Saturday, June 30, 2007

Breaking My Addictions

I've decided to give up caffeine and soda for a while. Now that the caffeine withdrawl has stopped, I find that one of the nifty side effects is that I'm really hyper and excitable. Yesterday I was so perky first thing in the morning that I was starting to annoy myself. Poor roommate. He has to put up with my shenanigans. Who would've thought giving up caffeine would give me more energy?

Monday, June 25, 2007

Decisions, Decisions

I'm torn. Two really good shows are coming to town, and they happen to be on the same night. On one hand, we have The Machine, a pretty cool Pink Floyd cover band, playing at Waterfront Park with a laser light show. Oooh...pretty lights. And on the other hand, there is Static X, in all their industrial thrashing glory, playing at Higherground. Egads, what's a girl to do?

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Ridiculous Product Of The Day

Truck Nuts. Need I say more?

I had heard about these thing a while ago and then promptly forgot about them. They are little plastic testicles to hang from the back of your truck. Just in case you need to compensate a little bit more. Today I was treated to a sighting of Truck Nuts in the wild. They look as utterly ridiculous in real life as the picture shows. Obviously, this isn't the actual sighting (it's from a website called bumpernuts.com), but you get the picture. The plastic genitalia that I saw crusing down Route 2 was also on a large yellow truck. I wonder what is going through the minds of the people who put these on their truck. Personally, it made me want to install a rubber foot on a spring to continuously kick the damn things. Thoughts?

Saturday, June 23, 2007

An Old Friend In A New Form

OK - file this under ridiculous products. Diet Coke has launched a new brand called Diet Coke Plus. It's Coke plus vitamins! Because, I know I look to my soda to give me all the nutrician I need. Now, I like Diet Coke in all its forms. I even gave Coca-Cola Blak, Coke's energy drink that is basically a mixture of Diet Coke and coffee, a try found it decent tasting. But Diet Coke Plus is just one of those things that makes me ask 'why?'

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Happy Summer

Today is the first official day of summer, the summersolstice, and the longest day of the year. Yay. Happy summer everyone!

Some things I love about summer ...

  • Warm weather! (Yeah, that was a no brainer. But I live in Vermont and it's cold most of the year, so cut me some slack.)
  • The fact that it's still ligt out at 9pm
  • Creemee stands. (Sadly I have yet to have a creemee this year. I must do something about that.)
  • Barbeques. (Tasty!)
  • Fresh fruit and veggies at the farmers markets
  • Listening to the street musicians
  • Going to the beach (I've yet to do this also)
  • Not having to wear a jacket
  • Iced tea and lemonade
  • Minigolf
  • Fun summer roadtrips
  • Just sitting outside enjoying the weather and watching people pass by
  • Free concerts at the waterfront
  • Reading a book while sitting in the sunshine
  • Drive-in movies

Some things I don't like about summer...

  • Driving a car with no air conditioning (I bought it in January. I didn't think it would be a problem)
  • My 3rd floor bedroom being to hot to sleep
  • Trying to concentrate on work when I just want to play outside
  • Not doing the billion things I need to do around the apartment (including unpacking) because I know there are only so many nice days before the snow flies
  • Mosquitos and black flies
  • Suicidal motorcycle drivers
  • Trying to cram everything I want to do into a few short months
  • Bathing suit shopping (the larger sizes are filled with horrible colors and patterns that even a skinny person wouldn't look good in)
  • Sunburn

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

How I Know My Life Is Getting Really Boring

I had the most bizarre dream last night. It's not bizarre for being very strange. I've had plenty of strange dreams. No, this dream was bizarere for being so incredibly mundane, my subconscious really shouldn't have wasted its time creating it.

My life must be getting really boring if this is the best I can dream up. I actually dreamed that I was cleaning the bathroom. In my apartment. And it looked pretty much the same as it does everyday. It wan't like I was cleaning the bathroom and the shower turned into a giant snake. That would have been worth dreaming about. Nope. I was just ordinarily cleaning the bathroom. And in the same order I tend to do in real life. Start with the toilet, then the bathtub. I must have woke up before I got to the sink.

And do you know what the real sad thing is? After I woke up, I realized that I had been dreaming. And the thought that popped into my head? I found it strange that in the dream I was using a powder cleaner and in real life I tend to use a liquid.

Yeah. My life must be getting pretty boring.

A Busy Few Weeks

Whew! It's been a very busy few weeks at work. I've been on the road nearly every day for a little over a week now. The road trip has culminated in 2 trips to upstate NY and a weekend long conference in Boston.

The conference wasn't too bad, other than being Saturday-Monday and eating up precious weekend hours. As always, some of the workshops were interesting and useful, others not so much (Yes, I realize the importance of good communication. Thank you for your insight.) More than a couple of times I found myself drifting off into space or my own thoughts, having to pull myself back into reality. You know the feeling. Someone is droning on about something that you really should be listening to. Must...pay...attention. Subject...so...boring. Concentration...fading. Diet Coke...only...hope...

I did get a chance to do some fun things. We were in Boston, after all. My boss decided that he wanted our internfrom Colombia to attend as well, so we roomed together and generally hung out together throughout the weekend. We got a chance to talk and she expressed a lot of the same feelings over being overwhelmed on stepping out into a career for the first time; she has the added stress of doing so in a foreign country. We had a good talk about being young and female in clinical engineering, a profession made up predominantly of older men.

She had never seen Boston, or any other large US city for that matter, so it gave me the excusae to do some real touristy things. She wanted to take a tour of the city, so we took the Duck Tour. I highly recommend this for anyone in the Boston area, even those who know the city well. You get loaded into an old WWII amphibious vehicle and are taken on a tour of the city and then into the Charles River. I even bought the tourist photo they snap of you prior to boarding. Later on we took the Ghosts and Gravestones tour. This is also highly recommended. The tour takes through Boston's not so happy past with a trolley tour and a walking tour through a couple of cemetaries.

All in all, it was a pretty good time. We stayed very busy all day long between the conference and the sight-seeing. I don't think I could have kept up the pace for much longer. It is good to be home.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

The Decision To Double Post

Well. I said I wasn't going to do this, but here I am. I've finally decided to double post over at my MySpace page. I had this blog before I had my MySpace account and didn't really feel the need to run two blogs, mainly because I barely keep up with this one. It seemed silly to me at the time to double post, and I admit that it still seems kind of silly. I have enough friends that read MySpace but don't read the blog here, partly because I update so infrequently, and partly because this site isn't as popular. An interesting aside, my sister is the person who convinced me to get a MySpace account so we could keep in touch more easily. We never did use it to communicate with each other. I'll continue to post here and this blog will probably have more content than the MySpace blog as I don't think I can put pictures or video up on the MySpace blog.

Generic Cereal

I went grocery shopping the other day (yes, I know, I don't know how my life got so exciting either). In an attempt to save money, or perhaps because I'm just cheap (No, frugal. The word is frugal!), I buy as much store brand stuff as possible. It's a habbit I picked up in my college years and I see no reason to break it now. One of the things that always makes me chuckle is the names of generic cereals. Some of my favorites have been Fruity O's (generic Fruit Loops), Rice Greats (generic Chex), and Oats and Honey and More (generic Honey Bunches of Oats). The other day I came home with Crispy Hexagons, the generic version of Crispex. Mmmm. Tastey!