It Tastes Like Goblin Piss

The new job is going very well. I still feel very out of place and strange, but the first couple weeks of any job are the "What have I done?" weeks. I'm easing in, however, and adjusting to the new environment. My day Thursday, for example, consisted of my going in a half hour early, turning on my computer, and converting some software documentation to HTML. I finished that quickly, so I browsed through the documentation that's already been done to make observations about the style. I noticed that images were presented in tables, so I changed all the images in my project. Then I noticed side notes were written differently, so I changed that... etc. Basically I was trying to make it identical in format, and I took notes so I could contribute to a style guide for our company's documentation.

After about 5 hours, my manager checked in for the first time and asked if I needed anything or had any questions. It's so strange not to be constantly watched at work, you know? Anyway, I showed him the operations section of the documentation and pointed out that it looked really ugly. After asking if there was another way he wanted to present the information, he took the controls and I watched. We created a table that would work pretty well, so I spent the remaining hours converting most of the operations to our table. I didn't quite finish.

As I was about a 15 minutes away from packing up and leaving, my coworker came in and started chatting about school. He has the same major as I do, only he's not at all happy with the way English degrees are done in Utah. I agreed with his argument, but added that while the required classes are useless, I have enjoyed them nonetheless, haha. We also talked about movies and stuff too for a while. All in all, I had about a 45-minute conversation with my new coworker. It was so nice! I'm still new and alone, but the environment there is super friendly, and I'm sure the newness feeling won't last too long. I love it. :)

Is It Really Only Tuesday? Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious...

Hooooly freakin' mother of all weird weeks! That's all I'm gonna say.

Why I Plan on Always Having Cash on Hand

Meet England. England is a pig who decided to dress up as a skeleton for Halloween. I found him at Target last week. Any guesses what England is for? Well, I bought this adorable little guy to store my change in hopes that someday (a few years from now), I will be able to afford a trip to England. Now, before you go feeling sorry for England for his becoming obsolete sometime in the future, allow me to explain how this works... yes, it is absolutely true that England will no longer be England once this goal is reached; however, the pig, the adorable personality, will still exist. He will simply bear a new name. Perhaps New Zealand or Mexico. But for now, this is England.

I already have a few dollars' worth of change in him, but I realized as I put the change inside that I don't seem to accumulate it as fast since debit/credit entered my life. There's a simple solution: always carry cash. When I think about it, it's actually a pretty wise move on the whole. Besides filling up England more quickly, using cash as much as I can will benefit me financially too. 1) Carrying large amounts of cash terrifies me, so I probably won't have more than $50 on me at one time. While I'm not a huge spender, having a definite limit right there and countable at the store will absolutely keep me conscious of impulse buys. 2) Getting cash is inconvenient. Unless I want to pay a few extra dollars, I have to go to the bank to get it. The easiest way, I think, is to take out $50 cash every time I deposit a paycheck and that will be my allowance for 2 weeks. Wow, insta-budget!

England... you have just simplified my life as well as brightened my room and heightened my chances of cultural exposure. Thank you.

The Great American Underwear Famine of 2005

This one's for you, Elise! I have some of these old conversations saved up, this is one I had late at night with Dary Fairy... enjoy!

Dary: there must be an underwear demand or something
Dary: haha
Me:The nation's underwear supply is going swiftly down, we're all gonna die of this underwear... ah.... famine.
Dary: underwear famine...
Dary: haha
Me: Well, apparently that's hte problem! Underwear's flying off shelves to make it into peoples' storage room in case of disaster, and when the world's supply runs out, they'll have more!
Dary: "Did you build up your emergency underwear supply? I hear it's gonna be a rough year.."
Me: *suddenly hears STar Wars theme in head, as if the explanation of the underwear famine is going up a starry screen in yellow letters*
Me: we're not sure we'll last through winter!
Dary: i want an emergency storage supply thing! lol
Dary: haha!
Me: We're just gonna have to go without sometimes...
Dary: ew
Dary: lol
Me: No more of that labeled Monday through Friday underwear, these are desperate and terrible times! I feel grieved my children have to live through it...
Me: Or WILL they? *sniffs*
Dary: now you only get two pair, one that says "Monday thru Saturday" and the other is special for Sunday and holidays
Me: HAHA!
Me: This is your dress-up underwear, so don't soil them.
Dary: haha
Dary: the American Underwear Famine of 2005
Me: Dress shirts, ties, slacks, and proper dress underwear are required to enter.
Me: Haha!
Dary: "We have to ship emergency underwear supplies in from Europe and Asia!"
Dary: HAHA!!
Me: No, no, the GREAT American Underwear Famine of 2005.
Dary: "M'am, can I please check to see if you have appropriate underwear to enter this restaurant?"
Dary: that sounded bad... haha
Me: We have just received word from our friends in the Middle East that turbans make good back-up for emergencies.
Me: Oh, good land....
Me: Yeha, that was relaly bad!
Dary: haha
Dary: it ended up sounding worse typed out than it did in my head
Me: Haha! I hate it when that happens!
Me: "Excuse me, this is the PROM! and you are clearly wearing cheapo, white Hanes. It's easily noticed, due to the lack of a proper ruffle..."

And then we started talking about other random things. The end!

Start Wearing Purple!

So... I love living with Buster and Emelie. The language is a bit colorful, but, my crap, it's funny! I'm posting a list of hilarious moments/quotes from the last few months.

Sass Pills
Buster: I took a lot of sass pills today, it's time for someone else to get crap. And you're not going to sleep tonight, you know why? Because I'm going to say "let's have a booger contest!" *sniff sniff sniff* and whoever can get a booger out first wins! And I will get a booger on your face, and that's how you know that you lose. Because you have a booger on your face!

Emelie and I one night while Buster was at work:
Me: I should go to bed... should I read Great Expectations, play Final Fantasy II, or watch Be Kind Rewind first?
Emelie: Let the cats decide!
Me: "Let the Ring-bearer decide!"
Emelie: That's exactly what I was thinking when I said that!
Me: Okay, Gandalf!
Emelie: Gandalf isn't here, Mrs. Torrance.
Me: Buster would be so proud.

A conversation I overheard:
Emelie: For your day off tomorrow, I have one request.
Buster: What's that?
Emelie: Fix the vacuum!
The phone conversation I heard about later:
Buster: So I fixed the vacuum. I used it in our room for two minutes and it started smoking again. I stabbed the front of it with the screwdriver and took it outside. I didn't just beat the s*** out of it, I f***ing MURDERED it!

Nertz 1.0
Buster: Wife, I don't care what planet you're from, that s*** don't fly!

Overheard in the Kitchen
Emelie: I love that little guy! He's retarded though!
Buster: He has brain sammich.

Cooking Dinner Together
Buster: One of you needs to pick the movie.
Me: I can't, I'm stirring these onions.
Buster: Wife?
Emelie: If I were the little red hen that could, I wouldn't be chugging up this hill making bread all by myself!
Me: HUH?
Emelie: It made sense in my head.

Nertz 1.3
Buster: Our language gets a little out of hand when we play...
Me: It's awesome! My favorite curse Buster says is effing shiz-a**... ARSE! DANG it!
Jess: I'm telling Mom!
Buster: I guess you can't do a triple-whammy...

On the Subject of Church
Buster: CHUHCH? I haven't been theh in MUMFS!

As Archie Nibbled Our Toes
Me: Archie bit mey...
Buster: Ouch. Ouch! OUCH, Archie! Ooooooouch! Archieeee!
Me: Ha... Archie bit mey. And that really hurt, Archie, and it's still hurting!

Waltz Back to Me, Oh My Sweet Ann Marie

Monday is the start of my final semester! I'm so excited to be done and start doing something with my life. I do have five goals in mind as relates to the semester though...

1) Be social! I made a ton of friends at SLCC, but I've been different with the U. It's time for me to stop being shy and enjoy what time I have left with these people!

2) Stay on top of homework. That's obviously always a goal, but seriously... even when I'm super busy with projects, I really do waste a lot of time. If I were to concentrate and do my homework with every spare moment, I would actually have a lot of free time left over.

3) Work out and eat right! I tend to neglect my health when school's going and I can't do that. I need to - once I recover from paying tuition - buy some healthy snacks for my backpack and most importantly, NOT indulge when I get home. I need to take an hour or so after getting home from the gym or work to unwind, shower, or whatever, before I think about dinner so I don't eat away the day's stresses.

4) Keep on reading. I got through 4-5 books in my very brief break and I LOVED it. Loved it, loved it, loved it! I need to make time for actual productive leisure instead of the usual internet surfing as a means of procrastination.

5) Apply for one job or send one resume per week. This is self-explanatory... basically I want a real job as soon as possible. I figure as long as I'm even just actively searching throughout the semester, I'll be on track.

Because of goal #1, hopefully I won't be AWOL or anything this semester. Just keep your fingers crossed for now that this won't be a difficult one. :)

Outside There's a Boxcar Waiting

I love being crafty! My schedule has been much more manageable the past couple weeks, so I've been doing a little more of it. I decided to post pictures of a couple things I've done. I realize they're not the best, but I did have a blast experimenting, and I don't think they turned out too bad considering. :)

This is a CD case I made for my cousin's birthday. It took quite a bit of time for how little it is, but it was pretty fun when I wasn't picking out stitches. Basically I picked out a main fabric (the brown sparkly stuff with pink flowers that you can only see on the far right), then chose the other fabrics from scraps Walmart had. I ironed some really thick, double-sided interfacing to the main fabric, then sewed the flaps on. I ironed on the other piece of main fabric to the other side of the interfacing. The border is just some pink bias tape I picked up. Voila! I'm thinking about doing these for Christmas...

Here's the back. You can see the main fabric a little better here... oh, and the elastic that holds it to the visor, durrrr... hehe. :)


Anyone who knows me knows that I love to cook... and experimenting in the kitchen is one of my favorite things to do! Usually I wind up doing desserts, but tonight I happened to be making dinner, and I wanted to get some use out of my spring form pans. So I finally unpacked them, washed them, and used them for the first time in Riverton (and for the first time got some other use out of them besides cheesecake). The idea was to make a Chicago deep-dish pizza:

For the record, I do realize this is entirely too much pizza for three people. One would have been perfect, or even a little much, but the one closest to the camera is made with gluten free crust. That's prolly why it looks all funky. Though I guess the normal one isn't much better, it has a massive tumor (I totally ate it too, and it was delicious. Mmm, tumor...).

Here's the inside. There's the bottom/side layer of crust, that holds in the sausage, peppers, onion, mushrooms, tomatoes and most of the cheese. Then there's a layer of crust on top of that. On top of that crust I put the sauce, a thinner layer of cheese, then pepperoni and olives. Yeah, this is basically a heart attack waiting to happen. Was it worth the 6-mile run? Aaaaaabsolutey! Next time I think I'll experiment a little more - maybe stuff it with mushrooms and spinach and use alfredo sauce somewhere? We shall see!