27 May 2009

The Stupid Thing That Is Annoying Me Today

It's the coffee cup lids here at work.

We used to have the dome lids:







Then, probably in order to save a few pennies, we switched to these lids:

I hate them. (They aren't the brand pictured over there, so none of this hate is directed at Dixie) The lids are terrible. You are supposed to peel back the tab and lock the little nub into the divot. A divot that has only a passing resemblance to the nub. I have gotten poked in the septum on more than one occasion. Not really one for the "fun" column.
Not only is there the locking issue, but the edges created when you peel back the tab are lethal. I don't have a particularly full lower lip and I still feel like I'm going to have hash marks. Bloody hash marks on my lips. And no, I can't just remove the lid because we aren't allowed to have open containers at our desks. Knowing my luck, I'd take the lid off to get a sip and promptly dump scalding hot coffee all over the place.

21 May 2009

Thursday Morning Randomness

I'm always a little suspicious when I wake up on a Thursday and feel refreshed. Thursdays are usually a grind for me. My day starts 2hrs earlier than the rest of the work week but I rarely, if ever, go to bed any earlier Wednesday nights.

This morning my alarm went off and I bolted out of bed. Perhaps it was the sunshiny nature of my bedroom that impelled me into panicked flight across the room to check the time. I blinked in disbelief when I saw that, yes, it was 6:30am and I was not late for work. In fact, I dawdled a fair amount this morning and still managed to get to work 20 minutes early.

Now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Am I going to crash around lunch time? Will I need to mainline coffee just to make it to 5? If today follows this week's pattern, I'm in for a day that time forgot.

Side note: One of my supervisors, the sugar-pusher, brought in rootbeer barrels. It is hard to maintain a limited sugar intake when faced with the candy version of crack! Must. Stay. Strong.

19 May 2009

A Messy Examination of My Reading Habits

I have been in a huge scifi phase lately. It's been all about Banks, Simmons, Scalzi, Morgan. Crazy, complex societies and world-building. Vast stellar distances and technology to make the mind boggle. Give me light-years or give me nothing!

Things were sloooooow at work yesterday and I was poking around in my desk to find someting to read. I uncovered a book my coworker had lent me months ago; Jane Green's Swapping Lives. I have read a fair amount of Green's novels and have usually enjoyed them. She doesn't always wrap things up in a nice, neat bow and I approve of that. I'm not the type of person who needs the perfect, fairytale happy ending in everything I read. While her characters aren't perfectly relatable - way more into designer clothes and the newest hotspots than I ever have been - they also aren't amazing super-women who have it all. In fact, there was one main character in a previous novel I actively disliked.

I have read a fair amount of chick lit. Some of it was good, some of it was fluff, some was crap, but that's how it is with anything, right? I don't ascribe to the idea that only certain genres of fiction are worth reading. After all, I went through a huge romance novel phase - the dirtier the better. I know there are some people who think excessive amounts (whatever that means) of sex detract from a story, but what about when the sex is the story? People have sex and people write what they know. Ergo, people write about sex. If you don't like it, don't read it. It's not as if there aren't millions of other things to read.

I seem to have lost sight of the point of this post. My point is this: I forgot how much I enjoy other genres of fiction. Scifi is my number one choice and I'm probably still going to head over to that section first, but I may make more of an effort to explore (or revisit) other sections of the bookstore.

18 May 2009

A Few Thing I Learned This Weekend

Vomiting sun-dried tomatoes is really disconcerting.

While I had a pretty good time Saturday, I'm not all about hanging out in a super crowded bar. It's barely even worth it for the people-watching.

Miller Lite is not an acceptable alternative to my beloved Yuengling.

Wearing my shell-tops Saturday night was the smartest idea I had all day. Maybe all week.

Cursing in Spanish is not acceptable. I still got pinched.

I'm not very good at silly little Wii games but it doesn't stop me from playing them.

The Hard Rock Cafe is just a touristy version of TGI Fridays. With louder music.

"Leather pants! Leather PANTS!"

"#1 Grad" looks exactly like "It's my birthday".

It's never a good idea to read the first of two books if you can't immediately lay hands on the second one.

A meatloaf sandwich is almost as good as a Whopper with cheese as a hangover cure.

A tube of ridiculously expensive (but awesome-smelling) lotion is an acceptable alternative to therapy. With more immediate results.

11 May 2009

Star Trek Review

Fellow nerds rejoice! The new Star Trek movie doesn't suck! Spoilers ahoy.

I took in an 11pm screening of the movie Saturday night. I was accompanied by my pop, my gay-BFF and his boyf. And yes, I was one of approximately 10 girls in the theater. That's cool; I like being in the minority.

Just a couple of points to address before I get into this: I was never an original Trekkie. My preferences were for TNG and the first 2 seasons of Voyager. I hate Wrath of Khan because of the ear bug incident. I'm not here to argue canon. As the movie points out, this is an AU situation here, people. Which conveniently opens things up for a whole slew of new movies that can boldly go in new directions.

I don't have any major objections to the casting. I did feel that Zoe Saldana's Uhuru was a little too sharp-edged, but there's definitely room for growth and you got flashes of her softer side in scenes with Zachary Quinto as Spock. Whose pointy-eared babies I would have. If I wanted babies.

Chis Pine does an adequate job of portraying a conflicted, cocky, underachieving Kirk. He leans a little too much towards cocky and unlikable, but gets the pudding beat out of him on many occasions, so that's good. Also, take notice of a recurring theme of dangling over a deadly drop. I was a little skeptical that Kirk's conviction and passion would trump Starfleet regs, but I'll let it go. I knew there would have to be some suspension of disbelief. Like Spock stranding Kirk on the ice planet. Dude, there's a brig for a reason. Also, how could such a large predator survive on an ice planet? What the hell does it eat? It can't possibly live off of stranded Starfleet cadets.

Eric Bana's Nero is a villain of few words but many scowls. His enormous, pointy, well-armed mining ship seems able to survive an exploding starship but lacks in the plumbing department. For some reason, there is standing water all over the place. And wires. Seems like an electrocution is just around the corner. Did like the uniforms though. I'll take a trench and combat boots over a goldenrod team jersey.

One of the good things about the movie is that you don't feel that any of the actors are trying to ape their predecessors. John Cho doesn't try to imitate George Takei's baritone and Simon Pegg's Scottish accent is much clearer.

There are definitely bits in there for the old school Trekkies. "Dammit, I'm a doctor, not a (whatever)." The Vulcan neck pinch and mind meld make appearances as well.

All in all, a good reboot. Here's hoping that this iteration of Trek can keep things fresh.

07 May 2009

I'm Not Crazy, I'm Frustrated. OK, a Little Crazy.

You know how you get a song, or a snippet of a song, stuck in your head? The same few words and notes circling around and around and around? Until you feel like your ears are going to bleed as your brain runs in clumpy streams from your nose? That sucks, right? At least when that happens you can sometime rid yourself of the earworm by listening to the song in question or by replacing it with another.

Unfortunately, that is not my problem. My problem is as follows: It has been about 2 weeks since I got blown off by the boilermaker and I can't. Stop. Thinking. About. Him. I'm not kidding here, folks. In the morning before work, outside on my breaks, at home on the computer, in bed falling asleep. It's making me crazy.

Was I so excited by the possibility of a relationship that I grabbed way too hard onto nothing? Or was he really that kind of special and I'm feeling the loss in a way most irritating? I'm sure some of it has to do with the dissatisfying way things ended. There was no closure, no explanation. Something happened around the start of the Flyers game on Saturday that turned everything around.

There has been some temptation to contact him and ask him what the fuck happened. I know some of my friends are almost as interested in the answer to that as I am. I didn't at first because I wasn't prepared to hear him say all the bad stuff I was thinking. Stuff like: it was my fault for being crazy (which I wasn't but most people aren't super rational right after being binned). I don't remember, or refuse to impart here, the other things I thought.

Am I ready to hear why now? Do I risk the contact and the attendant anxiety while I wait for a reply? Because we all know that there's a very good chance that he won't bother. I mean, he wouldn't man up to say that he wasn't feeling it anymore - why would this be any different?