Sigma Pi Alpha Moo - SPAM

This entry has less to do about the meat by product staple of the Hawaiian islands and more about the first word of that combination - Sigma.

As you may recall, all my dedicated readers, I purchased me a brand new lens. Today, said lens arrived. And I love, love, love, love it. I've spent all evening wondering through the neighborhood in search of things to photograph. And in typical jenn photography phasion I found flowers. Lots and lots of flowers oh and a boat.

My ultimate goal is to break out of the flower world. This weekend I plan on going into Seattle and wondering the streets in search for pigs and other great things to shoot. I've been given inspiration by many sites that show photos by photographers I admire. I've heard the more you look at pictures you want to take, the more your eye will start to see those things. We shall see.

I'm a coward. But it's done.

Just hit Send and sent this to the Crush:

Gary - I know this is a lame way to tell you, ans suspect you may already know, but I have an enormous crush on you. Have for a long time and I just wanted you to know.

Hope this doesn't make you feel odd or weird around me now, but I'm willing to take that risk.

Cheers
Jenn

**********************************
Oh the relief.

On Old McDonald's farm, there lived a flamingo

This weekend was a whirlwind of pink. The Parental Units are over and so I took this opportunity to hit mom up for making me a flamingo "poncho". I found the pattern last week and asked, but this was the first she got a chance to glance at the beauty that would be my flamingo poncho. Anyone else looking at this pattern would never assume that a simple, non assuming piece of brown clothing (the picture shows it in brown) could in fact be turned into a Pink Flamingo Poncho. I'm sure it'll be all the rage and everyone will want one. I'll make millions. Of course, I'll have to give some to the mom unit since she produced it, and well, me ultimately.

We wondered through the fabric store touching, looking, moving all pink fabric we could to see which would be best for the coveted Flamingo Poncho. (You know you want one.) Then we decided on a nice piece of crushed velvet. We wondered back to find thread as the MomUnit reminded me one uses thread to sew. See why I don't sew. On our way we stopped and picked out a feather boa that would match. The MomUnit kept exclaiming that she'd be blind by the end of this. I believe she was referring to the brightness of the fabric, but it could be she's just getting on in her years. (She'll be 60 this year... shhhh don't tell her. She still thinks she's 35).

We wondered around the back side of the "sewing" area and behold. I found this. This beautiful flamingo - sorta - looking fabric. If you look closely enough you'll see that the fabric has some texture like little individual threads stick out...sorta flamingo shag really. The boa we had for the other fabric clashed in a bad way with this, so I ran back and picked up this lighter pink number. The boa will line the neck line and the bottom hem of the poncho. Eva Gabor will have nothing on my Flamingo Poncho. Hey, maybe she'll want to buy one or two. If she's even still alive. I'm giddy with excitement for this costume. It'll be one for the history books that's for sure. Last night whilst I dozed off into flamingo dream land I had this fleeting thought about my foot high wig, "How on earth am I going to drive my Mustang with that wig on?"

Happy S.H.I.T day

(Sure Happy It’s Thursday) It’s been a long one boys and girls. But never fear, I’m here to entertain you while you wait, patiently, for the weekend. You can feel it can’t you? It’s right around the corner. Just mere hours away.

This will be a random blog. Some might question if all my blogs aren’t random so how is this different. To those “some” I say what Patron Saint always says. My blog. My rules.

At 8:54 this morning, Creed unceremoniously took over the conf room as “his office”. PMDude and I at the same time, looked up, watched him do it and laughed. Oh I love predictability. At one point we even put on the conf room that it was “Office of the Assistant to the Sales Manager”. And if you don’t watch The Office, you’ll have no idea how funny that is. But laugh anyhow. Come on. Laugh!

The XXXCrush has risen from the depths of darkness again. While he conned me by being all dreamy into driving my car, he’s since went dark and I’ve not heard a peep from him. Then yesterday, I decided to delete all email correspondences with him from my “saved” folder (a girl can never be sure when she might need to pull out an old email for proof). Not 4 minutes (yes four) after I get a long email from the XXXCrush. I of course delayed my response by a couple hours so not to appear like I’m waiting for his email. And he responded again. So now I’m even more confused. First nothing, then two in one day. Never fear I’m not putting all my passion eggs into one basket. I think that basket has a flaw and I might lose an egg or two. I definitely know one of them is cracked.

Any-Hoooo

Thanks to the brilliant feedback from another blogging friend (actually he's a blog friend through a blog friend. It get's very complicated) REAL, I've purchased myself a new lens for my kick ass camera. A Sigma Zoom Super Wide Angle 18-50mm f/2.8 EX DC Macro Autofocus Lens. His pictures are fantastic and very inspiring. He sent me a URL to a friend of his who also takes photos and HIS pictures, as well, got me very inspired. My goal now is to get out and shoot. I'm going to try, very hard, to NOT get all hung up on having the perfect photo, but instead focus (no pun intended) on learning how my camera takes pictures and what settings do to affect the photo.

My Halloween costume is coming along nicely. I've talked Mom into making a pink poncho for me in which we're going to sew a pink boa to the bottom. Then I ordered a beehive pink wig (which is actually the most exciting for me), have flamingo glasses on the way and now just need to find duck-ish feet. As this gets together and I do "test" runs, I'll post some photos. I'm sure everyone will get a laugh.

Pink Flamingo's Rock

Monday's suck. Wine Rocks. Wine makes Monday's not suck.

So, I've been thinking about my Halloween costume for this year's Dudley's Top Ten Worst. Every year I think about dressing up, but time goes by and well, I just give up. Last year, a wee bit toasted, I decided to dress this year. And I very seriously stated I would be a pink flamingo. (Note: for those of you who don't know, I collect flamingos. Not just normal flamingos. No they have to be a bit odd -like me.)

I had this vision in my mind, but have "issues" with regards to my vision. See a costume has to be comfortable, danceable and above all, tres chic. Tonight, I logged into that fun little interweb thing and searched. This is what I've found.

OOOO!!! AHHHH! I'd be one hot bird. And one very pink bird. I do have one small issue. I wonder how the bird's neck would attach to my head...what if my waste to head ratio is off and the stupid thing covers my face instead? (no comments from the peanut gallery please on how that wouldn't be such a bad thing.)

Do you know why pink flamingos are pink? Apparently its due to the shrimpees they eat. Hah!

Hello old friend!

Wow, I never thought that scanning all these negatives (shoosh PMDude) would cause such nostalgia. But it has. Many photos I'm finding it within my heart to delete (all old BF photos. Not as much fun as shredding was, but still fun) and I'm finding I have no remorse over it.


A big special occasion passed by earlier this week and I was remiss in mentioning it. How rude of me! Which might explain the knocking and pinging. But on Tuesday, my baby, the Stang was one year old! One year! Can you believe it? Ahhh, look how beautiful she is.



As I was thinking that I had missed such an important date as the Stang's First year anniversary, I scanned the below picture. Ahhh...DULCNEA #1. The one who stole my heart and how bitter sweet it was to let her go. I loved that car. She was everything a girl could have wanted from a Stang. But sadly, she was totaled out when a stupid teenager hit me from behind. It wasn't a light tap either. I was sitting still and he hit me at 35 mph. The whole back end was crumpled. The impact caused my sunglasses to fly off my head and land in the back window shelf. Good times. Ahhh, how I miss her. She's a beaut ain't she. She'd be 7 in October.




Okay, enough reminiscing. Back to the negatives. (PMDude, I know. I know. You choose to not use the word negative. It's so negative.)

Flight of the Conchords Sello Tape

PMDude and I cannot stop laughing at these guys. Their humor is so brilliant and way too clever. This is my new favorite tune I've found from them.

New Toy Tuesday!

I have a new favorite toy. It's not new new, as in I just got it today. It's been sitting in a box for about 3 months now. But now, today, it's hooked up and *new*. And useful. Very useful.

This year I made a goal to get my photography stuff in order, and begin doing photography again. Getting my stuff in order included purchasing a new fancy pants digital camera. Digital camera's mean 35mm film and all the freaking negatives that come with them are a thing of the past. My past. Only I have about 4 THOUSAND negatives. Sitting, doing nothing but taking up space. I'm not generally a negative keeper, I used to like to throw them away. Then when I needed to find a particular negative for my photography card making days, I couldn't. Thus started the plan...granted this was 7 years ago that this plan was formulating in my big head, but formulating it was.

Now back then, I had no idea what to do with all the negatives, so I did what any Type A personality would. I categorized them, put them in fancy negative page protectors, and organized them by event, year, photography or whatever I felt. I have 10 3" three ring binders bursting at the seams with negatives. I averaged it out tonight. One 3" three ring binder holds approximately 75 page protectors. Each page protector holds 7 rows of negatives. Each row of negatives are 5 negatives. Do the math with me will ya? 75 pages X 35 negatives a page X 10 binders = 26,250 negatives. My God.

So my new toy in order to help me with me newly found ginormous number of negatives is a negative scanner. Can I get a YEEE HAW?

Here's the catch. I couldn't afford, or rather didn't realize, that the one I really wanted scanned an entire 5 strips of negatives (25 at a time). Instead I bought one that only does TWO negatives at a time. Not two strips. Two negatives. Do you know how long I'll be here?

Well, let me tell you. I've averaged it out to be 15 seconds for each 2 negatives. So that's 13,125 negatives (that's 26,250 divided by 2 since I can do 2 at a time). Then 13, 125 times 15 - because that's 15 seconds per 2 negatives, then divided by 60 ( so I can get it in hours) = 3,281.25 hours. Huh? Wait, did I do something wrong...because that equals 136 days.

If my math is right, and I'm sure there's some mathy person out there who will tell me it isn't - please tell me it isn't. It's going to take me 1/3rd of a year to get this done. Ugh.

Now, I guarantee as I'm going through negatives I'll not scan them all. I mean ones of XBF and Evil XBF will have to be shredded. It's the only right thing to do. Photos of myself that are hideous will have to be shredded as well. I suppose I could go as far and shred any photos of friends who have dumped me and moved on to better friends. So basically in the end I have - well a few less.

Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life.

"A Monday by any other name, still sucks. "

"Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays… ~ secretary, Office Space"

"Monday is the root of all evil."

"I’ve come to the conclusion that Mondays last 50% longer than the other day." ~ Turtle Dundee

Yes, boys and girls, it's been a dooosey of a Monday. Why can't people at work just do what I tell them to and stop questioning my authority? I am, after all, their PM and as such should hold a certain amount of "I know what I'm talking about" and yet, I get nothing. I won't, and can't, go into specifics, but suffice it to say, everyone seems to be pissing me off today.

The weekend however started off with one helluva Dudley concert. I know. I know...I say that every time. I have two very good reasons for saying it every time though: 1) Clearly I forget how great the last concert was and so think the most recent concert Rocks the casbah and 2) I just think all of their shows are awesome. This one was particularly fun because they opened as their country cousins the Sh*tKickers. Good friend, Hiker Girl (Margo - you now have a code name. You should feel so proud) wasn't so sure about the SKs as she's not a country fan, but once they did a Billy Joel song country style, she was hooked. She and I continued to dance the night away when DMQ took the stage. Blueberry became somewhat of a wetblanket after the second set, so I did my best to ignore her and continue to make googly eyes at Mr. DMQ himself. Though my "googly eyes" might have also been construed as "drunk girl in the front row." Though I wasn't for a change. Hiker Girl on the other hand, continued to make googley eyes at the bass player and the young lead guitar guy ( who's quickly stealing my heart away from Mr. DMQ).

We started Friday evening at a kickass restaurant I found quite on accident in Seattle. I wanted something close to the Crocodile - where the show was, but didn't want something "normal". Found Assiago's. The guy (Mauro) hugging the patron on the website is the owner. He stopped by our table several times to check on us girls. AND he recommended the best bottle of wine. It was a 2003 Montepulciano (OnePath - you should find yourself a bottle of this. I think you would like it.). The wetblanket didn't have any wine, so Hiker Girl and I polished off the bottle. The food was sensational, flavorful, and just the right portions so not to fill stuffed. I highly recommend it if you're ever in Seattle looking for fantastic Italian cuisine.

Okay, I've stalled long enough. Back to Monday.

NY - One Year Later

It's hard to believe that exactly one year ago I was wondering the avenues of Manhattan. Oogling and Aggling at all the wonders that are NYC. An amazing place really. And 200+ photos later...I finally...finally finished the NY Scrapbook.

Scrapbooking has been very hot and cold for me lately (much like a certain relationship with a certain XCrush). I will go months without even thinking about doing anything creative. Then one day I get a wild twig up my butt and I sit down until whatever project is done. In this case, it started with wanting to scrap the Westport trip. That led into NY and wanting to finish that trip.

So without any further lollygagging. Here are some of the highlights. (Note: Bad lighting and shotty photography has made the colors off. Trust me though, they are color coordinated.)

I'm eating my veggie's

Another one of those, "who cares" blogs brought to you by Yours Truly. As Patron Saint says so often: My blog. My rules.

My new favorite snack. Veggie Stix. I bought them on a whim since I was in the Organic Food aisle at our local grocery store. Not an aisle I generally frequent, but the organic milk was down that aisle and I had to buy that for the tea I'm drinking these days because local brit only drinks organic. And...so... naturally, I turned to see their snacks. There's sitting all "buy me" like were Veggie Stix.

I recalled having them while being held captive at The Cat Shack many years ago. We had a lot of vegetarian/vegan types there. They're sooo good. Crunchy. Tasty. Flavorful. Yum in a bag.

The best part about them though, and here in lies the real truth, is they are UBBER loud when eating. See they're very crunchy. And I'm hoping that it annoys the hell out of a Creed (name was changed to protect the annoying. AND I don't want to be sued should he claim slander.) See, Creed chews very loud. It's especially fun when we're having a team lunch in the conf room and PMDude mentions with a look the "cow chewing" sound from across the table. AND Creed loves to smack his gum whenever he's in your space. Ugh.

And so with PMDude working from home today. I figured this an excellent opportunity to bug Creed. Chances are he's completely oblivious to my annoyance attempts. But who cares...I'm satisfied just knowing he "might" be bugged. And the Veggie Stix are satisfying my need for a snack.

Flight Of The Conchords - The Humans Are Dead

OMG. Local Brit in the office shared this today. I must have too much tea in my system, I thought this was pretty funny.

I'm a Ramblin' Man - er ah woman...

Is it just me, or does everyone have gnomes who visit their desk at work at night and tangle up your headset chord? I swear to you, I wrap mine a certain way to avoid tangle-age. And yet, every morning, they are tied in a series of knots that would make an experience boat person confused.

The weekend was mostly non-eventful. I got home Friday and proceeded to die a slow death on the couch with the remote in my hand. Had it not been for the drooling I might not have realized I was comatose.

Saturday I did the Seattle tour guide thing with a colleague here from the UK. It dawned on me that if you're not actually taking pictures or buying something, some Seattle hot spots just aren't that interesting. But whatever, we had fun.

I've mentioned in previous posts that I've crossed over the dark side and am drinking tea instead of coffee at work these days. I saved myself $20 last week alone by not buying coffee. PMDude had mentioned to me a while back about amazing coffee he makes with his French Press and so I broke down this weekend and bought a press. I have a coffee pot, but it usually makes too much coffee. Yes I realize I am the person responsible for telling the coffee pot how much to make. But you see, I can only make a good cup if I make 6 cups, of which I thrown 4 out. Its a waste. So Saturday I followed my directions carefully and made myself a cup of coffee. I can see how this could be good coffee someday. But for now, we'll just say it's a work in progress. "Watch this space" for the day it becomes amazing coffee.

I Just Called to say. "I Love You!"

Okay Okay, I hear ya loud and clear. I just need the time and place to do it. BTW - I won't be telling him I love him because that might be a wee bit premature. I'm just saying. I mean after all, I haven't even kissed him. And we all know the kiss is the tell tale (or is it tale tell) sign.

My favorite suggestion came to me via email from The Chicken Lady. I spit my tea out (Note: I have left the dark side of coffee momentarily for the even darker side of Tea. Since my trip across the pond I have now found myself addicted to making tea. It's a sickness, really. And in fact have passed up - if you can believe it - trips to Starbucks in liu of tea. PMDude suggested the world might be ending considering this drastic shift in my daily actions.)

Chicken Lady's suggestion: Ask him over for a sleepover and tell him you do NOT have a futon.

Any Hoooo....

While all of you left excellent suggestions, I believe my days of dreaming that he "accidentally" finds out are over. I have attempted to set up a dinner "date" with him, but got the oddest response. None. I really don't understand this guy sometimes. But whatever. He's responded to a few other of my emails (and that's not to say I've sent a hundred, only 98 or so - joking. That's a joke. Laugh people!)

I'm moving on from this for this week - and the crowd in unison breathes a sighs in relief - to something even mo' better....SeaFair weekend. Some colleagues from the UK office are in town, and I offered to be a tour guide for one of them. What? I'd do it for you too if you came to town. I love showing off Seattle. It'd be even better if it were nice out, but what's a girl to do.

And in other news, and perhaps no one really cares, but why is it that we, in the great country, only concern ourselves with the safety of people when a tragedy happens? Why then is that the time we start looking at the relevance of structural damage? Are human lives that unimportant to our government?

I am, of course, talking about the tragedy in Minnesota. The local news here, and perhaps in your neck of the woods, is now examining just how bad our local bridges are. The thing is, we've known some of them are ready to fall at any given moment and yet NOW, now that people have lost their lives, they're starting to take it seriously.

Case in point. We have a very old, decaying structure here in Seattle that was severely damaged in the "GREAT QUAKE OF 2001". Since that time, the tax payers of this area have paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars for studies to determine if the Alaskan Way Viaduct will fall (see photo to the right. It's the road looking thingy in front of Seattle) Frankly, any moron who's every been on it can tell it you will fall. Newton figured that out with this little thing called gravity. The key is, when and how. So, since the quake, our government has studied over and over again how bad it is. THEN, in typical Seattle government fashion, they decided to put the replacement options up for a vote. Two options, tear down the existing viaduct and rebuild it (oh and I should mention the viaduct is on the Seattle waterfront which is prime real estate)? Or build a tunnel? Of the two, the tunnel was EXTREMELY expensive.

Now, when the debate over which option to build was going on, of course, the opposition of each found "holes" in the theories for the options of the others. For example the people opposing the tunnel idea found case studies (less we mention the Boston Big Dig) in which the seawalls aren't sturdy enough and so could cause a cave in.

So, they put it to the voters. BUT, before they did, the government said the tunnel option isn't an option. But voters, please go to the polls and vote on which option you want: tunnel or viaduct.

Yes. You read that correctly. Even before the vote, they had already determined that the tunnel was not an option. So you ask yourself, why then, have we spent over a million dollars having a vote that doesn't count?

ARGH!

My point to all this, is - yes, there is a point, I'm only going the girly route to get there. That is to say not the direct route. I heard on the radio today a theory that the government could be just waiting for the thing to fall, loss of life would ensue of course because these things never EVER fall when no one's on them. And so the federal government would then chip in the money to replace it. I felt a chill go down my spine. Could our local government be that devious? To offer up as a sacrifice to the asphalt gods, lives of innocent people who just want to get to work on time? The thought scares me, but doesn't surprise me.