Week in Review

So my grandparents, now regular visitors to kristlyand, have been bugging me to update my website... so I guess I can do that ;)

My training was pretty awesome in Detroit. The trainer dude really knew his stuff, which was quite refreshing, and he threw in a bunch of bonus material. If you'd like to take a look at some of those extras, go here. It was a lecture class, and most of the people in there were pretty cool, minus the three women who worked for Allen Park, MI public schools who were some of the most annoying people on the planet. They had to make a comment about everything, ask a lot of dumb questions about macs (in a win2k class?), and tried to apply what we learned to their pathetic little network (and usually showed how much they didn't understand or misunderstood the material that was learned). And just when you thought they weren't annoying enough, someone gave them clicky pens and chewing gum. So not only did they speak, but they also chomped and cracked their gum most of the 2nd day of the course and clicked their pens in time. I thought I was going to go nuts. Fortunately, they found a vending machine and were able to satiate their huge maws with chocolate instead of the more annoying chewing gum counterpart. I hope it goes straight to their asses. Other than those clueless ladies, the training session was fine. I was even able to make my way into Dearborn to find an Einstein Bros. Bagels and a Mongolian BBQ. The food is even more yummy than usual when it's company sponsored. Regardless, I was happy to see Tommy when I got home.

Thursday night, Tom and I headed to Cosmos to see Jay and possibly get some work done. However, it seems like everytime we go to Cosmos, there's some sort of annoying group of folks planning to hold a consortium about an hour after we get there. The week before, it was the campus crusade. This week, some ethnic / poetry / short story class had a "poetry reading." This was the worst crap I've heard in quite some time. Present at the event was Barbie Doll (tm) who decided to rhyme about how hard it is to be beautiful, performance art / crazy about alliteration girl, frat boy with a heart, the girl who said she was a sucky poet (and almost got some kudos from me) until she started talking about suicide, and the various pot heads who thought it was so cool to write about being high. Joy.. needless to say, I didn't get much studying for Japanese accomplished and by the end of the night, I really wanted to stab my eyes out.

Saturday really ruled. I woke up at around 5am, went to frisches for coffee eggs and studying, which always works out well. We all voted to postpone exam day one hour, so I went to Japanese class about 8:30, instead of the usuall 8. Got a 96% on my exam (I forgot my particle wa, like watashi wa... I never do that.. doh!), won a belgian waffle maker in the white elephant gift exchange, had sushi at kotobuki with sensei and few other kids from class, and then headed to major magics for a couple of rounds of DDR!!! It was so incredibly fun. Everyone else left the arcade early, but I had a bunch of tokens left, so I stayed and played until I was out. What else was I going to do? You can't do laundry with those things (only in a perfect world).

Monday night I went grocery shopping and made christmas cookies. Tuesday night I helped Brandon put together a SQLserver :) (that was awesome). It was interesting how I was the only one who wanted to use the usermanual, but it did come in handy :) Then I came home and chopped until I could chop no more for the relish tray for the potluck on Wednesday. There was soooo much food, I'm surprised I was able to walk out of there. Wednesday night, I did some DDR at home, and tried to get Tom to study. Fortunately, one of his study buddies showed up and he went to the union... I read some more of the Two Towers while the thunder and rain crashed all around.... Ahhh relaxation....

Tonight, I need to organize all the presents for the United Way families so that they can be delivered tomorrow. I got a lot of donations from folks, so I need to go shopping too :) I'm very excited about it all :) If anyone would like to help me deliver, I'm accepting volunteers.

Today is the last day I work until 12-30! Hooray!

12.19.02 5:03pm(2 comments)

Grammas (and me) of the World Cheer for Joy

Since I'll be flying to Oklahoma in a few weeks, I decided to check out the new regulations to see what I could and couldn't bring on the plane with me. Thankfully, I can bring my knitting needles on the plane, although I'll have to buy some of those little kid scissors if I want to cut any yarn. However, much to my dismay, I discovered that I'll have to leave my cattle prod in my checked luggage along with my meat cleaver, throwing stars, and nunchakus.

12.09.02 9:50am(0 comments)

GeekGRRL!!!!

Best geek girl gadget *EVER*

OH OH AND THIS TOO!

12.06.02 10:34am(0 comments)

Bad Girls want Good Contracts!

I know this isn't supposed to be funny... but what the hell :)

2, 4, 6, 8, pay us more to Gyrate!

12.03.02 10:55am(0 comments)

But Baby it’s cold outside

Thanksgiving wasn't nearly as horrid as I thought it was going to be. Anticipating that I would lay around and mope all day, I tried to keep myself as busy as possible, a little cleaning here, some cooking there. Fortunately for me, Pete, Steve, and Jeni invited me over to Steve's house to hang out with them. I cooked my cornish game hens and we hung out a bit.

I had to leave though because Joe was in town, I hadn't seen him forever, and I wanted to chat with him before he went home. I met Joe at my apartment, showed him the place, my new car, and we had a nice chat. It was just like old times. Joe headed home and I went back over to Steve's for some chow. I hung out a bit more there, but had to leave so I could get started on the United Way Angel tree. I did some stuff at home, got a call from Tom, and went over to Sky Tech.

I had to still put the names, instructions, and gift request on the back of the angel ornaments that I had been cutting out all day. That took me quite some time, and it was already late. I didn't actually get the tree until about 1 am. I was in for quite a surprise as I single handedly pulled this 7.5 foot bushy bohemoth of a tree from the shelves and dragged it to the break room. I spread it out and sorted the branches, started fluffing branches and hookin' it all up. I've got the first two rows done and working on the third when I realize, "Hey, this tree needs some lights." I go grab some more decorations stored in the garage at sky tech. I open the boxes and find some pretty purple and gold garland, but the lights left a lot to be desired. The lights had white strands instead of green, and I wasn't about to decorate the tree with those. I thought, well that's dumb, they've got to have more lights somewhere, so I go out into the garage again. As the door closes behind me, I realize that my keys are no longer in my back pocket. F*CK.

It's 2:30 am. I'm without keys, coat, purse, mobile phone in the garage (fortunately for me it is a nice big heated garage) at sky tech. The christmas tree is ALL over the break room. I am so screwed. So I start looking around. Maybe someone left a key somewhere. No dice.

I open up the garage door a bit, crawl out, and head towards Meijer. I'm sorta jogging, so I can keep warm because I have no jacket. I figure, I could call the on-call person and have them call someone who lives close by to come let me in. I try to use my phone card number on all 3 of the payphones meijer has, but for some odd reason, it won't recognize my phone card number. I ask the meijer people if I can use their phone, but they tell me that the phones they have access to, don't have outside lines. So I run over to the meijer gas station and make a call from there. Why in the world the phone out in the middle of the cold and wind will take my phone card, but the one inside nice and warm Meijer won't, is beyond me. So I make my first page. Wait for a bit.

I realize that I really can't feel my legs all that well, so I head back to meijer. By this time, I'm bawling and the guy cleaning the restrooms makes the mistake to ask me what's wrong. He leads me to the greeter dude who then takes me to the sales manager's office where I use the phone. I wait around a bit more.

I see someone drive to the meijer gas station, so I run over there. No dice. I realize that Jeni is working at the gas station at the time and I talk to her for a little bit. She lets me borrow her coat, scarf, and gloves (Jeni, you are an absolute angel!!!!). I make another phone call from the Meijer gas station payphone, and wait some more. Suddenly, I see a car whipping around the corner, headed for the sky tech parking lot. I'm so crazed at this point that I start running for sky tech as fast as my chubby legs will take me. The car that was headed for sky tech had parked right beside me in the parking lot. Someone was there! I'm saved!

Pounding on the windows of the breakroom, I can't really see anyone in there, and they can't obviously hear me pounding. Then I figured, who else would be at Sky Tech at, and by this time it was, 3:50 am other than a courier! I run around and crawl back into the garage. There he was! The courier! Right at the door! I run over to the door and try to explain to him that I'm an employee, my name is Kristy, I was working on the tree and was locked out. He told me to slow down a bit, asked if I was okay, and if he could help me. I repeated what I was frantically trying to say earlier and asked him if I could come inside. He let me in, I thanked him a million times and went and got my coat... and my fricken keys.

However, I couldn't go home to my warm bed quite yet. I had a tree to decorate and lights to find. I figured, screw it, I'm just going to go buy some lights from the nice folks at meijer. I drive over there this time in my nice warm car, give jeni her coat back, grab some lights, thank the meijer folks again a few times, and head back to sky tech to finish the tree.

By 5 am, the tree is finished and I'm on my way home. Luckily, I didn't have to work until 2pm that day, so I had some time to get myself together. But Wait! It's the day after thanksgiving! The biggest shopping day of the year! I had shopping to do! So I take a shower, make a pot of coffee, reperuse my ads, devise a shopping strategy, and figure hell, I'm young.. this is what young folks do right? I head out to michaels and get there at 6:30 am. Then over to Target, Kohls, and then back to best buy. But, by 9:00 am there were still people lined up outside in the cold waiting to get in for the deals (that were probably sold out anyway). Screw that! I had my share of cold that morning, there was no way in hell I was going to wait outside to go in and find everything sold out. I went to the mall, did some shopping there. I realized at about 9:30 am that my joints were extremely stiff and it was painful to walk, so I headed home. By this time, I was so incredibly tired, that I just fell into bed.

My alarm woke me, I had some coffee, got myself together, and headed to work, still in a lot of pain. I was supposed to go out with Brandon to the vinyard friday night for dinner, but I opted out and went for the warm comfy pajamas, lying on the couch, under gramma's incredibly warm afghan, watching chick flicks instead.

See if I ever forget my keys again...

12.01.02 11:45am(0 comments)