YOU CAN NEVER BE TOO RICH OR TOO THIN.

You know, I don't know who originally said that, but I'm pretty sure they were from Palm Beach, Florida. : ) More about that in a bit.

As you may or may not know, last week I accompanied Steve on a buisness trip to West Palm Beach. We left on Monday, flying all the way down there, and I realized that my attitude about flying hasn't changed a bit since high school. I STILL HATE IT!!! I'm sure it wouldn't be so bad if I never had to take another shuttle like the ones that fly from Huntsville to Atlanta. They are basically the equivelent of an airborn Pinto. Tiny, tiny little planes that sound as if they are just waiting to hit cruising altitude before they fall completely to peices. Steve and I weren't originally seated together, but the kind soul who I was seated by switched with Steve. Personally, I think he thought I looked like I might panic and cause a scene, but I will choose to believe that he was just being nice.

Once we landed in Palm Beach, we were handed off to the car rental place and then we ended up at the hotel. We stayed in the Embassy Suites, which in my opinion is one of the nicer kinds of hotels to stay in. Free breakfast and a little tiny living room. Normally, when you have a hotel room it has your typical two twin beds, a nightstand in between, two ugly prints over each bed, and etc. With an Embassy Suite, you get all that PLUS the little living room, a fridge and a microwave. : ) Hey, I'm easy to please. Anyways, Steve had to attend a class from 8 am-4 pm, so I was pretty much on my own. At first I figured I'd truly be lazy and just lie about, read and watch TV. After about an hour of that, I was climbing the walls. It's not that I don't appreciate not doing anything, but there I was in Florida not doing anything. How could I? But I had a problem. I have NEVER been to a strange place and been alone before. Any time I've traveled, I've been with my family or a friend. Please don't pity me, I know 27 is a little old to be on my own for the first time, but I couldn't help it, I was loved and a little overprotected growing up! So there I was, keys to a rental car, and absolutely no nerve. So I had a long talk with myself (don't be alarmed, I do this a lot). I told myself that I would not be a coward, and that I would get in that car, and I would find out what was outside of that hotel room. So I did. I found out that West Palm Gardens is not quite the kind of place I'm used to. Very beautiful, very posh, palmy and stucco-ey. It was also very...fancy. Normally when I go to a beach town, it's overrun with all of those tacky sea-side souvineer shops and neon and whatever. West Palm Beach was all very...how shall I say it...a very "I'm having lunch with Buffy and Trevor at the club at four, but only if they don't spend all afternoon talking about Harvard again" type of place. I felt like I was practically wearing a sign that said "Makes less than $20,000 a year". Now, I know that's not really a fair thing to say, one shouldn't judge people because of how much or how little they earn, but dang. I felt like I needed a credit check just to take a deep breath out there. When I finally got the nerve to drive, I ended up on PGA Blvd, and this is some of what I saw. A mall roughly the size of Athens (Greece, not Alabama). A row of what I first thought were houses, but they turned out to be some extremely lovely offices and shops. A state park, condos - starting at only $795,000 as the signs so helpfully advertised- and finally a little public beach. I was so excited to find the beach, which in my opinion is the only reason to take a vacation in Florida, but I was SO not dressed for it. I had on jeans, but I rolled those suckers up and walked for a while. I was probably only out there for twenty minutes before I realized that I was going to have a heat stroke, but I still got sunburned a little. After leaving there, I just followed the road until I ended up in what I called the "ghetto" which in fact was actually just a less grand area with smaller houses, and after stopping for some sodas I headed back to the hotel. I was starving, so I figured I would just run through a drive through and take something back, but apparently West Palm Beach feels that fast food resturaunts are coarse and vulgar. No wonder everyone in that town is so thin. You couldn't get a Big Mac there for gold or spices! I had to order room service, which I am still embarrassed to do, and pay way too much for what I could have gotten at Burger King for $5. It was a lovely place, but I felt a little out of place. I also went to the giant mall and got to see my very first actual Tiffany & Co. and Bloomingdales. I, of course, couldn't afford anything in either place, but it was nice to be able browse.
The people I saw there fit into three categories, A) Rich, Thin, and Bored B) Rich, Thin and Beautiful or C) Old. I also noticed that there is an alarming trend among the young ladies down there to wear their jeans REALLY low cut. I mean, REALLY-REALLY low cut. As in, any lower and the whole world will be their gynocologist. Eventually they are just going to be wearing the legs of jeans. I felt like Urkel, and my jeans come below my belly button as it is. They also can do some hard core shopping. I saw people walking out of stores with bags upon bags of things. It was an amazing sight.
Steve was done with his class on Thursday, and he decided that he wanted to drive down to Key West. I was a little shocked. We don't normally do stuff like that, so I was all for it. We were only 232 miles away from Key West, so we got up early Friday morning, grabbed a couple of beach towels, and headed down. It should have only taken us about 4 hours to get there, but right before we got to the bridge at Key Largo, we got stopped by road construction for about an hour and a half. By the time we actually got to Key West, we had been on the road for over six hours. We jumped out of the car and went to the bathrooms to change (yuck, but I will not go into that) and we headed out to the beach. As we were lolling (don't you just love to loll?) we realized that we had no clean clothes and no place to get cleaned up. I tried talking Steve into staying overnight so we could at least have a place to take a bath and whatever, but he didn't want to, so we went downtown all nasty and sandy and had a late dinner at a place called the Roof Top Cafe. The people at the resturaunt kind of treated us shabbily in that "Yeah, we'll let you eat here because we don't have a good reason not to, but we aren't going to make any effort to make you feel welcome." However, we just wanted to eat and leave, and we did. We did a little shoping and made our way back to Palm Beach. We were fine until we reached Miami, and then it was like a roller derby. I thought the people in Huntsville didn't know how to drive, but I'd rather stand in the middle of rush hour traffic here than drive on the highway in Miami ever again. Even the cops are rude and bad drivers! I couldn't believe the people driving clearly 90 miles an hour, not putting on their turn signals, cutting people off and generally being dangerous. It was insane. Steve was nervous and I thought I was going to have a stroke. I didn't relax until we parked in the parking garage at the hotel. We were hungry, but as I said before, there was no fast food places to go to and it was late, so we had to have a vending machine dinner. Saturday we had designated as our lazy-go-to-the-beach day, and we did that with gusto. I had been doing so well all week not getting fried by the sun, but Saturday I left the sunblock on the table of our suite, so I got sunburned pretty bad. It wasn't as bad as I've been burned before, but it itches like crazy. Sunday we had to get back on the planes and come home. I hated to leave Florida, but I was glad to see my dogs and come home.

Notes of Interest.

~I embarrassed myself fairly badly at the beach on Wednesday, even though I didn't know it until Thursday. I got there on Wednesday fairly early in the day and staked out my lounging spot. I hadn't put on my bathing suit, but I had it with me, so I decided to just slide the top of it on under my shirt and then pull my shirt off. (Don't worry, there is no naked element to this.) Anyways, after I got the top on I realized that something was wrong with it, but I wasn't too concerned. Anyways, I hung out for a while, but didn't want to get too much sun too fast so I got my stuff together to leave. On my way out, I realize the lifeguards are checking me out, and I started feeling pretty cute as I walked past (don't judge me!). Anyways, it wasn't until Thursday that I realize that I had embarrassed myself. I'm in the changing area to go back to the beach, and I'm in the process of putting my suit top on and I realize that the lifeguards weren't checking me out the day before because I looked cute, they were looking at me because I had my top on upside down!!!!!!! Ugh. In my hurry to pull the stupid top on under my shirt, I had gotten the part that hooked around my neck and the part that hooked around my back confused. Oy vey...all I can hope was that there were new lifeguards there on thursday.

~Steve doesn't know the difference between a dolphin and a shark. : )

~Palm Beach is a great place to visit if you need to find out if you have an inferiority complex. Apparently, I have one.

~Most designers don't want to sell clothes to women over a juniors size 12. At least none of the more well known designers do.

~ Tiffany & Co. employs a security guard to watch you during the day while you are shopping. This is a good idea, but it makes browsing uncomfortable.

That is all! Ciao!

Precious Memories

Isn't it weird what brings back a memory? The other day I bought a new pack of Maebelene (?) eyeshadow and it made me have the most vivid flashback of the time I went to the district FFA officer interviews. I'm guessing it was because I bought almost the exact same eyeshadow so that I would have something to match the ever so stylish FFA corduroy jacket the night before I went. That was a fun day. I wasn't chosen as an officer, unfortunately, but I met a lot of nice people and made a very good friend as well. In fact, I have a whole scrapbook page for that year dedicated to that day. One of the girls and one of the guys drew me a picture on a piece of scratchy brown paper towel and I want to say that I got some cards from the state officers that were there. It was so much fun. Of course, I didn't find out until later that when I went into the office for my actual interview, they all started talking about my "tattoo". Stupid me had forgotten to take off a temporary tattoo that I had on my ankle before the interviews and it showed through my pantyhose and they were trying to decide if it was real. Heeheehee, that's typical me. Always doing something dumb like that. Anyways, thanks for taking a stroll down that proverbial lane with me this morning. : )

Just wanted to give a shout out to my peeps.

I'll Holla. Peace out.

No Dignity...

I was going to enter this on my blog today, and then I decided not to. I finally decided to post it after all when I realized that it is indeed a funny story. This is a story of how I once again lost my dignity in a public bathroom. I sent this story to a friend of mine, so I just cut and pasted the story as it was from that e-mail. Hope you get a good laugh!

I went to Wal-Mart last night and went to the bathroom. While I was in there I looked for some money that I had in my pocket, but couldn't find it. I was kind of ticked, because I knew that if it had fallen out, I would never see it again. I had just gotten resigned to the fact that I had lost it when I turned around and realized that the money was in the toilet. Now, I just stood there hoping I was hallucinating. Had it been my own bathroom, it would still have been disgusting, but not like this. When I walked in, I thought to myself that the bathroom was gross, but now I was faced with a predicament that would require me to fish something out of the toilet, and I wasn't prepared for that. I honestly thought about flushing it, but as you know, in the toilet or not, it was still money. Had it been change, I wouldn't have even considered it, but it was the green kind. So I went McGyver mode and tried to fashion a rudimentary glove from a toilet seat cover. However, those dissolve when they come into contact with water apparently. *Shudder* So I've got a handful of quickly dissolving toilet seat cover and wet money running like a loon through the bathroom making a high pitched keening noise. So I throw the money under hot water and wash my hands as much as possible. Then I have to take the money, wrap it in tissue, and stuff it into my purse. When I got home, I anti bacterial washed those suckers and hung them up to dry. I guess I'm guilty of money laundering (you know I was just waiting to use that one).

WEEKEND UPDATE!

Greetings everyone! How was your weekend? Mine was fine. Friday Steve and I rented some movies. I, Robot (pretty good, but the CGI effects were a little cartoony. Still a good flick, though.) Without A Paddle (which Steve thought was hilarious, but I played Sims 2 during.) and Dawn of the Dead. We didn't watch that last one because it was dark, so I saved it for Saturday. It was nice to sit at home and relax for a change. We always seem to be running somewhere these days!
Saturday I didn't have to work, so I started cleaning out the yella-room closet. For those of you not familliar with the yella-room, it's our screaming yellow guest room. We've pretty much been using it as a storage closet for the past couple of years, but I'm determined to get it organized again in case of visitors. I found clothes that I honestly forgot I had, so that was kind of fun. Since I saved Dawn of the Dead for that afternoon, I got all curled up and ready to be scared to death, but it didn't happen. I mean, it was gross, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't scary. Maybe I'm a little jaded from all the Stephen King stuff I've read, but the movie was more sad to me than anything. Of course, it was kind of scary when the little girl gnawed the guys jugular in half, but other than that it wasn't bad. That night we went to dinner with some friends and then went to our staple after dinner place: Barnes and Noble. I bought a copy of Vanity Fair, and by gosh I'm going to make myself read it! I also bought myself a small box of Godiva. It's sad when you have to buy your own Godivas, but at least you don't feel obligated to share them. : )
Sunday we went to church and to my parents house. I had to stay home and work on homework that night, but I had a hard time concentrating on anything. I don't know why, but it was like my mind was in a million pieces! I've worked for hours on this stupid project, and I'm no closer to finishing than I was three days ago. It makes me ill, I tell you! ILL!

You know where I'd like to go? There is a park in Athens called Big Spring Park. I used to go there when I was in highschool and hang out. It's tiny, but it's peaceful. I like to watch the ducks. There is also a huge cemetary near there that I've been to once and I'd like to take more pictures.

LOVELY...

I hate not knowing the whole story. Apparently sometime today a former employee came into the Space Center and caused a scene in the lobby and then came down to our trailer and threatened one of the ladies in our accounting department. We don't know what was said, but it must've been bad because the head accounting guy evacuated our office and made us come up to the back up call center in the museum. I'm sure whatever the lady said was an empty threat, but still, it's kind of scary. Now we're up here in this stuffy little office and being slammed with calls. Come, 5:00, I beseech thee!

SEE AT LAST! SEE AT LAST!

I FINALLY GOT MY NEW GLASSES! Woo-Hoo! I went and picked up my new ones yesterday and I can see for miles. It's weird, my eyes have been trained to focus through my ratty old ones for so long that it feels like my eyes are changing shape while they are getting used to the new ones. I'm also excited because the new ones aren't held together with glue, tape or soldier AND I don't look so much like Velma from the Scooby gang anymore. Go me.

Since I had two doc appointments yesterday I skipped school and had a Kelly Day. I went to a place called Garden Cove produce which is a health food store and that was kind of cool. I embarrassed myself there. Taking a que from a very talented photographer friend of mine, I took my camera along with me in case I saw anything interesting. When I got into the store, I thought that some of the things in there would make interesting pictures and that I could probably use some of the pictures for my art projects. Well, since this place is family owned, I asked if I could take pictures because I didn't want them to think I was with the health department or whatever. Well, the first lady told me to ask a second lady, and the second lady told me to talk to someone else, and before it was all over it had gotten more complicated than it was worth. So I was just going to quietly make my purchases and leave. Well, the cashier lady asked if I had taken any pictures and I told her that I just decided it was too much trouble and that it wasn't important, but she wouldn't let me leave until she called the manager over. I was so embarrased. When I told her I was just wanting the pictures so that I could use them for art projects she said "Who are you with?" I just stammered that I was an art student and told her what I wanted to do and told her it wasn't important and she STILL went on to tell me they would have to know some time in advance because of stocking days and what not. I just gave up. I figure I can take pictures at Target if I need pictures of fruit.
I also went to Maple Hill Cemetary to take some pictures, and it was too cold to stay long. I was hoping to get some of those "ghost" pictures I told you about before (heeheehee) and so I just hollered out "Okay, folks, if anyone wants to have their picture made, come on out." About that time I see someone out of the corner of my eye, which of course scares me, and I turned and no one was there. I left fairly quickly after that. In the hazy light of a new day, I'm pretty sure that it was just one of those eye floaters or whatever, but for a second I thought I was about to make an interesting new aquaintance. I'll be going back when it gets a little warmer. I don't know why I like old cemetaries. I'm a taphophile I guess. Don't get worried though, it's not death I'm facinated with, it's the old head stones. I wish that I knew where more old graveyards were. I've just about read everything at Maple Hill. It's still interesting to me, though, so I'll keep going back once a year or so. I haven't looked at the pictures I took yet, so I'll let you know if my friend in in any of them! ; )

Well, if I can't beat 'em...

What could possibly be more fun than the first season of The Dukes of Hazzard on DVD? Why, it's the SECOND season of The Dukes of Hazzard on DVD! You heard me right, folks. Steve bought the second set and we have been watching them at night since last week. You know, I've always liked that show and I realize that it's supposed to be a little silly, but golly-gee when you watch them back to back like we've been doing, you soon realize how campy the show is. I think I said the same thing about the first season, too, and it still holds true. However, I am prepared for my gentle revenge on having to watch them. I went out and bought a 10 disk set of "Natural Sounds" CDs. I've made him go to sleep listening to thunder and waves, so far. Next I'm going to turn on the Bird Sanctuary. He'll have Alfred Hitchcock nightmares! *evil grin*.

Speaking of those CDs, yesterday while I was getting ready for school, I turned on one labled "Solitude By the Lake" or something like that and I turned it up loud so I could hear it all over the house. I don't know what kind of lake this was supposed to be, but I kept expecting Tarzan to let out a yell and swing by me. I can only imagine what the neighbors were thinking!

And lastly...

BOO! I found out that my Yoga class is only a 10 week course instead of 15 weeks like all my other classes. This means I'm going to have to start practicing at home. That's not too bad. At least I won't be embarrassed when I fall down (and I do fall down. Frequently). : ) However, I am going to have to force myself to go to the gym to do regular workouts until school is over if I don't do this at home, I guess. Grrrr.

For those who care, I've updated my website. Nuthing exciting, but at least it's different.

For those who don't care, well, you probably don't read this that often and it doesn't really matter. heh.

I love quotes. I love the fact that we have snippets of wise things other people say to draw on when we don't know how to express ourselves. I use a lot of quotes in my artwork. Sometimes they make sense in the context I use them in and sometimes they don't. It doesn't really matter in the long run, and that's the beauty of the thing. Here is one I found for today:

Indifference is the invisible giant of the world.
~Ouida

So, how was my weekend? Well, it had it's moments. Friday night Steve and I went to see Josh's new condo. It's so adorable...I mean, it's a swingin' batchelor's pad and chick magnet. : ) Actually, it's really nice. It's in one of those condo plexes where they have little lawns and tennis courts. The one he's moving in to was owned by someone with BAD taste in decorating. It's going to have to be completely repainted and the wall paper will need to be taken down, but it's so cozy. He's going to let me help him redecorate! Yay! Saturday I had to work: BOO. Steve and I were going to spend the rest of the evening cleaning, but Josh invited us to a cookout and we went there instead. It was a lot of fun. We talked and laughed and I showed everyone my most impressive yoga backbend. Ooooh and/or ahhhhhh. : ) Sunday we overslept and didn't do anything except for going to my parent's house for lunch. We had been trying to get some things done around the house, and we got some of it done, but all it did was intensify the realization that we need to just bomb the place and start all over. Good news, though, is that my parent's will be having a yard sale and we can unload a ton of stuff with that. Everything they don't sell goes to Good Will, so even if no one buys it we don't have to bring it home. I just wish I wasn't getting rid of so many nice clothes. I suppose not getting fat would help, but I don't seem to have a say in the matter. Steve and I both decided to be brutal and not have those "I'll wear it when I lose weight" piles of clothes, but of course we did save back a couple of things. : )

Anyways, that was my weekend. How very, very exciting.

G'day! Welcome to Australia. Here, have a kangaroo scrotum!

It is amazing what you find on the internet when you are doing your homework.

You know, here is something that puzzles me. When you get into an art or music scene or whatever, you see these independantly printed, usually low quality, little publications which would normally be called magazines. These, however, are called "zines". Is it supposed to make make something cooler or edgier to call it a zine? Part of me thinks that's what they mean to do, and the other part of me thinks that maybe someone needs to learn to spell.

What does it say about my frame of mind when I'm sitting here eating Tang powder with a spoon?

I need advice.

Without going into details (which is odd for me, so please don't ask, although it's going to be hard to help me if you don't know. Just try anyways.) I need to know how to react to a potentially emotionally stressful situation. Don't worry, it's nothing really serious, my marriage is fine and no one will die because of this, but it could reduce me to one of those "face-down-in-a-bag-of-chex-mix" moods for a while. Of course, as of right now, the situation is only in my imagination. But you know how sometimes you can see the signs? Well, anyways, I have seen the signs and basically I just want to be able handle it gracefully with the least amount of stress and tantrum throwing. I've come to the conclusion that there are three ways to handle this:

A) Wait it out and see if it will be sudden and painful or so gradual that I won't even notice. Of course, if it's sudden, and I don't do anything, there will be a period of time where I'm going to be very sad and eat a lot before I get over it. If you haven't noticed, I'm an emotional eater. Or I might cry, and Steve hates that. Or both, and I really hate to eat when I'm crying because I get a stopped up nose and I tend to drool. Yeah, there you go. Pretty.

B) I could just start the process myself and get it over with. However, if I'm wrong about everything, it will make me look like a complete ass and not only that but I might end up making someone mad. Personally, I'm kind of tired of looking like an ass, and I don't like to make people mad unless I can turn it around and make the person feel bad for getting angry and then get diamonds or chocolate out of it later.

C) Get a pet otter to take my mind off of things. I like this idea, but Steve doesn't.

If you were faced with a situation that could upset you, which one of these would you pick? I know you probably think I should just wait and see what's going to happen, but it's the waiting part that is driving me crazy. It's like riding a rollar coaster blindfolded and going up and up and knowing that the drop will be coming soon, but not being able to see it. SIGH. Why can't I just be clairvoyant and know everything? It might be boring, but it wouldn't be as stressful.

FREE TO GOOD HOME

Husband who implied that I was fat and then made it even worse by trying to explain his way out of it. Goes by the name of Steve, but will also respond to "Butthead". If interested, by all means, let me know.

Ghoststudy Photo Gallery!

This is so interesting! I can't remember if I've ever posted the link to this or not, but this is a website that claims to post pictures of ghosts. Now, I don't know whether or not to believe that what is presented is ghosts or not. I've become too jaded in my old age to really believe (especially since I can do stuff like this in PhotoShop-ahem...hiremeforyourgraphicsdepartmentifyouhaveoneplease) that this is what I'm seeing. However, I wanted to post the link because I think it's kind of weird if nothing else. The only ones that actually scare me are the people in the TV sets. I don't know why, but just to entertain the idea that something could be looking at you through the screen of your turned off tv freaks me out. It gives me the same feeling that makes me look behind the shower curtain when I'm in the bathroom. : ) Enjoy!

Note to self, never point out the obvious to someone who doesn't want to acknowledge it.

Yesterday I overheard a lady that I work with talking with another lady about a friend of hers that was addicted to some kind of drugs. After her friend went back to her desk, she turned to me and said: "I just don't understand people who are addicted to drugs" as she reached for her 42nd ciggarette of the day. I said "It guess it must be like smoking." If looks could kill, you'd be following my hearse right now.