Renewed Faith in the Goodness of Human Nature

Often it doesn't take much, especially this time of year, to warm the heart and make a person think that the world is not that bad a place afterall.  Such a thing happened to me today.

Over three years ago I had a business trip to Minneapolis in the dead of winter.  I stayed at the Radisson there and in the business suite, where I hung out in the mornings before heading to the office on the skyway, I met a concierge whom I liked and we hit it off.  At the time I was reading a Christopher Moore novel.  (Love me some Christopher Moore) and she enquired about it and I gave her some details.  A couple of days later, I saw her again and had finished the novel and wanted to share it with her.  It was a hard-back book so I thought I should probably indicate that I would like to have it returned, and did so by putting my name and address on the inside cover.  Well, my husband said that I was silly for "loaning" it to her and that I would never see it again.  After several months went by, I conceded that he was likely right and I would have to buy a replacement for the book so that I would not have a hole in my Christopher Moore collection. 

Well, today, out of the blue, I got a package in the mail from Minneapolis.  Not remembering having ordered anything from Minneapolis, I was puzzled, but it was clearly addressed to me so I opened it.  And there, lo and behold, was my Christopher Moore novel.  There was a nice postcard inside saying that she had run across the book and felt she had better return it.  Of course, the address I gave was my business address here and she also added that she hoped I was still employed here.  (Thankfully, and for many more reasons than the return of the book, I am).  She also related that she is no longer working at the Radisson and is currently unemployed and hoping for a better year in 2011.  I too hope she finds a job.  I was right when I loaned her the book - she's a nice gal.  ;)

So I think I have a book on my shelves at home that has strayed too far from its owner and which I've had for a lot of years.  I remember who it belongs to and think I will pay this forward and return it to its rightful owner.  Okay, now before you get all judgemental, it was loaned to me by a lady with whom I worked about a decade ago, and shortly after the loan, she left the employment of the company and I never heard from her again.  Granted, I did not make an effort to find her, and she did not include her address on the front inside cover - but I could have tried.  Believing that kindness merits and begets more kindness, I am inclined to do just that.  I'll let you know if I find her.

Attending a Captivate Class in Portland

Well, I attended my last class for the quarter at UW last night, and then when it was done, got in my car and headed south to Portland.  I'm attending a Captivate class at a training provider here.  The problem is that I didn't arrive in Portland until about 12:30 a.m., and I'm staying with a friend so we stayed up talking like a couple of magpies until about 1:30.  We're both just KNACKERED!  And computer training is always soooooo riveting anyway.  It's a friggin' challenge just to stay upright - nevermind actually learning anything! 

But it beats being at the office for a couple of days and this is something that I have been feeling like I need to do for a while.  I'm getting tired of dropping everything I'm doing at work to train someone on a software feature - so this ought to save me some time in the longrun.  But DAMN!  I'm tired today.  :)

It's almost Hallowed-Weenie!

Halloween is coming!  Woo hoo!  Another Halloween is upon us. At least I'm going to be home this year.  I didn't have time this year to crack out the Halloween decs because I have been uber-busy with school, but it's in my heart.  Near and dear.  I'm not sure what the husband and I are gonna be doing to celebrate frightfest 2010, but we're going to do something! 

So, right now, I'm going to do a little Blogger image reprise.  This is the "Halloween bed" in all it's glory.  Can't wait 'til 2011 when I do this again.

a classic Halloween card.  Gorgeous, huh?

I dont' think this candy was mine, but I liked how it looked.

Yours -truly in the pumpkin witch costume.  I can't believe this was two years ago now.

Happy Halloween, everyone.  Go out, do something fun, and dream the dark.  It's a great time of year.

Sick of People Being Sick Around Other People

What the hell is it with people that they feel completely compelled to show up in group settings like classrooms when they are coughing and sounding generally consumptive? I know this girl next to me has a home....she's nice looking, well groomed and apparently DYING. I suppose I wouldn't be as sensitive if I wasn't immune suppressed, but still.

Right now we are watching a film on the villification of Arabs in American films. It really is rather astonishing. But I just wanted to vent about the lunger sitting next to me. Caio!

Game On!

Well, we've been doing a little D&D play since PAX, and having a pretty good time. Last week on Tuesday went went over to check out our friend's game store, Wandering Havoc Games. It's in Marysville and I guess has been open for just over a year. I'm really getting into learning about D&D and playing some of the games. So far, I've been involved in three, and they've all been good. I didn't play any video games this weekend, but I didn't really miss it. I woke up really early on Saturday and did a tarot reading for a client downtown. It was a good reading but took quite a bit of time. All good though. the workmen were here at the house laying tile and working on the outside of the house as well. So I wasn't really missing anything. Kristopher got all nerved-out and had to take off for a while. After I got home from the reading, I just took a nap for a while because I knew we were going to have a late night of it.
And right now we just finished watching the season finale of TrueBlood and I must say that I was hella disappointed. It wasn't a very good season and it wasn't a very good finale. Maybe I'm just done with it for a while.

Well, I'm finishing off the weekend working on a webpage for a client. I can't get things to show up correctly in Mozilla Firefox. I guess that one is a little too big to not be concerned about, so I'm back at it.

PAX 2010!

Well, it's finally here. PAX 2010. We are having a great time, but it is a test of one's mettle, that's for sure. I had a really cool pic on my phone which I emailed to myself so I could put up a pic here, and it hasn't yet arrived. Damn yous AT&T 3G dumbass Numbnut go nowhere fast network. My friend Chris Briggs, who's still over in the morass of people over at the main theatre, thinks that the iPhones are pooping the bed today at the convention center because virtually everyone in the pueblo has one. There are lots of peeps who are dressed up and it's lots of fun to look at everyone and even take some pics. Of course, my pics were of a LOTR Nazgul horse...but still. I'll shoe-horn it in here when it finally arrives.

I hope everyone is having a great day. I'll take pics on another camera and not rely on yon 3Gs no mo. E'rybody needs to see some PAX! :)

Beginning Week 2 of Summer Vacation

So it's week 2 of my vacation from school and I'm having a good time. I was playing video games and generally doing whatever pops into my head. So I've started a new game of God of War on the PSP - but what's more exciting and rare is the fact that I've been playing a game on X-Box 360. It's a game that I ordered at the last PAX and got in about February. I'd only played it a total of about three hours before this weekend, and I have now played it somewhere around 12. I'm on the second chapter. It's a lot of fun. The main character's name is War and he's one of the four horsemen of the apocolypse. The story line goes that there had been a truce between Heaven and Hell and it's been broken due to some kind of conspiracy and one of the horsemen, your character, pictured here, was summoned. His power gets taken away from him after the prolouge but he has to struggle to get it back through the chapters.

I worked on a website for my sister's paralegal association during the first week of my vacation. I didn't mind. I actually thought it was pretty fun and I got paid for it so it's a-okay. Yesterday, I read tarot for a new client that I got through a referral. She was pretty sweet. It was nice to meet a new one.So now we're watching TrueBlood. I really like this show, even though it's getting weirder and weirder.

Ah....First Weekend of Summer Break

Well, I finally finished the worst quarter of my academic career. I got a 3.0 in Biopsychology - which is bomb-diggity considering I made a D on the last two tests. My writing saved my ass once again. I got a 4.0 in my Anthro class, and was pretty happy about that. Now I'm waiting for my Communications grade. I'm hoping for good stuff. We had a comprehensive final that went back to the beginning of the quarter. When I first looked at it, I thought..."I am so screwed....I don't know ANY of this crap." But the longer I sat there, the more I remembered and the more I was able to write. So I have lots of hopes for that class grade too. I feel sorry for the professor because it seemed like it would be a cast-iron bitch to grade. One thing I know for certain is that I will never take three classes in one quarter if I'm working. Especially three classes that are all HARD.

So while I'm off school, I get to play a little code monkey and make a little green for it. My sister wants me to edit her paralegal association's website and I said I'd do it. She insisted I take some green for it, and who am I to argue. So that's what I'm working on this evening as I sit here in eager anticipation of the next TrueBlook episode.

It's been a great weekend and it's gonna finish off good too. I'm going to get this website updated and then play some video games after what I'm hoping is a great episode of True Blood! :)

So I guess I'd better get to it!

Holy SHIT SNACKS!

Well, it's full-on panic mode now. Here I am, blogging like a moron when I have a final project due today that is worth 70% of my grade in Anthropology and is, as of this moment, about half finished. Why am I procrastinating to such an extreme degree? I really couldn't tell you. I've just been operating on overload for so long, I think I've blown a fuse or something.

All I know is that after today, this Anthro class is done, and after tomorrow, my Biopsyche class will be done, and then I can focus on Communications, which is going to be a complete bitch-kitty and consume the entire weekend. **sigh** Well, just this one more and a whole month off. Okay, I'll get back to my presentation now.

There is a real Asshole in my Comm Class

What a jack-ass this mo-fo is. He's on his last quarter here at the UW and has the biggest mouth and the hardest head and the narrowest vision I've ever seen since Ive been in college.




So we are talking about listening in today's class. There is a researcher who is studying communication patterns of the Blackfeet Native Americans out on the mesas of the Dakotas. He is studying how they listen to trees and other aspects of nature. I, personally believe that this is a valid form of research and a valid form of listening. But, boy.... you should have heard these people in here. They are all about being complete absolutists....there is no gray area with these people - they are all "if it is not emperically sound - if you cannot see it, smell it or touch it, and cannot scientifically prove it then it's not real and therefore has no place in academia." Morons! Your bus is leaving... We don't fully understand the workings of a human brain, we don't fully understand particle physics....some of the greatest minds in history have attempted to ascertain the mind of God. Is that empirical? Undergrad ass-baskets, wake up! I have no patience for tiny-minded people. **sigh** I will be glad when this quarter is over. Over! Ahhh! I had to roll a professor under the bus for ignoring everyone in the online class, I have had to do homework almost every night and write more papers than I wrote in my entire school career up to this quarter, and I am puked of it! Ahhh!

Well, Back from Vacation

Hey you! We're back from the Alaskan wildes and very glad to be home. Pictured here is my little husband with his pride and joy, pirate King-style rum bottle. He bought that on the MS Rotterdam along with several other bottles of liquor, which, as it turns out is the only thing on a cruise ship that you can buy that isn't a carnival-style rip-off. I think they feel like they have to give you something so you can tell all your friends what a great fdeal you got on something. And what better thing to brag about than bringing back a buncha cheap booze?

We had a pretty good time on our vacation cruise to Alaska. That is, after all of the gail-force winds, sea-sickness and barfing up of the liver. That happened the first full day we were on the water. It started on Saturday night but by the time Sunday morning came along, it was like an episode of the World's Deadliest Catch. We missed our first formal night because of this, along with approximately half of the other guests on the boat and about half the crew as well. But the next day was much better and we made our first stop of the trip in Juneau. This is a picture of the dock as soon as we got clear of the boat. there were all kinds of people out there selling tours to one thing or another. And the main street was lined with jewelry stores of every ilk.

By Tuesday everyone was feeling much better, and we stopped to look at Hubbard Glacier. I don't have any pics of the glacier because my husband hasn't given me any from his camera. Bad husband! (Right now I'm having my third Captain Morgan and root beer. Can you tell? So please excuse in advance if this blog entry becomes unreadable. However, I am going back to school on Monday and intend to milk every moment of freedom from homework and scholastic responsility that I can between now and then. And I couldn't drink on the boat. After Sunday, well, I just didn't have the stomach for it. Literally.) Anyways, the glacier was a thing of beauty and maybe a little bit scary because you could hear the ice grinding against the hull as we approached the face of the thing, but we got a really up-close and personal look at it. I didn't see any big hunks breaking off of it, but the National Forest Service guide that the boat picked up and brought along with us said that most people saw big hunks falling off of it. They call it "Calving" - but I didn't see it. And that's despite the fact that I went in and got my swimsuit on and sat in the hot tub on the outter deck and stared at the glacier for another hour after everyone had gone back to their staterooms or other locations on the boat. It's really hard for me to believe it now, but I didn't get a singlle picture of the interior of the boat. Again, Sunday kind of set the pace for everything. So, I guess I'll have to just get some pics of the interior of the next ship we are on. If, in fact, there is ever another time. So what am I up to now, oh, right, Juneau. We went right away to visit the oldest Russian Orthodox cathedral here in the US and that was St. Nicholas'. Not much as cathedrals go, but it was pretty cool to see. A bunch of people evidently got together at the end of the 19th century and built a church here in this very, very rustic gold mining town, and it is still standing today. I think the priest said that they could fit approximately 50 people in the structure at a tight squeeze. But that at festivals such as Easter, it was likely that some people would have to stand outside. I'm sure that doesn't strain the imagination when you look at the picture.

Then we went to a little museum there run by a retired couple. It was pretty cool. They had these little Juneau High School diplomas that we made out for ourselves and stamped, but we left them behind. Anyway, after that, we went to the famous Red Dog Saloonand had a couple of beers and some potato skins. Here's a picture of us there and a picture of the piano player.

After that, I went and haggled with some diamond merchants. Check out the ring that got away. I told the jeweler at this establishment that I wanted him to quote me a price on this ring that would make a Jew cry....and he did. This ring, with a one karat center, princess cut diamond and a full Karat in baguettes below it was $4,400 out the door. No big deal to leave it behind. But now I know where to go and get the deal when it comes time to shop for the 10 year anniversary ring. After that, we went to the Alaska Tee-shirt company and had a good time shopping for souveniers for the peeps back home. Outside, Kristopher fought a bear.

But then we got back on the boat and had a pretty good day. This was the first time we got to have a formal dinner. It was very nice and we had a good time. Late night, but still no drinkie...and we got up the following morning for an excursion to Sitka. Sitka, as it turns out, is a big Russian-American community there in AK. Lots of Russian Orthodixy and fishing, and that's about it. I bought a Metreshka dollie and an amber bracelet there and Kristopher didn't buy anything. It was a fun stop though. We stopped also at the library where I found out that a former co-worker of mine had died of natural causes at the age of 45. I knew this guy pretty well, and he wasn't in any better or worse shape than I ame, and he dropped over dead. the net effect of this news was to make it where I didn't care how much money I spent! I didn't go crazy though. My feeling infected my husband though and he bought himself a hella nice watch on board the ship. As it turns out,l he got about a hundred bux better deal than he could have gotten off of Amazon or from Macy's for the same watch.

We had a pretty good time the rest of the evening and went to bed tired like we had every night up 'til then. Next day was Sitka. Sitka was nice and we saw a Russian Orthodox church and met a nice man at a Russian trading post.

Thursday night on the boat was the chef's special dinner. It was pretty cool. The wait staff danced through the dining room and put napkins on laps and brought salads and desserts to songs and other fun stuff. It was a good night and we sat with some really nice people and had a good meal. We tried a show that night, but it didn't work out. The staqe show was completely stupid. The guys were more womanly than the girls and it was completely terrible and cheesy. We then tried to go to the ship-board movie, and the screen was broken so they were showing it on two plasma screens on either side of the large central one over which the curtains were still drawn. We made it just a few minutes through the Harrison Ford movie, "the Mosquito Coast" and then gave up and went back to our room.

Okay, that's enough vacation talk for now. We are watching Battle Star Gallactica, and it is getting very, very good. I will continue this saga later. I hope.

Hello from A Comparative Study of Death

I'm in my Anthropology class, and we have another hour to go. The subject of tonight's lecture is "Escaping Oblivion" and we are talking about life after death. It's a fascinating subject. We have watched a few minutes of Betty J. Eadie's "Embraced by the Light" video. This room is full of fairly smug atheists, and it's so easy for them to be cynical and act superior. What a buncha crum bums. What the hell are they doing in an anthropology class? Friggin' idiots. Most of them are grad students too. How can you study something that is a universal human experience and be so friggin' cynical? Well, I just think that they're a bunch a bombastic turd-waggers. Now we're gonna watch some work by another anthropologist who worked with dying children at Children's Hospital here in Seattle. Maybe these fuckers will be able to accept some of it.

I'm listening to what's going on so I won't write any more for the moment. I have to write a long paper for this class and I'm looking forward to it.

Full Time Work, Full Time School, Part Time Insanity

Hi all,
I don't have time to blog anymore...I don't know how anyone DOES. Well, I guess if I weren't taking 15 hours at the UW, I would maybe have a few free minutes. But, I'm trying to get my degree finished up this year, and will certainly do it. I'm very glad to be accomplishing that before the 30% hike in tuition and fees goes into effect. I got an email from the provosts' office that says it's going to do just that. Already a 5-credit course there is $1,480.00. You do the math. And it's a state-friggin' school! But it's a pretty state friggin' school. Check out this picture of Denny Hall taken on a blustery April afternoon before class.


I have a class in this building called "A Comparative Study of Death." It's a great 300 level Anthropology class that I'm enjoying very much. Taught by a professor who's been around a while, it's a very interesting class indeed. But to walk up to this building and have that particular class in it is just so Addam's Family. I think it's extremely cool.

Currently, I am sitting in the "Husky Den" at the HUB here on the UW campus. I just got finished with a mid-term exam in Communications Law. I think I did okay - especially since my son came over and bugged me for a couple of hours to help fill out insurance forms for his work, and then I threw more study time on the fire by sitting around and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes with Topher until it was 10:30 or so. I had an exam in logic last night as well as some work on my Anthropology paper - all of this left about 1.5 hours for study on the material that was covered on the Communications mid-term. But I'd spent 3 hours studying for it on Sunday, so I still felt pretty good. So, I'm off to my favorite class (the Death class mentioned above). I wonder what Dr. Green has in store for us tonight. We shall see...Buwahahahahaha! I know we've got a cemetery tour coming up here in a couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to it and hoping that Tophie will come along.

Train People, Constitutional Law and a Bad Foot

Hello all... I'm sorry it's been so long since i had anything to say. Bizzy-bizzy-bizzy 'round our house. Lots going on and getting a lot accomplished.

I've been working out of our Portland office a bit, and my favorite way of getting down to P-town is to take the train. Gotta love Amtrak. I always feel so good riding the train. I'm saving gas...I'm getting work done (worked all that morning from basically 7:30 until I rolled in about 11:00). Yes, that's a very long time, but still....stuff was getting done. I would have, no doubt, spent three or slightly more hours getting there by plane, and couldn't even have gotten out my lappy or used my phone. So there! And, I would not have seen anythign nearly as cool as what I'm sharing with you here in this picture. This ia a photo of a leave-behind balloon sculpture done by a scruffy (and from wht the train employees said, smelly) Grizzly Adams lookin' dude. He was just sitting in the dining car, twisting up balloons, and when I got up to get a coffee, I saw this sitting there.

Ah! Constitutional Law class just let out, so I gotta go. But I wanted to get this up. Have a good night, and I will try to make it sooner than eight weeks when I post another of these.