Los Angelos...not what I expected

A couple wkends ago I went to LA to visit one of my fabulous college roomates, ROCKETT!, and to wishfully enjoy the nice weather that is suppossed to exist out there. Though I did not get the nice weather, haha, it was still warmer than Chicago and I was with fabulous people so it did not matter in the least. I also thought I'd put up some pictures because my last few posts have been rather boring and no run. 

Me enjoying the beach even though it was slightly chilly and rainy. I absolutely loved the LA beaches. They were so wide and open, flat and amazing. We got to watch a sunset on sat night and the colors were gorgeous! Unfortunately my camera had died by then or you would have seen a shot! 

We took the time to travel up to Hollywood and walk Hollywood Boulevard. It was very dirty and not really as glamorous or cool as I expected it to be. I mean they have celebrities there all the time and yet it was just blah. Fun to walk around though, great people watching. 

Here are us wonderful three, hanging out at Santa Monica Boulevard. We lucked out that after driving around all day seeing the countryside the rain decided to stop enough to allow us to walk around. We then followed that up with Happy Hour at a fun mexican place. Appropriate pictures do not exist! 

Here's me and my friend posing with muscle beach. I think it's been awhile since I tried to make a muscle cause I decided it would be more fun to just pose. ish... haha. But muscle beach dude, you have to work it. We also did many other fabulous things but I will leave you with these. Just to set your mind at ease, I did actually see the sun while I was there. :) These pictures just don't suggest that. 

 

Energy? Emails? Deleting?

I opened up an email tonight from a completely unexpected person and completely burst into tears. It was an incredibly surprising experience for me as I don't think I've ever been so affected by a simple email. I was literally sobbing and shaking, and while it only lasted for about 10 minutes it was very intense. After I finally calmed down I really had no idea what I wanted to do with this information that I had just received and all I could think was oh my effing god. This does not & will not make sense at all because I have not given any details whatsoever about the whole situation, but I feel like it's interestingly enough tying into this crazy energy field I have had going on around me the past week or so. I mean the fact that I just immediately burst into tears after seeing two words is crazy enough when it comes to me. 

But to explain energy, on sat morning I woke up and went to see something online and my safari opened up and then immediately quit on me. I didn't touch it, try to put in a website anything. It loaded the apple page and then kaput. So I tried a couple times, installed some updates, restarted, etc. still nothing, zip nada. I had to bring my friend touristing so I put it down and thought maybe it just needed some time so when we got back to my place after I tried again and nope. Biting the bullet I called up an apple support number and after close to 2 hours on the phone it ended up that something had happened with my account and I had to delete it and lots of other crazy computer shit. Luckily I did not lose any of my pictures or music so I was cool with it.

Then at work today, I went to open up a Microsoft word document (2007) which I don't have and all of a sudden the entire program crashed on me. After going and finding the lovely IT people they worked on it for about an hour or so it turned out that something was wrong with MY ACCOUNT on my work laptop. LIke for real???? Yet again though, I lost no settings or documents. I almost thought like maybe I should delete and reinstall myself...i mean that's the only thing you could get from that right? To which my mother said...yea that would be dumb, you should not get that from that! haha. But looking at what my night has been like I feel like maybe I shouldn't think about deleting myself, but maybe taking a look back at what I've gathered in my 22 years and bringing it forward into right now. Renewed and reformatted. 

My mother is currently in Sedona, Ar where I guess there are big energy vortexes and she said that she went to a consultation the other day and the Shama?? or whoever kept seeing me while she was diagnosing my mother and letting her connect with her inner child. And I had to laugh at that because while my mom is trying to find her inner child I feel like I am fighting to find the professional young woman who is going to succeed in her chosen field. 

Eh, lots of energy and finding talk here, even after it I still don't know exactly what I am thinking, I do believe though that it ties together somehow. But now I am off to bed, after not doing nearly as much to prepare for Macau as I would like, haha, but it was a good night. Let's just hope I'm able to sleep now.... 

On a thank you note: While I was walking home from Target tonight (with 4 enormous bags...I need lots of things for Macau) a lovely lady stopped and offered me a ride down to where I could catch my bus. So thank you Jeanette, and your lovely daughter Sophia! It was awesome to not have to walk in the freezing cold!

NEWMACS: GO WPI

This weekend is the Women's swimming championship for my college swim team and I've been sitting here at work looking at the results as they go up. THey are taking place at MIT this year which has the most gorgeous pool in the entire world (ok maybe the olympic beats it) but seriously it is absolutely amazing to swim in. Anywho so my old team is there and though most of the people I still know, a lot of the girls are new so I really only care about a couple people.

Couple things you should know, my school is D3 and we compete against a couple D2 schools when we go to this championship. We are also a very small team, think 15 girls instead of 40,becuase it's an engineering school so girls have really only recently been integrated and the swim team has only started getting recognition in the past 4 years since we got a new coach and swimmers have been getting better. So thinking about all that:

I want to put out a loud shoutout to my favorite girl, Karen, who landed in the top 8 for the 200 im and her time was right on her lifetime best. Which in swimming is an extremely hard thing to. Usually your lifetime bests happen like once and then you never get close to it again so for her to do this year, her senior year, is so great. I am seriously sitting here at work freaking out because I am so happy and excited and proud and giddy and sad becuase I'm not there!!! My friend Tiff who has been checking the results with me is going up there to surprise Karen tonight and it makes me so sad that I can't be tehre to celebrate with her. And for her to make it back when there are like 40 swimmers is so fantastic. Our team usually only has 1 or 2 people each day who get to go to finals and for the past few years it's been her and me so I feel like I should be there to walk to the bull pen with her and blah blah.

Regardless!!! I am jsut estatic for her and will be sending many many happy and congratulatory and good luck thoughts out to my favorite swimmer as well as the rest of the team and the fabulous coaches!

Ramblings

I'm off to LA tomorrow night and I'm sitting here looking at my tiny little carry-on and wondering how the heck I am going to fit everything I want to bring into this TINY ITSY BITSY suitcase. It's mocking me lounging in my circle chair, also known as a pop-a-dom. totally not the right spelling but it's how I think it. But back to packing, I have all the clothes I want to definitively bring and surrounding the silly bag, but I keep thinking of all the other clothes that are hanging in my closet, or relaxing on my floor and I want this, & this, & this. 

Then the logical part of me kicks in and I say, how long are you really going to be there silly. Two full days + a half, ultimately. So if I were to break things down I would need 3 bottoms and 3 tops plus some layers in case it's cold. But let's multiply that a bit because night outfits are always different. So now we're up to about 5 different bottoms and tops. I probably have like 10 tops, 4 bottoms (ooh I'm below on that one!) and than 4 pairs of shoes. Because shoe's are a must. 

So then I think, well I was going to bring my purple purse, but maybe I should bring my big black bag and then I can fit more in. And ultimately I don't want to do anymore tonight so I'm going to be stuck doing it in the morning....bah! packing is the WORST! whether it's long, short, fun, whatever. SUCKS!

But on better news, I officially passed on my projects tonight...a little bit tomorrow morning but in essence I finished and succeeded and satisfied everyone. Well sorta disappointed the customer, but it totally wasn't my fault. Planes got delayed, internet connections didn't work and everyone just lost out. But I'm excited cause I did it! And now I have to spend tomorrow catching up on all the class work I've been lacking on! Which reminds me, I do need to do my taxes sometime soon.....bah, it's never ending. haha, gotta love it

btw, the wind is going nuts outside my window tonight!! keep thinking someone is banging drums or something!

Cute shoes & Work Woes

For the first time since I have started my job I have been steadily busy and man does it wear you out. I have been going through a steady 9 hour day, cause I don't really take lunch, it's just not me. If I'm at work I work, becuase I would rather not be here just hanging out, let me leave an hour earlier. Duh. haha Though I did take a very long lunch break last week and went shopping with some colleagues. Sometimes a girl has just got to shop. And I got the cutest pair of ankle boots, shown right here, which I am actually wearing today!!! They are fabulous. These aren't quite the ones I have but they are the same color, and the zipper is there, though not on both sides, not like you can even tell that but I am still at work and don't want to search anymore. Plus the heel isn't as tall. Alrgiht back to my real thoughts.

So being busy as work has actually been a real thrill, and it's made me a lot more comfortable with everyone in my office because I was basically told to design an entire automatic sprinkler system and fire alarm system. I've had classes in this, but the professor absolutely sucked and even though I passed I never actually understood the whole entire process and what I did understand I knew was wrong half the time, but he just gave me a slightly bad grade and went on his way. I am not a fan of him, if you can tell. So here I am designing this entire system for a fairly large building, not only with columns and roof obstructions, but skylights too. Which let me tell you, is a bitch is design around. Sprinklers have all these restrictions where they can't be too close together or too far apart or too close to this wall or this stuck out random mechanical thing. It's a major headache, but also kind of cool because it's puzzle like. Which I've always enjoyed.

So here I am doing this whole thing by myself which meant I went out and searched down the prominent sprinkler guys, and then the well-informed fire alarm guy, and talked to the CAD technicians and generally just took help from whomever was willing to give it. I also had to talk to the client becuase he is getting these drawings close to a week later than he requested, which were fine, that's how things work in this business, but I hate confrontation and not making deadlines. It's frightening! Luckily everyone was really nice about it. Even the Vice President of the company who had to review my drawings and see all of my stupid intern mistakes. Yea, it has been one hell of a last week and a half, though I truly don't think it's over either, but I do belive the worst is past us. And through all of this, I have learned how to design and present a working, intelligent, professional sprinkler and alarm system so it's def been a really great experience, it just really makes me wish that the cliche of getting thrown into the pot with no help wasn't true. though I bet by the end of the week I'll look back and see all the help I got, and be glad that the girl who hates to talk to 1) people she doesn't know, 2) people on the phone, and 3)confrontation had to deal with all of it. And is better for it???? I still dislike talking to people on the phone, if I know them or not.

Sometimes...

I wish you could just get everything you want. No matter how it affected others, or what is caused, or what it meant. Or what it did. Just that you could have what you wanted, when you wanted it. Maybe that feeling is always why I've been called a princess???? (And you know, as long as it wasn't killing, hurting, maiming, torturing others....more? i'm out) 

Still wish it would work. :)

Phelps? Pot? Who cares?

I can not believe what the media is doing with this whole Michael Phelps was caught taking a bong hit. I won't even put up "the picture" for this post because I am so darn sick of seeing it flashing everywhere! I mean seriously, at the gym last night while I was on the machine for half an hour I probably saw the picture 30 times. Seriously???

Here we have a guy who has dedicated himself to a sport in such a fashion as to be able to win 8 OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALS! And for those people who didn't watch it, he came pretty darn close to not winning a couple of those races. Which means that he wasn't just jumping into it and killing the entire pool. No he actually had to work for each and every race and sometimes it was just pure luck that he took a last stroke or something and hit the wall first.

As a swimmer myself I have smoked while in season as well as not, and ultimately it does not make that much of a difference. I actually felt it effecting me more in terms of my singing ability than in swimming (breathing, length of breath,etc). Now I know a lot of this hype is because he is this famous athlete now, but does that mean he needs to live a life of perfectness? Too often this country puts people up on a pedastel just because of their talents. I mean respect them and all that, they completely deserve it, but to then believe that they don't do anything slightly crazy? I would consider it a very sad life if I had to live up to the ideals of what these famous people have to.

Michael Phelps obviously knows how to train to swim well and how to treat his body when he wants to succeed. So who cares what he does when he's relaxing, as long as he keeps up to this fabulous goal he set for himself and does the best he can do. that's all you can ask of someone.

And pot, is not bad, is not addictive, and is totally becoming legal. Everyone is different and even if you don't smoke, or don't like to doesn't mean the person who does is bad. I don't like watching sports on tv, but I don't hate the 3/4 of the human population who do...right?

11 DAYS!

In a fabulous 11 days I will be jetting of to Hollywood!! 

"pretty woman 

walking down the street 

pretty woman

the kind I like to meet" 

Best movie ever! But seriously I am so excited! It's all gonna be sunshiney and warm and oooey gooey fun friendness!! I've never been out to California before so I'm psyched to finally be getting there! Though it is supposed to be pushing 50 here by the end of this week so maybe I'll be all set for warmer weather! haha. 

So yea that's my shameless I'm going on a great vacation post. Def gonna keep talking about it cause I'm so excited!!! But 11 days till the flowers!! Gotta love when the universe is good to you!