- My goodness, the story telling in Little Fires Everywhere was so good. I’d consider owning a copy of it, to cherish again. (That, along with Station Eleven, my other favorite read from the year!). I really want to know more about what happens to the characters! We need a part II!
- I moved from that to a guidebook of San Francisco to somewhat prepare for our trip! Well, I also tried reading a novel called Ghosted but ditched it. The author spent way too much time describing the landscape, which drove me bonkers. And it was moving slow. That’s something I liked about Little Fires Everywhere – Ng didn’t go on and on about unnecessary details. It was super detailed, but with a purpose.
- Ha, on my Monday commute, another train rider was gushing to me when she saw my reusable plastic bag. She even got hers out to show me and told me about all the times she uses it. Love it!
- What is it with iTunes taking three attempts to get my playlists to sync? And it often rewriting them or missing songs? Grr.
- An update on our intruders – there’s been four of them so far and we’ve had them all relocated.
- Here’s some cute cuddling kitty pics!
Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 202
- Yesterday when I was leaving work and getting in the elevator, two people walked out with cake. After the doors closed, I said to the guy in the elevator with me “Ooo, cake! Someone must be having a retirement party.” Then he said something about the party, and “You don’t need that cake.” Then he paused and said, “and neither do I.” UM WTF kind of response is that to my stupid small talk? GFY, telling me I don’t need cake. Jeebus.
- I’ve said it before, but I’d love one day where everything I pick up, set down, or reach for doesn’t fall to the ground. And when I can walk through my house without any loop or strap on me getting caught on things. So aggravating.
- I finished Give Me Your Hand and am reading Vox. Give Me Your Hand is a mystery/thriller about Kit, a post doc vying for a prestigious research position, when an old classmate with a secret that scarred Kit shows up out of the blue and competes (kind of) against her for the spot! I mostly enjoyed it, except for the research on animals parts. Vox is a dystopian novel where women only get to say 100 words a day and are electrocuted when they go over. This one makes me feel awfully anxious reading it… but I want to see what happens.
- Shitterfly had a “free” bag offer recently so I ordered one to keep in my backpack (because a favorite similar bag of mine has a hole, sadness). I love having these lightweight bags handy. And I love having my cats’ faces on it!
- I had a light meeting week to start the week (woo hoo!) then had FOUR invites for meetings at 9:00 am on Wednesday. Sigh. And the one I went to ran 1.5 hours long (until 11:30).
- Another calendar complaint – when someone acts like it’s difficult to coordinate with my schedule, but they never bothered to check my public calendar and try making an appointment when I am shown as free. It’s not hard, folks.
- Aww, Khali loves her siblings, but especially Apollo! Apollo has been such a sh*t lately. He’s gone poo on the floor twice. And he wakes up in the middle of the night (not all nights, thankfully) to play. Sigh. I hope it’s growing pains!
Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 200
- I received two new Starbucks “Been There” mugs as gifts in the past few weeks! Gina got me Colorado, and Bobbi got me Arizona! Thank you, ladies! And since I’ve visited those states, I can use them (as opposed to waiting until I’ve gone there to use them <— just my own silly rules)!
- I finished Not Tonight, Josephine and started the novel A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out, about a twenty-eight year old working in public relations, who gets a special assignment that makes her question if she wants to be a sellout anymore, or follow her passion and be a writer (maybe – I am only a couple of chapters in but that is what I am guessing it’s about from the description). Whoa. The writing is so smart, clever, current, and relevant, that I feel like there’s actually something to get out of every sentence. So I’m enjoying it, but the level of concentration is kind of wearing me out! I did enjoy Not Tonight, Josephine. I loved the author’s sense of humor!
- I was so relaxed on vacation that I let my almost three year Duolingo streak lapse! I felt upset for a few minutes, then felt strangely free. Ha. (Only Bethany will care about this!)
- Ugh, then I missed “free” Shitterfly magnet day after vacation – when I have so many pics I want to make in to magnets! I turned off my Shitterfly Facebook notifications and saw it the day after on Facebook. Luckily “free” magnets come once a month. You guys know I love my (custom & regular!) magnets.
- Since I was planning on getting myself a mani for my birthday, then my coworker treated me, I can get one more… right? (Okay, let’s admit – this is a slippery slope of going back to getting them 1.5 times a month. I’m only trying not to since I bought a car this year and that wasn’t in my imaginary budget.) ANYWAY. I decided to get one nail a lighter shade than the rest, and meh, I don’t like it! Regrets!
From the OPI Peru Collection – Grandma Kissed A Gaucho and Don’t Toot My Flute, my previous mani was Alpaca My Bags
- I got a bill from my doctor, and was surprised to see my health care provider didn’t pay any of my visit fees. So I called the doctor and they said my provider said they don’t have me in the system. Which is odd, because I was checking the system while on the call, and it showed me as current. At first, the doctor told me to call my provider and see what was up… until we talked further and they realized they sent the bill to the wrong location. SIGH. Always question your health care bills, folks! I’m lucky I don’t have many and can KIND OF keep it straight. I can’t imagine dealing with a lot of them, or with a family’s. They make that sh*t so effing complicated.
- And today I have to go back to the doctor because they screwed up a test from last time. Sigh. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to adult today!
Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 190
- Kitty update! They’ve almost been home a week! We’re letting them explore more rooms, which they love (they still sleep in a closed in room at night, mostly for safety from our second floor drop to the living room). Khali likes to be near them, and they like to follow her around. There is still some slapping and interesting noises between those three, but things seem to be getting more friendly and less “get off my turf”! Happily, Khali’s personality is staying the same, and she isn’t regressing back to her scared stray cat “I don’t trust you” behavior. Phew.
The second picture in this series is of Apollo getting smacked.
- Data is STILL in the bathtub. We can take him out and walk around with him, but he always goes back to the bathtub. He’s still eating and going to the bathroom fine (well, what qualifies as fine for him now), but isn’t he bored out of his freaking mind in there?! Also, I’d like to use all the awesome spa stuff I got for my birthday (he’s occupying the only bathtub in the house)!!!!! His regular vet was off when we took him in last week – I wonder if he’d have a better analysis, or if we do just need some anxiety meds for Data?
- I wish there was a way to prevent sad animal stories from being shared by people in my feed on Facebook (I do tell Facebook I don’t want to see it) and from showing up in my RSS news feeds. Ugh. I’d rather see stories like this.
- Rachel and I decided to run the Madison Mini Marathon next Saturday for a birthday celebration together. Yay!
- Gah, I’ve felt like a zombie most mornings this summer, and my diet is definitely to blame! I’m so ready to have a normal schedule and get back in to a routine!
- I’m currently reading Not Tonight, Josephine: A Road Trip Through Small-Town America, a book about the (British) author’s travels across the US in the 2000. Gina read it and liked it so she gave me a copy for my birthday. The author is humorous and I’m learning more about US geography (and getting some travel ideas, too)! I’m enjoying it!
- Speaking of books, something strange has been happening at my library, where the books I have that are eligible for renewal are somehow already renewed by their due date without me doing anything. I wonder what the hell is going on. Of course, this did NOT happen with The Last Time I Lied, which is newer, and was not eligible for renewal, and I did not have time to finish. Sad face. I put in a hold request for it.
- I will finish with a Photoshop rant. For some reason, the quality of my “save for web” settings keeps getting changed from maximum to medium. And I don’t notice it until I upload the images here and see how pixelated they are, after I’ve closed them in Photoshop. So I have to reopen them and resave them at a higher resolution. Wah wah wah. And yeah, I tried to figure out how to stop this! I just need to remember to make sure it’s at maximum each time I use it!
Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 189
- I talked to the veterinarian on Tuesday and the females kittens haven’t been spayed yet – besides the restriction of weighing five pounds or more, they’re also trying to fit them in the pro bono surgery schedule. That’s okay with me. At this point we can’t bring them home until August 1st or 2nd due to travel anyway.
- The kittens are getting so big! They look huge in this photo Bobbi sent me from visiting them Tuesday!
I put white stars by the kittens that are ours. The other two are actually going to one family as well! The two others from the litter are already home.
- All my current library books are non-fiction. I wonder how many of these I’ll make it through. My Fight/Your Fight and Chasing Excellence had a similar tone (which makes sense, one is about CrossFit, and one is about Ronda Rousey) – that being the best requires 100% dedication and sacrifice. I abandoned Chasing Excellence, but am enjoying My Fight/Your Fight.
- I thought I was picking up our next Book Club for Two book, Extreme Ownership, yesterday, but for some reason, the library canceled my hold, after it said it was being shipped. Wah. (I just requested it again…)
- Other people’s dreams are boring, but I have to share this one. Ha. I was in a Mad Men-esque office, and an important client was coming in. For some reason, I had on my “run all the miles, eat all the tacos” shirt. So I asked Joan (from the show) if I could go home and change in to a dress. She was very annoyed/upset with me.
- I should have added this to my Tuesday complaint post, but Google Gmail, how much longer are you going to have “contacts” under your left side drop down menu, if it just tells people to use the right side menu? Just take it away from the left side! That will teach me faster! (Maybe this is fixed in the new Gmail, which I am not using, since it doesn’t have Labs.)
Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 187
I’m having a great summer. But I’m human. I need to complain:
- Why do manufacturers assume I want my paper towels and toilet paper to be BIGGER?! I do not! I have the feeling they do this to charge more for less, not give us more for less. And it’s definitely not for the environment (less waste and all that). (This annoys me because the bigger ones don’t fit in our holders well.)
- Am I really helping someone with a project at work by doing a role I have no idea how to do if I have to ask them what to do about everything? Or is it only making me frustrated and less confident?
- Why do the dentist fees on my explanation of benefits (EOB) not match the bill I was given at the dentist? Why are EOBs so damn hard to understand? Why did my dentist eff up my last appointment so much (I could write a whole post about that but I’m still too annoyed to. Hopefully I just forget all the details and don’t ever talk about it again.).
- Why wouldn’t Kohl’s let me exchange something via mail and insist I go to the store, even when I told customer support I couldn’t find that item in the store on my own? Why do they think I ordered it online?!?! BECAUSE I COULD NOT FIND IT IN THE STORE AND HATE SHOPPING.
- These deer fly bites. Ouch.
And some good things!
- We’ve been putting pumpkin in Data’s food and it seems to be helping with his poo! Yay!
- I got to do actual design work at work last week and this week.
- I have five days in a row off work coming up.
- At some point, there will be kittens in our home (probably August 1st or 2nd).
- We figured out who Beanzie is.
- I’m not running my fastest, but I feel acclimated to the summer heat and high humidity and dew point. It’s not completely wearing me out (yet).
- I’m the smallest I’ve been as an adult (after college) in the summer. Which is actually heavier than earlier this year, but I struggle the most with my eating in the summer, so I’ll take it! The goal is to maintain my weight and focus on losing again in the fall.
- I feel overwhelmed by everything on my personal (and work, sigh) calendar, but grateful for all the love and fun activities!
Thanks for listening/reading!
Last week Mica told me about an icebreaker she participated in where you had to say what you’d want your superpower to be. She asked me what mine would be, and I said never getting sick or injured (so basically, amazing immunity and invulnerability).
But even when I said that, I knew I’d think about it more, and come up with a superpower that was communication based. I don’t want to be able to read people’s minds (um, NO THANKS) but wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a way to share information and ideas, instantly, without words, so that the other person understood them, even if they didn’t agree with them? And you could do the same with their information/ideas?
So much gets lost in communication, because of human error, laziness, and greed (hoarding information). And I’m guilty of being lazy with communication from time to time. I get so tired of constantly communicating. SO, SO, SO tired of it. The deciphering. The begging for information. Sharing the same thing over and over. Trying to find a way to explain something to someone. Trying to find the person WITH information. (Mostly talking about work here, ha.) So. Much. Adulting.
So I can see many instances in my professional and personal life where this “superpower” would come in handy. Of course, I’d want to be able to turn it off and on!
- BIG NEWS! Today we are going to the veterinarian to fill out an adoption application and put down a deposit for KITTENZ!
- UM, THIS IS A PROBLEM. I was trying out the new Gmail and IT DOESN’T HAVE LABS. WTF NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I switched back to the old version. I use the “Undo Send” lab A LOT. A LOT A LOT.
- I tried to apply for a different position at work yesterday and it almost didn’t happen because the system is such a total pita/pos. But I finally got it in! I doubt I will get an interview, but, eh, worth a shot.
- Until yesterday, all of my June runs were between 47-61°F. That seems cool for June (I am NOT complaining). Yesterday’s run was 76°F. That felt more like June!
- And your weekly reading update: I finished Artemis and started California. It was nice to go from Endure, which was hard for me to read, to an easy-read like Artemis!
- When Mom and I saw Book Club last Saturday, the theater only had a few people in it, and a person seeing the movie alone came and sat right next to me. You can pick an assigned seat at this theater, and maybe they picked that one and didn’t feel like they should move to another, but I have to admit, I was a bit annoyed. Especially since they talked to themselves through a lot of the movie.
Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 182
- I downloaded Bad Wolves’ cover of “Zombie” yesterday and ended up down a rabbit hole of googling about the Cranberries. I like the homage of their music video to the original.
- Does anyone else who uses iTunes to make playlists want to vent with me about how annoying it is, and how it doesn’t sync half the time (and overwrites your computer with old playlists from your phone)? Or am I the only one still using iTunes?!
- This article (pdf here) about the movie The Truman Show is interesting. It’s the twenty year anniversary of the show, and they’re reflecting on how when they made the show it blew their mind that people would be interested in watching what a total stranger is up to all day… fast forward twenty years, and that is a lot of the entertainment business, with reality shows and social media!
- There’s not enough pictures to break up all this text, so here’s one Steven sent me when he was picking up meds for Data at the vet’s office yesterday.
- I finished reading Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, and didn’t care for it. It’s well written/researched, and has a plethora of studies referenced, but didn’t do it for me. There was one MAJOR happy outcome of reading it though! The book mentions the swirl and spit sports drink study that Runner’s World has been touting for years, usually as advice to lose weight (grrrr, so messed up). The study was done to find out why we get benefits immediately from a carbohydrate sports drinks, before they enter the bloodstream – not to come up with silly ways to cut on calories. It’s because as soon as you have the drink in your mouth, parts of your brain react to it, and immediately act as if you’d taken in the carbohydrates, whether you ingest it or not. This is the data Runner’s World was using to give their stupid advice, but I hadn’t seen it in this unadulterated form. I’m glad the study was done for legitimate scientific reasons, and it’s just Runner’s World spinning it strangely.
- I started reading Bart Yasso’s Run Forever… but when I got it from the library I could tell I wouldn’t care for it. It’s an advice book, on how to, you guessed it, RUN FOREVER! There was nothing new in there for me. I mostly skimmed it, and returned it. I’m not really in to advice books right now.
- So now I am reading the hard copy of Artemis (I had the digital version on my phone but prefer hard copy). Steven finished the audio copy yesterday. I am behind in Book Club for Two!
- The last time I shared this chart, it had a slight incline at the end. Ideally, it would still be gently sloping down, but if I can maintain my weight during this very busy month, I will be glad!
- We had our yard and house sprayed for bugs last Saturday, and the spray left the windows SUPER streaky. Ick! Luckily, I have tons of anxious taper energy and could spend a few hours cleaning them yesterday after work. Ha! I’m actually glad I’m so busy this weekend and the weekdays leading to the marathon so I don’t think as much about how little I am running.
Link to Random Thoughts Thursday 181
I love it when I wake up in the morning and smell a stink bomb, then go to Data’s litter box to cover it up, and realize it’s NOT in his litter box. It’s all over the welcome mat. And door threshold. And door.
WHY DATA WHY
I love it when I get to work THEN realize the back of my shirt is see-through. Dammit. I had a funny feeling when I was getting dressed this morning, and should have checked at home. (Whiny side note: I wanted to wear a dress today, but elected to wear pants and a shirt because I have fifty+ mosquito bites and thought pants would deter me from scratching more than a dress. Ugh.)
I love it when the main program I use at for my job won’t work, week after week, despite help from IT.
I love it when I’ve been waiting for a month for info and I get it and it says “let’s discuss further” instead of answering ANYTHING.
I love it when I leave my desk for a few minutes and the same person calls me over and over.
Wednesdays seem to be my Mondays lately. Thanks for letting me vent, that’s all I wanted to do! (I realize none of these things are a big deal, except the first one since it means Data is still not feeling well.)
(What’s funny to me is that I woke up feeling achy (from a strength workout) and tired (from going to bed late after seeing Solo), and thought about this post (below) I saw and how I was going to do the things listed to start the day out right… and it was working!!!!! Until I found the sh*t on the floor and saw all the mosquitoes inside the house and immediately felt irritated. Ha. I’ll keep at it!)
And I will end with a few positive small things from my week/day:
- It was AWESOME to have Monday off
- It was fun to go to the movies last night with Steven
- I found a birthday gift for a friend
- I got to have a “coffee” (really, chai) break with my work bestie today
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