Saturday, July 31, 2004

One of My Favorites Things

I love ice cream sandwiches.

My dear friend, Becky, would caution me to rethink that statement. "Do you really love ice cream sandwiches? Isn't that a bit a strong statement."

Yes, I really do love ice cream sandwiches. Just ask my boyfriend. I will eat at least 75% of any box of them that he brings home. I get teased endlessly about it. I don't care.

There is something so perfect about the ice cream sandwich. That "cookie" that's a little on the dry side but not really as it will stick to anything. That creamy ice cream that starts melting in a nanosecond. As a kid, I was always getting ice cream sandwiches from the concession stand at the public pool and having to lick circuits around the ice cream track to keep it from dripping all over. I have since mastered eating them more quickly. This probably happened around the time that I discovered the best thing about the ice cream sandwich is the moment you sink your teeth in to bite a piece off.

Just thinking about it makes me so glad that I bought a 24 count box of them today. My boyfriend is betting he'll only get 5 of them.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Got a Light?

It all started one evening last week.  There was a knock on the door.  When I answered it, my upstairs neighbor and her gaggle of greatgrandchildren greeted me.  It was one of these kids who dubbed me "mean old lady" for not sharing my Krispy Kremes.  I've heard her greatgrandmother yell and I think she needs to reevaluate her definition.

Back to the story.

They were at my door and in need of a flashlight.  Who am I to deny a greatgrandmother and her gaggle of greatgrandchildren a flashlight at night?  I produced a flashlight, it was used, and then it was returned ten minutes later.

Now I'm more of what you would call a homebody.  I like writing, surfing the internet, and reading.  None of these require going outside, especially during the hot California summer.  Aside from work, I can be consistently counted on to venture from the apartment to do laundry.  Want to guess what I hear every time I step out loaded down with a laundry basket or seeking mail?

"Hey lady!  Do you got a flashlight?"

Is it "mean, old lady" girl?  No.  It is her little brother, who likes to throw rocks at my front door and apparently play with flashlights in broad daylight.  My response, after perusing a yard full of broken toys, "No.  I don't usually carry a flashlight on me."  Yet the young lad is not deterred, for every time he sees me, he follows me, questioning me about my flashlight.  Here's our most recent exchange.

I struggled out the front door, lugging my laundry basket, trying to shut the door before my contraband kitty can escape.  I am greeted with, "Hey lady!  Do you got a flashlight?"

"No."

Not satisfied, the future Hans Blix follows me around the 4-plex to the laundry room off the garage, countering,

"But my grandma says you do."

"No, I don't.  Not anymore." I concluded as I shut the laundry room/

The moral of the story?

Lend your flashlight to a greatgrandmother and her gaggle of greatgrandchildren and you wind up with a 4-year-old stalker with a future in either investigative journalism or street hooliganism with a focus in rock throwing.

Monday, July 26, 2004

Really Bad Democrat

Okay.  Apparently I was a little off.  I was thinking that last week was the DNC.  Oops.  I should research these things a little better.  Oh how I have drifted from the days as a kid when I was awestruck by Ann Richards' refrence to George the Elder, "He can't help it.  He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth."

Sunday, July 25, 2004

Bad Democrat: The Week in Review

Okay, I admit it.  I didn't practice what I preached this week.  The closest I got to following the Democratic convention was the 5 minutes of NPR's Morning Edition that I listened to that featured a blurb on a pizza place across the street from the big event that was forced to close due to security for the event.  They put up a huge pro-Bush sign.  It makes me wonder, if they had been able to stay open and had made a ton of money this week, would they be pro-Kerry?  

On the whole, I've become lazy as a voter.  I don't really care about politics too much at the moment.  It disappoints me because I used to be quite passionate about the election.  If you want to see me at my prime, read this.

In other news, my neighbors moved.  WOO HOO!  No more worrying about them taking over the garage we shared.  No more worrying about them reporting our cat.  The number of children playing right outside our apartment has dropped dramatically.  And I can't be certain, but I don't think I have to worry about my detergent getting stolen from the laundry room again.

My aunt made it through her surgery with flying colors.

I will never again have my mother reminding me to send her the vanilla that I bought for her in Mexico.

And on an ominous front for the blog, I bought a new SimCity game.  Hopefully, I'll be bored with it in a week and focusing on the blog again.

Okay, and I didn't technically know about this until today, so it's not really part of last week, but Nocturnal Elucidations now has a review on the Weblog Review.

Saturday, July 24, 2004

No Login, No Job?

Thursday, I made a bold move.  I wrote my first personal e-mail at work, where computer policies are on the fairly strict side.  But this was for an old college roommate who I had told about the blog earlier in the week so I wanted to send her the address so she could take a looksie. 

As I clicked the send button in Gmail, a window popped up telling me there were problems connecting me to my local server.  I entered my login and password a few times to no.  I exited out of all my programs, logged off my computer and tried logging in again.  I was informed that my login had been locked out and that I needed to call an administrator.  Well, everyone's out east and the offices there have been closed an hour, so I call and leave a message.

Then I start to worry.

Did I get busted for a violation of computer policy?  So I start to think of everything and anything they may have hated.  There was the time I went to weather.com to see how ungodly hot it was going to get.  The handful of times I checked my e-mail on Gmail.  It didn't help that a co-worker had told me how at a previous employer, they revoked computer logins to notify employees that they were laid off.  I was not a happy camper.

It didn't help that people kept asking me to do things and I had to explain that I was locked out and couldn't do it.  What must they be thinking?  On the upside, with a co-worker out on vacation, this was the first calm I had experienced all week.  I coasted to the end of the day.

Thursday night, I consulted friends and family for reassurance.  Everyone agreed that I shouldn't lose a wink of sleep over it and find out in the morning what happened.  Oddly enough, that's what I did.

Friday morning, I started my computer and went to log in, hoping the problem had been resolved.  It hadn't.  I mustered my courage and dialed the computer help desk again.  They had no record of me calling the day before, but they did fix the problem.  Apparently when that window popped up during my Gmail session and I was trying to log in, well, the system recorded it as 3 failed attempts on my login and automatically locked the login as a precaution.

I am a happy camper again.

Except that I had to catch up on computer work.

Monday, July 19, 2004

Week's Goal

Over the weekend, I got a political e-mail over the weekend.  One of those forwards that makes bold comments and is light on the evidence, as in the sources for information.  I can't very well go after the sender of this e-mail for what I consider to be one of the great e-mail offenses, possibly even more annoying than spam.  If I do, I shall be flogged by my family.  Instead, I'll take my frustration on you.
 
Hopefully, you know my views on e-mail (if not, read the link over to the right), so I won't go into those again.  I will hop onto my soapbox for a moment regarding politics since this week is the Democratic Convention.
 
Discuss politics.  This is a good thing.  Even debate because no one should agree about everything, especially matters of government.  It is when there is disagreement that issues are further analyzed and debated.  This is a good thing.  No one likes a "yes" man, or woman.  Whatever your party affiliation, don't let it become a debate of Democrats vs. Republicans, or any other party combination for that matter.  Debate issues, not parties.  I say this with a caveat.  Do some research.  Heck, do this for yourself.  Be informed.  The following do NOT count as sources of research:  network news, local news, your spouse, friends or co-workers (unless any of them work for non-partisan think tanks), and a good deal of what's on the internet.  How do you do research then?  Chances are you'll get your inital bits of info from any on that list, just try to verify it elsewhere.  And when you get into a political discussion/debate, make it a discussion/debate.  Do not be a preacher.  Preachers do not listen, they preach.  If everyone in the conversation is preaching/persuading, no one is listening to each other and it's no longer a conversation, but a frustrating waste of hot air. 
 
So this week, let's get informed and start some discussions.
 

Sunday, July 18, 2004

Blogger Remorse

We've all done it at one point or another.
 
We've said something we shouldn't have.  And I'm not just talking about times like a few weeks ago when I shared the insulting nicknames for a few superiors with a frequest visitor to the offiice without realizing that one of them was within earshot.  When I did realize, I turned even paler than usual.  I was told that my eyes got quite big as well.  This has proven to a funny experience to recall, though not nearly as funny as having told my co-workers about my dream in which I surrendered my cat to the Nazis.
 
I'm thinking of the T.M.I. comments.  The Too Much Information comments that shape people's perception of the speaker in a not so positive way.  Like when during my first week of work at my current job, a co-worker and I were discussing our lingering symptoms from recent bouts of the stomach flu and I brought up my lingering gassiness.
 
It was easy enough to establish boundaries in the beginning.  When I started this blog, I had a few rules, especially since I was encouraging friends and family to read my blog.
  1. No "Momming" - aka talking about friends and family constantly while never talking about myself because no likes to be talked about that much and people won't get to know me if I'm always sharing stories about other people.
  2. Try not to encourage stalkers.
  3. (This rule is still under consideration.)  Would Laurie Notaro write about it?  If no, then it's definitely it's definitely an entry that I'll regret the morning after.

This brings me back to the TMI entries.  There are just that shouldn't be shared with the world, like the perfectly nice British chap who had an entry that started off discussing sitting at his computer naked eating potato chips.  I don't know how the entry ended because I stopped reading and haven't gone back.

For those considering writing a blog entry that goes into a great deal of personal information I offer the following bits of caution:

  1. You may think you can edit/delete entries if you change your mind about an entry, but you can't change/erase the memories of those who read it.
  2. What you think may be a glimpse into a side of you that your readers don't normally get to see might be the awkward first impression of a new visitor to your blog.

Saturday, July 17, 2004

I'm Sorry. So Sorry.

I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a while.  I promise that I'll get a real entry in this weekend sometime.  I'm also working on adding a few more weeks.  Oh, and Blogger has added some great new features that I hope to explore this weekend.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

The Humbling of Misc Karen

I have always maintained a "distant" relationship with my student loans. My "career" in retail made it impossible to make payments. However, with the advent of my new job, I am now able to make payments. With my most recent deferrment set to expire this summer, I was ready, in the nick of time, to make payments.

Last week, I received a notice for payment, and yesterday, for the first time, I mailed a check.

Today, I received an overdue notice. Ouch. I got on the phone and promptly began to pace around the apartment. Nothing causes me more stress than the thought of how I will be paying forever on my student loans. Whenever I talk to them I get all rambly and anxious. I was told I missed a June payment. I indicated that I didn't know about a June payment. I was asked if I wanted to talk to a supervisor. I said yes. I was then told that I actually did have to ask for one. This guy was basically itching to palm me off on someone. Grrrrr.

I then talked to the supervisor. Turned out that I was not as up to date with my address as I thought I was. (Though they did manage to track down my Cali address.) Well, I can't exactly get cranky when it's my fault.

So tomorrow I will be firing out another check. Thank goodness it's payday.

Stupid student loans.

If you hate my student loans as much as I do, e-mail me at misckaren@gmail.com to find out how you can help.

Monday, July 05, 2004

Recalling the 4th

Despite the prolonged hangover and illness from Friday night, yesterday ended pretty well.

We were stirred from our attempts to fall asleep (we are now early to bed people) by the sounds of fireworks. I suggested that it could have also been our neighbors making the loudest microwave popcorn I have ever heard. It wasn't.

We went out in the front yard in our scraggly pajamas to watch the city's fireworks display which was originating just two blocks north of our apartment. We could have sat on our couch watching through the front window with our cat.

!!!SENTIMENTAL FLASHBACK ALERT!!!

Whenever I see fireworks, I think back to when I was a kid and how every 4th we would go to the nearby lake to catch the display. We'd sit in lawnchairs and get eaten alive by mosqitoes while listening to the local easy listening station's musical contribution. Fireworks are truly the only time I can stand such sappy fare. In fact, I think it is required. That, or some Beach Boys.

So we watched the fireworks as they were framed by the palm trees across the street. And while I pined for my patriotic music, we, instead, enjoyed the chorus of car alarms that were triggered by the loud booms of the fireworks. With every particularly loud boom, we eagerly watched a pick-up parked across the street, as it's lights flickered, threatening to sound its alarm. My boyfriend was disappointed when the finale failed to trigger the truck's wails. I has no regrets and wish we could do it all again tonight.

Happy Belated 4th.

Thanks to all the troops, past and present. Don't forget the future ones in boot camp either.

Happy Birthday Bro!

Sunday, July 04, 2004

Ahem.

Okay, I need to clarify a few things regarding my last post.

1) I do not think all Midwesterners are idiots. If I did, I'd be including myself because I consider myself a Midwesterner. Don't believe me? Read more of my blog. My co-workers tease me constantly for complaining how I wish I were back there. If I offended anyone with the post I'm sorry. Thanks to JenLynn for the call on this one. (Jen is a good friend with whom I blog on two other blogs, and I hope she's not too mad at me.)

2) Okay, I don't know who posted the guy's address in the comments, but in my mind that is a big party foul. Until I can find out how to delete that entry and not the other one posted, all comments are now hidden. Granted that gets rid of the handful of comments I had, but I'm not down with the address thing. Take that to Fark, not here.

And on a SPOILER note regarding Spiderman 2, what's the point of having a secret identity when it's no longer a secret.

As for future complaining, I promise to use my "I" statements.