I don't think I ask for much

It's not often that I'll post up something that's good for only a rant, but this is one such occasion. My morning has not been going well.

One could really say that the first two hours of my actual morning began at Katz's Deli (they never close!) over coffee, iced tea, onion rings, and disgusting fried pickles - the latter was not my order. This was a shining example of college life at its finest. The group project that we had more than a month to complete had literally been put off until the last 24 hours, so here we sat, discussing the intricacies of why we can't launch a skittle anywhere (let alone the distance we desired) with the electromagnet supplies we had bought for our trebuchet. In the company of friends? Yes. Fighting to stay awake? Also yes. See any real life drag queens? For the first time in my life... yes.

I was finally washed up and in bed by ~3:30, but no more than an hour later, my alarm clock went off. This is because I somehow thought it smart to get up before the roosters every morning and arrive at work between 6-6:30 a.m. As soon as I sat up, I was sick. There still isn't any indication what portion of my nutritious meal from three hours before was fighting back at me, but fight it did. This caused me to leave the house 15 minutes later than usual, but the rain caused me to be 45 minutes late to work. There was no wreck, no stalled car, and (this week) no plane crash onto the highway. Someone from a northern state once told me that Houston shuts down worse for a light drizzle than most of those cities do for snow. I believe it.

The absolute highlight of my day came when I finally felt well enough to force some breakfast. The healthiest option in the office vending machine appeared to be pretzels, and they were the last bag o' pretzels occupying their prime top row real estate. The last dollar I had went into the machine, but no pretzels came out. I pieced together one dollar more of nickels and dimes to invest my luck on the Veggie Crisps next door knocking them down. I now had a bag of veggie crisps and was two dollars lighter, but no pretzels. Out of vending-sized change, I borrowed 75 cents from Charlie so that I could persuade my pretzels down with the bag of Cheetos on the other side. Now I had Cheetos, Veggie Crisps, was two dollars lighter and seventy five cents in debt, and an empty spot in my heart for the bag of pretzels that refused to fall. With nothing behind them and nothing in front, and apparently no corners caught on the shelf, the pretzels literally appeared to be suspended in thin air. Mocking me. Is one bag of pretzels - never mind that I've already paid for them - too much to ask? Frustrated, I left the bag for whomever is able to earn their keep by getting them out, and enjoyed my 320 calories of cheesy, crunchy goodness.

There is a Toastmasters meeting at lunch today which I am (of course) speaking for, and the presentation of our small wooden wonder is scheduled for 4:15. Right now I'm skeptical whether I'll make it that far.

Editor's Update:
Not ten minutes after the initial blog post, I had the pretzels hostage in my desk drawer. Kelly (who probably figured I'd have a breakdown by the end of the day without my pretzels) went and literally shook down the vending machine until they fell out. Thank you, Kelly!

Post-Turkey Coma

It started out innocently (and productively enough). My Thanksgiving day was completely full of being here and doing that, running around and trying to make a difference. But after I got that first taste of turkey, it was all downhill from there.

I awoke early on Thanksgiving and dressed myself for a not-freezing-cold-but-definitely-not-warm November morning of being outside. I was signed up for the Turkey Trot 10k, and as much as I wanted to trot back into the comfort of my warm bed, there was no talking myself out of it. The catalyst behind this run/walk was my mother, who had asked my sister and myself to walk it with her. We did, shedding clothes left and right as we warmed up. By the time we got to the 4.5 mile mark, I wanted to run and took off toward the finish line. There were so few walkers on the 10k route (most were smart and did the 5k) that I was completely alone in my attempt to catch the other runners, save for a few teenage waterstation volunteers cheering me on. The Starbucks reward at the end of the tunnel was oh-so-worth it.

As soon as I got home and could shower, it was time to leave again and head for campus where I'd meet a friend and ride to the Convention Center to help feed the homeless. We had visions of being close to the people, of really making a difference. Carrying in the four assorted pies we had brought to hand out to the masses, we noticed that there seemed to be just as many volunteers as there were people to feed. Our "in touch" job ended up being to input volunteer data into the database on one of about a dozen terminals behind the volunteer desk. I didn't even have to wear a hairnet.

My evening dinner with the family was nice. I debated about bringing up the family blog that I had been planning for us to do, and put it off until Christmas when more of us could be together - such as the people who actually would participate in a blog in the first place. We had all the usual German-American things that one would expect, my beloved Oma noticed that I was looking skinny, and left brimmed over with leftovers that would surely fix that if I ate them all.

That was Thanksgiving day, and I've done not even the sum of that whole day's activities in the entire weekend I've had remaining since then. My biggest accomplishments include cleaning the bathroom, a load of laundry (of about four that need to be done) and not one, but two trips to Chick-Fil-A. And nap. I've napped both on Friday and Saturday, for no reason. I wasn't even necessarily tired; I was bored. I have plenty that I could do, of course, like my final Matlab homework from HELL 1331. I think that the tryptophan in the turkey had a more lasting effect this time.

Maybe going to the wedding shower I'll attend tonight will wake me up from my pseudo-slumber. Maybe not. They're serving Mexican food.

43 Things

43 Things is an experiment by The Robot Co-op where people can go to create a list of 43 goals that they want to accomplish in life. It's a very simple concept. New items can be entered in the text box or there is a constantly rotating list of links at the bottom to choose from. The larger the link, the more people have picked it.

For example:
Fall in love has been picked by 188 people.
Put a Democrat in the White House has been picked by two.

(Sorry, Dems, but I got a laugh out of that one. Don't worry, the anti-Dubya statements are still rampant on this site.)

Here's my list. As a note of irony, I created this list on Tuesday morning. By Tuesday evening, I had already accomplished one of the things on my list.

Possible New Career

I was told over the phone today (by a friend, mind you - complete strangers still don't have the nerve to talk to me this way) that I have 'a voice that should be doing a phone sex hotline for business people.' Sweet!

I wonder if I have some unrealized potential? I'm starting to think I need to explore the possibilities of this new career opportunity.

The really important thing I need to know first is this: are you slipping off your Cole Haans underneath your desk right now?

Updated 11/24/04: I was told that some people don't know what Cole Haans are. They're shoes. If I have to explain it, I guess it's not funny.

Color Me Literate

I heard about a cute - albeit utopian - art project today while listening to NPR. Yes, that NPR, the liberal public radio station. Once in a while I'll admit to my guilty pleasures.

The project, called "There Is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World," is an entire used bookstore of over 20,000 books arranged solely by the color of their spines. The 16 volunteers worked for ten hours overnight to convert the store to a rainbow spectrum of literature. My favorite part of the interview was the artist's vision (and I'm paraphrasing) that he ' tries to take something very ordinary and put it out of its structure, to see it a different way.' How neat is that?

When I pictured the reds melting slowly into greys on my rainy drive home, I thought about where my book would fit in along the wall. The conclusion was that it must depend on when I wrote it. If I wrote the book today, I would color the spine the exact deep hue of confident blue that filled the sky at that 5:30-ish drivetime moment. If I had written it yesterday, it may have resided next to another pink bestseller. Without getting too philosophical, I wonder what color my book will be tomorrow. Right now, I'm hoping for red.

Time for me

One of the best things to come out of the last month or so is the extended time I have for myself. This seems a little strange, because of the constant litany of complaints about my schedule and its relatively skimpy allowance for down-time. It seems as if the last couple of months have been a slow crescendo of academic stress that culminated in an exam over Matlab concepts last Saturday. The extended time theory comes in when I stop and think, How much worse would this have been if I still had a boyfriend? Especially one to whom I often gave more consideration than I did to myself.

The effects of my newfound freedom have mostly been revealed in the improved amount of time that I'm able to spend studying (and therefore have improved grades), the time I'm spending talking to and meeting up with friends (I'm going out with my friend April, who's coming in from Austin, in about an hour), and excitedly, in my physical well-being. I'll elaborate on the last one.

I'm almost embarrassed to say that even though I'm still 15 pounds away from my goal, I am an entire 13 pounds lighter than I was in July. Sure, part of this is because of the running that I was doing before my schedule became so prohibitive. Part of it is also due to my much-improved eating patterns; though I hate it, exercise alone won't get me there. But an additional factor must be the little bit of running I've been doing lately and the Winsor Pilates that I've been doing nearly every morning. At first I thought that a 20 minute video couldn't really sculpt and lengthen the muscles as much as they claimed. To my surprise, however, some of those moves were downright hard. The seal, which makes anyone attempting it look like a complete imbecile, is something that I'm still working to perfect. It all pays off when a co-worker stops me at the coffee bar to tell me that I "look gr-reat," when I have extra room in a pair of jeans that hadn't previously fit for about a year, or when I'm approached by a cute firefighter/petroleum engineer at the cyber cafe where I go to study.

When the breakup first happened, one of my co-workers advised me to take this time to do the things for myself that I never got to or wouldn't take the time to do. I'm so glad that I took his advice. I didn't think a month ago that I'd be sitting here a happier person with a more enthusiastic outlook about my future (and, ahem, a slightly tighter abs), but it's amazing how time can change things.

I am more convinced than ever that everything we go through is all a part of God's plan.*

*A note to my Agnostic friends: I don't expect this to change your minds, but give it some thought.

Where's my book deal?

Several times recently I have noticed authors with relatively similar experiences to mine who are barely older than I and who already have bestselling books, or book deals, of their very own. This makes me wonder, could I ever write a book?

The first example is one that I'm currently reading, The Devil Wears Prada. Lauren Weisberger, who graduated from Cornell in 1999, is probably no more than 28 years old and a very entertaining writer. I've never had such an outrageously satanic boss, but there are about a million things I could say about being one of the only women in a seriously male-dominated field.

The other came to my attention when I logged on to Blogger this evening; a book which was inspired by [gasp!] a blog. Breakup Babe, whose book deal with Random House was recently announced, was able to take her experience of a broken heart and turn it into a profitable venture. Let's see, have I recently had any life events that compare to this? Digging through my blog archives, it looks like I have. Too bad I didn't spill out more of the details to all of my (two) readers - I might have had a book deal by now. I will give her credit for being a far better writer than me, but seriously, how much does style count for?

If there are any publishers out there searching for the next up-and-coming author, I'm your woman. Most of my writing experience is technical and editorial work, but as of late I'm looking to expand. I would happy to provide samples, such as my recent publication of INtools and SP3D Integration, or to highlight my contributions to SmartPlant Electrical Training Manual - both worthy and exciting in their own genres. You may also refer to the entire content of my blog, which I provide to the public free of charge. For now.

Getting in the spirit

It was bound to happen, but I was surprised that it came around only fourteen days into November. I heard my first Christmas song today, walking past a display of similarly festive CDs in my Target-wide quest for a pilates mat. "I'll be Home for Christmas" was blaring, not subtly mind you, from the speakers in the display. I stood there for a minute and looked at it strangely. "I can't believe you haven't started your Christmas shopping yet - get some stuff while you're here," seemed to be the message they were trying to send.

Don't get me wrong, I usually love Christmas, despite the requisite stress and expenses that come with it. I just wonder if the stores have ever stopped to think that the 'less is more' philosophy may be effective with seasonal adornments as well.

Social Time

For those (two) of you who check and read the blog faithfully, hoping to find a new tidbit of information and lately finding none, I apologize. In the past two weeks I have had almost nothing to write about, except for the election. Here's what I've been up to that nobody wants to hear about:

- Being sick (last weekend through about Tuesday - went to the doc and got antibiotics, which always makes everything better).
- Matlab project.
- Planning and executing a Women's Panel for the SWE student section in which I'm an officer.
- Composing and mailing corporate fundraising letters for the same organization.
- Excessive amount of work for my "easy" online Drama course, including renting movies, reading entire (short) books for a weekly assignment, and the one assignment that turned out to be really fun: interviewing a high profile play director (and the dean of the school of theatre at UH). I now rest my assumptions that online classes will be more convenient.
- Design project for my Intro to Engineering class (okay, so we have almost nothing accomplished but our first team meeting is this evening).
- The bi-weekly Philosophy exam online, for which I didn't have time to read 25 pages but somehow managed to strategize a 90% on the test.
- Studying for my Matlab exam, worth 23% of my final semester grade.

I'll elaborate on the last one. I'm a part of an informal study group of people who are all in the same class, between 3 and 5 people at any given time. The exams are on Saturday mornings at 9:00 a.m. and each of us walked in there yesterday with many long hours of preparation and feeling like we owned the place. I had fully completed the exams from the last two semesters that we were given for practice, and looked through one from 1999, and my groupmates had done the same. Each was similar in material, and we all knew it inside and out. I honestly felt like with a little luck, I could earn 100% on that exam.

The transformation in our attitudes when we walked out was almost comical. The entire exam, up to (but not including) the last page, was almost exactly as I expected. I'm confident that I did well on that part. With 10 minutes left, I flipped to the last question. The description of the problem alone consumed almost the entire page, and it was full of equations and symbols we'd never seen - I wouldn't even say greek symbols, it was more like arabic. The entire correct solution, in the form of Matlab programming code, must have been forty lines long. Just to read the problem took about 4 minutes, another several to understand it, and I just started writing after that in order to have something down on paper. This problem would, in reality, require up to 30 minutes to complete, and it was worth 18 points. Fully three quarters of the people who began the exam did not finish in the time alotted. Those who did may just as well have been from the other class who was taking their test in the same lecture hall where we were. My entire group, all of us in the group who didn't finish (but keeping in mind that we're all easily in the top half of the class) walked out of the exam room feeling utterly defeated.

In order to ease our post-exam depression, we trekked over to the University Games Room to play some pool. One of the guys was easily running the table, but none of us were playing phenominally. After he left, I won the last game with a banked shot on the 8 into the opposite corner and 5 of the opponent's balls left on the table. Pool makes me feel great when I'm winning. The couple of Miller Lites and full-fat pizza we had later didn't hurt, either.

What's significant about this pool excursion is that it was the first time in about two weeks that I can remember having time to go out and be social - to actually see people in a non-work, non-study setting. It was almost like for a couple of hours I had my own life back.

It's election day!

I arrived at my polling place - a middle school nearby - at 6:30 this morning to vote. About an hour later, I was out of there and had used the 'new' e-Slate electronic voting machine. The sticker I got to wear around all day touting my polling prowess made it worth the whole ordeal.

While the election coverage still rolls in, I found it appropriate to consult my favorite government official about the election and who he thinks will win. He can't say for sure what the result will be, but it's very clear who he voted for.


First Dog, Barney Bush

I got to wondering, when I checked out the first dog's most recent Photos of the Day, what his platform and issues are. Everyone knows that Laura Bush is a big proponent of education, and that Lynne Cheney talks about the importance of history and historical education. So, what does Barney care about? It must be something that's important to the President, but not enough so that he'll spend his own time focusing on it. My thoughts are somewhere along the lines of animal / environmental relations. Kelly thinks that I think about the coolest shi... uh, stuff. I guess if that's what you call it, sure.

Want to read more about Barney? Visit his web site!