Survivor Man Vegas

Ah Vegas, America's playground. More like America's hunting ground. Packs of twenty something males roam around looking for willing females. While the women are more like ambush hunters waiting till a male comes near and then strikes. Although I don't know if you could consider either group to be prey, since it appeared to me that they are both looking for the same thing. Now if you aren't out hunting you might feel like prey, left alone for even a minute and you're swarmed, guys standing too close telling you that you have pretty eyes, or grabbing you and trying to pull you into a dance. I've learned the hard way that subtly in this case is not an option, a hard shove doesn't even faze them, but they do seem to have exceptionally short memories so if you run away they will move on to the next girl. You don't even have to be that attractive, all you really need is a pulse.

Mother's Day

Ah Mother's day. The second most commercialized day of the year after Christmas. Don't get me wrong I do think that mothers' deserve a day of their own, they do a lot, and from what I can see from friends, family, and coworkers its still the mom that does the brunt of the child rearing (thereare of course exceptions). But it just seems so sad to run around because you have to get your mom a gift because the calendar says so. Yes I got my mom a gift (it was late but I called her on Sunday). And now I feel bad because I forgot to call my step mom who I'm sorry is not my mother and had no hand in the rearing of me (she married my father when I was 19), she's a wonderful woman and I love her but she's not my mom (I'm gonna call her tonight). Although I still feel bad for not sending her a card.

Sunny SB

Ok Santa Barbara is supposed to be this wonderful vacation town, and I have to admit that its pretty great, but it definatly has its draw backs. Like June, supposed to be one of the brightest months of the year, is one of the worst in SB, its known as June gloom and its cold and damp, totally sucks. And then over the last few years is been gloomy and damp in May too, and that's just not fair. I'm ok with June but May too? At least its supposed to burn off by the afternoon and half the time it does do that, the other half it stays horrible the whole day. Summer is actually the worst time is SB, usually Spring and Fall are the best seasons here. But this year spring got completely rained out, and then fogged over. Oh well I guess we can keep our hopes up for August that's usually a good month.

Really?

OK so when did master/slave contracts become normal? I was reading The Smoking Gun and yet again theres another story about about some sado masochism sex contract gone bad. Its always so sad too because you think that if these two love birds can't make it who can? But anyways this contract looks like its some form letter downloaded off the internet. I'm pretty liberal but that still grosses me out, not that I'm judging (I totally am, sorry). And who thought to post form letters? Was there one guy out there who was just like "All these contracts that I've been filling out totally blow, I'll write up my own and everyone will use it and finally there will be peace in the master/sex slave world!" And its been in the news so often, there must be thousands of people out there just like me who are so intensely disturbed by these news stories that they too feel the need to go find more stories that disturb and disgust them.

Oh To Be a Woman

Today was an amazing day for me. Usually I would say that a six hour drive between Sacramento and Santa Barbara is more of a boring day, but something amazing happened during this drive, something that shocked me to my very core. About two hours into the drive we stopped at a Chevron somewhere south of Stockton on the I-5, and I get out and head to the bathroom. And this is where I saw it. As I walked to the ladies room I noticed that the men's room actually had a small line while I walked straight into the ladies. This never happens. I've waited in lines for ten minutes as thousands of guys goes in and out while the women in line make small talk about how there is always a line for girls. So I couldn't help but smile a triumphant smile at the guy, because for once I was able to walk straight up to the door and go in.

Weird Day

Ever have one of those days that's just kind of surreal? Today was my last day at my first "real" job, I was there for over two and a half years. I thought that I would be sad to go, kind of nostalgic? Nope, the whole day just kind of passed. Didn't seem special, monumental, nothing. Of course I'll miss some of the people but not the job itself. The main feeling I get is relief. So the whole day I kind of just went through the motions, the weirdest point was when I finished cleaning off my desk and packed everything away and all I thought was "Hmm my desk has never been that clean, looks weird." And the worst part is getting ready for my new job the part that I mention is the best part is that I can walk to work. Does nothing else draw me to the job, sadly that was the deciding factor.

Milestones

I'm am so proud today. After two years and much agony I've finally finished, and I don't think that I've ever been prouder. College graduation, my first job these are nothing compared to the joy I feel from this. That's right I've finally finished knitting my first scarf. Sure the lines aren't the straightest and many of the loops are large enough to drive cars through but I don't care, I wear it proudly to work on this the twenty fifth day of April. And then you might ask me, why this project has taken me 2 years? Well I started in Dan's house thinking to knit myself something warm in that freezing place, but my joints froze up from the cold and I could only knit very slowly. Summer came along and it got put away. And then we moved. So randomly I was trying to find something in the closet when I came across my old knitting, so I brought it downstairs and decided to give it another shot. And now after about a month I have a finished scarf!! YEAH ME!

Sure I Can Drive Five Hours

Ah the joys of getting married. One of them is calling up friends from miles away so that they can watch you try on dresses while they sit there and ooh and ahh wondering why this place doesn't have vending machines because a big bar of chocolate would definitely be appreciated. Of course I can't really complain I promised that if she needed me I would be up there, and I wanted to go too. As E is one of my closest friends it nice to be a part of the planning. But I'm not a good shopper, it tires me out and it gets annoying really quickly. But wedding dress shopping is different you actually have to make an appointment and then wake up early and head to these places, where it takes at least two people to dress one person, in dresses that cost more than my rent. And of course no one can decide on one dress, they all look wonderful, although there were quite a few that looked hideous (as a good bridesmaid I let her know that those were not an option), so we take pictures and then obsess about those for the rest of the night. After the dress is narrowed down to two likely contenders its the bridesmaids' turn to try on the dresses. Thankfully we basically ran out of time. I'm kind of hoping that they just tell me to buy a certain dress, at this point I don't even care if it looks good I just don't want to try anything on. Although I did get a hot dog on a stick so I had a good day.

Procrastination and Taxes

Have you noticed that taxes aren't really that hard to do anymore? Well if you're me, a single gal making very little they aren't hard to do at all. But I still wait till the last minute and then scramble around and try to find all of my W-2s. I swear I put them all in the same spot, but I could only find two of the three forms that I needed. Oh well I'm a pretty good guesser. Then I had to decide if I was going to do this the traditional way or online, online won by a landslide. I got a bunch of emails from turbo tax, and I'm a big believer in quantity not quality so I gave them a shot. They are great for for federal, but charge you for state the whole thing probably took about ten minutes. And since today is the seventeenth I suck it up and pay for state instead of doing them again (I have no idea where I stuck the rest of my W-2s anyways). At least I'm getting more back than what I had to pay. Now here I am sitting at work printing out my tax forms and looking for an envelope, asking myself why didn't I finish this three weeks ago when I started filling out the form and got distracted by Land of the Dead? At least the post offices are open till midnight.

Parents

I went up to visit my parents for the weekend. I love the bay area but visiting my parents is kind of a chore. Its not that I don't love them, I do its just that they are divorced so I feel like have to spend a certain amount of time with both of them to be fair. And then I have no time to visit my friends. I have to sneak up to the Bay Area and not tell my parents if I want to visit friends, and then I feel guilty. But the other thing is that I don't do anything when I visit my parents. I sit, eat, and watch t.v. And then I go to the other house and the cycle repeats itself. This time I mixed it up a bit by bringing my knitting, wow that was a good time. And then my dad always tries to get me to have a drink or be ok with him smoking a stinky cigar, I showered because I don't want to smell bad, your cigar will completely ruin the effect. A five hour drive for this? I get guilt trips about not coming home, but when was the last time one of them came and visited me? My mom cam over a year and a half ago my dad almost two years ago. But still its my fault, I'm a bad child for moving so far away.

Mind wanderings

 So I'm trying to take up knitting again. Its kind of frustrating, and I'm no good at it but it keeps my hands busy. So last night as I sat at home trying to knit, feminism popped into my head. I have no idea why, I think knitting is neither a feminist or nonfeminist thing, its generally a girlie thing but I don't think practitioners of the craft have any particular leanings either way. But there I was and a commercial came on, and it made me so annoyed. In our battles to make everything equal, advertising does its best to keep all stereotypes intact. Its moms that are cleaning the house and making dinner, men that are driving fast cars, and clothing challenged women selling beer. So I tip my hat to you Hoover vacuum for having bikers as the spokesmen for your product, bikers drinking milkshakes. There is no point to this story.

Big Brother in Oregon?

So I recently read that Oregon is starting to lose revenue on gas taxes because people are buying smaller, more gas efficient cars. So to make that money back they are seriously considering taxing the amount of miles that are driven instead of the amount of gallons purchased. Basically you would put a little gps unit in your car that would track where, when, and how far you drove and then tax you on instate and peak hour diving. Track my driving? Ok I don't live in the Oregon and have no plans to move there in the future, but if it works in one state others might adopt it, and that worries me. I don't want anyone tracking my driving. True I don't go anywhere interesting but thats not the point. The point is that this falls under personal privacy, as a private citizens I have a right to go where ever I want. And of course they say that the information from the gps wouldn't be used for anything else and would be erased every time you go to the gas station and pay your taxes. But you know are government would start using those records to follow people around, of course only suspicious people, but what exactly is the definition of a suspicious person? What right do they have to ask me where I go?

 

And then what if they decide to track how fast you were going? Automatically send you a ticket when you go over the speed limit? And then a little camera in the car to make sure that you are doing nothing illegal?

My Thoughts on the FCC

The FCC is one of many government organizations that are trying to take away Americans' freedoms. The FCC scares me; I realize that they are answering to people complaining about shows, but how many more people aren't complaining? Why listen to the minority, and why take such drastic measures? The extreme censorship of the FCC is wrong, the fact that they won't give stations guidelines so instead they live in fear that they are going to get fined up the wazoo for something that they weren't sure was "indecent" or not. Take for example the WB's new show about an undergraduate sex class. They edited the first show after finishing it removing scenes of two girls kissing and another of a girl unzipping her jeans. Neither of those scenes seems indecent to me but the WB is scared that the FCC might fine them, and fine them not just once for an indecent show but for every time they think something is indecent. What right do they have to say that two girls kissing is indecent? As long as the show is rated for adults people should not be so up in arms regarding the content. If you think something is indecent, write a letter to the station, stop watching the show, but stop complaining about it to the FCC.

And where is it going to stop? It seems like lately the FCC is censoring more and more often. What right do they have to tell me what I can and can't watch? Isn't this infringing on the stations right to free speech?

I'm ok for reprimanding CBS for the Janet Jackson incident (although the fine did seem a little high), it was in the middle of the day, children could have been watching, and there seemed like there was no risk of seeing a boob when you started watching. But if a show is on late, and has an adult rating, that means it should have a little leeway. If you don't want to risk seeing something that offends you check out the Disney channel or TLC. I want my TV unedited, I'm adult enough to know what’s decent and what isn't, and I'm adult enough to turn off the TV or write a letter to the creator of the show, not go tell my mommy that some show hurt my feelings. And you know that the people that complain about these shows are little old ladies scanning the channels just waiting for something indecent to happen so that she can report it.

The chairman of the FCC is appointed by the president, that’s why I'm not totally surprised that the chairman, Kevin J. Martin, had worked for the president before. This wouldn't be the first time that George W. had promoted someone for past loyalties, instead of present works. Mr. Martin probably feels that is his duty to clean up American television, that TV should be more moral and crap like that.

Just give me everything, I can filter out the indecent. If I wanted to watch edited TV I can watch tbs.

Freddy, Zombies, and Coked up Monkeys

I love horror movies, with some hot kettle corn and a coke, there is nothing better than sitting in a theatre waiting for the next scare. I don't like the artsier scary movies, I like the ones dripping with cheese, ones with horrible actresses whose only talent is her ability to wear tight tops and scream at everything. As a feminist that might sound a bit wrong, but I can't help it. I actually cheered when I saw the preview for Freddy vs. Jason and I was extremely disapointed when Alien vs. Predator came out with a PG-13 rating instead of an R, and I even thought House of Wax was very entertaining.

You have to wonder about horror fans. I would assume that for most of them there must have been some sort of traumatic event in their youth. For me it was when I was five or six and my teenage cousin came to stay with us for the summer. He would sit on the couch and watch movies all day long. One day when both of my parents were gone he popped in Nightmare on Elm St (the original and scariest one) and let me watch it. Now the concept behind Nightmare on Elm St is one of the creepiest, a mutilated murderer stalks you in your dreams, and (as the movie points out) eventually you have to sleep. So every night for a week I woke up screaming and would run into my parents' room and crawl into bed with my mom.

If I followed the Love Line theory of if something traumatizes you when you are younger you will be drawn to that act/person/thing when you are older, then the reason I love horror movies is because they scared me so badly when I was young. I wonder about other fans... were they traumatized like me, do they associate horror movies with a good memory, or are they just sick and twisted?

In the last few years I have moved from slasher movies (still love them though) to zombie movies. They are fun because often they are little commentaries on what the writer/director feels society has become. I like them because in a weird way I think the zombies are cute (I have already established that I have issues). And I have moved the movie Sean of the Dead into my all time best list. Of course most of these zombie and slasher films are worthless dribble that were probably written by coked up monkeys, but then thats probably why I love them.

Girls Scout Cookies and World Domination

Why do people (me) obsess over girl scout cookies? Is it because they are so good? Only come out once a year? Or because they put an addictive chemical in it that makes you crave it the minute you see a box, like some trigger in your mind?

So on Sunday I was making waffles, I was cleaning up and went to put the flour away on the top shelf of the pantry. I put the flour down and the shelf goes crashing into the one below it which then falls also. So I gently close the cupboard door and finish up the waffles. After breakfast its decided that a trip to Ace Hardware is needed.

On the way into the store I notice a bunch of young school girls and their mothers. My heart rate starts to go up and I get excited, they are selling girl scout cookies! I hadn't even realized it was that season. Usually someone at work will send out an email letting everyone know that their little girl is selling cookies and that it is our duty to buy some (and if its the CEO sending out the email everyone must buy). I of course do my duty and then some.

The girl scouts got their start in 1912, but the famed cookies didn't get their start until 1917. And those cookies are not the cookies we crave today. Up until the 30s the cookies were homemade, by the little girl scouts with mothers supervising, they packaged them up in little wax bags and put a girl scout sticker on them. Then in 1936 the Girl Scouts started to get serious. They hired a commercial baker and set up mass production of the cookies, and in 1937 over 125 girl scout councils held cookie sales.

Today about 70% of the sales stay with local Girl Scout councils. The balance goes to the baker. Of that 70% about 12-17% goes straight to the troupe. So of the $8 I spent a good $.95 went straight to the dealers, I mean girls I bought them from. So yeah! I bought the cookies to help empower little girls in my community, and not for the yummy yummy goodness that can be found within each brightly colored box. And I totally didn't start to panic when I realized that no one would be bringing Girl Scout cookies to work, and that I would have to drive back to the hardware store to stock up.

And then I have to ask myself, why don't they sell this stuff year round? Is it because if they were offered year round no one would buy their overpriced confections? They offer it once a year so that you feel like you have to buy them (the cute little girl hawking the goods doesn't hurt either) or you will be missing out. And the price isn't that bad, after all its only once a year, nevermind that you normally don't buy cookies at all, that's not the point.

I'm pretty sure that the Girl Scouts are planning world domination. There has to be a chemical in the cookies just building up in everyone's brain, and then one day they push a button and we all do whatever they tell us. I mean you never notice them eating the cookies.

Ms. Piggy and Other Randomness

Ok I think I’ll go off on Ms. Piggy. How she can associate with Jessica Simpson and Dominoes is beyond me. I mean one or the other maybe, but both? She really is a slut, and she seems to have left Kermit behind. That ungrateful bitch! She would be nothing without that little green frog. I mean he’s already said that it isn’t easy being green but being dumped by a pig? That’s got to sting. And if I have to pick one or the other, the amphibian has my vote every time.

I mean I used to really like Ms. Piggy, although she was always a little over the top jealous and rather violent, which can’t be good for children to watch day after day, but if she’s starting to hang with the chicken of the sea gal I’m out. I miss the muppets, those critics on the balcony were a riot. And Animal, Beaker, the Swedish chef and the chickens those were all the coolest characters ever. How did that go off the air and yet Barny is still poisoning the youth of America?

I admit, a lot of the shows I grew up on were totally crap, its like a bunch of stoned guys got together wrote down a bunch of words that didn’t go together at all and said, “That’s genius! Lets draw it!” For example: the PawPaw Bears, I loved it but it was lame, or the Snorks they really weren’t as good as the Smurfs. The Smurfs were a classic, I think it worked because the vocab was so small, just insert the word “smurf” for anything.

The Not So Secret World of Geocaching

There we were walking around this tree squatting, moving around branches, trying to get a closer look. “You?” A calls out “No, you?” We were off the path trying to find a geocache and not having much luck, this was our second one, the first one we had not been able to find. Then finally I noticed a color that was slightly out of place “I found it.”

Geocaching is a hobby that I thought was only for techie geeks that were also outdoorsy, but apparently quite a few people do including a friend of mine from MS who had never heard of the Ipod Nano when I showed it to her in December (I think it had already been out for 6 months by then). Its a lot like a scavenger hunt, you get the coordinates and maybe a clue and then try to find a little treasure. Within the cache there are usually little trinkets and a log book which you sign and date and maybe leave a little message.

Apparently it started in 2000 when President Clinton lifted scrambling for civilian gps, so that manufacturers could produce more precise machines. One guy hid a bucket, posted the coordinates on the internet, and the great game was born.

Aaron and I went out today to Hendry’s beach in Santa Barbara to try and find the first cache. The cache was supposedly by the restaurant by the beach and there were quite a lot of people milling about, waling to and from the beach, or eating on the outside patio of the restaurant. So we get to where we think it might be (a gps has a +/- radius of about 20 feet) and try looking for it. Aaron is way more subtle than I am, I lean over the bushes and look under benches, he sits down and glances over at the bushes. Well we didn’t want to look to weird so after about ten minutes we gave up on that one and started down the beach looking for another one.

Again we felt kind of self conscious about holding a gps so like the idiots we are every once in awhile we would hold it up to our ears and pretend that it’s a cell phone, it kind of looks like one maybe people believed us, who knows I didn’t stop and ask. But as we start coming upto the place where the geocache should be Aaron informs me that he thinks he was mistaken and that the cache is probably not on the beach but instead above us 100 feet on the cliff. Lovely. There’s no way to get to cliff from the beach (well at least no way that we can see). So we head back to our car and look for a way to get to the cliffs from the street we came in on. About twenty feet past the parking lot we notice a little trail that goes up to cliffs, so we make a u-turn and re-park.

It takes awhile to get up the hill and to the cliffs and then some bad gps reading on our part. Finally we get to the spot that we think its in. Off the trail around a deformed, short tree we start searching for the cache. I finally find a Tupperware container, of course I don’t want to touch it because it looks kind of wet. Inside there are a bunch of little toys (I loved the gummi bears little figurine) and beads that people had left. We didn’t bring anything to leave in the box so we signed our names and put everything back.

Although I must admit that I felt rather lame looking for these things as normal people walked by, after finding the cache it was so much cooler. Its like you know a secret, you are in the know, and everyone else is oblivious.

UltraViolet = UltraPainful

Ok I like cheesy movies. Usually I am the last person to say a movie sucks as long as its not some sappy romance movie I can usually find something redeeming with it. Like House of Wax, I was entertained and didn't feel like they stole my money I even thought Paris Hilton had a great death scene (although Jared paedecki's character border on the psychotically stupid, Hey are those weird operating instruments in this creepy house? I think I should take a closer look.). And Freddie vs. Jason will always be a favorite, I mean on the dvd you have the option to just cycle through the death scenes, you really couldn't ask for more than that. But UltraViolet had no redeeming qualities. The dialog was painful, the fight scenes were way over the top, and the plot was non existant, and everything about the movie seemed forced. And I don't usually care if people are good actors (I already mentioned that P.H. wasn't that bad in House of Wax), but this was wrong, one of the girls in my group actually fell asleep during the movie. And its not like I went in with high expectations, no offence to Mila Jovovich but if she's in a movie I'm pretty sure its not going to be oscar caliber, but the Resident Evil flicks were pretty decent, and The Fifith Element is a classic (ok so its not like she talks a lot in that movie) but still, Mila for shame!! You should actually apologize to people for this! What were you thinking? This is way worse than Speed 2: Cruise Control could ever be, and VanHelsing doesn't even come close. This movie was worse than the myriad of LifeTime movies played over and over on the WE channel. This movie should be getting negative stars, it is a smoking pile of crap.

Work sucks

So its been awhile since I last posted and thought I should try to write something down. Since I last posted I've been to Costa Rica and tromped through the jungle, zipped through the tree tops, and laid around on a tropical beach.

And then it was back to work. Which has been very difficult to focus on. I've been back a month and still can't bring myself to care that much. But after yesterday I really don't care. Yesterday we had a VIP at work, so of course we throw them a party, and the President of the company shows them around and introduces them to everyone. When they pass me and a coworker the president says "These girls are in the ____ department." Then the president turns towards me and says "But more importantly this girl is dating one of our engineers." Good to know that my only importance to the company is that I'm sleeping with a tech guy. Not that I've been with the company for over two years and that I used to be a pretty hard worker, nope whats important is that I'm dating an engineer. Who cares who I'm dating! That has absolutly nothing to do with my job. About 5 minutes after they passed me by I thought of all the things I should have said. Things that would have got me in trouble and things that wouldn't have. Like I could have said "Yes thats true but I also worked on this project last month" or "What business is it of yours who I'm dating and why would you bring it up at work?"

Ok done.

OOWWW!!

OK so I feel like an ass. I was putting together a gift basket for work, and one of the items was a nice Santa Barbara wine. I grab all of the stuff I had just bought and get out of the car, A tells me to put everything in the basket, "I've got it" I reply and take a step. I then proceed to drop the bag holding the bottle of wine, which lands right on my toe, and then proceeds to breaks one of the rhinestones off of my shoe. This is the most painful thing I've ever felt and the pain just keeps coming. Something about feet which make injury to them seem much worse than anything else. I can bang my choulder on every wall in the house, and nothing, but stub my toe on the stairs and I'm whining for an hour.

So there I am in the company parking lot hopping up and down on one shoe and doing a piss poor job of trying not to cry. I limp up to work, A brings me an icepack and some food, and I take a bunch of motrin, my firend that usually has stronger drugs is of course not here today. The rest of the afternoon I sit in my chair, rocking back and forth, trying not to cry, while my toe gets black and blue and the rest of my foot gets frostbite. And then a friend had to drive me home because I couldn't drive. Wow this Tuesday sucked.

Luckily I woke up this morning and my toe is much better, I don't even think I'll loose the nail (yuck). Only half of it is black and I think a little nail polish might fix that up anyways. Stupid bottle of wine, it didn't even break (I'm not sure how I feel about that, I didn't pay for it so I kind of wish the evil thing had shattered so that it couldn't work its mischief on someone else).