Political Nonfunctioning

Last night was...let's say...a blur. I went to a political function to hob nob with the best and brightest of our great little city. Being the anti-social butterfly that I am, I was pleasantly surprised to see the alcohol freely flowing. Wine clutched in hand, I made my way through the political maze. A hand shake here, a hand shake there and before I knew it (3 glasses later) I was singing at the top of my lungs to the radio on the way to get some mooses (wink, wink).

Needless to say, I crashed on my bed at 9pm and woke up at 3am with a splitting headache. I tried to bear the pain but as the minutes passed on the alarm clock I knew two tylenol pm's were inevitable. No worries, I thought to myself, it was going to be Friday afterall. I could grab a couple extra hours of zzzs and slip into my desk without anyone noticing.

Ahhh...I layed down and began to feel my body relax as sleep was coming over...SH#@! SCHOOL. 9am Fridays, I have school! No sleeping in for me and 4 hours is not near enough time to sleep off the sleeping aid.

So, there I went, out the front door, mascara smeared and all. A triple starbucks was in order. Oh the joys of drinking. Wouldn't it be worth all the money in the world to know what your classmates think of you when you show up on mornings like these???

Political Nonfunctioning

Last night was...let's say...a blur. I went to a political function to hob nob with the best and brightest of our great little city. Being the anti-social butterfly that I am, I was pleasantly surprised to see the alcohol freely flowing. Wine clutched in hand, I made my way through the political maze. A hand shake here, a hand shake there and before I knew it (3 glasses later) I was singing at the top of my lungs to the radio on the way to get some mooses (wink, wink).

Needless to say, I crashed on my bed at 9pm and woke up at 3am with a splitting headache. I tried to bear the pain but as the minutes passed on the alarm clock I knew two tylenol pm's were inevitable. No worries, I thought to myself, it was going to be Friday afterall. I could grab a couple extra hours of zzzs and slip into my desk without anyone noticing. Ahhh...I layed down and began to feel my body relax as sleep was coming over...SH#@! SCHOOL. 9am Fridays, I have school! No sleeping in for me and 4 hours is not near enough time to sleep off the sleeping aid.

So, there I went, out the front door, mascara smeared and all. A triple starbucks was in order. Oh the joys of drinking. Wouldn't it be worth all the money in the world to know what your classmates think of you when you show up on mornings like these???

Bad Student Behavior

About 2 years ago I visited a Housing Law class at USC with a friend of mine who was in law school. I sat in the back of the classroom and observed these students. My friend was in the 99th percentile with his LSAT score and from this, I gather the others in the room were no dummies. As I looked around the room I observed a very interesting laptop phenomena: SOLITAIRE. Almost half the class was playing solitaire and occasionally lifting their eyes from the game to pretend they were listening.

"How could this be?" I thought to myself, horrified. These 4.0, 175 LSAT scorers (highest score possible: 180), probably had to choose between Harvard, Stanford or USC law students are wasting precious class time playing card games on their computers. I just couldn't believe students would do this during class time.

My, my, How times have changed. Here I sit writing this blog in my Saturday morning Policy Analysis and Evaluation class. Shame, shame on me. I know. But I can't help myself! The teacher is talking about hybrid cars. What does that have to do with public administration? I can also blame my shameful behavior on a bit of sickness due to my concert-capades last night. My attention span is a bit low this morning.

All I can say is cheers to wireless internet and laptops. This morning you are my lifesaver!

Weight Watching

I have officially entered the mid 20's-my-body-no-longer-snaps-back into-place-after-I've-eaten-a-bunch-of-crap stage of my life. In attempting to cope with this new stage I enthusiastically became a member of weight watchers. Every Thursday morning at 9am, it's me and a lot of older ladies (and a few men) getting together to discuss our weight woes. And, no joke, woes is entirely the correct word for my situation.

The first week I was on fire. Nothing could tempt me away from my points system.* I rocked the scale when I was down 2.6 lbs. Yay me! Of course, to celebrate I went out to eat and had a considerable amount of liquor. Bad Moo!

Here is my progress since I began:

Week 1: - 2.6 (Fabulous!)
Week 2: + .4 (bad)
Week 3: - .8 (getting better)
Week 4: + .4 (bad, again)

As you can see, fluctuation is my middle name and with two Dave Matthews Band concerts coming up this weekend, my future is not looking bright. Something has to change. Maybe it's more dedication to eating the right foods and exercising. Or maybe it's reminding myself of why I started this: I want to be healthy and desperately want to stop feeling like a stuffed sausage in my clothes. Maybe it sounds corny but my commitment has to come from within. This is not a temporary fix. It's a lifestyle change and I am realizing that can't happen in a month. Who knows how long it will take.

It feels good to at least have started the process. And that's what it is, a process. A process of learning, succeeding, failing, highs, lows, plateaus. A process of finding out who I really am and how I feel when I can't reach for a slice of pizza. That's my challenge for today -- a luncheon where pizza will be served (my one true weakness). After my weigh-in this morning, I think I will sit across the room from the pizza boxes and keep my hands in my lap. Wish me luck.



*For those who have no idea, weight watchers assigns each food a point value based on a given portion and you have a daily points allowance. Mine is 20.

House Guest

Something has moved into my house.

It's like the little spider on the wall. You don't notice it at first. It seems ok, not too big of a deal. Life goes on and you go about your days. But suddenly, the house guest is more noticeable. The once small web being woven becomes increasingly large and complicated. You try to pretend the large web doesn't bother you but you know it will have to be dealt with eventually.

I am sitting here on my living room floor wondering about my house guest. Was it the right thing to let it get this far? Tonight, I'm not so sure. With no broom in sight, the web will have to wait and my guest will remain. He will leave soon though. I can feel it.

Tech unsavy

I can manage my way through the tech world like a ballerina dancing in quicksand.

Last year a beautiful package arrives with a nice, shiny, new laptop in it. I think to myself, "this is great! No more SLOW, stupid desktop." All was well until 2 days later when the screen starts to collect little blue dots. So many little blue dots that they become one big blue screen and my computer was dead. DEAD. Even the IT people couldn't help me and it had to be replaced.

All has been well with my new friend (now almost a year old) except my supposed 6 hour battery only ran for 30 minutes. :-( not good. Finally fed up with it, I get on the HP help website and they connect me to a live chat with a technician. It was great! This man and I (assuming Kris was a man, maybe Kris was a woman)...ok, this technician and I chatted for a good hour about my technical woes. I felt listened to and consoled. My problem mattered! The technician even said "I understand the gravity of this situation."

Thank you, HP technician. You are my hero! Who knew batteries needed calibrating?

Don't drink the water

Your Ideal Marriage Proposal Is

New Years, at the crack of midnight, under a windstorm of confetti.

What's" Your Ideal Marriage Proposal?

This is the way I want it to go for me. It's almost dead on. Proposed to at the stroke of midnight? LOVE IT!

Anyway, the title is as such because 3, count them 1, 2, 3 of my friends have become wives-to-be in the last 2 weeks! Something is seriously going around. This is worse than the chickenpox. There are only 2 of my good friends right now who are yet to be engaged and once they go, I will be the one and only spinster.

On the positive side, lots of parties coming soon. Yippee!!!!

...oh yeah, and don't I totally look like the girl in the picture now that I'm blonde? HA HA.

Lamb vs. Snake

What would you rather be, A lamb or a snake? My first instinct is to be a lamb and it really showed today at work. I walked in this morning thinking everything was fine. There was tons of work to do and we were coming up on a holiday weekend. Assuming my day was about to fly by, I opened my email to HORROR.

Let me try to explain...I work for local government and when angry people are involved it's not always pretty. I've always thought myself a nice, hard working person who could charm any angry constituent with kindness and patience. WRONG. A woman was very upset that in one of my "kind and patient" emails, I mentioned that unfortunately the process takes some time (meaning government is VERY slow and please don't call me tomorrow wondering why so and so isn't done yet!).

This one little phrase "the process takes some time" turned into a whole diatribe from this woman to my boss about how his staff member was very condescending and how dare I tell her it would take some time. Forget all the good things I said about taking the issue very seriously and working on it right away, calling in the big cheeses, blah, blah, blah.

As I read on, I was mortified. My little lamb self came out and I began sobbing in my cubicle. How could someone attack me when I was actually working hard to resolve their problem?

After crying a little more and collecting myself, I came to the conclusion that if I am to survive this political world I exist in from 8am-5pm each day, I must shed my wool and become a snake. Not a rattle snake or anything. How about a garden snake? I need the rough exterior with the soft insides. A thicker skin with a sensitive heart. Not sure yet how to strike that balance but however it comes about, it will be new for me. I will be thinking about that tonight over a pint of beer. How better else to kiss off a bad day and start anew???