You're never too old...

Never.

Ever.

Give me something to blog about...

How about a worker/friend who every time he sends me an email about work, he has a sentence or two alerting me to something that happened in the lab. Then another paragraph of randomness... when he needed me to figure something out for example:

"the challenge has been made, the gauntlet has been thrown down, the target is set, the harvest date has come, the sun has set, the moon has risen, the trout are swimming upstream, the birds are flying south, the light has turned green, the whistle has been blown, the gun has gone off, the feature film has started, the test has begun, the applications are due, the registration has begun, the fire alarm is sounding, the judges hammer has fallen, the power ranges have morphed, the transformers have maximized, the fat lady has begun to sing, the dice are rolling, the world is turning, the phone is ringing will you answer it?"

Why does he do this? Because it makes me laugh :)

The ones I wanted...

Yay :)

Both the Danny & the Sandy that I wanted won!

Up, Down & All Around

That pretty much describes my day.

It got better.

It got a lot worse.

It got better again - thanks to some good friends.

Angry Aspen

Apparently I get this really scary/evil/angry face when I'm really upset about something. Today I got REALLY upset - while at work. NOT GOOD. Everybody was asking me if I was ok, if I was mad at them... NOT GOOD.

After I left I called my mom and fumed for at least 10 minutes, took a drive in the country, chatted up some horses I saw along the way, listened to the chirping birds and a woodpecker beating the crud out of a tree.

I feel better now.

I just sent apology emails to three people who saw me really upset and thought I was mad at something they did.

*sigh*

NOT GOOD.

Next...

So apparently people in the Ed. Dept. thought I was done at the end of the summer. Uhm... nope... I'm here through December. After I made this abundantly clear to my supervisor and the dept. secretary I had several people come up to me and say how happy they are that I'm here through December. This makes me feel all warm and tingly. And then they ask what's next for me... after December.

Then feel like I've had my brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.

I'm going with the flow.
I'm going with the flow.
I'm going with the flow.
I'm going with the flow.
I'm going with the flow...

NZ Knitter

Found this site - Just Jussi - from an article in the NZ Herald. Gorgeous stuff. Maybe one day I'll be able to knit like that :)

Oh... and I thought animal rights activists wanted to SAVE animals... not let them die...

Emo?!? Me?!?

LOL

My friends were giving me a hard time because I dyed my hair... and now it's kind of... black-ish... well... really dark brown. I took Aya's word on it and she said it wasn't too dark and it would look great... *grin* Yeah. Well she still says it looks good... but I miss my normal hair color.

Oh, and if you're not familiar with "Emo" here's what the Urban Dictionary has to say:

"Genre of softcore punk music that integrates unenthusiastic melodramatic 17 year olds who dont smile, high pitched overwrought lyrics and inaudible guitar rifts with tight wool sweaters, tighter jeans, itchy scarfs (even in the summer), ripped chucks with favorite bands signature, black square rimmed glasses, and ebony greasy unwashed hair that is required to cover at least 3/5 ths of the face at an angle."

Hmm... not 17, smile all the time, no wool (too hot and too itchy), don't wear tight anything, soft scarves only when it's COLD, no chucks, my glasses are purple and catty, I wash my hair and I don't hide behind it anymore... so no... I'm not emo. Though I do listen to some music that's classified as emo...

Oh, and I really liked this definition:
"Like a Goth, only much less dark and much more Harry Potter."

Black Sheep

I laughed so hard I cried... and then I snorted... snorting and crying... just from the preview.

I've GOT to see that movie...

Do you realize how much trouble NZ would be in if that happened (cuz it's SOOO possible)... the sheep outnumber the humans by 10 to 1.

*edit* indeed! 10 to 1 not 4 to 1... silly me :)

hehehehe
*snort*

hehehehehehe
/sigh

Pirates 3.0

Well.... I was super-excited for the first and second one... but the second one let me down :(

Now the preview for the third one - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is out.

Subbing 1.0

2 hours....
Standing outside in the freezing cold, watching kids K - 5 play.

More to come :)

Never seen the original...

But I really want to see the new: Hairspray.

Now... do I watch the old one first or wait for July, watch the new one, then watch the old one.

*ponder*

And yeah.... can't sleep.

New Playlist

I changed my playlist... this is a collection of rockish songs...
Abba, Matchbox Twenty, BNL, Bowling for Soup, ELO, Kiss, Kansas, Twisted Sister, Weezer...

I dunno some old and some new. Whatever tickled my fancy at the moment :)

Not this time...

We got about ten minutes north of here when the roads started getting slippery and it was snowing so much that every time an 18-wheeler passed I couldn't see the road... So we turned around and came home.

Nobody was THAT desperate to get to D's parent's house...

We spent all afternoon working on wedding stuff: invitations and decorating the little bubble containers :)

Dinner with several friends and then back to their apt to finish up decorating... Also, we watched Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead & Loving It.

THAT made up for earlier disappointments. :)

Outta here...

I'm actually going somewhere for a couple of days... getting out of town... moving to the country :)

Later!

What's with the acorns?

I mean seriously....

Aspen -- [noun]: A person with a taste for acorns 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

"Hail to the do-rag."

LOL

K... sorry... but THIS ONE really did make me laugh out loud.

:)

Translation please?

Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.

Yesterdays fortune cookies... 2 out of 3 said this (I freaking love fortune cookies... nummy)

Intrigued, I alta-vista'd blind hog and this is what I got...

Apparently there's a book published in 1945 called: A Blind Hogs Acorn...

And then there was THIS (for lack of a better description)... They describe it as "an unusually good performance coming from an unexpected source."

The third fortune cookie: "Happiness is coming from an unexpected source."

And so, to you oh Fortune Cookie God... I say this: Bring it on.

Man oh man...

My head hurts...
I just spent the last hour looking around to see if teachers are needed in the states that I'm interested in living in... ugh I can't even make that sentence make sense now... hehe... k here's what I've come up with so far...

States I've been to and know I'd like to live in:
*Minnesota
*Wisconsin
*Colorado
*Wyoming
*Montana
*Texas

States that I haven't been to but I think I'd like to live in:
*Michigan (maybe - need to go there first)
*Washington
*Oregon
*Nevada (maybe Reno - cousin there)
*Alaska
*Northern California?

As for the number of teaching jobs available... well... yeah... *sigh*
I signed up for two different free sites to search for teaching jobs:
ABC Teaching Jobs
Education America

There are so many sites to look at... every state, school district...
It's going to be a lot of work, but I WILL find a job somewhere :) I think it helps that I'm willing to relocate.

I'm not the only one

Just in the Ed. Dept we had 4 people out sick yesterday... Some with stomach-issues and some with head-coldy issues like me.

Geeze....

Germs = suxor.

Flackity flack...

Well people are glad we made the trip safely, but they're informing me that I'm insane/stupid to have gone in the first place.

Let me just say I knew perfectly well we had NO business whatsoever going, but since the other two weren't about to drop it - and I wasn't sure they'd be able to say, "Ok, this is too much we need to stop" – and because if anything had happened to them I would have been devastated... I went. I drove and I did my darndest to make sure they got there and back safely... and I succeeded. And the Assoc. Director of Res. Life thanked me today for making sure we got there and back safely.

When we got to the hotel that first night it was interesting to see how each of us dealt with the day...

Amy kept herself busy calling people, ironing and organizing for the next day.

Aya got in her pj's and watched Resident Evil. She says all the stress and violence of the movie makes her feel like her problems aren't nearly as bad.

I called my mom to tell her where we were, popped on my iPod and lay down on the bed to relax. It made me feel better, but I still wasn't able to sleep. I think I got about 2 hours of sleep, off and on, that night. My mind was replaying the day’s events, thanking the Lord we were safe, and wondering what the next day was going to be like.

More...

It took us 16 hours (minus spending the night in a hotel) to get there and only 9 hours to get back.

I hardly slept the first few nights, which is probably why I have a cold. Started feeling icky Saturday morning and it's just gotten worse.

I got back home at 11pm last night and took two Nyquil. Woke up at noon today, made myself eat so I could take more medicine, went back to bed. Woke up at 4pm, made myself get up and stay up so I could sleep tonight.

Had a Hall Council Exec and a HC hall-wide meeting tonight. Both were VERY brief. It's good to be the president :)

I've got class and work tomorrow. Didn't make it through all of the site revisions for tomorrows class... maybe I can do a couple more tomorrow morning.

Time for more sleeeeeeep!

Home.... safe.... exhausted

G'night.

Thank you, thank you, thank you OMG thank you...

4:20am - Woke up
4:30am - Called Aya & Amy to see if we were REALLY going to do this
5:30am - Left town - roads were not-so-good just outside of town but got better as we went
8:00am - Stopped for breakfast
10:30am - Arrived in the cities
11:50am - Reached the other side of the cities - lots of snow and traffic at a stand-still in places

The afternoon drive through Wisconsin was spotty, but generally not that bad. We had snow, sleet, rain, hail... and variations of all the above.

5:00ish - We got almost to Wausau, WI (about 100 miles from our destination) and we hit blizzard-type weather... We stopped at an Applebee's so I could take a break from driving and we were hoping the weather would get better. Left Applebee's at 6:00pm and it took us over an hour to get 30 miles. I couldn't see the road for large periods of time, there were cars/trucks/vans in the ditch every 5 minutes... then I literally couldn't see anything because the road hadn't been plowed recently, the wind was blowing more snow across the road, we were headed into the driving snow, and an 18-wheeler that had JUST passed us was off the side of the road, jack-knifed and I declared "THAT'S IT! We're pulling off I can't see the freaking road and there's a sign for a hotel." And we did. Our guardian angels were DEFINITELY with us. I have never been so scared in my life. We made it to the hotel and I was shaking all over. We're in the room now making lots of phone calls to reschedule interviews, checking emails, checking weather and road conditions....

UGH!
I tried so hard to talk them out of this trip and I probably should have stayed at home, but I couldn't just drop out and make them go on their own... It sounds weird but if something had happened to them I would have felt so horrible.... and I knew I was risking my own neck... but for most of the trip it really wasn't that bad.... Just WI is freaking awful.

UGH! UGH! UGH!

Anywho... We're here. We're safe.
I am going to try and relax, take a hot shower and go to sleep. They'll both be running around the room but my adrenaline is starting to wear off and it has been a LONG freaking day.... Sleep is sounding so good right now.

We'll most likely be up at 4am tomorrow to check weather and road conditions. It could potentially take us up to 4 hours to get there.... but I'm seriously holding my ground if it's anything at all like it is now we're not going ANYWHERE. If they don't have jobs they can all come stay in my one-bedroom apt. At least we'll all be ALIVE.

That's what's important.