You're Gonna Do What?

I've been on a blog break this week. So much has been going on, but nothing specific or too interesting to tell about. We had a four-day weekend, and it was so much fun, although it was pretty much the same stuff that we always do, but in larger portions: hanging out, singing karaoke, drinking a bit, dancing a bit, barbecuing a bit, sleeping a lot, eating a lot, and working out less than I should. It's how life was meant to be. What a bummer that it was all shattered by the reality of going back to work at Social Security today. Thank God there's only three more days until the weekend, when I'm sure we'll hang out, sing karaoke, drink a bit, dance a bit, barbecue a bit, sleep a lot, eat a lot and work out less than we should. I'm beginning to think that life has gotten a bit too predictable recently...

Beer and Dodgeball

Kevin comes back from fire school today. He survived days 1 and 2, and only has half a day left. He's had fun, I think. They've been in College Station, which he loves, so he's been showing everybody where to go out and whatnot. He said that one of the clubs, Hurricane Harry's, which used to be the freshman hoochie club, is now a dodgeball bar. Evidently, Kevin and Jeff went there Wednesday and all these guys were drinking and playing dodgeball. What a random (and dangerous) combination...

Mr. 80-SPF Sunblock Wearer

I have to say, my favorite commercials these days are the Real Men of Genius Bud Light "We salute you..." commercials. They're just sarcastic enough to crack me up. Today's was the "We salute you, Mr. 80 SPF sunblock wearer" commercial that said something like, "Though there are only 24 hours in a day, you wear sunblock strong enough to last for 80 hours. In the event that the sun should not go down today, you'll be ready. You laugh in the face of the 30 spf sunblock..."
(Those weren't the exact words, but you get the idea.)
Those commercials make me laugh so much...

Fireman Kev

Oh my goodness - I'm freaking out. Kevin leaves for fire school tomorrow morning. (He got forced on the fire squad through his job.) This in and of itself is bad enough, but to make matters worse, he's going with our friend, Jeff, who might possibly be the most immature person ever. Don't get me wrong, I love Jeff - he's probably the funniest person I've ever known, but it's kind of like sending my husband to fight fires with Lucille Ball or something. If there's trouble, Jeff will find it, and no doubt Kevin will be right there with him. Jeff's so excited - he thinks he's a real fireman, which is evidently what he's always wanted to be. Everybody say a prayer for them.
I'm going to be good wifey though, and make care packages for each of them. I wonder if Kevin will be embarrassed if I decorate bags with their names and stuff...maybe I'll cut sandwiches into heart shapes and write "I LOVE YOU" in mustard on the inside :) Yes, perhaps I will...

Damn it, Lainy

I totally caved.
Had a kolache.

Fatty Boombatty

Why do people insist on bringing donuts to work on Fridays?
Don't they know that people are dieting :)
Today, one of the girls that I work with came in with 2 dozen donuts and a dozen kolaches. Come on, Lainy - is that really necessary?

What the...?

What a great week this has been.
I'm in a completely different mindset than I was last week. The weather here has been nice all week - lots of sun, which means that I've been able to swim and work out outside all week. That always puts me in a good mood. Kevin and I have been playing catch in our back yard after work, and that's always fun. I love that I can be a tomboy with him and he's cool with it.
Work has been good - I got a new desk and filing cabinet yesterday without having to ask for it. Maybe it's sad that something that small makes me happy, but it does. Rita and I have both been in good moods this week, which means that we've done lots of laughing, thus making the week go by quickly. I'll even go out on a limb and say that I've enjoyed work this week. What the hell is going on with me?

Chaotic

I watched the Britney and Kevin show, Chaotic, last night. What a horrible and painful waste of life. I can't believe I watched the whole thing, but I just kept thinking that it would get better at some point. I was completely wrong...

Politics and The Prisoner's Dilemma

I've always been interested in The Prisoner's Dilemma, and how it relates to real life situations, specifically politics. (Don't worry, I'm not going in to specific political situations here.)
You've probably heard of The Prisoner's Dilemma before, but I'll give a quick rundown anyway.

Two criminals are brought back to a police station for interrogation. They're questioned in separate rooms, and each is offered the same deal by the police. The deal is as follows:
If you act as a state's witness and help us convict your friend (assuming he doesn't confess), then you will go free, and your friend will get twenty years in prison. On the other hand, if you don't confess and your friend does, then he will go free and you will get twenty years. If you both confess, then you both get ten years in prison. (The implied statement here is that if neither of them confesses, the state has no case against them and both of them go free).

Naturally, the prisoner starts to look at this from a personal gain perspective: If his friend confesses, then it's better for him to confess as well to get a reduced sentence. If his friend doesnt confess and he does, he can go free. The problem with this selfish type of thinking is that the other person is playing the same game, and when both people are playing this game from a personal gain perspective, it's impossible for either of them to win the ultimate payoff, and go free. However, if both of them took a step back and played from a group perspective, they can both be silent and the state wouldn't have a case against either of them. Rather than take the proactive approach to protect themselves from the other prisoner, each of them could have assumed that the other is playing for the good of the group. And if they had both assumed this and stayed silent, they both would have won. It's when fear and proactive "self-defense" come in to play that the game becomes lose-lose.
I guess the question then becomes (as it relates to politics and war, etc) at what point does proactive self-defense (i.e. attacking the bad guy BEFORE the bad guy can attack us) turn full circle and make us the bad guy? Is our anticipation of attack actually a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Think about how many aspects of life we can relate to this scenario...

What the Hell are You Even Talking About

I'm pretty sure that anybody who really knows me is aware of the fact that I'm a self-proclaimed geek. I've learned to live with, even embrace, this quality. And one of the geeky things that I do is to give all of my pets their own distinct voice and personality. This drives Kevin crazy, but I don't care - I think I'm damn funny.
Our fat cat, Mo, is totally Napoleon Dynamite in my mind. He does everything slow, he's a bit clumsy, he has a short temper, and I can literally picture him saying to us when we try to put him outside at night, "What the hell are you even talking about? It's cold outside. Goh."
My dog, Tuffie, was the ladies man. He humped everything in sight - pillows, legs, dolls, other animals, furniture - seriously, anything he could jump on. Tuffie didn't discriminate. It was really quite embarrassing at times. He may or may not have been a reincarnated rapist. We're not sure. But as I was saying, he was totally the ladies man - I pictured him to be like, "Well hellooo, Ladieth (The ladies man speaks with a bit of a lisp, after all). Which one of you's fine lookin' ladieth want to go home with Tuffie tonight?" (Poor Tuffie, died without ever having actually picked up a lady...)
Sasha, my little cat, is a "SheNayNay" type - she has a bad attitude, and if she were a woman, she would totally have four-inch, air brushed nail tips, long hair, too-tight shorts, and she would say, "Oh, He-elll Noooo" a lot. She would also shake her finger and head in unison, and give the "Oh He-ell Nooo" look, complete with pursed lips and narrowed eyes, while she was saying this.
I'm still working on a voice for my mom's dog, Harley...

Heaven In A Cup

Sweet - evidently Wendy's is giving away free Frosty's this weekend.
Perhaps I'll have to impose a temporary stay on the diet so that I can bask in the chocolatey goodness of this timeless treat.
Perhaps...

To Make Yourself Forget

Wow, so I dont even know where to start after yesterday's post.
The Counting Crows inspire me during times when I'm unsure of what to do next. When I was about to graduate from college, I listened to them non-stop. Their "August and Everything After" c.d. is the best. It's just mellow enough to keep me calm, and that's necessary.

Speaking of college...today makes three years since I graduated from A&M. It's crazy how time flies.

You Were The Last Good Thing I Ever Saw

I talked to one of my friends from high school today. We talked for a really long time about everything that's been happening - life, love, career, etc.
It made me realize that I haven't accomplished nearly what I had hoped I would by this point in my life. Somewhere along the way I forgot about my dreams, and settled for a career that I don't love, in an area that I'm not crazy about. Somewhere along the way, so-so became acceptable. When I left Santa Fe, I was planning on going to law school. And I went off to A&M, and I did well. And then I got accepted to law school and freaked out. I was scared of giving up a middle-of-the-road career, because I doubted my ability to do better. That's not a good reason.
I feel like I've gotten too comfortable in too many aspects of life recently. And I seriously need to change that...

OCD

It is my belief that I'm now bordering on obsessive when it comes to working out. Yesterday, there was a storm in the Houston area. This was not just any storm, though - it was reminiscent of something you might have seen in the movie, "The Perfect Storm." It came complete with rain, hail, thunder, lightning, rose colored skies, power outages, tornadoes, etc. Good sleeping weather.
But being that it was mother's day, and my cousin and I had cheated on our diets and had brownies earlier, we decided that not even The Perfect Storm was going to keep us from our workout. So we moved the furniture out of my living room, and we did some pop dance video. It was a sight to see us trying to keep up with this choreographed dance that we had never done before. Especially because part of the video was salsa dancing. We were literally doing more laughing at each other than actually working out. We then tried my Abs tape, which was right out of the 80's - these people had the 80's sweatbands and leotards. By this time, we're giggly because we're still picturing each other trying to salsa dance, and despite our best attempts, we can not get past the sweatbands and clothing on these people. Very retro. We then decided that our best bet was to brave the tornadic winds and run a few laps around my neighborhood. What the hell were we thinking???
As we're about halfway around the block, fighting the rain, and getting tossed around like rag dolls, we begin to realize how crazy we are. The only problem with this is that we are about a third of a mile from my house at this time, in the wind and rain, and we still need to get back home. They say hindsight's 20/20, but I'm pretty sure most people would have had the foresight to realize our thunderstorm workout was a bad idea. Obsessed people don't have this foresight, evidently. So as punishment for our stupidity, we had to endure a 1/3 mile trek back to my house, fighting the wind and rain the entire way. Needless to say, we learned our lesson. We did, however, get a killer workout...

Low

What an off day...
Earlier today, my grandpa, who happens to be the sweetest and cutest man ever, was walking out of Kroger and was held at gunpoint and robbed by two guys. But what's even worse is that the guys asked my grandpa for directions first, so he stopped to give them directions. When he stopped, they pulled a gun on him and asked him to give them all the money in his wallet.
You know, I don't think it gets much lower than to steal from a 75-year-old man...

Anything That You Want To Do

Thank God this week is over! Work has been hellish - Rita's been out for the past two weeks, leaving Mike and me to cover the phones, the front window and the workload of three people all by ourselves. We've been working overtime every day and on the weekends, trying to get everything done. And it's over now. Never before have I ever been so excited about the weekend.
Kevin's out of town doing Mother's Day stuff, and I'm taking the opportunity this weekend to read, blog, relax, and float in my mom's pool. And although I miss Kevin, I'm also planning on sprawling out across the entire bed and sleeping until noon tomorrow. Nice.

Paula-tics

I'm evidently a "lousy bitch." Yep. There was a lady who called in to our office today, and she wanted to speak to her claims representative, who happened to be out of the office. So I told the lady that Amanda wasn't in today but I did offer to help her, take a message or send her to Amanda's voice mail. Caller was not impressed, got mad ( evidently has a touch of social disorder), and straight up called me a lousy bitch. If I had a dime for every time somebody yelled/cursed at me over the phone at work...Oh, how I love my job.
On a completely different note, I watched "Fallen Idol" last night, which was the special on ABC that talked about the Paula Abdul/Corey Clark affair. Paula's a play-ah, play-ah!!! It had just the right amount of scandal to entertain me for a full hour. Very nice. And good timing on Corey's part - how ironic that this was aired at the same time that he's releasing his first album, which evidently has a song on it that's named "Paula-tics." He should really be embarrassed about that...

WHY?!?

It's days like today that make me want to let Kevin join the military and go be a stay-at-home military wife...

Token

Kevin works for the neatest company ever. They had a crawfish boil this weekend, complete with 500 pounds of crawfish, a bottomless margarita machine, beer like I've never seen before, and karaoke. Have I mentioned how much I love karaoke?
At one point, all the girls were dancing, and the token fat drunk guy, who also happens to be in charge of SAFETY over the plant, decides that he wants to join us on the dance floor. But he doesn't want to make just any entrance. He wants to make the token fat drunk guy entrance. So he positions a chair next to us, and takes a running start. Bad idea, fat man. The chair, in movie-like fashion, gives way to the guy's body weight, and the guy literally busts his head on the ground even before the rest of his body hits the floor. Once we all figured out he was ok, the laughing and pointing commenced. And it didn't stop for quite some time. Good times.

Beach Bum

I'm on a workout kick. Stacie and I are down to about 6 weeks until we leave for San Diego, and we have now kicked our workout routine into high gear. And when I say high gear, I mean we walked/ran 4 miles a day 4 times last week, did Tae Bo on Saturday, did 9 miles (walked 5 and ran 4) yesterday and went to a kickboxing class today. I found the bikini that I love at the Fossil store - it's white with four leaf clovers all over it - but I refuse to buy it until I have a beach body. By the time that happens, they'll be sold out.