, if you've read becca's update for the day, i did indeed host a partylite candle party last night. and yes, as becca states, the concept is only slightly less shady than an outright pyramid scheme. no argument with her points there. i agreed to host because it helped my friend betsy out, and hey, it doesn't hurt me any. the only money i have to spend is $20 on some snacks for the people who came, and in return i get to have people over to my apartment (which i like) and i get $100 of candle stuff for free. it's a no-lose situation for me, and so i had no problem with becca coming over to hang out and snack, even though i knew ahead of time she wasn't going to buy anything.

what i did have a problem with was her sarcasm and rudeness towards the other people at the party, enough that it led more than one person to comment on her attitude after she'd left and forced me to apologize to julie, the candle lady. i don't like having to apologize for the behavior of others, especially when they are my friends. anyway, if becca is allowed to make fun of me today on her webpage, i'm allowed to gripe about her behavior on my webpage. :)

never fear though people, we're not fighting or anything. just another typical day in our office. with leftover brownies from last night!

we're supposed to have softball but after a whole day of rain yesterday, i'm sure it's going to be cancelled again. {sigh} i swear, there have been more weeks of cancelled softball than weeks that we've actually played. let's see...by my count, we've missed 5 weeks, and only played 3. yup. that sucks.

(2:07 p.m.)

for those who requested it, here's a picture of my short hair. jason says i'm not smiling enough, and that i look stoned. becca says i just look dazed. hmm. i thought i looked normal enough. oh well.

(3:10 p.m.)

i forgot, i posted pictures from the two races this weekend. see them here!

becca has been sucked into gavin's world of early mornings, late nights, matlab headaches and not being able to say "no" when someone asks if you can get them this chart by tomorrow (when actually you need about a week to do it). poor becca.

yesterday i did a lot of straightening around my apartment, and it looks pretty good. i can tell i've done a good job when i walk into my living room the next morning and think "wow, where did all my stuff go?"

hmm. i really don't have much to say today so far.

(4:37 p.m.)

wahoo! my group lead just came into the office and says i'm going to be joining a small group entering the second phase of a guidance/targeting study. i'm going to have something besides debris footprints to do. hurrah!

in other news, it is nasty outside. i'm not looking forward to having to walk through the cold and wet to my car. yuck yuck. fortunately, my clean and straightened apartment will be nice and cozy.

so, my hair is really short. i sort of realized this yesterday, but it was cemented a few hours ago in the shower when i reached back to shampoo my hair and grasped only air. it's not short in a bad way, but it's definitely different and is taking some getting used to. i can't be sure, but i don't think i've had it this short since senior year of high school (and that was 6.5 years ago). i said shoulder-length; the hair-cutter apparently heard chin-length. but i think i like it.

anyway. time for more exciting news. i ran another 5k this morning (completing my pair of weekend races) that finished on the 50-yard line of reliant stadium. after running a new personal record of 31:40 yesterday, i didn't really expect much today. well guess what--i ran the race in 30:09!!! i am soooooo excited. i don't really know how it happened. i ran the first half of the race with debbie before pulling about a minute and a half ahead of her, and she said we took off really quickly. i didn't look at my watch when we passed mile 1, so i don't know how quickly we ran that one. and there never was a marker for mile 2, so i really had no idea what kind of pace i was on. next thing i knew i passed the marker for mile 6 (the marker was for the 10k people), and knowing i had only 0.2 miles to go (since the races finished at the same spot) i glanced at my watch to find 28:40! i couldn't believe my eyes, but i picked up the pace a bit more for the home stretch and just barely missed finishing in under half an hour. maybe next time!

in any case, i'm excited.

and to top that, my plans for the afternoon are...cleaning my apartment. fun, fun. ugh.

the past 24 hours. highlights:

• a trip to the compaq center for an aeros (the houston minor league hockey team) game
• jason catching and then giving me an aeros t-shirt with the name of their sponsor--IKEA!!!--on the back ("you don't have to be rich. just smart.")
• a new personal record in a 5k! 31:40 this morning at the reindeer run!
• soccer game immediately after finishing a 5k, though we lost miserably
• haircut (it's quite short now)
• pedicure (ahhhhhhhh)
• mexican food with becca
• a trip to lowe's to get 1) a mini-christmas tree for my apartment and 2) a pretty wreath for my front door that appropriately was from a tree farm in...north carolina :)

lowlights:

• i am freaking tired. heading to bed early because we're running another race tomorrow morning that ends on the 50 yard line of reliant stadium...too cool to pass up.

now this is the kind of winter's day that i love. cold, but brilliantly sunny. it's beautiful outside.

it is not so beautiful in charlotte. i turned on my cell phone yesterday as i was leaving work and had a message from my parents. not only did they lose power (and thus, heat) in the big east coast ice storm, but my dad's car is likely totalled after he got hit in the driver's side door by a couple of mexican guys early yesterday morning. he has a lump on his head because the force of the impact tossed his head into the window and smashed the window.

he's ok, thank god. i thoroughly berated him for not wearing his seatbelt. he never wears his seatbelt, which really really bothers me. taking defensive driving this past week and seeing video of crash test dummies with and without seatbelts (dummy with seatbelt gets a nice thud but stays put, dummy without seatbelt has his head smash through the windshield and his neck snapped) only made me worry more. i don't know how i can convince him that it's worthwhile to wear a seatbelt, even if he finds it a bit uncomfortable.

anyway, after driving around all day in the car because it beat staying home in a cold house, my parents split up for the night. my mom spent last night at a friend's house, while my dad decided to "be a man" and tough it out in our heatless and lightless house. he told some story about how he was used to it, because when he was a kid there was snow in his bedroom that didn't melt. he said he'd just sleep under lots of covers, then get up and take a hot shower. fortunately for him we have a gas water heater. sigh. my dad is such a freak show.

i'm so sad that tom glavine is leaving the braves. there is no loyalty in baseball.

last night was the branch christmas party. i think it went well. becca and i were in charge, and i think we had a decent turnout. the gift exchange was humorous as well...especially when ray (our group lead) ended up with a frog downspout cover!

the party also reminded me how much i love my group. my branch (ascent/entry flight dynamics) is organized into 4 groups (ascent analysis, descent analysis, flight dynamics and landing support (fdo), and guidance and procedures (gpo)), and the party last night only proved that mine is by far the most social and the most compatible as a group.

there was no one at the restaurant last night from the gpo group, only 3 ascent analysis people, and 5 from the fdo/lso group. not only we were the only group that had every person there, but we were also the last people to leave. and we all get along so well... it seems like you're always seeing movies that portray office christmas parties as awkward affairs where you're forced to socialize with people you don't really care about (i'm thinking bridget jones's diary where she's doing drunk karaoke half-heartedly). that is never the case with our group. we have so much fun, and actually enjoy each other's company both in and out of the office. it's cool. it's a definite advantage to working where i do.

the past two mornings have made me realize how nice it is to have a garage. yesterday, when it was pouring rain, i didn't have to struggle with closing the umbrella and the car door at the same time while simultaneously trying not to let too much water in. today, when it was really cold outside, my car was still reasonably warm because it didn't spend the night outside.

yay garage.

i think that when becca wears festive/tacky earrings to work, she's just asking for me to tease her.

i totally want a camera phone. i am so susceptible to advertising. and george just clued me in on how to get t-mobile to give me the phone i want...because amazon has really good online rebates that will get me a camera phone for free with new activation. so i just wait till january when my contract is about to expire, call them up, ask for the phone i want, and then when they tell me they can't give it to me, i just threaten to cancel, explaining that i can get the phone i want for free online! then they give me what i want. it worked for george. :)

i found this cool 5k for us to do in january. it's the first ever rockets run (as in the houston rockets, the nba team), and running the race gets you not only the usual race t-shirt, but it also gets you a complimentary ticket to the rockets-nuggets basketball game that night! cool! i haven't been to an nba game since i went with courtney to see the lakers play the hawks in atlanta two years ago, and before that, not since junior high or something...when the hornets were still a new phenomenon and they hadn't moved to new orleans. ah well. silly hornets.

tonight is the branch christmas party. fun fun. except i still haven't bought my $10 exchange gift yet...help, i need ideas!! i was going to buy an amaryllis bulb because i am all in love with the amaryllis i am currently growing on my kitchen counter, but becca says that's a girl-specific gift. she is probably right. but speaking of my own amaryllis, i've decided that i'm going to call him ivan and take pictures of his growth and make a webpage to prove my plant-growing abilities (which are doubted by many, many people after a couple unfortunate episodes with cactii).

and that's all she wrote.

(10:17 a.m.)

i have many friends that also keep online journals. it's nice, because i always have a way to know something about what they're thinking. today, christina wrote something i really liked. (i always hesitate to link to my friends' pages for reasons i don't want to put into words, but then again, we all know that when you publish online, you forfeit control of who reads what you write. therefore, i decided to go ahead and give the link because i don't want to copy and paste her entire entry.) she has a way of putting her ideas into words that i just can't match. her entry from yesterday about relationships and dating in my generation is very much how i find myself feeling these days. the most astute of her observations in my opinion:

i think it is because my generation forms deep intimate relationships with friends - not physically intimate, but emotionally and socially intimate, so those needs are being filled by friends which were before being only filled by lovers. and so we fulfill our physical intimacy needs with random hook ups - with friends, with strangers.

it's raining cats and dogs outside today. really. i almost got hit by a beagle on the way in.

(hahahaha, i kill me!)

honestly though, it's nasty outside. i got up dark and early to go to fitness class, and found it pouring rain outside. i resisted the temptation to crawl back in bed by thinking "oh, but today is the last day of class and it's our fitness test, i have to go or greta will be disappointed, plus i want to see how much i've improved"...only to arrive at gilruth to find that greta wasn't there because her driveway was flooded and she couldn't get her car onto the road. sigh. oh well.

because it's rainy, and because i don't like to run on the treadmill (it gives me more shin pain than running on the road for some reason), i ended up being glad that i was talked into running with jason last night. he wanted to run 6 miles to make sure he'd be ok in the 10k he's running on sunday; i ran the first three miles with him to keep him on a slow pace, and then i walked another mile and a half while he ran another 3. he finished in just over an hour. he said his goal was to finish the 10k sunday in under an hour; he's going to have absolutely no problem with that. as for me, i'm running the 5k on sunday (both races are part of the same event), and i'm aiming for 31:30.

enough boring running babble. dull, dull, dull.

carter got a new camera yesterday but my curiosity is still unsatisfied, as he couldn't download any pictures last night to send me. stupid batteries.

jordan called last night to hear about stanford; jordan is a guy i know from tech who was a couple years behind me. he's graduating this month and trying to decide where he wants to go to grad school in the fall. i love stanford. i miss stanford.

i also got to talk to nick finally, since megan has gone and he no longer has visitors to distract him from my all-important calls. ;) he is recovering from being sick, thank goodness. on monday i got the following email from him that totally cracked me up:

I'm so sick...come take care of me. I want to come home. Freaking country with its freaking food that freaking made me freaking sick. I've been sitting here all day watching Dawson's Creek in French and I am bored to tears. GD.

i cannot wait to go visit him. we are going to have so much fun. and we are going to climb a mountain! and it was his idea to climb it! yayayayayay.

oh. i found out on sunday that i am too old for advent treats this year. mom decided that graduation was the cutoff. how disappointing.

(4:19 p.m.)

the idea of going to san francisco/stanford in may to visit people/run bay to breakers again has just occurred to me. half-joking, but half-serious. this could be quite fun.

so i tutored again this morning. it was all confusing at first because debbie (the woman in charge of tutoring, not my friend debbie) wasn't in her classroom, and i didn't know where diego's classroom was because she didn't show me last time and i didn't think to ask. i had no idea where debbie was, so i sat in her room and amused myself by making faces at the turtle.

after about 10 minutes i decided to walk back up to the office to ask if they knew where she was. turns out she was across the road at target with the choir (random!) but another woman was able to help me find diego by going to all the 4th grade classrooms and checking the student lists posted outside the doors. so we were about 20 minutes late getting started. he did some more multiplication, as well as a few words problems (in spanish--he had to translate for me, sheesh), and when he finished that, i made him do a few more problems with elevens and twelves. he didn't want to, but i convinced him. mwa ha ha. ;)

when we were done i gave him one of the space station expedition 6 stickers that cindy brought around the office yesterday. diego didn't know what nasa or the space shuttle or astronauts were. i have my work cut out for me!

anyway. it was fun. diego is a nice kid.

we're supposed to have softball tonight, but i think we may be rained out. it hasn't actually rained yet, but it was the foggiest i've ever seen outside this morning (i couldn't even see the kemah bridge until i was on it), and i don't think the weather is supposed to get any better; on the weather.com map, all i can see is various shades of green headed my way. the weird thing is that it's warm outside. after spending a year in and around san francisco, i associate fog with chill.

anyway. i'm being pretty boring this morning. maybe i'll have more to say later.

(12:23 p.m.)

i love the mirror in the women's bathroom here at work. i am convinced that it is slightly concave, making one appear thinner than they actually are. i want this mirror in my apartment. it makes me feel quite attractive.

it smells funky outside this morning. like wood smoke. only it's not coming from someone's fireplace, because it fills the air all over clear lake. i smelled it at gilruth this morning on my way to fitness class. i smelled it leaving my apartment after changing clothes. i smelled it walking in from the parking lot. and i may be imagining, but it seemed like it was more than fog all over the place. i dunno. something's weird.

i ran in the 5-mile jingle bell run downtown yesterday. i was really proud of myself for making it the whole way in...53:55. honestly, i think the course may have been just a tad long. i passed mile 1 in 10:32, mile 2 in 21:05 and mile 3 in 31:37. but didn't reach mile 4 until 43:30. and then finished at 53:55. now, count with me. miles 1, 2, 3 and 5 took about 10:30 each, and yet mile 4 randomly took me almost 12 minutes?? adding fuel to my fire is the fact that the course was a simple out and back course...which means that mile 3 and mile 2 should have been marked in the same place, just on opposite sides of the road. and they weren't.

anyway. i think the course was ~1/10 of a mile longer than advertised. but the run was fun. they gave us foam reindeer ears, which i wore of course, and jingle bells to tie on shoes, which i thought would be annoying, but turned out not to be.

there's a cnn story today about cell phones and driving that says the statistics quoted were based on an average cell phone user who uses 600 minutes a year. that's got to be a typo. i'd guess that the average cell phone user sucks up 600 minutes a month.

so it was really a very quiet weekend in my life. saturday i piddled around the apartment, watched my yellow jackets get trounced, talked on the phone, and did 2/3 of my online defensive driving course (that i have to finish by wednesday). yesterday i ran, ate, and did more defensive driving. i have one 40-minute lesson left. it is so annoying for three main reasons, 1) everything in the lessons is common sense, 2) the webpage requires you to spend a certain amount of time on each page and that amount of time is too long (i.e. i am required to spend a full minute on a page that contains 2 sentences, which leads to me sitting there twiddling my thumbs, because in order for the counter to work, my browser has to be the selected window, which means i can't even go check email or something), and 3) the questions are absurd. here's a sample question: "the speaker in the video was a a) woman, b) man, c) child." or "the color of the speaker's shirt was a) red, b) blue, c) black."

the sad thing is that i'm not even kidding. half the questions don't even cover defensive driving-related material; they just test you to make sure you watched the video. i missed one question because i was paying attention to the video and didn't remember whether the kid's name was a) jimmy, b) johnny, or c) joey. ugh. i'm so glad i only have 40 minutes left.

anyway. enough babbling.