commas and ampersands

I'm supposed to be working on my thesis database, but I'd rather be doing anything but. It's not that I mind the research, because that's interesting. It's the data entry into Access that's dragging me down. I know it's the best way to keep everything straight, because otherwise, I'll never remember what belongs where, but still... I'd rather have a photographic memory and not have to document everything. ;)

Man, this Starbucks is freezing. I should really go home, where I can control the A/C.

(And now, I'm home.)

The internet here is being ridiculously slow tonight. Just sayin'.

I don't think I've mentioned it here yet, but I plowed through Chuck in the past couple of weeks. I've been busy with so much other stuff, and yet I kept going, and I watched both seasons within about a week and a half. It's one of those shows that I've now caught up to and I actually miss. I haven't felt the need to rewatch episodes or random scenes from week to week with any show for a while, but I've been doing that with this one since I finished it. Colin hasn't seen it, so I've already told him that this will be added to our "must-buy" list. He'll like it, and I'll gladly rewatch it with him.

We have so much TV on DVD to get through, though. There are at least 5 shows that we need to watch all or part of (or have a season of and need to watch to see if we want to watch more). That's definitely where more of our entertainment budget has been going lately. We both used to buy a lot more movies (especially him), but in the past year or so, most of what we've purchased has been TV. Somehow, it just seems like a better value to get 14 hours of viewing for not much more money than a movie's 2 hours. Also, we love having the excuse of working through a show to spend a quiet night at home. We get so busy that when we do have time to spend 3 or 4 hours in front of the TV, watching a few episodes of whatever show we're working through, we love it.

Not that we don't watch movies, because sometimes that's just what we're in the mood for, but for whatever reason, it's been more about TV lately--but we so rarely watch TV live that it's all about the TV on DVD.

I don't have a desk right now, and I haven't had one while I've lived here, but when we have our own place and I have a desk again, I've found the one I want. I really like the IKEA Mikael desk, either regular or corner, depending on the configuration of the room. Sunday after church, I had lunch at IKEA and spent some time wandering around. Bad idea when I'm packing and putting things in storage. Heh. There are always too many things that I want.

New blog entry up at the other blog. As an artist evaluating your work, whose opinions matter most?

Four more days until I leave. Fortunately, there's not too much left to do around here. I'll have enough to keep me busy for the next couple of days, but I shouldn't be too overwhelmed and stressed out. And then, I have next week off, since I'd planned to start work a week later when we were hoping to take next week as a vacation week. Hopefully I can get together with a few friends and get some errands done--maybe even take care of transferring over my license, the car registration and insurance, and my health care right away. We'll see.

And... it's bedtime.

I was at a Christmas party last night that included a gift exchange. It wasn't really a white elephant exchange; the gifts were mostly nice, useable things (a picture frame, a set of mixing bowls, a Starbucks mug, a bottle of wine, a gigantic chocolate bar, etc). This wasn't the "wrap a roll of duct tape and can of Spam" kind of gift exchange, although those are fun in their own way.¹

I was the second one to pick a gift, and the one that I happened to open was a Lindt chocolate snowman (not bad) and the ugliest Santa candle I've ever seen... and I knew as soon as I opened it that I'd be taking the ugly Santa candle home. No one would want to steal that gift from me--and I was right. My fate was determined in the first round of gifts, and that's exactly what I ended up with.

It wasn't until afterwards that I discovered that my very own sister had brought that gift, regifting some items from a gift basket, and didn't even warn me when I was about to pick it up! I didn't get a well-timed cough or a glare or anything! She just let me unwrap to my ugly-Santa-candled doom.

So guess what she's getting in her stocking next Christmas?

However, there are two ways to win at a gift exchange. One is to take home the best present (or the one you want most). The second is to have brought the most sought after gift--the one that's stolen the most often, desired by most people, and causes most disappointment for the ones who don't get it. In that part of the game, I totally won.

I took a Starbucks travel mug (one of the ones with a coupon for a free drink) and a pound of coffee, and it flew back and forth across the room a number of times before finally ending up in Colin's mom's possession.

Also sweetening our overall win of the evening, Colin came away with a brie baker, which we'd actually been wanting to get anyway. I'd seen one a week or so ago, and contemplated buying it, but didn't, and we were actually looking at it again yesterday afternoon. When someone else opened it, I knew it was pointless for me to try and steal it, because no one was going to steal my crappy gift away from me, but Colin did some clever maneuvering and managed to end up with it, so bonus points for us there.

Still. Ugly Santa is totally going in Esther's stocking next Christmas.




¹ I saw an article this Christmas with the best White Elephant gifts, and my favorite was to take an empty gift bag, and when you get to the party, take someone's purse from wherever people are storing their coats and put it in the gift bag. I have no idea where I saw that article, so if someone reading this entry linked to it, you get credit for this suggestion.

I have two stories to tell today:

Before I left for Thanksgiving, I ordered a few things off of Amazon--namely, part of Colin's Christmas gift (which I'm not going to name here, since he occasionally reads this) and a couple of books for thesis research.

I didn't figure they'd come over the weekend, but I'd forgotten that Thursday was the only day without mail service, and when I got back, the tracking said that it had been delivered on Friday. The only problem was, Friday was the day that overlapped Mariah and I both being out of town, and the package was nowhere to be found. When USPS delivers a package that doesn't need to be signed for, they usually leave it outside our apartment door, and we pick it up when we get home. No big deal. However, with both of us out of town, it went missing. I'm guessing that a neighbor took it, but I really don't know anyone in our building, so I didn't have anyone to ask, and, of course, I didn't want to go door to door accusing people of stealing my mail.

I left notes on the doors of our immediate neighbors, asking if they'd happened to notice it and pick it up for safekeeping, but didn't get a response from either, so I emailed Amazon, asking about a replacement. I figured that I'd have to spend some time on the phone with customer service and that I'd have to fight to get a replacement, or somehow prove that I hadn't actually gotten the package.

Within 12 hours, I got an email back, saying that they'd processed a replacement order for me, and that they were upgrading the shipping on the second one.

I realize that they must have policies in place and they probably deal with complaints like that all the time (and I'm sure a certain number of people use it to scam the company and get duplicates), but I was so impressed with how quickly it was dealt with and how little hassle. One email. That was it, and my replacement package is on the way and will be here well before I leave for Christmas.

Amazon FTW!


Story #2 is a random, cool, "it's a small world" story (because really, do I have any other kind of story?).

( Strange, convoluted family relations )

It's that time of year again...

The A/C in our apartment is set up kind of strangely. We can't have both the A/C and the heat at the same time.

Well, of course, you silly girl; who would want the air conditioning and the heat on together?

Okay, no one. But what I mean is, because our system is set up in this weird, funky way, we have to get a technician every winter and summer to switch something in our A/C unit from heat to A/C. This is something that our landlord could have permanently dealt with, but she's chosen not to (yet), so we have to call someone in every few months.

In general, this isn't a bad thing. For most of the year, we don't need both the heat and the A/C at the same time. However, there are a few weeks in November when it would come in handy. See, at night, it's getting down to 50F/10C or so, which, while not freezing cold, is kind of chilly. Without being able to run the heat to take a bit of the edge off, it's hard to be motivated to get out of my cozy, warm, 3-blanketed bed into the cold bedroom.

However, we have days, like this weekend is forecast to be, that are still getting up to 90F/32C. The apartment faces west, and all the windows are on the west side, so in the afternoon, the whole place can get a little bit toasty, and it's handy to have the A/C just to take the edge off. We don't need to run either one a whole lot--in general, the apartment is quite comfortable when it's the temperature that it naturally is at this time of year--but there are moments.

In another week or two, we'll call the technician in and have the system switched over to heat so that we're set for the winter. Once it gets chillier, in January and February, we'll want it, and we won't need the A/C for a few more months at that point.

Still, for right now, it's rather inconvenient, and as much as I love snuggling under lots of blankets in a chilly room (because that's quite a wonderful feeling), it's not so fun when I have to get out of bed in the morning.



In slightly related news, I have a 30% off coupon for Old Navy, Gap, and/or Banana Republic. I might have to use that to get a winter coat, since my older dressy one is getting kind of worn and I've needed a new one since at least last year. I may only need a real winter coat for about 3 weeks of the year (when I'm in Calgary at Christmas), but I still need it for those 3 weeks, and if I'm moving back up there after I graduate next December, I'll definitely need one then.

I saw one that I loved at H&M, but it was about $30 more than I wanted to spend. However, Target has one similar to the one at H&M, and it's almost exactly the same price as the one I'm looking at from Old Navy (with the discount). I'll have to look at them both again and see which one I like better.

I also have a "friends" coupon to forward to as many people as would like it, so if you want 30% off through Sunday for either in-store or online (U.S. only, unfortunately; seems like Canada is always being discriminated against in the good-discount department), let me know (along with your email address if I don't have it), and I'll forward it to you.

( Just to get you onto my page )

Let's see how long this solution to my bathroom storage issue lasts.

In other words, how many nights until it comes crashing down in the middle of the night and scares the bejeebers out of me?


( So, now I've purchased four 'solutions' and returned three. How many more to go? )

So, when I came back from Calgary, one of the things that I really needed was some sort of holder for my hair dryer and straightener, since, with this new haircut, I actually use those two particular appliances and wanted them stored somewhere slightly more accessible than the very back, bottom corner of my bathroom cabinet.

Not too difficult, right? With such a plethora of bathroom organizational products available in this wide, wide world, I should be able to find one that meets my needs, right? Well, so far, I've bought three different "solutions" and returned two of them. Maybe this third one will be what I need, but that still remains to be seen.

The first one I got was this little deal:


( A photographic journey through my bathroom's organizational solutions (or lack thereof) )

Wow--a week since I posted? I guess so. It's been a fairly uneventfully eventful week, in the way that transitions often are.

Last Wednesday night was the first choir practice (which was why we didn't leave until Thursday morning--and why Colin flew back today instead of staying longer), which I went to, just for fun, even though I won't be singing with them. I'll be writing the narration again, so hearing the cantata again is always a good thing--even though I helped Colin put it together, so I've got a pretty good sense of the whole thing. I'll still need to listen to it several more times before I even think about starting to write.

Colin worked Wednesday night, so he got home an hour before we had to leave. Enough time to shower and change, basically, which meant that I drove and he slept for about the first 6 hours of the trip.

The road trip was uneventful, in terms of any major catastrophes. We realized just how much pulling the trailer affected our gas mileage last year. I mean, we'd known that all along, but it doubled the amount of gas that we used. This year, I was thinking that the first shift (we switch off at every tank of gas) felt a lot longer than it had, but I mostly attributed that to the fact that Colin was asleep and there was no one to talk to. We realized, though, that we stopped for our first tank of gas in the same place that we'd stopped for our second tank last year. And it's always a nice change to go to the U.S. and start paying American gas prices, even though they're still high. When we left, gas in Calgary was the equivalent of $5/gallon, give or take (and at its highest point this summer, it'd been around $5.40 or so), so it was a nice change to go to gas that was just under $4. It certainly makes a difference when a full tank is $60 as opposed to $85.

We stopped in Salt Lake City for the night, getting in at around 10. Had some dinner, thought about going to a movie but couldn't find a theatre in time for a show, ended up watching HIMYM on my laptop instead. Low-key, but it was nice to get a good sleep after all the night shifts and weird hours.

The next day, we slept in a bit, had breakfast, and were on the road by about noon. Except for gas and bathroom stops, we drove straight through to L.A.--no stop in Vegas this year. My friend Kim lives there, and we'd tried to see if we could meet her for a late lunch, but it didn't work with her work schedule, so we just kept going and made it back to my apartment by about 9.

I was telling someone just before leaving Calgary that I was having that "moving itch" in that I had all these new things that I wanted to buy, even though I didn't actually move anywhere. Still, on Saturday, we did a little bit of shopping and I got a few little things. One of the biggest things I needed was a new bookcase--mine was sorely lacking in space, and I wanted to go with something bigger (a corner unit and a full-size shelf) rather than getting a second one. However, we couldn't really justify spending the money on the ones we really wanted, even though they're pieces that we'll keep in our house after we get married, so I got a $20 one that's similar to my old one instead, and we bought some spray paint to do it a dark espresso brown.

I still need to get a second one to replace the one I had originally (because they're small enough that I do need two full bookcases, and that's just for some of my books), but I'll do that and paint it in a few weeks, once I'm working again, and I'll get enough paint to do some of the other furniture in my room that needs to be painted as well. Right now, I have about 5 different colors of furniture, because they're all mismatched pieces from all over the place, and while I know that I'm not investing in anything really good because we're going to be putting together a bedroom within the near-ish future, I still want it to match and look good in the meantime. Spray paint is just about the cheapest way to at least make it somewhat match.

Anyway, we also got some hanging lamps and a remote light switch, since my room doesn't have an overhead light and I was tired of banging my shins on my bed when I crossed the room in the dark to turn on a light. And, since my mattress was the most uncomfortable thing my back had ever felt, I got a good-quality (and much cheaper than a new mattress set) air mattress. We'll see how that works, but I've slept on some really good air mattresses lately, so I know it's possible for it to be a decently comfortable bed. Also, it's a full, which means that the extra space on my bedframe (which is 3/4 size) isn't hanging out under the mattress like it was on the old single mattress.

So, I got my fill of new stuff without spending too much on it. It was all necessary--I mean, I could have gone without it all; it wasn't necessary like our computers were necessary earlier this summer, but it wasn't frivolous like new, unnecessary clothes.

Sunday, we went to church... except that when we got there, we realized that there was only one service, which was just ending. Oops. Guess we should have checked to see if there was a summer service schedule. Ah well... we ended up going to the Getty instead. I've been meaning to go there since I moved here (gotta love free art museums), but hadn't made it yet, so it was one more thing checked off my list.

Yesterday was Disneyland, and it was a perfect day for it. After the busyness of Ikea on Saturday and the Getty on Sunday, I was worried that Disneyland would be insane, but I guess being the last day of the long weekend, everyone was on their way back home. We didn't wait more than 30 minutes for any ride, and we had plenty of time to get on everything that we wanted to, so we spent a lot more time on the rides than we did last time we were there. We had better spots for the show and the fireworks, too, so we actually saw them instead of seeing the backstage of them. Heh. I think that next time, we need to go to California Adventure. I've heard that it's not as good as Disneyland, but I'd still like to go, at least once.

Today, we had a pretty lazy morning, just hanging around the apartment until it was time to go to the airport. Colin's flight was at 1:50 this afternoon, so we were at the airport and he was heading to security by about 12:30. I ran a few errands and then came home to finish unpacking and cleaning. It hasn't been the top priority the past few days, which is fine, but the half-unpacked bags and boxes in my room were driving me nuts, and there were things that needed to be rearranged after having them put away to make room for the subletter. It's all done now, though. New bookshelf is up and full, the clothes are all put away, the bathroom medicine cabinet is rearranged, and the storage room has empty boxes (and an old mattress) in it. The only thing I still need is a holder/shelf/hook set for my straightener and blow drier. I've tried two different styles so far and neither has worked, so I've ended up returning them both. I guess it's back to Target tomorrow to see what else I can find.

I haven't transferred back to the Starbucks down here yet. Rather, I haven't heard from the manager since my transfer request was submitted. I tried calling her today, but there was no answer at the store (I must have caught them during a rush when no one could pick up the phone). I'll try again tomorrow, and if I can't get anyone, I'll go in and talk to her in person. I was hoping to start working this week, but I'm not sure that's going to happen, so I'll have a pretty boring week, it looks like. Ah well. Still, though, I feel like I should have used these few days to work so that there's not as much of a gap in my paychecks. Anyone have some freelance work for me for a couple of days? ;o)

I have pictures to post from the last month or so, but this entry is long enough, so I'll get to them in a separate one.

And... that's been my week. We're back into long distance, which sucks in a lot of ways, but at least I'm not moving somewhere completely new this year. I'm coming back to a familiar situation and friends, and we know what to expect this time, at least on some level. And Thanksgiving is only 6 weeks away, give or take. That's not too bad at all.