just some stuff i've been working on with my new camera...

evil is still evil even when it's old...

charles manson isn't nearly as creepy at 74 as he was when he was younger but he still scares the bejebbus out of me.

don't forget to

it's that time again... what time? daylight saving time!

thematic photography...

carmi over at written inc has his thematic photography up for the week. the theme this week is "down".


i love to shoot from different perspectives and had been dreaming about the day that i would be at the vatican to shoot this very photo. i finally got to do it in 2005!

i wish i had something to say...

but i don't.

since it is february though, i will leave you with this pretty heart.

just a couple of random things...

how does someone that looks like this:

end up on the worst dressed list? i think drew looks like a dream!

next: after 20 years as a person with a .com email address i am having a hard time adjusting to being a .edu person. i keep giving out the wrong email address.

and lastly: i better get my medical insurance straightened out and SOON. i have been completely off all my meds for the last two weeks and can't seem to stop crying. UGH! i really hate not being in better control of my emotions.

bluetooth this...

so the hands free law was created so that people could pay more attention to the road instead of their cell phone. this video is a great example of what else people are doing.

fingers crossed...

i am asking all of you to please keep your fingers crossed for me on friday afternoon. i have been invited back for a second interview!

political stuff...

i can't remember where i stole this from but it was too priceless not to post.


in the city today i stopped to chat with this fellow that had a big table of obama stuff about last nights debate. he ended up giving me this tee shirt (that i might wear in the race on sunday) and two obama buttons. how cool is that!


i saw this magnet at one of the farmers markets i go to and almost wet myself when i read it...

in case you can't tell from the picture, that is W. talking to pope jpII.

are you registered?

MIA...

sorry i have been MIA for a while.

here are some pictures of what i have been up to.

barbie at the sisters houses in SF.

i have lived here in the bay area nearly all my life but have never seen the sisters. one of san francisco's most famous sites.

the rest of these shots are from a recent trip to the monterey bay aquarium and the bubba gump shrimp factory.

good new, bad news, stuff and nonsense...

first the good news: in the war between my body and iron, my body has won this round. at my check up last week, i was expecting my iron levels to be down but they were up from my visit in march. march level was 12.8 and last week i was 13.3 so maybe something has finally kicked in within my body and started breaking down iron and absorbing it.

the bad news: i got laid off today. i am a little bit bummed about it but then i found out that the leprechaun got laid off too, so i guess what goes around really does come around. i would also like to believe that this is the universe's way of kicking me in the ass and telling me that when i make my big announcement on saturday that things are going to go well with it.

stuff: on saturday i will be making a big announcement.

nonsense: on sunday night i stayed up until 10:00 pm making my version of a "mock hostess cupcake" as a challenge from someone at work. a third person at work had brought in some that they had bought at a local bakery that were supposed to be really delicious. i tried mine and my first thought was that the ganache on the top was WAY too thick. it was almost two inches thick(ick!). the cake itself was leaden. it sat like a brick in my stomach all the rest of the day. so when faced with this challenge i was quite confident that i could beat it. i used my family's special chocolate cake recipe as the base for the cupcake. i made a simple white buttercream for the filling, and a bittersweet chocolate ganache for the topping. the squirlyques on the top were an icing trick i learned in my cake class.

the result to me is that the cake was light and fluffy. much better than the challenger. my cream filling was a little too thick but it tasted better. my thinner ganache was better than the piled high ganache.

scale of 1-5

category competitor barbie
ganache 2 4
cream 3 4
cake 1 5
total 6 13

winner = barbie!

oh my GOD...

how come no one told me?

P.S. I Love You was SO good. i don't want to say it was a "chick flick" because i would like to believe that there might be a straight man out there some where that might have enjoyed it. i had it in my netflix queue because one of the guys i work with recommended it to me because his wife had loved it. i finally watched it on monday night. i alternated between laughing and crying through the whole movie. in the end though i thought it was a really, really great movie. oh, and can i just say, gerard butler! YUM!!!!!

Bon Fête du Canada

or for the english speakers in canada happy canada day!

random things from my weekend...

this is a long one. you better go potty first and then get a drink and a snack...

friday:

immediately after work: drive to pharmacy with 2 prescriptions that need refilling. one is an asthma med, the other is one of my OCD meds. i belong to a plan with the company that makes this particular asthma medication. they send me a coupon every month that is good for $20.00 off my co-pay every month. good thing, because the co-pay for this drug is $50.00. i know, right? anyway. i go to the drop off window. i hand them to the clerk. i tell him i will wait. he tells me the waiting time is about 20 minutes. so i go get the rest of the things that i need and then have a seat in the waiting area. i wait, and i wait. i play a game of bejeweled on my phone. i wait some more. i read the diabetes magazine from the stand. finally one of the clerks calls me up. so i pile up my other purchases on the counter. she starts ringing things up. i hand her the coupon for the medication. she reads it and puts it down. she rings up the rest of my things and then picks up the coupon again. she reads it again, front and back. then tells me that i can one use one or the other. “one or the other what?” i ask. “your insurance or the coupon” she tells me. “oh, no, no, no. that coupon is from the drugs manufacturer. it is to help with the co-pay.” again she tries to tell me i can’t use both. i look at her and say “you must be new here.” she answers with “yes, i am new but that has nothing to do with this.” i look around her to the pharmacist. “paramla! can you come over here?” i nearly shout across the pharmacy. i explain what the clerk is trying to do before the clerk can even blink. paramla tells the clerk, “you go do xyz, i’ll take care of barbie.”
why the clerk didn’t just ask for help in the first place is beyond me. but to make me call in the “principal” on her.

oh wait.... i almost forgot the best part of this story. later on friday night: the second drug was for my OCD. they gave it to me in two little bottles like it comes from the factory. the bottles were so small that the prescription label didn't fit on the bottle. well, i didn't notice this until after i got home. i had to take them back to the pharmacy and ask them to change them to the regular brown bottles because of how they had labled them. when i arrived at the "consult a pharmacist" window paramla looked at me and asked "did we forget something?" ok, i feel bad now... as i type this, and we did laugh about it at the party yesterday but at the time i was ready to climb over the pharmacy counter and fill it myself. i was all, "um, you do know that this is an OCD med, right? look at how it's packaged. you can't do that. i need this label to be flat." and now that i am remembering it again, she actually said "but it is flat." "no, it's not. see it's not stuck to the bottle all the way" i said showing her the problem. she watches me flapping the bottle around the window (thinking thoughts of "this girl is crazy!" i am sure!). then she says "the bottle is too small to do it that way." "ok, well then... you are going to need to put this in a different bottle. because i can't have these sitting on my shelf. i won't be able to sleep if i bring these bottles into my house. do you know how long it takes me to peel the label off the singular bottle????" anyway, long story short, she put a "note" in my file about putting all my meds into those brown bottles with the labels stuck to them all the way around.

i'm betting that my asking for them to start the label at the edge of the tab so they all start and end in the same place on the bottle is probably too much to hope for. ;)

later still on friday night found me sitting in a room at the hospital emergency department having a breathing treatment with 4,872,963 other asthmatics in san jose. no big deal. my xopenex just didn’t seem to be doing the trick.

saturday morning i wanted to wash my comforter so i packed all my dirty laundry, sheets, towels, linens, and the comforter into my truck and headed to a nearby laundry mat that was unbelievably clean. i think you could possibly have eaten off the floors in this place. weird. anyway. no fewer than four people questioned my judgment at having stuck my $300 down comforter in the washing machine. but, when it was done i pulled it out and showed them the tag that said it was machine wash and dryable. so neener neener neener on them for paying $70 to dry clean theirs.

after everything was dried and folded and packed back into the truck i headed off to my cell providers store to pick up a hands free device so that i can be in full compliance tomorrow when the new law takes effect. then to the AMC theaters to pick up my gift for notsoccer mom’s son’s birthday. after that i needed to get him a card so i went across the street to target. i crossed the threshold into the store at about 5:15 pm with the sole purpose of getting a birthday card for the boy. when i finally freed myself from the time vortex that is target it was 7:45 and i had spent $200.00 and i still did NOT have a birthday card. i swear i don’t even remember what i bought. all i know is that when i did manage to break free i had a hankering for steak like you wouldn’t believe.

i went home and vacuumed my room so that i could make the bed. then i brought in the bags of everything i bought. set up the air purifier next to the bed. i do remember buying that. and then ended up not even eating dinner because by the time i got the bed made and my room put back together it was too late to eat before bed.

sunday was notsoccer mom’s son’s birthday party. the kids all seemed to have a blast. it’s nice now that he is getting older the kids all entertain themselves.
notsoccer mom did all the invites and candy wrappers and stuff that all goes with the theme that the boy picked. and like every year, she did a great job.

i did get that steak i was craving finally. last night i went to black angus for dinner and tonight i have leftovers!!!! yay for leftovers!

oh yeah... in the it's a small world department: i was talking with NSM's friend L at the party. i found out that we have the same asthma doctor. her dad was a dentist that for many years practiced in the office next door to my ENT so they are good friends. her dad is being treated by my old sinus specialist Dr. Doogie.

isn't that weird?

pin heads of the world unite!

this story isn't going to mean much to anyone except notsoccer mom because she knows about my pin headedness already. but i thought i would share anyway. i have a REALLY hard time finding hats that fit. probably because i have the world's smallest head for an adult. it's obvious to me now that it's because i don't keep my brains in my head where there are supposed to me. clearly i am sitting on them, otherwise, my ASS wouldn't need to be so HUGE!

on the friday night before my company's mandatory fun, i thought i would go to target and get a sun hat since the event was being held at the beach. you know protect the oh so delicate skin on my tender baby fresh face from undue sun damage. or not. 9:30 pm on friday night finds me in the hat aisle at said store. i am trying on all of the lovely straw hats. every single stinking one of them falls to the bridge of my nose before coming to rest on the top of my glasses. even the ball caps are too big. that was how i ended up with the pink visor that you saw in the picture i posted of me freezing. i like to call that the visor grip of death because it squeezed my head so freakin' tight i thought my eyeballs might just explode out of my head. at any moment i was expecting to feel blood dripping out of my ears. you can't imagine the headache i had from that stupid visor.

although it did help keep the glare out of my eyes.

by the way, NSM... the boy left his monterey bay aquarium hat at my house last week. :)

blue glass...

carmi's theme this week is glass.

wait, what?

doctor "i am always late, it's part of my charm" was actually on time for my appointment today. i had made a list of things i wanted to cover with him. he started off by thanking me for letting his nurse weigh me. um... ok.

he said he was glad i had 1. come in to see him about my concerns. and 2. was so organized as to have brought him a list of issues and possible solutions (um, hello? remember me? you are treating me for my OCD?).

so, he would like me to keep going to the same hematologist so rather than refer me to someone else, he suggested i just change medical groups so that i can keep him and the hematologist. easy enough. just need to make sure my GYN and asthma docs are also in the new medical plan.

he ordered new bloodwork as he thinks part of my problem with weight gain is my thyroid. apparently my thyroid levels on my last test back in september were barely in the normal range. i'll know in a few days if he is going to put me on a thyroid medication.

he prescribed an anti-migrain medication that has benefits as a mood elevator and aids in weightloss.

and then, at the end of the appointment... he hugged me. that was weird. i don't mind because i am a hugger too, but he has never done that before.

scent-sation hallucination...

on mothers day, my brother called me. he was feeling down and missing our mom. we talked for a little while saying things like "remember that time"...

the next day as i was dressing for work, i pulled my top over my head and caught a wiff of my mothers scent. mom loved white shoulders cologne. it was the only scent she ever wore. some times it was like she had bathed in it because it permeated all of her clothing.

so, here is the weird part. ever since that day, everything i have put on smells like white shoulders. it's like my mother is hanging out in my closet, only it's even the clothes that are clean and fresh out of the dryer.

i haven't changed detergent or dryer sheets in years. and i don't normally wear any perfume because of my asthma, so what's the deal???

if there's a hell, that's where i'll be...

i apologize to all you faithful, but i find the guy just a little creepy.

so i had a little fun with him.



if you thought these were funny, you can go to says-it.com and make your own signs.