Friday, February 27, 2009

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I have a few more "cast members" to add to my list of fellow gym members. A) Uncomfortably Close Lady is a woman who comes in and gets on the machine right next to me, no matter how many other elliptical machines are available. It doesn't bother me if I'm next to someone when the place is crowded, but when I am the only person in a line-up of 10 or 12 machines, there is no reason for her to get that close. She just makes me nervous. B) Dr. Smellgood is a guy who's probably in his 40s and always rides one of the stationary bikes. He always, ALWAYS, smells so good. I don't know if he's wearing cologne or if he takes a bath with some kind of manly-scented soap, but when he comes in and gets on the bike you can smell whatever it is. It just now occurred to me that it doesn't make much sense to bathe before going to the gym. Perhaps he smells perfectly normal, but the fact that I'm in a gym with a bunch of sweaty people makes him smell better by comparison. I dunno. Also we have C) "Homely Girl" (which sounds mean, but it's true), D) "Mrs. Valdez" (the lady who carrys a cup of coffee around with her when she does weights. Gross) and E) "Angela" who looks like the tiny blonde lady on The Office. She looks like the kind of woman who'd have a screaming fit at you if she knew you celebrated Halloween. She's probably very nice, though.

2) For those of you who listen to the Space Camp Podcast, I have some interesting news. My very awesome friend Andrew is now making it a video podcast and he's animating it! It looks really neat, and I now have an Anime counterpart! She's much thinner than I am, but I'm not going to complain. He actually got my character all put together and everything, and someone had to remind him I'm not a blonde. :) I can see how he might have mistaken that though. People with Native American ancestory, like me, are usually very Aryan. Heeheehee. At any rate, if you normally listen, make sure you watch it this time. We've made it more child-directed, but if nothing else, check it out to see Andrew's work. He's done an amazing job for a first time animator.

3) I have several big projects that I need to work on, but I either don't have the sign information I need at the moment (and no matter how much I ask, I'm not getting e-mails telling me what is needed) or the project requires me to be downstairs around the guests doing things that will be messy and/or in the way. I hate working while guests are in the museum around me! They always want to know what I'm doing, stand around and watch, or let their kids wander over and touch stuff and knock things over that I'm working with. I've even had some guests wait until I bend over so that they can look down my shirt. No, I'm not kidding. I've got to make a battle plan so I can start working on the Star Trek stuff we are going to be doing for the new movie that is coming out.

I think there was more, but I can't remember right now. Possibly more to come. :)

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) As promised, here is the Alien video I was in to promote the Addy awards. Guess which one is me!


2)Yesterday I had a terrible sinus headache almost all day. Nothing I took helped for longer than an hour. I hate sinus problems because they always make me feel woozy and nauseated. I had to go to Target and go through the rigmarole of buying real medicine with actual pseudoephedrine hydrochloride in them. You know, the simple fact that I can't just walk into a store and buy a packet of medicine that will actually make me feel better without having to give my driver's license and a DNA sample ticks me off so bad. It's even worse when you are standing there trying not to throw up or fall down, because honestly, all you want to do is rip into the box and snarf them all down so you can feel better. That kind of thing is frowned upon, though. It's probably easier to actually go out and buy meth. Ooooh, now that I think about that...if allergy and cold pills are what people need to have to make meth, I bet it can unclog sinuses like nobody's business! I'm sure someone around here could hook me up...

3) I awoke this morning to the dulcet tones of Toto singing "Africa" and now that song is in my head. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than "It's All Coming Back To Me Now," but at least I don't want to stand on my desk and sing "Africa" into a Sharpie. Not right now, anyways. Check with me later. :)

Monday, February 23, 2009

I had an award filled weekend!

Well, I didn't win any awards, but I attended an awards ceremony and watched one on TV. That's got to count for something, right?

Saturday night the SpRocket hosted the Addy awards, which is the state awards for graphic design, advertisements and commercials. As I'm sure I mentioned, I don't normally get invited to things like that, but since we helped out Sam, who volunteered to be creative director this year, with a few details and the opening video, they paid for my ticket. I was told it was a dressy affair, so I wound up being a bit overdressed for the occasion, but I looked good so I didn't care. :) I really only have one nice dress that I can fit into (well, two, but I put the other in my dry cleaning bag and completely misplaced it) so I didn't have much of a choice anyways. I honestly don't think anyone expected me to show up, because they all seemed surprised to see me. At least they looked happily surprised! The awards themselves were a bit tedious, as I'm sure all awards ceremonies went, but I kept myself busy by Twittering about it. During intermission, I had to abandon my seat to take some pictures of my boss when he won some awards. Actually, our department (minus me because they don't involve me in things like that) won about 8 awards! Go Them! The two I'm most proud of are the ones that my friend and co-worker Andrew won for his YouTube videos that promoted the movie "The Dark Knight" we were going to show. The great thing about them was that they weren't made to be flashy, and in fact were very tongue in cheek, badly filmed with a handheld camera, and silly. They were still hilarious and brilliant. They won two gold Addys, a Judges Choice award, and everyone in the theater thought they were funny. They were the only two videos that the Emcee played all the way through! Here is the second one for your enjoyment. Andrew is starring as Batman. :)


My only beef with the evening was that I spent the whole event with what felt like a borderline migraine. I'm sure it was just a sinus headache that raged out of control, but it moved over to the right side of my head and set up camp. Luckily it didn't get much worse and I took many Tylonol and went to bed before it could get terrible.

Sunday was a day of not feeling well and sleeping a lot. I'm sure it's the weather, or allergies, but neither Steve nor I went anywhere or did anything productive all day. I lay down at one point to rest and woke up 4 hours later, so I'm guessing I needed some sleep. I eneded up watching the Oscars, which I rarely do anymore, and I enjoyed them this year. They did it a bit different than usual, so it didn't seem to drag on as much as it normally does. Steve was in his chair reading (I KNOW!) and he only looked up everyone once in a while to see what was going on, so I would have to keep telling him what was going on. At one point, one of the guys from Slumdog Millionaire was giving an acceptance speech and Steve looked up and said "Oh, is that M. Night Shamalan?" I laughed, because that man had a very pronounced Indian accent and so I told him no and that Shamalan is originally from Philadelphia (I think). He went on with his book. After that, every time a man with a slightly dark complexion got up to accept an award, Steve would ask if it was M. Night Shamalan. I'm sure I'm not spelling that right. Anyways, it kind of got ridiculous. Here are a few of my responses to "Is that M. Night Shamalan?"
*No, Steve, that man is too old to be him.
*No, Steve, that man is Japanese
*No, Steve, that kid is only 4
It took me a while to realize he was messing with me. Apparently, sinus problems slow my wits down to a crawl.
I watched more of the show than I normally do, but it was mostly background noise. I liked seeing what people were wearing. Skinny people get to wear great clothes!

Friday, February 20, 2009

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Earlier this week we had a meeting to discuss the marketing and design work that we will need to have in place for when we show the new Star Trek movie here at the SpRocket. I don't normally get invited to those, but the theater manager asked me to come along so that we could figure out what we might need as far as props or artwork for the theater lobby. My co-worker Andrew (who is so cool, by the way) came to the meeting dressed like Spock, I was wearing my lab coat with the DHARMA Initiative patches on it, and our PR manager had pulled a brown scarf down over her face and was pretending to be Chewbacca. Of course, when the Aerospace manager came in, he looked at us like we were crazy. All silliness aside, we sat down to have the meeting and a weird thing took place. They actually listened to me! Seriously, they listened, took notes and asked my opinion about things. My direct boss wasn't running the meeting, so I can only assume that is why they didn't ignore my ideas, but it was a strange feeling! I liked it! I know that probably sounds silly to most of you, but you have no idea how things are when I go into one of our Marketing meetings. I don't have anything directly to do with marketing in my everyday job, so it's not a huge deal, but I've actually learned a lot about marketing and advertising over the past couple of years and I know I come up with valuable ideas and information (mainly because some of it gets recycled as someone elses' idea and is suddenly considered brilliant). I don't think that anyone believes that I know anything useful, though. Oh well, it was a nice feeling to be listened to, though. :)

2) I got my driver's license renewed yesterday and I truly hate my picture! I thought nothing could be worse than my last one, which made me look like I was suffering from some kind of albinism, not to mention that the way I was holding my head made the flash cast a shadow under my nose and gave me a Hitler moustache! The one that they took yesterday is really bad. I didn't smile, so the picture looks like a mugshot of one of those women who you see on the news who throw their children off of bridges. I look super-pissed. No wonder people get nervous around me when I'm not smiling. Yipes.

3) I've decided to go to the Addy Awards tomorrow. I'm sure it will be a treat, because you know how much I loooooooove to schmooze. :) Actually, I thought it was nice that they included me in this, and I didn't want to seem ungreatful. Time to find my fancy dress and not embarrass my co-workers! Wooooooo!

4) Speaking of the Addys, I've got the alien video they made, but I can't post it until Monday. It's cute.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

NEW LINK

If you glance at the sidebar, you will notice I added another blog link, Dispatches From the Island. It is written by my favorite actor on Lost, Jorge Garcia (Hurley). It's not really a blog about the show, although he does talk about it. It's mainly just like this blog and it talks about his regular life. He's a funny guy and he has a cute dog. What's not to love?

Monday, February 16, 2009

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Over the weekend I was thinking about the movie "It's a Wonderful Life." It's interesting to think about what life would be like if you hadn't been born, because we all affect people, even in the smallest degrees, just by taking up space in the world. George Bailey saw how much worse off everyone would have been if had had never existed, which was awesome for him. However, wouldn't it suck if you were shown what things would be like if you never existed, and it turned out that things were much better? You'd be all: "Wow, he's still alive? They got married and became missionaries in the Congo? She cured Cancer and Ebola? He was elected president and now we have world peace?!" Yeah, there would be no coming back from that. Maybe that's why we never get to find those things out!

2) Last Friday I helped my boss out by dressing like an alien and running wild through Rocket Park. He is on the planning committee for the Addy awards, the awards for regional advertising and graphic design, and they needed an opening video for the banquet. It was actually a lot of fun, except that we had to wear those close fitting rubber masks and I am terribly claustrophobic. We also had to "hijack" golf cards and go rip-assing around the park while we were being filmed. That wasn't so bad, but the eyeholes in my mask were a bit too close together and I couldn't wear my glasses, so we're lucky that I didn't flatten any tourists or kill my boss (who rode along with me). When I finally got to take the mask off, my hair was wet from condensation and sweat, which was disgusting. It was fun, though. I've asked for a copy of the final cut so I can show you guys my great acting abilities. :) I was also informed this morning that the department bought all of us involved with the video a ticket to the event, but I'm not sure if I'm interested in going or not. I should probably go and schmooze with designers much more talented than myself in hopes that something creative will rub off on me! Normally these tickets are expensive, and I wouldn't have bought one for myself. Oh well, we'll see. I know when and where it will be, so I can decide later on in the week if I'm up for it!

3) I had a nice, calm birthday this year! Since it was on a Saturday, I didn't have to worry about taking off from work, which was good. I watched TV, ate whatever I wanted, went shopping and took a nap whenever I felt like it! When I wasn't doing any of those things, I played around with the iPod Touch that Steve got me for my birtday! We had a good time. It was a nice day.

4)

Saturday, February 14, 2009

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!


Also, thanks to everyone who sent a card, e-card or birthday wish! I can honestly say that I have felt extremely loved today, and it made me very happy!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I'm going to say it again. I could die over here in my office, and no one would find me until they noticed the smell. I enjoy the fact that I am kind of isolated up here and that people don't just wonder up to my office for no reason, but what if I fall or accidentally stab my jugular with an Exacto knife? You know how accident prone I am! I need a bell or something, I think.

Also, this:

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

I had to take a break for a second to write this.

When I came in this morning, my boss came into my office with a handful of envelopes. He asked me if I would seal them for him with a glue stick. Then he asked if I knew how to do it. I laughed and said I would figure it out, and I don't know if he took me seriously or what, but he proceeded to show me how to do it!! I laughed again and told him I used to do it all of the time when I worked in the call center. It was only then that he seemed to realize that I might not glue my face to anything.

What the...

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to gluing envelopes closed. You know, if I can remember how.

Monday, February 09, 2009

NOT AN EMPTY THREAT

The other night, Steve and I had to run to Target to pick up a few essentials (i.e. root beer and apple slices). It was really busy, and we had to stand in line for longer than just a couple of minutes. Of course he started to pick at me. I don't remember what he was doing, probably touching the buggy, which is a no-no (that's a whole other post) but I told him that if he didn't stop, I was going to have to cut him.

He didn't stop!

A minute or so later, we got up to the belt and I started putting the groceries on it. When I picked up the root beer, apparently the structure of the carton had gotten compromised and it split along one side. A bottle fell out of the carton, just barely missed landing in the cart (curses) and smashed to the floor. When it did, it sprayed shards of broken glass and root beer all over Steve. When we got home, we saw where a piece of it DID actually cut his arm. I warned him!

That'll teach him to mess with me!
RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I wish the weather would make up its mind. It's flipping back and forth so much that my allergies don't know what to do! Steve and I were sick all day yesterday with various sinus ailments. It should be cold or warm for a few days at a time!

2) I had such good intentions for this weekend, but I didn't accomplish even a quarter of what I had planned. I did go to the gym on Saturday morning, because I missed it on Friday, I helped Steve paint more paneling, and I was going to come home and clean out my office. It's scary in there. Seriously, one of these days I'm going to go missing, and someone will finally find me in that office underneath a heap of paper and books, impaled with paint brushes. Well, needless to say I did very little in terms of cleaning up the office except for moving some supplies from one set of boxes into a storage container, which I then flipped over and all of my hard work organizing was destroyed. Sigh. I hate to clean. When it's done and everything looks nice it's great, but the process is a pain.

3) I love paint chips! We had to go to Lowes to pick up a piece of baseboard on Saturday and I spent most of the time we were there grabbing every color of paint chip that caught my eye. I DO have two rooms that need to be repainted, and I haven't got a clue what color I want to use, but mainly I just liked the squares of colors. I also use them to make stuff, but that's a secret that Lowes doesn't need to know. :)

4) This video kind of freaks me out, but it's funny. You may have already seen it, though.

It made me do the Robot early this morning!

Monday, February 02, 2009

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Happy Groundhog Day! It's a shame there won't be a parade.

2) I hate bag pipes. I hate them. When I hear them, I want to howl like a dog. They make me aggressive. I once went to a wedding that had a bagpipe player, and it was all I could do not to hurdle the pews and strangle the man playing it with his own kilt. I can't explain my hatred, though!

3) I painted the new paneling for Steve's man room on Saturday, and I must say, it looks nice. We even picked out a non-gay color this time. It's called Storm Cloud (or some such thing) and it's a nice grayish-blue. I like it much better than the brick paneling that he had before.

4) The people next door are selling their house. That means a whole new set of neighbors to do inadvertant weird stuff in front of! Wheeeeeeeee!

5) More later. I got stuffs I got to do.