Traveling

Traveling to Houston again this afternoon for another committee meeting. This is my first trip to make alone. Ever. Thanks to the advice of everyone after the last time I traveled, I have packed away a nice book and some headphones. Who cares if I'm not actually going to be listening to anything...the chatty Cathy sitting next to me doesn't have to know that. :)

Go to bed a little earlier

As I was sitting at the signal light leaving Sand Springs for work, a white Nissan pulled up behind me, and I about choked myself laughing out loud. Sitting in the passenger seat was a young, teenage boy who had obviously not gotten enough sleep last night. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was open wide enough to squeeze an entire apple inside! I could almost hear his snoring and see the drool rolling down his chin as he caught up on the Zzzzs he had lost last night.

It's really embarrassing when you fall asleep and you jerk yourself awake and the person sitting next to you snickers at you....but to have everyone in Sand Springs that drove by this poor kid's car snicker at him too...that's just wrong.

Bathroom drama

LOL! My co-worker just came in with battle wounds on her leg from the bathroom. Like me, she uses her foot to flush the toilet, and when she put her foot on the handle, her leg slipped and she cut her knee on the toilet paper holder. It was even bleeding. LOL--it is nice to know that we can share such traumatic stories with each other, and then turn around and laugh about it.

It's also good to know I am not the only foot-flushing fool. . .

YAY!

Congratulations to Carrie! I have been pulling for her since the beginning. I was shocked that she won, but happy nonetheless. As a fellow NSU attendee, I am glad that she won American Idol. :)

Bad News

Butch was gone when I got home from work yesterday and watered my flowers. :( Must have gotten too dry for him...Bummer. Now I'll have to find a new pet.

Meet Butch

We have a new pet frog in our backyard. He's been here since Saturday...at least that's when I discovered him in my flower bed. He's brown and about 3 inches long. He blends in well with the dirt, so I didn't see him until I was picking weeds from the flower bed and I guess I got too close to his personal space and he hopped a few feet away.

A couple of days ago, I guess he decided that the gladiola flower bed wasn't comfortable enough for him, so he moved over to the impassions on the top level. He waddled into the dirt and made a new bed for himself. He stays in the same spot all the time--what a boring life.

I sprayed him with water when I was watering my flowers and he didn't hop away. He just wiped his face off with his right foot (hand, whatever frogs have) and sat there. I even tried talking to him and kicking the stones around, but he didn't budge. He is stubborn.

I told my sister about him, and she said she was ready to be an aunt. Lord willing, Mike and I are still several years away from having children...well, ones with flesh anyways. Our next step is a dog. But since we haven't found the right one yet (and yes, I am looking) I guess the frog will have to do for now. I will name him Butch.

I will be sad if I go home to water my flowers tonight and Butch is gone. Four days is enough time to get attached, right? Well, okay maybe not for a frog. I am not attached.

Truth be known, I hate frogs. They are slimy and gross. I will never touch Butch...on purpose.

Excuse me sir...

To the guy whose car alarm has been going off outside for about 5 minutes now: Have mercy on all of us folks inside who are trying hard to concentrate on our Tetris game! You are making it difficult to concentrate to line up the pieces correctly. Please. Stop. The. Madness.

My trip to Cairo

My coworkers returned to the office yesterday after having been in Cairo for a meeting for two weeks. I was interested to hear their many stories of the sheer craziness the driving in Cairo is, and it brought back nightmares to the handful of times that I was riding in a cab through Houston. Cairo was much worse, they assured me. Many times they were driving 65 miles an hour on the highway and suddenly all the cars would come to a complete stop...up ahead was a donkey pulling a cart full of watermelons on the highway.

The mass amounts of mosquitos in Cairo were unbelieveable. Standing inside the buildings even, one would get 50-60 bites. Sounds a lot like my backyard, well anywhere outside for me really. They swarm me like vultures hovering over roadkill. I can't even wear scented anything in the summer because of the sheer torture they put me through for the five seconds it takes me to walk from the car to the front door of the house.

My coworkers brought me back a gift from Cairo...a small, handmade jewelry box. It was beautiful. As I opened it, the overwhelming scent of bandaids filled the room. "It smells like bandaids," I said. My boss took the box and inhaled. "Nope...It smells like Cairo."

Oh, fun! I told them I was going to take my jewelry box home, stand out on my back deck, take a huge whif of the jewelry box as the mosquitos tore into my skin. Then, I could feel like I had actually gone with them to Cairo.

Unbearable...

So, your inside your house minding your own while your kids are outside playing in the swimming pool, when you go outside to your barking dog, and see this:



A cuddly grizzly sitting in your pool!

Hey, don't say it can't happen to you (unless you don't have a pool, of course)...it happened to this woman.

LOL! Ha ha! Snort. Ha!

It's not my fault.

Just so we are clear, I take NO responsibility for my appearance today. All of the credit goes to the wonderful thunder/rain storm that we have been having this morning that caused my electricity to blow halfway through my process of getting ready.

I stood there in the bathroom getting ready to curl my hair when all of a sudden, the lights are gone. The irony here is that I had previously played this scenario in my mind as I was standing in the shower hoping that I wouldn't be left standing in the dark with the water running. I scrambled around to get the flashlight and quickly lit a candle. Luckily, I got to use my curling iron while it was still hot--it was difficult to do that though, with only the light from a candle.

I am almost ashamed to admit I said this, but it is a typical "Amy statement," so I'm sure you'd expect nothing less. I frantically called Mike and told him I guess I'd have to stay home from work today, or at least until the power came back on. When he asked why, I said, "Well, because my car is in the garage and the power doesn't work so I can't get the door open..." (insert jokes about Amy here) Then he precedes to tell me, that all I have to do is manually lift up the door to get it open....DUH! I knew that....I'll blame that one on the weather too--I was all flustered from the power being out that I couldn't think clearly. :)

After all that, I forgot to wear a belt today. :( Might as well blame that on the weather too...everything else is because of the weather today.

Only English folks.

Among the many interesting things I see on my job, I have recently (okay, well, nearly everyday for the past several months) have received emails containing the following text:

贵公司负责人(经理/财务）： 您好!
我是广东德宏贸易有限公司。我司实力雄厚，有着良好的社会关系，现完成不了每月销
售额度，为要冲减进项。现有部分“增值税”(电脑)发票对外提供，税率方面较低(6%)左右
的税点。其它“国税”“地税”等普通发票(2%)左右的税点优惠代开或合作。还可以根据数
目的大小来衡量优惠的多少。

Or another one received just today:

Модуль 1.
Принципы клиент-ориентированного подхода. Что такое сервис/обслуживание? Ориентация на клиента» или клиент - ориентированный подход. Система обслуживания. Политика и стандарты. Основные этапы процесса обслуживания. Какие шаги необходимо совершить для достижения успеха в обслуживании клиентов. Развитие ориентации на результат.

An out of office reply to an email I sent:
Ce message (et toutes ses pièces jointes éventuelles) est confidentiel et établi à l'intention exclusive de ses destinataires. Toute utilisation de ce message non conforme à sa destination, toute diffusion ou toute publication, totale ou partielle, est interdite, sauf autorisation expresse. L'IFP décline toute responsabilité au titre de ce message.

And a response to a very English email I sent:

ESTE ES EL CORREO EN EL QUE EL PROVEEDOR NOS CONFIRMA EL REGISTRO DEL ING. CARLOS CALDERON Y MYRIAM ORTIZ OSRNIO EN EL D&P FORUM. POR FAVOR INFORME A LOS INTERESADOS.

GRACIAS

Come on people! I am an English speaking American. English is the only language I speak naturally. Hey, maybe I should present this information to my supervisor and tell him it's good cause for an on-site learning experience to each of these countries to learn their languages. :) Yeah, he probably wouldn't buy it....OR, he'd want to come along!

There is a difference.

There is nothing like standing in the office kitchen cutting up some fruit to snack on, minding your own business, when someone from behind you in their most nasally, whining voice says, "You're so skinny." I'm talking Fran Drescher nasally. I pretended like I didn't hear it or that they weren't actually talking to me and continued to cut my apple. Obviously she wanted to be clear that she was talking to me, so she walked up behind me, put her hand around the back of my arm and said it again.

I started gritting my teeth, turned around with my fake smile plastered on my face, and said (obviously annoyed), "Ummm, thank you?"

Those that don't know me well, this is one of my big pet peeves. Why don't people understand how rude it is too walk up to someone and say that? Especially with that condescending, nasally tone, "You're so disgusting." That's what I hear when people say that me, when they say it that way. You don't walk up to an excessively obeise person and say, "You're so fat."

I'm probably going to get a lot of flack for this post, but I don't care. There is a difference between someone complimenting me and someone degrading me. That tone was not a compliment.

*Stepping off my soapbox now...*

Mental note 3

Note to self: For tomorrow, organize workspace area! It is unforgiveable when you have to sort through endless piles of paperwork and binders just to find the phone number and address for the new Freckles Frozen Custard written on a sticky note attached to your desktop. Prioritize Amy. I. mean. really.

What's for lunch?

I've been nearly starving since I walked into the office this morning. I thought that my morning snack of strawberries would ease the torture of my hunger pangs, but all it did for me was leave seeds in between my teeth. The time finally came when I was ready for the lunch I brought. I pulled out of the freezer the South Beach Diet box with a delicious looking picture of penne noodles and chicken mixed with an orangy-red sauce. This was the first time I bought this particular frozen meal, but was very excited about it based on the picture on the front of the box.

I started to get a little nervous when I took the meal out of the box and placed it into the microwave. Something about the way the sauce was gooped in one spot on top of the noodles and chicken told me that this meal was going to be questionable, but I continued on getting my meal prepared. My stomach continued to growl as I pulled the now steaming carton container from the microwave tray and removed the plastic wrap to stir my lunch. It smelled okay--not great, but okay. I went to my office and closed the door, then sat down at my desk to relieve the pain in my stomach. I was completely disappointed when I sunk my teeth into the rubbery chicken and floppy noodles. Another meal wasted. I couldn't even bring myself to finish the carton of food. The first few bites was enough to tell me if I continued eating it, I would be seeing it again later.

I dug the box with the deceiving picture on the front out of the trash and began to examine to the box....nope, I was right--it wasn't there. I thought for sure that the company would have clearly marked the disclaimer on the front of the box, but it was no where. I should write the frozen food idustry and make them vow to put the following disclaimer on the front of their boxes: "The wonderfully delicious meal that is pictured on the front of this box is NOTHING like the contents within. Be advised that the meal inside is a completely different substance matter than what is pictured on front."

I'm sure if that label was clearly printed on the box, it would remind me in the future whenever I attempted to buy another frozen meal for my lunch. Lesson learned.

Weekend recap

Friday: Mike and I went grocery shopping--in record time and record amount spent, both significantly smaller than usual. :) Love it when that happens.

Painted at my sisters. Lots of chitter chatter, sweat, 4 people, and 2 hours later we had one coat in one bedroom completed. Hmph. Progress? I guess anything is better than nothing.

Saturday: While the boys put in our new patio doors (before and after pictures to come), my sister and I took my mom to lunch for a delayed Mother's Day celebration. She opted to go to a hole in the wall BBQ joint that turned out to be pretty tasty. In true Amy fashion I ate more dessert than lunch. :)

Sunday: We crammed in two movies between morning and evening church services, Secret Window and Open Water. Both were okay. Mike and I did enjoy tormenting each other with fictitious fish bites (pinches) after watching the movie...cheap entertainment--but it was fun. Sometimes I'm convinced that he and I are still children trapped in adult bodies. :)

As you can see, nothing too exciting, but I'm sure you are having a much better day now having read what I did this weekend. :) Don't kid yourself--you are telling yourself now how much you appreciate your exciting, adventurous life and are thankful you don't have as boring a life as this fellow blogger.

Spandex dog

I usually don't like to take ideas from other people's blogs, but this one I just couldn't resist. This picture cracked me up. I laughed out loud for like 2 minutes:



He looks hacked off...quite frankly, I don't blame him.

Another workout battle

I've just been having a run of bad luck on my ventures to working out. My co-worker and I decided to walk outside to enjoy the beautiful weather (high 80s) instead of lifting weights inside. We went to the basement to change into our workout gear and I noticed I had forgotten to pack my socks. Grrr...

I went ahead and put my tennis shoes on and we headed out the door. Feeling a slight surge of energy (and feeling somewhat guilty for not having worked out in 5 days) we decided to take the long route...which means mastering the gigantic hill--the one where she and I vowed not to speak to one another while attempting to climb the monstrosity...I hate to admit it, but it takes every last ounce of breath and energy for me to make it up this monster.

As the top of the hill was finally in reach and we were back to comfortable speaking levels, I mentioned the slight irritation on the back of my heel where my tennis shoe had decided to dig a bite into my heel. Being the stubborn, tough girl that I am, I declined her offer to turn around and head back to the office. After about another hundred feet I began to wince at the pain that my shoe was causing on my foot. I finally caved and admitted defeat as I moved over to the side of the road and removed my shoe from my left foot. Despite the scorching temperatures of the blacktop (I opted to walk on the small amount of concrete next to the curb), and the obvious fashion statement I was making, I proceded on back to the office with one shoe on and one shoe off.

With the end of the road in sight, a black truck with two twenty-somethings in the seat, pulled up next to us, and actually had the audacity to stick their heads out the window and say, "Hey, you lost your shoe." My co-worker and I blatantly stared back at the two idiots with a "are these guys for real?" smirk on our face as we continued walking. For you guys seeking advice from a mildly, decent looking person: Do not think it is cool to pull up to two strange young women and procede to point out the obvious. This does nothing but make you look like an idiot and desperate for attention. Just. Keep. Driving. And certainly, don't drive back around for a second peek after said young women give you the obvious "we are NOT interested" glares as they continue walking.

I managed to make it back to the office without passing out or having my co-worker carry me (the thought did cross my mind, and I did mention it). I survived--I felt like a wuss, but I survived. Got myself a decent workout and four blisters on my foot in the process. I'd say it was worth it.

TV Guide's review on the Fallen Idol special

Primetime Live: Fallen Idol
What a load of crap! This Corey Clark is still so full of sour grapes about being kicked off of Idol in 2002, you can practically see the cheap whine oozing out of his pores. Like we'd believe a bitter bad-check-passing wannabe who a) lied about b) being arrested for c) assaulting his little sister, that Paula Abdul coached him on song choice and the humpty hump? Please, we all know she's clueless about music and, if you didn't notice, the dude's DL look makes Randy Jackson's Journey gear seem butch. Though it's no wonder this fairy tale is coming out now. Based on what we heard, Clark's soon-to-drop CD needs all the press it can get. Hello, suck city. Even if the "I heard rumors back then" comment from that one ousted singer was kind of damning, it's telling that the so-called couple's trip to the cell-phone store wasn't verified onscreen. Nor was there proof that any of those calls came from Abdul's number. All Clark has is one voicemail from her warning him about a rumor that he started in the first place! Besides, months before all of this blew up, Simon Cowell himself told me that contact with the contestants is kept "to a minimum... it's healthier for us and [those] in the competition." So if you think he'd allow this to go on backstage, ya'll got another think coming. But I think the strongest weapon against these charges is the always-up Abdul herself. In her email to ABC, she calls Clark a flat-out "opportunist" and "a liar." Which is mighty tough talk from a woman who never met a compliment she didn't breathlessly utter. So you know she's gotta mean it. Straight up. — DJH

Do I buy Corey's story? Not for a minute...not even after watching his "I want publicity" interview...

Smarten up, you stinkin' squirrels

Driving to work this morning, I was getting ready to make my way under the telephone wires ahead when I saw not one, but TWO furry little squirrels who had fallen to their deaths from the high wire above. Obviously tight rope walking was not on their resume as skills possessed, but I give them props for attempting such a life-threatening feat. Unfortunately, it proved to be their last attempt.

It reminded me of all the drives to and from Tahlequah on the weekends, driving on Hwy 82 for 20 minutes. To pass the time, sometimes I found myself counting the road kill on the sides of the two lane road. I think the most I ever counted was 37. Morbid...I know.

Trix

I sat down to eat a nice big bowl of Trix this morning for breakfast. I poured on the milk and patiently waited for it to get a little soggy so I could eat it. I got so excited about my bowl of Trix that I just couldn't wait. Now I have Trix mouth...you know, the soreness that you get on the roof of your mouth from eating the Trix too fast. This stinks...now I'll have to eat something else for breakfast tomorrow morning to allow my mouth to recooperate from Trix mouth...bummer.

FINALLY!!!

The day I have been waiting 6 months for....


"Dawson's Creek: The Complete Fifth Season" hits stores today...Going to Wal-Mart during my lunch today. :)