For three days before my period every month, I go into this wild phase where I will scrub/swiffer/sweep/etc anything in the house that will sit still long enough to be cleaned. This is the time of the month when floors get mopped, closets get organized, etc. I have to say, if I had to pick and chose my PMS symptoms, this is definately the most useful.
I am fairly tidy the rest of the month, but not stepford-clean-freak. Unfortunately, my fairly tidiness would be enough if I lived alone, but I don't. I live with the king of the slobs. The guy who tells me, "oh, no, honey, you don't have to clean up after dinner, I'll do it." But two weeks later, the pans would still be on the stove if I left it to him. He left a 2 square foot pile of Magic cards right in front off his side of the couch for over 2 weeks, so he had to sit down at the middle of the couch and scooch over. Every time I suggested he move them, he informed me he wasn't done sorting them yet. (the baffling part is that he bought two huge boxes of Magic cards on Ebay to replace the collection he had as a teenager - but doesn't know anyone here who plays, so plays the computer game version instead!)
Anyway, he's been all like "I don't have time to do anything other than cook because I work 50 hours a week" - Except I work 40 hours, then study for another 12+ every week, and I still find time to keep up with the dishwasher, take out the trash, change the cat's litter, and do all of both of our laundry.
Of course, he also sleeps 12-13 hours every friday and saturday night, routinely waking up well into the afternoon. But he refuses to acknowledge the fact that if he took better care of his body, by quitting smoking, eating better and working out, he would need less sleep to recover. He's 30 freaking years old, It's time he started to realize his body's not going to hold out forever.
And the part that makes it the most frustrating is that he's a computer security engineer. He's smart and capable of rational analysis. He'll sulk and be moody for a week if he put on enough weight to have to go out and buy 3 new bigger pairs of pants. But he isn't willing to give up his 48-64 oz per day of Minute Maid Lemonade (why not just eat the corn syrup with a spoon?) and wonders why he puts on weight. He thinks he'll get thinner doing situps, but thinks cardio is useless and horrifying.
Why is he willing to put in so much energy into a job he despises, but is completely unwilling to put any effort at all into us having a nice, relaxing, and non-chaotic home... whoich I would have thought would be more motivating than the world's most soul-sucking job?
I love the "notes" feature in Flickr. I took pictures of my brown, dead winter yard, and notated where I've planted all of my bulbs (or at least where I think I've planted them) The pictures are kinda boring, but I'm excited and looking forward to a few months from now, when things start sprouting, and I can match them up to the pictures.
Have a look at all the ugly landscaping I'm trying to work around!
Seriously, where the hell did 2006 go?
It was a big year for me. I went to England, I passed an actuarial exam, my mom had her hip replaced, I bought a house - I feel like there were even more big things that happened, but I don't even remember anymore. But needless to say - It was quite a full year.
This year, I'm hoping for a little more simplicity. I still want to pass exams, but I'd be happy to let the rest of my life chill out a little bit, and spend a year on personal growth and stuff.
I set some pretty ambitious dance-related goals, but I've resisted making "resolutions" for my regular life.
I do have some plans, though:
I mentioned it in my dance goals, but I'm working the Couch-to-5k plan already. I'm a week in, and it's so gratifying, though it's hard to believe that I will ever be able to run 3 miles at a time. Once I can, I'm hoping to enter a couple of local 5k races this spring.
I've been putting together my study plan for my next exam. I'm starting 4 months in advance, so I can take it easy with just studying a couple of days a week, and still make it to 400 hours of study time by the time I sit for the test. If I can put in 400 really, honestly committed hours, I should have no trouble passing.
I'm putting a moratorium on buying stuff. No BPAL, not bath/body stuff, no tea, no books, no yarn, etc. I have more than enough of all of the above, and I'm just not going to buy more until I use what I've got. It's all just sitting around waiting to go bad or go stale, and taking up space. This way, I save money, I don't let the things I already have go to waste, and most importantly, I get back the space I was using to store all of that stuff. And I am 100% sure I need less clutter in my life.
There we are, no resolutions, just a few straightforward goals. (and I think there's a huge difference between goals and resolutions.)
In just over 4 hours, I will be a home owner!
The scay part is getting the enormous cashier's check. I've been just staring at my bank account balance all weekend, all of my down payment money is in there, and I've never had so much money all at once.
I'm going to own a house! I'm so excited!
I've signed up to fund two different loans so far (I'm sure I'll add more over time) I love the concept, and I'm enjoying being involved in the whole micro-loan thing.
Araceli Romero Herrera
Walter Siavichay
I am looking forward to watching these business prosper. And I can't wait to see how far they expand into more countries.
I put in an offer on a townhouse yesterday.
Holy crap, this attaching an album to an entry thing is *cool*. Only it seems to only have 9 out of my 11 pictures, and it doesn't include the captions. See the full gallery for more details.
Anyway, check out the pictures. It's an end unit, so I only have a neighbor on one side, and there's no neighbors to the back, just a stand of trees and way back behind those is the fitness center. I ran out of charge on my camera before I got pictures of the bedrooms, but there's really nothing exciting about those.
It's hot a new heating/ac system (with a digital thermostat! so I'll be able to program it to heat when I'm nome and not when I'm not and stuff) and I'll have a full-on laundry room in the basement, where I can have a normal, not stacked washer and dryer. I'm excited.
And this is the development it's in: Chesterfield Village Townhomes
Oh my god, I dropped the ball. I undid a ton of really hard work with a little oversight. Something no one in their right mind should have done.
So you know those exams I talk about periodically? And you know how I've been studying for this one, and my company sent me to Chicago for a week to prepare, and bought me hundreds of dollars of books? I forgot to register.
It would have taken me 10 minutes, and I forgot to do it.
My boss has been fairly supportive. That is, once he finished laughing at me. I know he didn't mean to be mean. I can certainly see the humor in it. And they're not making me pay back the money or anything, unless I quit my job before next fall, which I doubt I'll do.
I feel like an idiot, a bonehead. And the sad thing is that telling my boss was the easy part. Now I wonder how I'll tell my mom! She'll be disapointed and angry, and I just won't be able to bear it. Even though there's nothing she can do to me. And I'll here about it for the rest of my exam-taking career. My mom will nag me about every one, reminding me to register because "remember how unhappy I was this time", every sitting for the next 3 or 4 years until I'm done. Worse than that, for *at least* the next 10 years, she'll bring it up whenever I have to remember something important. I won't get to live it down.
She'll ask me if I am depressed. I am not depressed, I am exhausted. I have been traveling far too much lately, and I hate it. It throws off my schedule, it throws off my rhythm, and I just don't enjoy it. 3 of the 4 trips were to see my parents, and it's great to see them, and they want to see me as often as possible, but they don't really understand how much it wears me out. They don't get how hard it is on me to be away from my home.
And my mom is having her hip replaced in a week and a half. My parents don't really understand that this is stressful for my sister and I. After all, we're not the ones going through surgery. And yeah, it's a planned thing, not an emergency, but seriously, it's my mom. I am not so excited about facing the fact that she's getting older.
And I'm buying a house. And that's kind of daunting too. I have great credit, and I can afford it, but it's still a really big deal. I want to do it, but I'm afraid of moving again, afraid of change. Afraid of messing something up because I've never done this before. Or what if I forget to do something minor but crucial, and mess up my mortgage the same way I did my exam?
I am so damn tired. I want my mother. (except I want my mother when she's sweet and supportinve, not the way she is when she's all disapointed and disapproving.)
So I was lame and skipped last weeks garden pics, but honestly, the summer has already peaked, and the garden isn't changing much.
The big tomato is still lush and huge. We picked a huge bowl of tomatoes for a salad this afternoon.
The experimental tomato has also turned into a jungle. tomato production has slowed down since the weather cooled off, so I'm hoping at least some of those flowers become tomatoes before the frost comes. I'll be happy to make a big pile of fried green cherry tomatoes when the time comes, but I want more tomatoes!
Still trying to figure out what to do with all the habaneros
The Christmas cactus leaf isn't showing any sprouts, but it isn't whithering either. (I guess it's been 3 weeks since I planted it)
The jade leaves, however, shrivelled up to nothing. Pout. I need to pick something else for that pot.
I love my boyfriend, he is super-super-smart, but sometimes I think he's a little too quick with the paranoia.
Someone recently tipped him off to the dangers of fluoride. This person apparently convinced him that you consume enough fluoride in drinking 8 glasses of water a day to cause measurable harm to the body. I've heard this before too, and after reading up on the topic, I am confident in my point of view that that is a load of crap.
Yes, flouride in large doses can hurt you - so can water or alcohol. Here's the solution: Don't eat your toothpaste.
But, that's not what prompted me to write this. The thing is, he's all concerned about 1ppm of fluoride in the water, but he *smokes*. If he's concerned about ingesting toxins, maybe he'd like to have a little chat with his lungs. I'm sure they'd be happy to stop getting coated in tar, and dosed with carbon monoxide.
Me, personally, if I had to pick just one substance added to things we food and drink that poses the biggest, baddest health risk? It wouldn't be fluoride (which totally would not be in the top 10, probably not even the top 100), it would be high fructose corn syrup. That is some nasty shit.
I had to grab a picture of the masterpiece I've got painted on my big toes. The picture doesn't capture it well, but the nails are a really rich, slightly sparkly red (though they were out of I'm Not Really a Waitress!), the flower petals are white, the center of the flower is coral, there's a rhinestone in the center, then the flower has some littel accents in blue, and there's silver glitter along the little swoopy thing.
And just because I'm vain, a better shot of my pretty manicure:
First of all, I'm only including a handful of the pictures I took last weekend, since most of them look just like the week before.
But... I visited my parents last weekend, and while I was there, I grabbed leaves off of my mom's christmas cactus and jade plant. I've got them outside right now since it's hot out, and it hasn't been raining.
The christmas cactus leaf:
The Jade leaves:
And a side shot of one of the beautiful pots I found for them on an obscure shelf at Lowes:
---
And now, on to this week!
First of all, the bounty we harvested today! The bowl is full of red ripe tomatoes.
A rose bud is opening right now:
The most spectacular thing this weekend, though was the moonflower that finally bloomed this weekend! It smells beautiful
Here it is this afternoon before it opened:
And here are three shots of it this evening after it opened: Unfortunately, my camera doesn't really do well with close ups in the dark.
My brain is all over the place... come back, brain!
I did take garden pictures last weekend, I'll post them tonight.
Last weekend, I took my parents' cat back home to Kentucky. She was staying with me while my parents were out of town. Well, according to my mom, the cat is totally out of sorts since I left, sulking, only coming out when she's on the phone. My poor kitty. I am giving my mom instructions to pick the cat up a lot, call her silly pet names, and basically do all of the things she never tolerated when she was younger and snootier.
I have a nasty headache. I took advil and drank a big glass of water, but neither is helping.
Rusty was out late at the campaign office waiting for the primary results to come in. This would be the 2nd night in a row of crummy sleep because I hate to sleep in our bed alone. (Though I sleep fine alone in my old room at my parents house, but that kind-of makes sense)
Perhaps the bad sleep and the headach are related. Nah, that would make too much sense.
The guy whose campaign Rusty was working on didn't win the primary. He was the leader in St. Louis County, but lost in St. Charles and Lincoln counties. Damn. Also, there was a pretty sane, rational guy runing against the incumbent in the Republican primary, I would have liked to see him in the election, but he got crushed.
Mercifully, no one here is stomping around about running as an independent.
Dear Joe Lieberman, Put on your big boy pants and deal with it. You lost. Fair and square, you lost. If you wanted to run as an independent you should have started there to begin with, but you threw your hat in the ring with the democrats, and you lost. YOU LOST. Seriously, grow up.
I love my plants. I snagged leaves off of my mom's jade plant and christmas cactus when I was home visiting. They're both suposedly pretty easy to propagate, so I hope I can convince them to sprout. I've got them outside in the heat with ust a tiny bit of water every couple of days, so I'm hoping the mama leaves don't succumb to rotting. As long as the mama leaves are ok, there will be baby plants... eventually. Though I'm hoping the warm weather will help them sprout a little faster.
I am so in love with the idea of sharing plants, and growing plants off of cuttings from friends and family. There's something warmer and sweeter about it than just buying something at Lowes (not that I don't have a bunch of Lowes plants too)
Yesterday, we cleaned the kitchen so I could make lasagna. I love my clean kitchen. I just want to stand in the middle of it and bask in its wonderfulness.
Tonight, I'm going to do something similar with the living room, so I can lie on the couch and bask in its wonderfulness too.
When I'm PMS-y, I get the overwhelming urge to clean. This is good, since it means the apartment is clean once a month, at least. Today, while I'm home for lunch, I'm going to fold laundry. Fun! I need to remember to pick up some mesh laundry bags next time I'm at Target.
I am absolutely enchanted by those liquid soaps that foam by themselves. I've got one from Method in the bathroom, it smells like green tea and aloe, and feels so soft and nice. In the kitchen, I've got Dial that's all yummy and pear-scented. And when I was visiting my parents, I used the Aveno facial cleanser that foams itself, and loved it too. I just really love the foam texture, and the fact that it soesn't leave you with little soapy blobs or slimy smears to try and rinse off your hands and face. Plush, I just enjoy foam.
Saturday morning, I am hauling myself to the salon as soon as it opens, and getting my legs, underarms and eyebrows waxed, and getting a manicure and pedicure. In a spa chair. And I'm going to ask them to paint cherry blossoms on my big toenails. (In general, I am against "nail art" on principle... but I like having little sakura blossoms on my big toes. Everybody needs a little whimsy in their life)
Why won't this damn headache go away?
My boyfriend is very involved in politics right now, so we seem to be going to multiple events every week. Last night, we went to a meet-and-greet for two candidates, a woman running for the state Senate, and a man running for the Federal House. (My boyfriend is working quite actively on the guy's campaign)
My sweetie is *extremely* progressive. We don't always see eye-to-eye, but we are always respectful of each other's views, and we take the time to understand each other's positions.
As for my own beliefs, I'm a little disillusioned, kinda cynical, and am a strong believer in financial accountability, personal privacy, plain dealing, and giving everyone an equal opportunity - though what they do with it is their own business. 40 years ago, I may have been called a republican, but now, I just don't believe there is a place on the political spectrum for me, though I stick with the democrats, since the current republicans don't share my stance on *anything* (*grumble*grumble*fiscal mismanagement*grumble*insane war*grumble*intruding on my personal life*grumble*lying SOBs*grumble*grumble*)
Let me preface my story by saying that the event was early in the evening, so I didn't change after work. I was wearing an ankle-length black velvet skirt, a button down shirt, and high heels.
There was another lady there, who was wering a hat covered in progressive pins, and who was putting off a very activist vibe. (Which is fine, it's her right... But personally, I find wearing advertising, whether commercial or political, a little tacky. I am not a billboard.) I didn't think any less of her, after all I'm living in sin with a guy who is hanging out way to the Left of me politically. But anyway, she didn't seem to like the look of me.
Anyway, in the course of conversation she lets loose with the statement that we should never have electronic voting machines because she doesn't want the democratic process to be ar the mercy of energy companies. I'm thinking, fat lot of good paper ballots do you if the lights are out! So I respond with mentioning that that could easily be adressed by requiring polling places only be set up in buildings that have generators (since the polling places are usually schools, community centers, and government buildings, it's fair to say a lot of them already have generators anyway) She looked at me like I had sprouted tentacles for even accepting the idea of electronic voting machines.
I am of the opinion that the current electronic voting machine technology is a travesty. But this is America, and people like things that are shiny, new, and space-age. So we have to accept that they will continue to exist, and push legislation that requires a paper trail, verifiable security measures, and publicly auditable code. Honestly, if we took the requirements Nevada sets on slot machines and made the same requirements on voting machines, we'd be 90% of the way there.
Well, that only made it worse! I was clearly mocking democracy by comparing voting machines to slot machines!
She then railed on about how the requirements that I was talking about were never going to happen, and I was living in a dream world of woulda-coulda-shoulda. But *she* was only concerned with reality. And reality to her, was that because the voting machines available now were criminal, and paper works just fine, that the correct answer is to ban electronic voting machines, and go back to paper. Now who is in a dream world of woulda-coulda-shoulda? You can't put the shaving cream back in the can. Electronic voting is out there, people have bought into it, and I don't see any chance of it being abandoned wholesale across the country. Maybe we didn't need it, but we've got it, so as Tim Gunn says, we have to make it work.
So, in the course of this discussion, she is squirming in her seat like she wants to scoot as far away from me as possible, throwing up her hands and exclaiming over and over again how she just can't talk to someone like me, and that I'm just impossible, and that introducing electronic voting machies was just like starting the Iraq war, and whatever. By the end of the conversation, I might as well have been Richard Nixon and Cthuhlu's love child.
This has caused me no end of amusement.
The whole drive home I was asking Rusty how he likes dating an evil republican baby-eater.
It's been a great week in the garden.
Four Morning glories this morning:
And check out the crazy moonflower bud that will open soon:
Another angle showing of the strawberries' prison break:
The current extent of the tomato jungle:
Clusters of growing tomatoes:
Some of the making of tonight's tomato/basil/mozzerella sald:
I have my first ripening pepper!
Remember what the Experimental tomato looked like just three weeks ago? Look at it now:
Finally, the roses are blooming again! Something like 10 buds all over the plants:
Oh. My. God.
My boss called me in to her office this morning to tell me she just put in her two weeks notice. I'm happy for her, she's going to a larger insurance company where there's more upward potential for her (she's already the senior actuary in our little division) But dude, again?
I first came on board with this company last September. I was brought on to work for a guy who was crazy smart. Unfortunately, his work style did not mesh super-well with the rest of the office. He ended up jumping ship this past spring to go be the chief actuary at another small company. I wasn't too bummed out, since I ended up wotking for *his* boss, who was also a super-actuary She's the one who quit today.
This is even more familiar, because when I first got hired out of school at the big consulting firm I worked for in San Francisco, I got hired by seriously one of the most brilliant actuaries I have ever met, and worked directly under him for the coolest 6 months ever. Then he got headhunted away to be chief actuary at a big insurance company. After that, I ended up working for a couple of mediocre-by-comparison managers who totally didn't inspire me, but at least they didn't quit (Well, one of them did, almost right after I did - that would explain why he was so happy for me!)
Part of me has gotten into the habit of thinking (is it me? Do they hate having me work for them so much? But you know, that's really just not it. Somehow, thanks to good interview skills, good luck, whatever, I have managed to maneuver myself into these great positions. Even 6 months working under a mega-egg-brain is so much more educational than 3 yars working for someone who's just average. Unfortunately, having a mega-egg-brain opens a lot of doors, and those are the kind of people getting chief-actuary-type jobs thrown at them. And until i get to management-level, I won't be reporting directly to chief-actuary-level people.
I guess the only thing to do is keep doing what I'm doing now, maneuvering myself to work for managers who are right on that susp, to learn as much as I can right now.
Godwin's Law says whoever invokes Nazis/Hitler in an argument first loses.
In addition to this, a friend and I decided today that if, in the course of an internet argument someone declares their authorativeness based on being a member of MENSA, they also automatically lose.
I hit the blog post picture limit again. Damnit.
Earlier this week the first morning glory flower opened. I love it!
Here's the vine as of today, running off to explore my upstairs neighbor's balcony:
Here is my lovely tomato... I picked 7 tomatoes off of it today, we ate them with little buffalo mozerellas, fresh basil, and balsamic vinegar.
I haven't shown the basil lately, take a look!
Here's the other tomato plant, it's turning into a total jungle, it's really taken off since I re-potted it. It's got a bunch of little green tomatoes on it.
The peppers are showing no signs at all of ripening:
The roses are putting out new buds, I'll have more flowers soon:
I think there's as much strawberry foliage outside the pot as inside:
My tomato is getting so heavy, it's actually hanging crooked:
One cluster of ripening tomatoes:
Another cluster of ripening tomatoes:
Look at all of these peppers!
Here's the experimental tomato, it has really perked up amazingly since being re-potted. In this picture, you can see the support I'm using. It's designed to hold a flowerpot, but it makes a pretty tomato support.
Remember that little morning glory bud I posted last weekend? (Scroll down, I'll wait ) This is what it looked like tonight:
I'm pretty sure this one has got to be a moonflower bud, since it looks so different from the other one:
Between 3 and 3:30 eastern time today, exam results come out!!!!
I am completely useless today. There's a message board for actuaries (I guess there's one for everything!) and I keep reloading, looking to see if results are out early. I mean, I'm working and all, but not very efficiently.
Oof.
Oh my god, I had my first fresh tomatoes today, and they were *divine*. Nothing at all like store-bought. This will be a wonderful summer.
So, I re-potted the experimental tomato (I felt so bad for it). The pot is actually plastic, and is nice and light. Oddly enough, the little tomato started ripening right after I re-potted the plant. This little tomato was about 2/3 of an inch across:
Here's the plant in it's little pot:
The big tomato also had a tomato ripen. (I was out of town all weekend, and ofcourse they started ripening as soon as I wasn't there to see it) Here's the tomato on the plant:
Here it is on a little saucer: It's just over an inch across.
Here's the whole brutish plant. The roses need to be deadheaded. Also, check out the dragon guarding my little garden (I got him on clearance at Target today)
My pepper plant is still very bushy, and *dripping* in peppers:
I'm thinking or naming my strawberry plants, "The Rapunzels":
Finally, I think I have my very first morning glory/moonflower bud! I don't actually know which.
Valentina's post on the topic of Karma reminded me of a post I had been meaning to write a few months ago on the exact same topic.
First, as a bit of introduction. The summer between my junior and senior years of college I fucked up. Part of it was being 20 years old and personally stupid, and part of it was being naiive and not realizing I was being sucked into a vortex of other people's problems. I won't go into details because it was stupid, and anyway, it happened 6 years ago. The drama culminated in the woman involved in the drama threatening to drive to Nashville and shoot me.
Fast forward to a couple of months ago, she calls my mother (my parents phone number was on the lease I signed that summer when I rented their house) trying to track me down. My mom won't give her my contact info, but accidentally let slip I was in St Louis. I'm in the phone book, so it was easy to find me. My mom was nice enough to call me and let me know this woman had called. She had told my mom that she needed "closure".
(Let me interject that counselors/therapists/well meaning friends who tell people to dig up people from their past and demand "closure" are jackasses. Seriously, what is the point of trying to stir up 6-year-old shit? To re-open old wounds? Seriously, what is the logic?)
Anyway, due to the beauty of caller ID, I screened her calls and let the machine take them. They weren't mean or anything, she just wanted an apology. Well, to paraphrase House, you either get to ask for an apology, or you get to threaten to shoot me, you don't get both. And to be perfectly honest, I have nothing to apologize for other than having been 20 years old and attractive. I didn't actually do any of the things she still firmly believes I did.
She left three messages, the last one ending with, "I'm not going to call you again, but you know, I believe in Karma"
Snort. You know what, me too. I made mistakes, I learned from them. I apologized when appropriate, and grew the hell up. Got less naive and less stupid. And the more I learn from my mistakes, the smoother my life seems to go. Everyone makes mistakes. Karma isn't just about cosmic retribution, it's about learning. It's about getting smacked upside the head with the clue stick if you can't figure it out for yourself. Well, I figured out what I was doing that was stupid, and I fixed it. No need for the clue-by-four.
Her, on the other hand... Well, her life has not been so smooth. Some things beyond her control, but by no means all. Seriously, if she wants to dig up 6 year old shit, she can wallow in it all by her lonesome. And honesly, has no right to complain about the stink, since she's the one who dug it up. I wonder why, if she believes so much in Karma, she can't see that the universe might be trying to tell her that her own hunger for drama is stupid.
So, yeah. i don't really know where I was going with this, I just wanted to get off my chest how funny I thought it all was...
I'm going to start with the seriously most spectacular thing in my rarden right now:
The runners on my strawberries are putting out runners!
My tomato is gi-normous!!!
Check out the little green tomatos!
And my peppers are looking petty awesome too:
Finally, my vines have made it well up and over the railing:
I'm sure no one noticed that I'm late with my update this week... And to make it worse, some of the pictures are terribly out of focus.
I took these pictures of a bloom on my rose last week - The bloom is about 1.5 inches across: (There are a total of 7 unopened buds on the plants)
This are the plants again on sunday. It's blury, like I said, but you can see a bunch of buds opening:
See my strawberry plants putting out runners:
Although the picture is blury, you can see what a behemoth my tomato plant has become:
Finally, my morning glories/moonflowers have made it as high as the railing... I don't expect blooms for another month or so, but I hope once they grow into a space with more sunlight, they'll grow faster:
