Thursday, April 30, 2009

The never ending to do list

I write to do lists because I am not organized enough to remember things (including names, dates, and places). I also write them because I enjoy crossing things off them. Personally, I'm surprised that I don't write "write to do list" on my to do list just so I can cross if off when I'm done. I do however write things on them so that I can immediately cross them off because they would have been on the list if I'd written the list before I did the task -- which I recognize is not necessarily rational but it helps me sleep at night.


The point of this is that my to do lists of late have been a lot of wedding planning stuff and cleaning. There is also a lot of "buy stuff for other people" on the list because everyone is born in the spring and summer plus everyone gets married then too. Stupid people... However, now I need to buy stuff for me too and I've run out of energy, funding, and the little bit of desire I've ever had to buy stuff for me besides nerdy things like books. I don't even want to go shoe shopping, which marks a sad moment for me as that is the only apparel item I've ever enjoyed purchasing. Unfortunately, I do need to go buy stuff, which adds to my to do list.


But the purpose of this rant is to explain that most of my major tasks for the wedding are completed. Almost all the vendors are at least hired, except the baker. That's the boys purview and he has FAILED to get this off his list. We are not cake eaters (he's at least a frosting eater, but even that leaves me less than enthused), so we have enlisted his sister and mother to come and help us pick the baker/cake. They are coming this weekend for that express purpose. HE STILL HASN'T SET UP APPOINTMENTS!!!! He's known for weeks and every day I NAG him which makes me feel like an ASS. I give him weekly to do lists and that's been on there since we've known when they're coming. Why is this so f-ing hard???? You get to cross it off your list when you've made the appointments. I even offered to just go ahead and make these calls myself just to get it done.


The worst part about all of this is that a couple of months ago we talked about how I'm not good at delegating or at least sharing tasks. I think that this only reinforces my feelings about why it is I don't and will only lead to more stress for me. I have been trying to share the burden (see the weekly to do list for him), but all that leads to is me nagging him to accomplish what I need for him to get done sooner because he procrastinates more than I do.


FRICK YOU BLOG SPOT!

There was about five more paragraphs that I'd typed but because I logged out of gmail got logged out of blogger and the paragraphs got deleted. So, those will be retyped later. I should do some work at work now.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Go Connecticut!

Outside the world of basketball, Connecticut is awesome for other reasons, too.

http://www.connpost.com/localnews/ci_12210238

Monday, April 13, 2009

There used to be more to me then planning a wedding and going to work

So, this weekend was spent doing my taxes, working, hanging out with the boy's family (that's a whole post of ranting I'd rather not be a part of), and talking about the wedding with said family. I know that there was a time when I had interesting things to say about the state of the world, politics, sports, neighborhood bars, etc., but now I've become a sad sack of boring, limited to only one or two topics, neither of which are truly interesting to me. I apologize for that and will work on becoming more dynamic again, but only after I sign a contract with a florist and design my invitations...

On a work related note, I went out to "happy hour" on Thursday with a team of lawyers who have been spending an obscene number of hours on one case together. There were four men and two women, and that's when it hit me hard just how much of a boys club I'm hanging out it. I actually left the table at one point because of the way they were "flirting" with the waitress. It's was very uncomfortable for me, especially given that the primary instigator was not only the oldest member of our group, he is also my "mentor" and has two young kids at home. It was only made worse by the fact that the waitress did not get it. She was so oblivious to the lies and teasing and it made me sad for her.

Also, it was brought to my attention that 1) I am not cool and 2) my tolerance needs work if I am to be a successful networker. I was more directly shown 1 then 2 in that I don't go to any of the places that the other had ALL been to. This is a) because I don't travel out of my comfort zone as often as I could; b) because I don't believe in going to clubs and paying obscene amounts of money for sh*tty drinks; and c) because I don't believe that I should put on clothes that cost as much as my work clothes to go out. I wear jeans and flip-flops and go to places where the people are fun to watch and the servers know how to spot both a line and a way to mock the line giver. Call me what you will, I just like the snappy come-back of a girl who is clearly being hit on by skeevy old men. It brings me my bliss, and that should be enough.

Never mind that I didn't get home until after 1:00 am on a work night, can't recover from 6 glasses of wine like I used to, and had to be functional the next day. That did not make for a pleasant Friday. I am really glad that the boy is understanding and willing to drive up to where we were, leave his car about 20 minutes drive from our house and drive my sorry butt and my car back home so that I could get to work with my stuff the next day. He is very good to me. Also, he is willing to listen to drunken ranting and answer the same question 100 times in a 30 minute drive.

By the way, this blogging thing has been added to the mental list of things I shouldn't do, but do anyway, while at work. Facebook is on that list too...

Assess is not the same word as asses, no matter how fast you read it.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

I caved, and I was still right

Okay, so the three of you that still read this know that I caved to the peer pressure and signed up for facebook. It came from over a week's worth of conversations that all eventually turned back to something about facebook. It may have been an unconscious thing on my part, but really it was getting to me. So, I took the plunged, but largely because one person noted that there were some hilarious pictures of someone else and a goat. This, I must say, clinched it.

However, since signing up, I've noticed that I was right about a lot of things. 1) I don't keep up with it as much as other people do. Nor do I have any idea what to post on my page. Besides my profile picture, which has lead to a lot of wtf-esq comments, I have yet to post anything worthy of the five minutes it takes to get it up there. Also, I have limited pictures of myself as I don't believe in cameras in general. When I do have a camera, I take photos of others. When someone else has a camera, I hide. Therefore, I have no interesting photo albums to upload. Also, I don't do anything so why post anything about that... 2) um, I don't know a lot of the people well who are asking for friend requests. Seriously, most of my high school seems to be on facebook and I don't remember most of them in any real way. And there were only 65 people in my graduating class. I don't care what most of them are up to, or I would make it a point to keep track/e-mail/go to reunions with them. Some of them aren't even from my class year and want to be on my friends list. I don't even remember them AT ALL. Why on earth do they want to add me as I don't recall ever conversing in a meaningful way with any of them. Is this our latest version of competition, since most of us are no longer physically active in the United States? Ha, I have 300 friends on facebook and you only have 250?

What I do like about it is how many parents of young peoples have their entire photo section dedicated to pictures of their kids. This is awesome as I don't every get to see this little people in the real world, so at least I can get to know them virtually.

Other things of importance in my life: this whole wedding thing is getting to be a pretty solid picture. It is strange how the boy is so helpful about some things, but getting him to ask his grooms people is like asking him to set him self on fire. He keeps putting it off. Most of them are "typical" males, so it's not like there will be some long sentimental conversation that goes along with this question. Most will just be happy that he's asking them as they all appear to like me so don't disapprove of his decision to marry me. I understand the issues about choosing between friends, but for those that he knows he wants, what's the hold up?

Also, we have decided to purchase "starter" wedding bands. This is in part to reduce costs but it's also because I have no idea what I want and will likely want something custom made which just takes a lot of decision making on my part. I am not very good at decision making when it comes to picking out a restaurant/bar, so why on earth would I want to design something that will cost a lot to make all because of an arbitrary deadline of my wedding date. So, we will be getting rings and they will likely be made of titanium. I find that really cool. I am hoping to have a black stripe in mine. However, the problem I've encountered is that all metal bands are considered "male" only, therefore are all very wide, and "females" rings are expensive jewel encrusted bands according to the jewelry trade. This is wrong as I am not a diamond band type of girl. I put my hands into softball gloves. I don't want to remove my ring and thereby increase the chance of loosing a stone or the whole thing because of my lifestyle. So, that's more complication than I need. Also, I have the tiniest finger size so I'm trying to avoid a giant width of ring. But seriously, titanium seems like a cool thing.

Work is kicking my ass. I'm now regularly here from 8:30 - 8:00 pm. It good in that I still have job, but I'm tired all the time and am stressed out, which effects my relationship in a not as healthy as I personally am looking for. I have noticed that I get super annoyed quickly and without a real justification. However, the boy notices and asks why, but I'm not so open about it because I know that I'm just stressed out and tired.

Still, it'd be nice if he did the darn dishes everyone in a while...or, more accurately, if he would just do something around the house without me having to repeatedly ask for him to do it and then start doing it myself because it has gotten to be too long and then he asks if he can help. I just cannot win the outlasting game as I desire not to live in complete filth in order to win what I see as a battle of wills and what he sees as not a problem. Oh, and I've talked about this with him before and I have come to the conclusion that he will never get this. EVER. Still, I want to marry him, but apparently I just needed to vent in cyberspace.

Would it be inappropriate to quote The Princess Bride on my wedding invitations?

Monday, March 02, 2009

So much pressure...

Okay, so I know it's not cool to have this attitude, but I don't want to join facebook. Is that a crime? The boy has pointed out that most of my friends have facebook pages (so does he) and so do a large portion of my family. He also reminds me it's a way of keeping track of people who I haven't seen. I have been officially invited (i.e. by people who have facebook pages through their facebook accounts) to join no less than four times. However, I don't want to be a part of it.

I know that it probably would be good to join because of the ability to keep up with others, but considering how often I don't update this blog, what would be the possibility to keep better track of me. It would be one more obligation that I would have to keep and would fail to do so. Why do I need that right now? I barely e-mail people back and I certainly never remember to e-mail others spontaneously without a specific purpose/mass e-mail intent.

Plus, I know employers, clients, and the like would check on me. No matter how tasteful and appropriate my site would be, there would likely be some concern flagged somewhere. Even if I did mark it as private, some how I just don't trust the system.

What's the upside for me to start now? The last time I join one of these sites, no one used it after that (e.g. AOL IM; Friendster). As soon as I start a site, people will have moved on to the next cool way to make me feel inadequate in the area of keeping up my contact with others. Many of them have jumped to add twitter, which just seems like it would be boring for me to add: at work; at home watching TV; asleep. There you have the options, figure it out for yourself.

Until such time as I have been convinced that it is worth my investment of time (or my mom decides to join because it's that ubiquitous), I shall remain facebook profile free.

Stupid peer pressure...

In other news, I have spent more time at the dentist/orthodontist in the last three months then I have spent at the gym. Today, the trip to the ortho cost me at $30 parking ticket because they cannot properly estimate how long there appointments will take. I should know this by now, but I did feed the meter for an extra 20 minutes. To bad that I needed an extra 40 minutes (doubling the estimated appointment time). I'm sort of hella pissed about it too. Especially since they called and asked me to come in early but then I sat in the chair by myself until my original appointment time anyway. ARG! In addition, I have never had a ticket in my life, including parking tickets (excluding Grinnell College parking tickets, of which I had 1). From my four visits to the orthodontist, I've gotten two tickets out of the deal. One for a bad brake light (in the boy's car no less) and one for parking. BASTARDS!

I think that topic is getting me all worked up, and seeing as how I'm supposed to be working right now, I think I will stop my ranting.

I should be exploring the library's catalogue for something more interesting to read then The Knot's Guide to Weddings. Later!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

What the Frick!

There is a snow day in parts of San Diego County! Not where I live because here it is too close to the ocean to snow, but within my horizonal view, there is snow in the mountains and the schools are closed because of the snow.

Oh, and I think the high for Ohio was warmer then the high for here today.

What's up with that.

Monday, February 09, 2009

So, how's the new year plans going

Well, clearly the "more blogging" part isn't going so good.  I have been a little more organized about stuff, but even my subconscious is concerned.  I had a dream last night that nothing was finished when it was time for the wedding, and I didn't realize it until stuff wasn't right.  So, that was more than unsettling way to wake up, repeatedly.  

So, my question, if anyone still reads this, is if there is a magical way in which to figure out which photographer to choose (besides by price)?  I have met with two, and will meet with one more tomorrow, but I like some things about one and other things about the other.  If they were combined into one person I think that I would totally hire that person.  But, unfortunately such things are not yet possible, but I want this taken care of prior to the end of the month because the photos mean a lot to me.

Also, why is the dyson vacuum guy so compelling?  I wish to own a vacuum made my him...wow that's good mind bending...

Monday, January 12, 2009

Honey, I'm home

Things I have managed to accomplish by not blogging
1.  Watching more TV
2. Working from home every night and on the weekends
3. Last minute Christmas shopping for more people than ever
4. Procrastinating until it cost a ridiculous amount of money to mail out said presents
5. Think about planning my wedding
6. Making a decision about said wedding's location and date
7. Clean the apartment - twice
8. Avoid any answering of wedding questions
9. Spend a lot of time with the boy's family over the holiday (and learning about the 85 different types of cholesterol medication because after me and the boy the next youngest family member was 62, seriously)
10. Hear from everyone talk about how cute, adorable, sweet, angelic and all-round entertaining my niece is
11. Go to my dad's inaugural ball/fund raiser for the arts and kids where everyone asked if I was the mother of previously mentioned angel child (my reply "No, I'm the other one")
12. Have the holidays quietly hurt because my mom's dad passed away two days before Christmas and I procrastinated so long that I did not send him my annual letter in which I would have told him I was getting married

Things I have not accomplished by not blogging
1. E-mailing people individually to say hello
2. Remember to call my family on a regular basis
3. Getting my Holiday cards out before new years
4. Enjoy the outdoors
5. Go to the gym
6. Sleep more
7. Get organized
8. Balance my checkbook
9. Cook more
10. Maintain a sense of balance between my work and my life

Things I plan to do in the new year (not resolutions, but expectations)
1. Blog more
2. Get organized
3. Read more fiction
4. Plan and get through my wedding
5. Go to the gym regularly, not regularly sporadically
6. Balance work with life
7. Visit my family
8. Reduce the procrastination
9. Spend less, give more
10. Use each month to teach myself to keep up with something that I consistently get behind in
11. Remain inspired to try to find something new to learn where ever and when ever I can

So, there you have it.  Two months in a nut shell...or at least in an sketchy outline.

How many lists is too many?