snow

If you look carefully behind where it says 'cold' and 'snow' you can see the reflection of my brand new crutches. Stupid new york.

Theresa Sobczak

Cold in NYC

My hotel in NYC shows me the weather by the elevator. Cold and cloudy is an understatement

Theresa Sobczak

Kimchi

If you care to know more about kimchi, here's an article that was in the SF Chronicle

Finally, a purpose for science

This article talks about a scientist who wanted to test the idea of "double dipping" - that is, whether or not a significant number of germs are transferred when people dip, eat and dip again. It turns out fewer germs are transferred than expected - and thicker dips are better than runny ones because more of the dip sticks to the chip and doesn't run your germs back into the bowl :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/dining/30curious.html?ex=1359435600&en=4685daa806b50ab5&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! This is my first post of 2008 and I'm happy to report that my resolution of exercising more is going fairly well. Actually, prior to 2008 I never exercised. I learned to use the gym/machines at work and I'm keeping track of my weight.

Other exciting 2008 news: I'm probably going to get knee surgery this year. The doctors tell me that my kneecaps are naturally too high on my legs plus I have very loose ligaments on one side which is what causes my knees to pop out. In order to solve this problem, they're going to cut into me and loosen up one side of my knee and tighten the other to balance out the forces on my kneecap. I have xrays and MRIs I can share soon.

In April, assuming my knee surgery doesn't prevent me, I'm going to be in Florence, Italy for CHI, a conference for human-computer interaction. I'm supposed to do research all over the world this year, but if my knee surgery conflicts I may have to postpone it so I can do the necessary traveling.

The week of February 11, I'll be in NYC.

Carnival is in April, Liz is getting married in September, and hopefully I'll get to go visit Caryl soon.

Overall, it's going to be a busy year!

Sunrise at PHL

Theresa Sobczak

Web lost and found for gloves

This link is terribly long because i'm posting from my phone. It's an article about a website called onecoldhand.com founded by a CMU student to reconnect people with their lost gloves.

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.google.com%2Fnews%2Furl%3Fsa%3DT%26ct%3Dus%2F5-1-0%26fd%3DR%26url%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fseattletimes.nwsource.com%2Fhtml%2Fnationworld%2F2004088548_gloves23.html%26cid%3D1125279884%26ei%3DWfdxR6vRCp6arAO89PH9Dg

updates

I'm waiting at my doctor's office waiting to be called so I figured i'd update you on what's going on. I'm here at the doctor to see if I really need knee surgery. If you didn't already know I have really bad knees and my kneecaps slip around a lot. I'm hoping to get that fixed now that I have the means/time to do so.
Last week I was in NYC on business. I got to see Dan and Chaitanya from the Phoenix office. My boyfriend John also traveled with me. We were there over a weekend so I went to see my family. A mind-blowing even occurred: my mom said to John 'give me a hug' when she was greeting us. It was very unlike anything I've ever seen my mom do with a current boyfriend.
Tonight is the google holiday party, which should be fun. I'm being cheap and I didn't buy a new dress or anything

Theresa Sobczak

Christmas cards

This year I decided I wanted Christmas cards that would be pretty and spread holiday cheer but also benefit a good cause. While surfin' the 'net I found this website: Cards that Give. There's a gallery of cards so you can choose by design or select a charity. It was a much bigger list than I could find anywhere else, but I don't know how comprehensive it is. I only wish there was a way of finding local charities...but I ended up going with some UNICEF cards anyway.

Celebrity filled work day

As I was walking back to my desk from a talk with Anthony Bourdain I was going to the cafe to get a cookie and lots of Googlers were standing around in groups and kinda looking around in awe. It turns out Goldie Hawn and her long-time boyfriend were here. Someone I don't know just turns to me and says in a stunned voice "...that's Goldie Hawn..." and I say "yeah. wow."

Theresa Sobczak

Halloween

A billion pumpkins appeared outside my office

Theresa Sobczak

Fantasy football hilariousness

My dad's team (Homers) is taking on the the Elks. I'd be intimidated if I were the Elks

Machu Picchu

I got to work this morning and found this article:
Yale to return Peruvian artifacts

I do remember being rather disappointed in Yale when our tour guide in Peru told us that they had the artifacts and refused to give them back. I'm glad that they seemed to have worked things out. Hopefully I'll get to see the exhibit before it returns to Cuzco. If not, I guess I'll just have to take another trip there. :)

Crushes, sororities days, toilets, and hilarity

So yesterday I was in the bathroom IMing my friend on my phone. As I did that I was reminded of happy times from my days as a sorority girl (so long ago). Basically, Caryl had this huge crush on this guy. She was being such a girl about it. She had to pee really badly but was talking to crush boy on AIM and didn't want to miss anything. I think I was in my room and I heard her shouting about how she didn't know what to do. The eventual solution: she took her laptop to the bathroom with her while she peed.

Hilarity!

Pink Floyd album art

Have you ever seen this poster?

Have you ever tried to figure out which album covers are on that thing? Oh yeah, it's easy: Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Wish You Were Here...maybe you know those. But what about the rest? I don't actually own any albums with cover art, but it was REALLY hard to figure out which (besides Animals and Atom Heart Mother) are there. Seriously internet...

(It's Relics)

Not a fan of London

I feel like I shouldn't judge London because I really didn't get out to see much of the city. All I did was work, sit in my hotel, and go out to eat. None of those was particularly fun like it was in Madrid. Madrid was a beautiful city that I look forward to returning to someday. London I could take or leave. Everything is super expensive here! Not only is everything super expensive - it's not even that good! I'm willing to pay lots of money for good food. It makes me angry to pay lots of money for really shitty food. London was all right as a city, but I didn't find anything really exciting or interesting about it. It's cute, I guess. Basically, I'm not impressed. And I'm happy to going back to Mountain View today.

Food!

All I can think about is food. I haven't had tasty food in a long time it feels like. I can't wait to get back to the States and chow down on some mexican. I'll be so happy!
So it turns out I someone contracted (is that the right word for this) salmonella in Madrid. I guess it's a lot worse than I thought both from having experienced its fury on my body and by having everyone reacting in a very very shocked way when they hear that's what I had. I have no idea how I got it, just that it was miserable.
Now that I can finally eat again I really really want something tasty in my mouth. And, just as a piece of advice, when you want something tasty in your mouth, do not send your mouth to London. I'm sure there's good food around here somewhere, but (shhh, don't tell anyone I said this) even the Google cafe isn't all that good here(!!!!). I don't think it's that the food is bad, I think it's just that British taste is bad. I've found few people who disagree with me on that, so far.

¡Buenos Dias Princesa!

Last night I was flipping through my Spanish tv for the first time and I found Life is Beautiful (one of my favorites) en español. I found it funny that Guido's phrase for his wife had been turned into "¡Buenos Dias Princesa!" I don't know what I expected, but I thought it was funny. I even considered temporarily changing the name of my blog while I'm in Spain.

Armpits

So when I was taking Spanish in high school my friends and I once discovered a picture of a female with a raised arm pointing to something in the distance. This young woman had very hairy armpits. Our Spanish teacher explained that women don't groom their armpit hair in Spain. This was very shocking news.

Since I've arrived in Madrid, I've been carefully peeking at women's armpits to see if my Spanish teacher was right. So far I have only encountered 1 pair of hairy armpits. However, it seems that Spanish women keep their armpits pretty well hidden. I've also only seen one pair of shaven armpits.

I'll report back with the conclusion to this study at a later time.

(and in case you were wondering, yes, I do occasionally feel weird for trying to spot armpit hair on the streets and the metro of Madrid)

Day 2 in Madrid

So this morning I went into the office and finally found the kitchen. It's not that hard to find, it's just that I wasn't looking before. It was awesome. Apparently Spaniards have a thing for orange juice because there was a fantastic orange juicer in the kitchen. It looked like this:


So a coworker explained to me that Spaniards consider the country to be the orange country and they drink oj all day, not just ask breakfast. It's even considered a dessert!
Did you know they make white chocolate Toblerone? Because I didn't until I saw it in the kitchen at work today.

Another observation about Madrid: there are no ads on the metro trains. Where there are normally ads there are just blank spots or big maps of all of the other metro lines.

Subway cheese

While browsin the net and trying to stay awake at what Madrid wants me to think is 4:30 PM, I found this cartoon

I think you should listen to this cartoon's message, as it's a powerful one.
By the way, that was found on The Consumerist

Welcome to Madrid

There are a few things I've learned about Madrid in the short time I've been here (5 hours).
- I thought they don't believe in street signs, but it's just that they don't believe in street signs on the STREET. They're instead high up on buildings.
- Buying metro tickets is very confusing. I still don't know why I had to buy a suplemento. Do you? Exactly. That's as much as I know.
- The dollar sucks against the Euro!

About my hotel:
- There's no iron! I have to pay someone 5 euros to iron a shirt for me. I think it'll be cheaper for me to just purchase an iron and throw it away at the end of the trip. I'll let you know what I end up doing.
- I found a nice little window in my bathtub. Story and annotated pictures to come later.
- My room includes one of the very first hair driers ever produced. I attempted to use it and decided that it would take approximately 35 minutes to dry my hair using it. (again, a picture to come)
- I think I have a bidet in my bathroom but I'm scared of it because I don't know how to use it.

Kwik-e-mart

So in case you haven't heard, some 7-elevens were converted into
Kwik-e-marts to promote the Simpsons movie. One of them happens to be
in my town, so check it out. My favorite parts were the old dude in the
freezer (trying to freeze himself into the future), the pink sprinkled
donuts, and the cashier saying "thank you, come again"

Advice needed!

My little bro is graduating from high school. I can't believe he's old enough to be graduating from high school, but that's beside the point. Do you have any idea what a big sister is supposed to get her little bro for graduating? Right now it looks like he'll be commuting to Penn State Berks from Collegeville (about a 45 minute drive) but he might also rent an apartment. If he were moving out of the house I'd definitely get him some badass college-apartment stuff - like a TV. But if he's not moving out of the house he doesn't need a tv so I have no idea what to do. I'd give him cash, but I'd rather he did something useful with it than spend it on chicks.

Party cups

I have a recommendation for you if you're going to be holding a party soon: http://etch-it.com/index.html. They're pretty awesome. Here's an illustration:


Basically, these cups have this stuff that you can scratch with your fingernail to write on. It's very entertaining when you've had several beverages and you don't waste cups. :) They were a big hit at this party I went to in San Francisco, so I want you to be a cool host/hostess too. Don't forget to invite me!

In NYC

So this week (5/20-5/25) I will be in NYC. I'm here on business but I definitely want to hang out with anyone who's around. I'm really into eating amazing food, so if you'd be willing to hang out with me I might make you have dinner with me. :) I wonder when restaurant week is...probably not til June. Damn. Oh well, come eat delicious food with me anyway.

Vegas pig

I'm in Vegas at this Harley Davidson themed cafe. I found this pig
holding condiments on my table

Toilet art

So I saw this piece of art in the stall of a bar bathroom, thought it
was a little weird

Easter

I feel like a bad Christian girl. Today I had a talk with my boyfriend about the importance of this day to Christians. The Christ rising from the dead is pretty much the entire event that Christianity is based on. Then after this conversation, we headed over to our friends' house for an Easter Egg Hunt. An easter egg jello shot hunt. While I can't deny that it was delicious, I feel a little guilty for celebrating this day by gratuitously consuming alcohol. At the same time, how is it any different from the way children celebrate Easter? They hunt for eggs and indulge in candy, so is it wrong for me to hunt for eggs in order to indulge in alcohol? Probably...because I know better.

I miss the struggle...almost

I think I found life more satisfying in college even though it was a much bigger struggle. I felt like I was getting something done, making a difference, and going somewhere. It's not that I don't feel that way now but I think it's different. It's just being in the real world I suppose. There aren't anymore compulsory milestones. In college I was working toward graduating and getting a fantastic job in 4 years. Now I have that, I achieved that. What is the milestone now? There's no 4 year mark to look forward to.

Gift from Beijing

One of my coworkers in the Beijing office just dropped by to introduce
herself and give me this awesome gift. It's a paper cutout. Apparently
these artists use knives to cut out these designs. Mine is full of fish
which signifies 'more' as in more luck, more money, more food, more
people, etc. My cubemate choose a peacock design which signifies
beauty. :)

Bacon is a vegetable

I recently found a great reason to embrace my vegetarianism...

Bei

Like I said before...Bei was in town and he did something crazy. This
is a photo of his half shaved head which he raffled off to raise money
for an ill professor. His boss at Disney won the raffle and got to do
the honors

Update

I've been bad and I haven't been updating as much as I should. Let's see...tonight i was busy making plans for when I head back to CMU for Carnival. Anyone else going to Carnival?

Bei is in town...

At the moment I am watching Bei get his head shaved by his boss at an
ETC event in San Francisco. Oh, Bei

Seeds growing out of my strawberry

Do you see this? The seeds under the stem? Am I crazy? Have I just
never noticed this before? It's kinda weirding me out....like those
tentacle things on the underside of ferns.

Wax

Dude(ttes). I waxed a guy's chest on Friday. It was pretty badass. It's still all patchy. I will attach photos.

I wrote a lot more but he was bitching about it so now there's no info.

It's coming

I don't know if anyone's paying attention, but I am. A new blog post is
coming. I realize it's been a while and lots of stuff has happened.
So, just in time for Valentine's Day I have 'new blog post' on my to do
list.

Also on my to do list: go see Dave Chapelle tonight, buy plane tickets
to GS, Carnival, and Michael's graduation, buy tp, saline solution,
shoes, and new jeans, mail my taxes, clean my room....

Boo Bears.

Boo.

Storyless

I have nothing interesting to say. I really don't. I've been on the phone with people recently asking how my life is going and I truly have nothing more to say than "ok." Is it really that nothing is going on? No. Maybe I just don't have enough time to tell you about the endless excitement of my life. Maybe.

An interesting article...will put this to use soon

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/fashion/25love.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087%0A&em&en=a5fb740d3765b8e1&ex=1169096400

I'm having scary daydreams.

Paying it forward

So last night I was in New York City with Shawn (guy from Google who also happens to be on vacation on the east coast) and his friend Josh. Anyway, after a long hard night of trying to keep up with New York and their late bar-closing times (4am!)...we decided to grab some cheap Mexican food. So this was 3 in the morning and we were all at least a bit drunk. The chick working the counter was super nice...even at 3 in the morning. She was so extremely pleasant to every person in the store that we were kinda taken aback. Shawn then told us a story about how when he worked at Dominos this guy once told him that his nice attitude once made his night and that, in turn, made Shawn's life. Shawn wanted to do the same for this woman. Only he expressed it a little differently. He took a $100 bill out of his wallet and looked at it for a little while. He dropped it in their tip jar and we left. I hope they were pleasantly surprised!

Dream that caused me to be late for work

I had a really crazy dream last night.

The first part I remember is that I was supposed to be getting married to Nik. I was thinking about calling it off because I didn't think it was right to be getting married. Then I saw there was a timer in this room I was in that displayed how long it was til I was supposed to get married - 12 hours. I kinda freaked out and I called Nik on the phone to tell him and I think he knew it was coming. He was mad at me and put me on speakerphone so everyone (his family, including his mom) could hear what I had to say.

The next part of my dream I remember was Steve dropping me off at my house. My Korean grandmother was there for some reason. Steve walked out of my house and she watched him leave because she was very concerned about some Korean thing. Basically, there were a lot of clouds in the sky (which was no good) but she realized Steve would be fine when a balloon floated up into the sky and spread the clouds a little.

The next thing I remember is being home and being forced to take my brother shoe shopping. I was waiting in the car (which was a minivan) and I think i was watching an infomercial...anyway my mom drove by in a truck and I was really unhappy about having to take Michael shoe shopping.

The last thing I remember was that I was hanging out with Steve, this girl Hannah from middle school, and some other guy. We were talking about what we were going to do that night and I was laying on the floor and Steve was laying on the couch above me. Hannah whispers to me that whatever we do we can go cheat on our boyfriends. And I am shocked and tell her I wouldn't do that. Then I look at Steve and get upset and say "I can't anyway...because I don't have a boyfriend"

Weird.

Ooooh Google

While I was walking around in my pig pjs today I saw this and it makes
me appreciate where I work. But at the same time I wonder why this
person didn't put away their big red ball when they were done playing

Izzle

So I got an email in a mailing list that read "Happy Fridizzle, my nizzles!" I turn to my friend Sasha and we have a short conversation that goes a little like this:

Me: What's a nizzle?
Sasha: What?
Me: A nizzle
Sasha: In what context?
Me: As in 'Happy Fridizzle, my nizzles' - it's in an email
Sasha: What? Let me see [walks over]
Sasha: Oh, I think that's like 'homies'
Me: But aren't you supposed to add the suffix -izzle to words that already exist?
Sasha: Yeah...
Me: So what word is that?
Sasha: [whispering] I think it's the n-word
Me: oh.
Sasha: You're so innocent.

Perception and decision making

This is going to be a fairly crude assessment of things (at least academically)...

Rational decision making consists mainly of a few things
1) Perceived risk
2) Perceived benefit
3) Assessed likelihood of various outcomes

Of course there is a LOT more involved than that, but those are the basics. Which is the problem with rational decision making. There's emotion (i.e. fear) that could skew, either positively or negatively, one's view of decision at hand. And yes, there are times when emotion actually leads us to make better decisions than cognition alone, but I'm not getting into that here. There are general biases that most everyone face, my favorite being regret theory. Regret theory is the idea that the regret one might feel by making a decision that results in a negative outcome can have a very strong impact on that decision.

So, it is actually impossible (I think) to assess every aspect of a decision. It's kinda like the idea of traveling back in time and changing something that might set off a chain reaction that changes history; see this Simpsons clip for further info. It's hard to take into account the affect one small decision might have on other aspects of your life that you might never have thought of. In high school when I found myself daydreaming I would catch myself, note whatever it was I was thinking about, and try to trace it back to whatever triggered that thought - just for the fun of it. For example, let's say I found myself imagining various ice cream flavors Ben and Jerry's should try, which was a result of me thinking about weird food combinations, which was a result of me thinking about a sign I saw at 7-11 for slurpee flavor combos, which was a result of me thinking about how I lost my 7-11 receipt, which was a result of the teacher talking about the importance of keeping receipts for tax purposes. From the topic of taxes to Ben and Jerry's...well I don't know where I was going with this. Perhaps I'm trying to say everything is/can be related to everything else. Which is why I believe that it is impossible to assess every aspect of a decision before making it.

Basically, we can't tell the future and what the results of a decision will be. So we have to make decisions based on how likely we perceive various outcomes to be. I'd like to note that i said "perceived" likelihood. Naturally, humans are extremely biased creatures. So, for example some people think that using significant lottery numbers, like birthdays or anniversaries, make them luckier. If you're reading this you no doubt understand that that's not true. However, those people *perceive* their potential outcome to be of greater likelihood, and there's little you could do to convince them otherwise.

Why am I talking about this? To remind myself to be rational and that my perception of the state of things differs greatly from others.

I <3 Firefox 2.0

Here are my reasons for loving FF 2.0. I'm very dedicated to explaining this to you, so read the whole thing and if you learn something new I think it will improve your life - no joke.

1. More streamlined RSS feedreading experience.
Have you ever wanted to add an RSS feed to your Google Personalized homepage? (In case you don't know, an RSS feed allows you to be able to go somewhere like Personalized homepage and see updates to a blog or news site without visiting that site and checking - huge time saver on the stalker front). Anyway, before it was a long and complicated process that required you to somehow figure out the feed address...basically it was a lot more difficult than it should be. But now with FF 2.0 , you can just click on the feed button in the URL bar...



then you get this and you want to choose Google Reader. I guess you can choose the other ones, but I don't see why you'd want to. :)





Then you get another page, click Add to Personalized Homepage and it appears on Google!






You guys are on my Google Personalized Homepage...so everytime I open my browser I get to stalk you and see if you'd made any updates. Except it's like passive stalking since Google just gives me the info without having to check your blog everyday.

If you're not familiar with Google Personalized Homepage, I don't think I could live without it honestly. It's how I get news, keep up on you guys, and read other blogs as well. It has a bunch of other tools and fun stuff in the directory (labeled "Add stuff"). Check it out if you haven't already.

Back to Firefox...

2. Search query suggestions
Firefox has always had a Google search bar but now it offers query suggestions as I type! Sometimes this is useless, sometimes it's amazing because it prevents me from typing a long query, and sometimes it helps me remember what I'm searching for.

Let's say I'm searching for the Tenacious D movie but I don't remember what it's called (oh no!) All I do is type is whatever I can remember (in this case "Tenacious D and" something). FF offers me suggestions! Woot.






3. General amazingness by saving me time and frustration
Firefox just crashed (which I actually think was Blogger's fault and not FF's) while I was trying to upload these example photos. Yeah, tragedy...but wait! When I opened firefox it asked me if I wanted to restore my session. I did and this whole post was waiting for me even though I hadn't saved it. Thank goodness. You wouldn't have gotten this valuable information if Firefox hadn't been so amazing.

The relationship between emotions and cognition

I studied this. I should have more insight.

Feel like writing

I'm writing my Christmas cards...and it's hard to decide who to send them to. I've got my family and Tridelt so far. Hm. I want to send one to you, but I don't have your address. Please give it to me. :) I was thinking of sending cards to Steve's parents...but I don't know his Dad's address. And it's not fair to only send a card to his mom. I also don't know how to address it. Ugh, complications. I also don't want her to think I'm a freak for sending her a card. I also don't know if I should write Merry Christmas. Steve pretty much called me lame when I said happy holidays or something...but perhaps his mom is more sensitive. How am I supposed to know these things? I think I know the answers but I'll ask him just in case.

So the holiday party was fun. I wish I had taken pictures so I could show you the craziness.

Caryl - if you're reading this, what the heck? Do you have a blog anymore? If so, why was I not notified?

Rose

Today while sitting and reading email I made a silly putty rose. Here
it is if you're interested. :)

By the way, yes, I know I'm lame.

My roommates and I took a seduction quiz...

So the roomies and I have been talking about layable vs. not layable and our seduction styles. Seduction styles came about as a result of the book The Art of Seduction. Allie Lin first introduced me to this book and I passed its wisdom onto Leah. Anyway, I think the book is a lot wiser than this flash quiz (I do hate the loading times) but here's what I got.

Fancy things in Spokane

My first-ish house

This is 2400 University Place in Cheney, WA. It was where I played when
I was a wee one after my parents moved out of married student housing at
Eastern Washington University.

Nice view from a not so nice place

This is the view of Spokane from my Grandpa's hospital room. He's doing
ok.

Tenacious D

Crappy photos of the D rockin'

Tenacious D

Crappy photos of the D rockin'

dress help!

I'm looking for a dress to wear to the company holiday party. I tried a
few on and here were my two favorite. Any strong feelings?
--wants to dress to impress

Edit: So I've decided against either of these dresses. I'll wear a little black dress and spend my money on accessories.

Oh California

So here I am...eating outside...in a halter top....in November. Yay
California.

Happy birthday!

I had a very good birthday.

;) I had forgotten what it was like to blush.

Heard in MV

So hopefully this will just be a placeholder for a more comprehensive
entry with charts and other comparative evidence between Mountain View
anf Pittsburgh. Anyway, walking back from lunch today I overheard a
conversation during which the following was said: "I just don't
appreciate the inconsistency of the temperature here." Now, to make sure
I wasn't crazy I checked out good ol' weather.com. For the past week,
the temperature has been between 60 and 64 degrees. The november
monthly average is 64 degrees. Upon closer inspection, looking at day
by day averages for this month for many years past, the temperature has
been between 60 and 64 degrees. Hm.
--in bed and still pondering this incident 12 hours later

World Usability Day - woot!

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/world-usability-day.html

Yay!

Yet another airplane blog entry. Looking out my window, it's like this plane is chasing the sunset.

I had a good trip. I spent Wednesday to today (Sunday) in Pittsburgh for a recruiting trip. I've been dying to go recruit since I got my job. It's kinda like when I would recruit for incoming students, SEO, or anything - I just enjoy sharing my wonderful life with others. That sounds kinda bad. I don't mean that the way it sounds. I just want everyone to be happy.

When I wasn't working, I got to spend time with Steve and sisters. I always love going home (hm! I used the word home to describe tridelt) to my girls. I only wish that my older girls (that's you, if you're reading this and wondering) were there too. I got to meet a bunch of the newbies who are initiating next week, yay! They're super sweet and I was so thrilled to meet them. I also went to the football team's last game of their undefeated season...but I was busy watching the tridelt cheerleaders and making Leah, Sturges, and Rachelle do kicks and stuff by shouting at them. I was telling Andrea that I thought it must be sad to be a CMU cheerleader because you stand there the entire game cheering and saying stuff like "get pumped up" and "make some noise" and no one does. So, in an attempt to be encouraging, whenever any of the tridelts would say such things I would cheer. Apparently this riled up some other fans, so it was doubley effective. woo. Anyway, the girls were all super cute and Andrea and I were like proud moms watching them.

Andrea, Lacey, and I went to dinner at Union Grill last night. It was delish. I then ran into a million people I knew at this party we went to afterwards.

So the question of the weekend was "what's up with you and Steve?" For me, same as always - staying strong and waiting, but with somewhat more hope. I suppose this, like everything, is a learning experience. I still have a lot to work on. While my transition may have been out of necessity, the point is it happened and it's somewhat positive. But I still have a lot of questions I can't ask, requests I can't make, and things I can't say. That's just the way it is for now.

Waiting for the shuttle

So here I am waiting for the shuttle. I'm usually not even awake at
8:00 in the morning. Dammit. I prob missed the shuttle I needed to
catch. I don't want to drive all the way into the city during rush
hour. Hmmm. We'l have to see how it goes
--sleepy and cold

First mobile post

I've decided this is my new thing. Running around and blogging from
where ever and taking photos on location (courtesy of go.blogger.com).
Here's me in bed with my laptop. Obviously I'm not going for efficiency
since my laptop is next to me. It'll get more interesting soon, I
hope.

I hate thinking I see a flashing window out of the corner of my eye.
--in bed

Greys and I are done

Greys makes me too sad. I look forward to it all week...and it just gets me down again. Good thing I'm happy now.

You know what's good about being single?

Being single means I can:
Not shave my legs
Eat as much garlic as I want
Stay at work super late without feeling guilty.

:/

Velcro shoes

Prison Issue 23: Coffee/Sterling Blue

These are my cute new shoes. They have velcro straps.

Two things:
1. I must be a woman - I went shoe shopping to cheer me up.
2. Something must really be wrong if I can't even bother with tying laces anymore.

Contemplatative....

I just am.

In Seattle

Hello. I'm in Seattle. I've been missing Grey's but it's ok. I know it's Tivoed at home and I've been keeping myself busy enough that I am able to live without it. that won't stop me for looking for it on the abc website again after I finish writing.

People have lots of advice. It's funny because sometimes you want advice because you truly don't know what to do and need some (any!) direction. Then there are times when you realize that the person giving the advice won't understand enough about the situation to truly take into consideration everything that deserves considering. Sometimes that's good anyway. Sometimes details don't matter and there's a right answer and a wrong answer. I think i take the advice that I want.

My weekend slow dancing in a burning room

I really wish I could write poems or songs. It would make expressing myself a lot easier. I much prefer to put cryptic lyrics in my profile than to actually say what's going on. I do it because I need to let it out, to scream and shout to anyone who might be listening without actually letting them know what's going on. It's why, when I'm asked, I tell people they're to be interpreted any way the reader would like, but only I really know. That's gotten me in trouble in the past. I don't know how many people actually look over them and wonder what's going on in my head, I think it would be interesting (but more likely disappointing) to find out.

I just realized I feel like Meredith (from Grey's, of course); she knitted a sweater.

It was good seeing my sisters again. I miss them. It's really hard to go from being in a house full of girls who love you unconditionally to driving around California aimlessly and alone. I should be realistic. I consider myself lucky for having the friends I do have in my new home. It just totally sucks being an adult.

It was good seeing Steve again. I miss him. I wish he wasn't having such a hard time with everything. I wish there was something I could do.

Everything does happen for a reason - I know it does. I just wish I knew the reason because waiting is hard.

The next day...
I'm so tired. I'm so so tired of thinking about it and crying over it and reliving everything in my head. I really just want it all to be over. I want to get on with my life. I can't be productive like this. I'm trying to get all of my finances all nice and organized, but I just can't because I can only think about one thing. I don't know why I can't distract myself or allow myself to think about anything else. I don't want to be in this horrible fog of a life anymore, I want to go back to being myself.

Throughout the day people kept asking me how my trip went, so I had to tell them. It went well, it really did. I came out of it better than I went in. It wasn't ideal for me, but it was the best I suppose (even though I hate to admit that). So I thought about it a bit. He says he cares about me and isn't angry with me anymore. I can't help but wonder if he's just doing a fantastic job of manipulating me into thinking those things so I'll leave him alone. I don't want to be some psycho chick, but it makes sense. What do you do when some girl won't let go? You tell them, "it's not you, it's me" a la George Costanza. While that thought is making the rounds through my head, I don't actually believe it. I believe every word he told me. And as agonizing as it is, I'm still waiting.

There's one coming

There's a post coming. I started it on the plane last night.

jamming

I remember when c j and Rachel were jamming together in my room in Donner. c j would play his steel drum and Rachel would play her (electric) violin.

Transit

Transit is available in Pittsburgh now! I so wish it had been available before I left school - it would've helped a lot.

My car

By the way, this is my beautiful car.



I drive around with the top down all the time. It makes me feel more alive...and Californian.

Cheese curds

I have a craving for cheese curds. Mmm, squeeky salty cheese curds. But I have no idea where to get them around here! I think they're not fancy enough for Whole Foods (though I found a delicious Robusto that I'm now in love with. It's has hints of carmel and nuts. My friends said it smelled like feet, but I find the taste wonderful) but too regional for regular super markets. In Pittsburgh, i was able to find packets at Giant Eagle a few years ago. I'll continue my search and let you know.

Actually, the reason this came up is because I heard the farmers market in San Francisco has a dairy farmer who has cheese curds. So I suppose if I truly wanted my cheese curds I could get them...early on a Saturday morning...if I wanted to drive 45 minutes.

Tri Delta Alum Meeting

I went to a Tri Delta alumnae meeting today. I drove into San Francisco and ended up at a lovely house that was filled with beautiful (and I mean beautiful) Tri Deltas. It's always hard being the new girl, but it was fun talking to other Tridelts. It turns out that next week there will be a Delta Drinking event followed by a viewing of the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy. When I heard that, it kinda all came together for me. It's silly, but last year one of the things I really loved was sitting together with sisters and screaming and gasping and making predictions while watching Grey's.

On the way home I got pulled over for having expired registration. He let me go since I just bought my car. It was still nerve racking as it was the first time I saw those flashing lights behind me.

More Grey's wisdom

"You already know what to do. If you didn't, you wouldn't be in so much pain"

Greys has all the answers

"Derek, have you considered that even though I’m Satan and an adulteress bitch I could still be the love of your life?"

What do I want?

So today I had to explain to Andrea why I was being quiet at her birthday party at Six Flags. I apologized and explained that it wasn't that I wasn't having a good time celebrating her birthday, it's just that I knew I was going home to have my boyfriend break up with me.

Long story short, Andrea (also single for the first time in a long time) asked me what I want. I want Steve.

One more gasp of air before drowning

...so that's a little dramatic but it's the best analogy I could think of to describe what's going on right now.

My lesson

For a while I knew I couldn't stop because I had nothing stopping me. I always assumed love would take care of that for me, but I realize I was wrong. In order for me to learn anything, I suppose I needed to fall myself.

No New Grey's = Theresa is a Dum Dum

So I don't know what I was thinking. There was no new Grey's Anatomy - and I made Tom and Dan watch with me and everything. There was an episode I hadn't seen before so I guess that's kinda like new Grey's.

A lot to say...

I have a lot to say...though none of it really significant. Hopefully jetlag and Grey's Anatomy will still allow me to have the energy to blog tomorrow.

In recent news:
I'm a horrible bitch
I just got back from Korea
I bought a car
I've been working for a while
I moved to a house in Mountain View

More to come.