Hump Day
I could be sitting up at the nice, AC'd MR Research Center right now, but I'm not. Sadly, we had to cancel today's subject. SO, instead of chatting away with the MR techs for an hour and a half, I am in my office doing all the work that I would rather avoid. You know, the busy work that piles up, the tasks that each take only a few minutes but pile up to the point of requiring hours to complete.
I actually have a major project to tackle, but all this stupid little crap keeps getting in the way. I start to read the papers I need to read (and trust me, reading scientific journal articles takes every bit of concentration I have) and someone asks me a question, or gives me something stupid to do that only takes 5 minutes, but totally breaks my concentration.
I would go the library and sit and read for the next 2.5 hours of work, but then I would be likely to anger someone who happened to be looking for me (undoubtedly just to do something stupid that could wait anyway), and who would just assume I had taken off early and gone home.
So, I've been trying to come up with some exciting, interesting, bizarre job that I could get (or career that I could pursue). Things I've come up with that might make me happy being:
- the person who gets to name products (like lipsticks and fast food sandwiches)
- the person who gets to try out all the cool new products before they hit the market
- the person who gets to travel around the world, staying in hotels (or camping out), eating at restaurants, seeing attractions and then rating them for some magazine or tour book or something.
- the tour guide of the Ducky Boat
Actually, one of the jobs that I had in college that was the most interesting and the most fun (and where the hours passed the fastest) was when I gave tours of the
Windmill on Windmill Island. I got to meet people from all over the world, the people I had to work with actually WANTED TO BE THERE, I got to be moving around, talking to people all day - it was just fun. Do I want to make a career of giving tours? No, not really. But I'm also coming to realize I don't want to make a career doing what I'm doing now. I'm in no hurry to settle into a longterm career though. In fact, I can't really do so in the next two years anyway, knowing that in 2-3 years, I will be moving out of the Pittsburgh area. SO, now is the time to have some fun, crazy job, right?
Any suggestions???
As promised
Toronto stories, at last!
One of these days, I really will put pictures online so that I can post them here, but I'm lazy and currently have no computer at home. Add these two things together and you get no pictures.
Anyway, as promised, here are the highlights of our trip to Toronto:
FRIDAY: We went to the
zoo. I love zoos. One could even argue that I have a mild to moderate obsession with zoos. To make the zoo experience that much more meaningful, this one had a moose.
We found a Nikon 7.1 mexapixel digital camera on the ground. I am proud that I figured out how to change the language to English (from Japanese) just by looking at all the little quasi-descript symbols in the menues. Sadly, the battery is now dead, as we have no cables to accompany this camera yet. :( However, this shall soon be remedied. I think that this camera probably cost more than we spent on our entire trip (*note* I do sympathize with the loser of said camera, but there was no way we were tracking her down to get it back to her).
We went to a club (the name eludes me) to watch some live bands play as part of a festival going on that weekend. Probably about 30 venues had live music from Thurs-Sunday, having 3-5 bands play each day. One of the bands, called "Kids These Days" was pretty awesome (we bought a cd).
SATURDAY: It was bloody miserable outside that day. Humid, hot, oppressive. That morning we went out for a breakfast buffet at the "Golden Griddle", a block or two from our hotel. Sitting in the window, eating our breakfast, I glance out to the street to see 5-6 middle aged (in their 40's or 50's, maybe) men riding their bicycles past the restaurant. After a few moments of observation (and one of hte guys standing up to pedal), I realize that they're all naked. Ah, the interesting sights you see in a city where public nudity is not illegal.
We went out later to the University of Toronto campus and walked around. After being out for several hours in the heat, we went a movie theater and saw the film
"Palindromes", which was enjoyable (from the man who directed
"Welcome to the Dollhouse" and
"Happiness").
That night we once again ventured out to see some live music, this time to a different bar. This place, called Rancho Relaxo, was pretty cool and the first band we saw was great. However, it was on the second floor with NO AC (and very few fans), and people crammed in nearly wall to wall. Needless to say, it was HOT. After an hour, when the second band came on and starting some hardcore sucking, we left, back to the AC of our hotel room.
SUNDAY: I can't remember. I know we went to the
Royal Ontario Museum, which was fabulous. We walked around downtown a lot, ventured out to Queen Street, went into a few little shops - just explored. It was not as oppressive as Saturday, but still REALLY hot and humid out. Eventually we ended up back at our hotel with takeout pizza to watch
Family Guy. As it was our last night and we had to be up early in the morning (Jon was flying home and I had to go set up for the conference), we stayed in and ordered a movie (a bad one I'm too embarassed to name, but it was perfect for our tired, brainless state of being at the time).
MONDAY: Conference stuff. I ended up killing time in the afternoon by going up in the
CN Tower, getting lunch there, and reading for several hours before coming back down. That night I presented my poster for the first time, then headed back to the hotel with some takeout Sushi, which was AWESOME. Read a lot, relaxed, tried to de-stress for the poster presenting the next day (no one talked to me this night, but I knew I wouldn't be so lucky tuesday morning).
TUESDAY: Presented my poster in the morning, which went well. I spent some time in the afternoon perusing the other posters. Went back to the hotel and ran in the exercise room (which was unbearably hot). Took a shower and headed out to go to a baseball game ($2 tickets on Tuesday night at
Rogers Center). Got home late and grabbed a slice of pizza.
WEDNESDAY: slept in late, went running, showered. Had excellent Sushi for lunch and then headed out to Castle Loma. If you're in Toronto, check it out - it's worth seeing. Sadly, I got there an hour before they closed, so I had to rush my visit a bit (though it's still doable in an hour). By this point in the week, I was ready to be home. Hanging out for three days by myself was enough. I went back with some Chinese food (yum!) and watched the baseball game, read a bit, and went to sleep. Left the next morning.
THE END.
(okay, so there weren't many exciting stories. The naked guys on the bikes, perhaps. Oh, and we saw some guy dressed as batman with an entourage of other guys where matching shirts. Their shirts had a picture of a cartoon guy who was REALLY WELL endowed. Yeah, that's about the best I can give you...sorry.)
Top 100...
Top 100 Movie QuotesSome of these I understand, but "Nobody put Baby in the corner."??????? Yes, this is MEMORABLE, but this is also up there for THE
WORST movie quote of all time! Anyway, this is the Top 100 list for 2005. Below are the links to the Top 100 lists for the past few years.
Top 100 Songs from Movies Top 100 Heroes and VillainsMy favorite of these is Man from Bambi as a villain. :)
Top 100 Passions"...of the Christ" was not one of them either!
Number of these movies that I've seen:
24Top 100 ThrillsI am VERY happy that "Blood Simple" made this list. FABULOUS movie that most people haven't seen.
What the hell is "Titanic" doing on this list????
Number of these movies that I've seen:
45Top 100 LaughsWhat about "The Big Lewbowski"? They had "Raising Arizona" and "Fargo", but come on??? Give props for The Dude!
Number of these movies that I've seen:
27Top 100 StarsTop 100 MoviesSadly, I HAVE seen "Shane". I HATE that movie.
Number of these movies that I've seen:
33
one day, i'll post again!
I have so many stories from Toronto, and no time to write! Not having a computer at home is getting to be very trying. BLARGH!!!
This is short one, but hopefully it will suffice for today, because it's all I've got!
Ways to Annoy Me on Mornings when I've only gotten 3 Hours of sleep the night before:
1. Intermittently use capital and lower case letters to begin words in a sentence. dammit!
2. Don't get up out of your seat when I have to get off the bus, forcing me to crawl over you.
3. Be the slow guy at Kiva Han so I can't get a morning hot chocolate fix and have to get blue fingers while typing at work (seriously, so cold in here, my fingers are blue!).
4. Be the bus driver who won't stop even though I'm AT THE STOP RUNNING AT THE BUS AND YOU HAVEN'T EVEN GOTTEN INTO THE FUCKING INTERSECTION YET!!!
5. Think I have ANY clue what you're talking about when I only slept for 3 hours. See the blank stare? See the glazed eyes? No one is home this morning - must keep things SIMPLE.
And this one is a bonus from a couple of nights ago:
Glare at me and my friends for no reason during a baseball game just because you don't understand our free spirits. :) Seriously though, we weren't doing anything unruley or annoying. I think she just didn't understand why we were laughing and repeatedly saying "popcorn fetus". I'm not sure I understand either, come to think of it....
I have returned...
I am back, arriving at work to a desk full of crap to do. *sigh* Just one day today and a short day tomorrow (stupid working on saturday, *grumble*).
Will have much to tell later, but don't have the time now. Computer at home is still deep in its coma.
Monday, I will not be working as it is my birthday, and I'm going to treat myself to day at the spa with the Coco. WOO HOO!!!
More Tuesday (if not sooner...).
Hello....annoying, dubious pause.....
Hah, hah, just kidding! Comrade Scha-lin is not in right now. If you'll leave your name, number, and a brief message, she'll get back to you as soon as she's done ridding the world of Canadians. **BEEP!!!**
*side note* I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE answering machine messages like this one. HATE THEM!! HATE THEM HATE THEM HATE THEM HATE THEM HATE THEM!!
**side note again** I'm really not eradicating Canadians, nor do I want to. In fact, I'm hoping to make some fast friends to rescue me when the next JaggerBush finds his way into office. My thankfulness that the JaggerBush has no sons is
just about enough to make me shout out a great big "AMEN!". Just about. Not quite though.
***final side note*** will return next Friday (the 17th). Cheers.
Random notes for Hump Day
I am addicted to Nantucket Nectars Half & Half.
I just can't stop drinking it.
I squashed my banana this morning. Put it in my bag to go to work, took it out all brown and squishy. I must have had it next to something cold to turn it that brown that quickly. I have yet to be brave enough to try it.
Tonight, we migrate to Cleveland, OH to see
The Pixies. True, they will be in da burgh tomorrow night, but we will be on a turbo prop jet flying outta da burgh n at to toronto.
See above (about Toronto).
Plans while in Toronto (in no real order):
Go to the zoo.
Eat seafood (i WILL be missing my fish sandwich, after all).
Go running.
Hottub.
Walk around and explore a lot.
Do whatever we feel like doing.
(jon goes home)
Present a poster at a conference where everyone knows what they're talking about EXCEPT ME (seriously folks, this is not just self-doubt talking here. These people are experts and I barely can explain what I did to get the results we're presenting).
Go out to a bar party with a bunch of people who are at a conference for the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (this could be interesting...)
Fly home.
Any suggestions?
Just one of those days
Woke up, went for a great run. Feeling good.
Walked the dog. Started having difficulty seeing. Aura starting. BLARGH!
Got home, took drugs, buried face for half an hour.
Showered, left for work.
Feeling miserable. Hate fucking migraines.
Feeling a little better now than this morning. Finally ate something for lunch.
Had to listen to a really loud woman talk about her trip to Italy where she was "so filled up with the spirit" that she couldn't even eat lunch. She also told her friend a story about a person on the trip losing her passport, and then having it returned to her moments after everyone got together and prayed about it.
Don't get it. It seems very contradictory to me that people can believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful god and at the same time believe that praying to said god to RETURN A FUCKING PASSPORT will be effective.
Back at work now, hoping i'll get out a bit early so i can go home and sleep for an hour or so. hopefully this will aid the passing of the migraine. especially since we are SUPPOSED to go the game tonight....
fingers crossed (see, i can be superstitious too!). :)
If you don't like the word 'fuck', don't read this post.
It's kind of cold and very rainy out today. I got up with LHPJ and ran 4 miles this morning, which makes me feel pretty good about myself. I got a late start to work and stood around waiting ten minutes for a bus before a coworker pulled up to the stoplight. I tried to knock on her window without scaring the crap out of her. It was nice not taking the bus with all the wet, crabby people. I got into work and was STARVING, so I ate my leftover mexican pizza (yum!!) for breakfast. oh so good for me!!
And then it happened. I checked my email. There I found a classic, beautifully crafted rant from Coco-nan the Coco-er. There is something satisfying in haveing someone share a rant about something that PISSES EVERYONE OFF. It's cathartic in much the same way as breaking something (like a bottle in the street), but without the mess.
A personal favorite moment in the rant, regarding dealing with customer service (doesn't matter for what - I think we all have had this experience), if I may quote:
I made 10 calls during each of
which a robo-bitch informed me that they were "busy with other customers
and sorry for the wait and call back and no you can't hold on because
we're hanging up on you now." 24 hour tech support my achin' ass!
Everytime the recording comes on I yell "Fuck you!" into the phone and give
their website the finger cuz, you know, that helps.
Fuck, fuckety, fucktardified, motherfuckers!
*sigh* Moments like this make me happy to live in a world where one can create and use such expressive words such as "fucktardified". :)
And as a thank you to Coco, I am going to encourage everyone to give the finger to the next website that pisses you off. Or to the next person that tells you (GEM!) that "semen is a baby!". :)
Happy friday everyone.
Ways to annoy me early in the morning
1. Take up two seats on the bus when people are cramming into the aisles like sardines.
2. Push your way in front of me to get on the bus first, even though you just got to the stop and I've been standing here for ten minutes, and THEN proceed to take the last available seat (not counting the one occupied by someone's backpack (see above)).
3. Be blogger
4. Mow your lawn at 6:45 am (this didn't happen THIS morning, but our neighbors on BOTH sides of us and the guy who mows our lawn all choose to do so right after sunrise). Those last 15 minutes of sleep are precious, dammit!!
5. Make a really long line at Kiva Han so that I can't stop and pick up my energy sustaining beverage of the morning (typically, hot chocolate, though as the weather warms up we'll be moving into Iced Mocha season).
