When I Was In College Everyone Was Sooo Stressed

Posted on April 18, 2006 by Frog

When I was in college, specifically, senior year, everyone I was friends with seemed to think they were so very stressed. Looking back on that time, I seem to remember being irritated that everyone said that, and now I know what stress is and we were STUPID. I don’t care that many of my friends were honor student brainiacs (I hung out with them but I wasn’t an honor student). We were STUPID. When the stress in our lives was all about whether or not to go to free taco night on Wednesdays or stay in and drink, well, that’s not really stress, is it?

What I consider stress now:

  • I’ve totally changed my mind about going back to grad school. I really think I might and considering I’ve had nearly a whole week of motivation while thinking about grad school, I should probably go with it. Who knows when I’ll feel like this again. The problem is I won’t be able to officially start until January 2007. The other problem? Being accepted into the program.

  • I finished my portion of our group project and I’ve spent lots of time trying to get the two people in the group we’ve been calling “blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things” to actually do their work only to find out they are worse than lame so I’ve been spending time editing and re-writing their portions. Because, really, I have nothing better to do with my time.
  • I’ve watched the planets align and can now officially start working as an e-learning wonk. I have twenty-four gazillion things to learn, but for the last five or six years what I’ve really wanted to do was learn how to design courses for online deployment and now I’m finally going to spend part of my work day learning how to and actually doing that. The other part of my work day will be spent amazing my co-workers with all the crazy mad computing skillz and figuring out what we’re going to do for lunch. Believe me, the lunch decision takes time, energy and serious effort.
Posted in General Spleen Venting | Comments Off

One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor

Posted on April 16, 2006 by Frog

Yesterday we went over to my sister’s to help with a wiring problem they were having. This week they had some work done to their kitchen and now have a new floor, new dishwasher and a new table and chairs. The better-half switched out some wiring so the two-way switch for the kitchen light worked on both switches.

Their kitchen looks great but it made me look at the lousy vinyl we have in a back hallway with even more disgust than usual. So, today, I mopped it. And when that didn’t make any difference, I got out the bleach spray and a scrubby and cleaned the floor the hard way…on my hands and knees.

I still hate the floor but at least now it’s cleaner. I have new floor envy.

Posted in Generic Thoughts | 1 Comment

What A Little Moonlight Can Do

Posted on April 15, 2006 by Frog

This picture is from Wednesday night. The clouds were moving pretty quickly but this is a fairly accurate depiction of our night sky.

We’re serving Steak Diane tomorrow for Easter dinner. A traditional favorite, no?

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How do you like them apples?

Posted on April 13, 2006 by Frog

In class tonight we got our second paper assignments back. There are 14 people in my class. 2 got As and the rest Cs. The first 5 minutes or so of the class was how to write better, what to do next time, etc. We were all feeling pretty low about our abilities.

One professor’s comments:

The other professor’s comments:

Posted in Thinking | 1 Comment

Hello Kitty!

Posted on April 12, 2006 by Frog

I may have mentioned this before, but there used to be an employee in my building who was well over 40 years old and totally into Hello Kitty. One of the folks in my lunch group had the misfortune of sitting next to her. He packed his stuff up and moved upstairs to an empty cube and has since cracked us up about the Hello Kitty madness–he still makes us laugh even though that employee has been gone for a few months. Her Hello Kitty legacy remains warmly in our hearts.

I found a Hello Kitty song over the weekend and cropped it down. I’ve been waiting all week for the opportunity to get on his machine and make the cropped song his new email notification. Today I finally had my chance as he had to run an errand at lunch. Two partners in crime suggested that I find a Hello Kitty background for his computer. The hideousness that we created was breath-taking.

When he got back from his errand, he was a little annoyed but then decided the worst thing he could do was to keep the Hello Kitty splendor to drive us all nuts and share in his pain.

I’m a little worried about what I may find at my desk tomorrow morning. I’m sure there will be payback.

Posted in Generic Thoughts | 3 Comments

Won’t You Please, Won’t You Please

Posted on April 11, 2006 by Frog

I have a 3-4 page portion of a group paper due on Thursday and I’m this close to being done but I just can’t seem to get it together and finish. I was emailing someone from class this morning and she’s having the same problem. We agreed that this is a big sign that we’re not cut out for continuing with this program.

We also said that we’re going to knock out our final paper (which is 10-12 pages) before the week it is due. I’m a little concerned that if I’m having this much trouble staying focused for 3 1/2 pages that I’ll never get 12 pages done. So, I’d better start it soon rather than wait for the last possible second.

This evening I asked The Niece if she knew anything about informal learning and could she please finish writing my paper. She declined my request.

Posted in Thinking | 1 Comment

London calling upon the zombies of death

Posted on April 9, 2006 by Frog

I’d like to be on the record that I absolutely disagree with the Bush administration on the use of nuclear weapons. When I first saw this news item appear, I checked the date of publication because I really thought I was looking at one of those fake news articles that run for April Fool’s. Are they completely out of their minds?

The good news is there’s only 2 years and 287 days until GW is out of office.

Update: The New Yorker article.

Posted in General Spleen Venting | Comments Off

You can dip your foot in the pool but you can’t have a swim

Posted on April 8, 2006 by Frog

So we decided that money does grow on trees and we’re going to get a pool. We met with the pool guy on Monday night, handed over a deposit and are going to the pool store today to look at liner patterns.

We originally thought we would go with a curvy pool but then we got some advice (thanks to Liz and Frog) and looked at how cool an automatic cover would be so we’re going with a rectangular shape.

This is the shape (thanks to Fort Wayne pools):

The pool guy said he thought they could start work in about 6 weeks. I really hope they can because I need to be sitting by the pool this summer. Ah, the life.

BTW, I posted some pictures of the destruction over in House Proud–see the link over there on the left side. I’ll post more pictures as we go through the process of having the pool built. And, in case you are wondering, no, we’re not quite done with the screened porch but are going to finish that project soon.

Posted in Thinking | 1 Comment

Really Starting To Get On My Nerves

Posted on April 5, 2006 by Frog

I don’t like how Firefox poops its pants when I try to play a Quicktime movie. I don’t like how Firefox and XP don’t always play nice. For proof:

I switched back and forth between Firefox and a Properties window of an MP3 that’s housed on my desktop. Firefox pooped its pants and now I have the lovely Properties remnant left on my screen. I have attempted a refresh of the desktop and I’m afraid only a Restart will do. This has happened before so I know how to fix it. But, I don’t really know why it happens and why it only happens occasionally. The last time it happened it was with the message that appears if you right click on an item in your task bar.

On a completely other subject, we got this in the mail yesterday. We saw it years ago in the theater and it’s so bad that it’s great. While I was marveling over the DVD case, the better-half asked, “Think we’re the only ones on the street with a copy of this?” Yep.

Posted in General Spleen Venting | 7 Comments

I Got New Pants

Posted on April 3, 2006 by Frog

Years and years ago a friend’s boyfriend was telling us about Hanukkah and how he received chocolate gold coins and then he said “I got new pants” in this incredibly funny way as if he were five years old and was really jazzed about getting new pants. The boyfriend is long gone but that line still cracks me up.

I’m wearing new pants today and every single time I go to the restroom I’m confronted with the fact that these pants button differently than my old pants. The button is on the left side and on my old pants the button was on the right side. I tend to buy pants in quantity so all this week I’ll be relearning how to button and unbutton my pants. At least I can say, “New Pants! I got new pants.”

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