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Sand and surf, dolphins and starfish

August 18th, 2008 - 2:28 pm | 6 Comments | Posted in Life in General

This last Saturday I overslept.

It put a bit of a wrinkle in my plans.

See, Jess and I were planning on hitting the beach, and I had an errand I was hoping to get done that morning. I didn’t really have time, though, so to the beach we went!

There’s a nifty little park not too far from the apartment. It has a water park for the kids, camp grounds, nature trails, boat and kayak rentals at the lake, and beach access - very cool place to go! The first date that Jess and I went on was renting a double kayak and paddling around the lake, so I thought it might be fun to revisit that.

The weather disagreed.

However! Not ones to be easily deterred, Jess and I drove over to the beach access and made our way down to the sand under an overcast, drizzling sky. Not really optimal beach weather, but it really cuts down on the possibility of sunburn and reduces the number of people at the beach. We left our shoes up on the beach and made our way down to the surf, and had just gotten our feet wet when I saw something black and pointy and moving sticking up out of the water about 100 yards out.

OMYGAWDSHARK!

Just kidding! They were dolphins! It was kinda hard to tell from the shore, but there had to be at least two groups of them, with one group having 8-10 dolphins in it. They were just swimming along parallel to the shore, breaking the water every so often in that non-jump that dolphins do. I’d never seen dolphins off our beach before, so it was very awesome. Both of us were wishing we had a boat or a kayak so we could go out where they were.

As we were walking up the beach, we noticed something else that I hadn’t seen on the beach before - starfish! Hundreds of starfish had washed up onto a small section of beach, and many of them were still alive; we could pick them up and see the little appendages on their arms wiggling about in the air. I think between the two of us we probably tossed about 30 or so back into the ocean for another chance.

After some more wading the smell from the nearby cookouts was becoming very enticing, so Jess and I headed up to Chili’s for lunch - burgers for us both! I had something with blue cheese, and Jess had one with mushrooms on it. So very yummy.

After lunch we curled up for a nap, but that only lasted an hour or so before I had to go take care of some work stuff. Boooo, work. But…. I also got to go run my errand. Yay errand!

Work done and errand accomplished, I headed back to Jess’ house to drag her out of bed. She didn’t want to get up, but after much persuasion (read - tickling of the feet) she crawled from her bed. We headed back down towards the beach, except this time our destination was a store - Kilwin’s! This store was also part of our first date! Jess got some ice cream and I grabbed a chocolate shake, then we wandered around for a bit nibbling our treats before heading down to the sand.

Dusk was starting to fall - there were no dolphins or starfish on this part of the beach, just groups of people milling around. Jess and I strolled up and down the sand a bit, chatting and contemplating the oddity of the sand bar while the sun went down. After about 30 minutes or so we began wandering back to the car and wound up stopping just before the boardwalk that crossed the dunes. I wriggled a little box out of my pocket, said “I didn’t plan the dolphins and starfish, but I totally planned this part”, showed her the engagement ring that I’d picked up earlier, and asked her to marry me.

She totally said yes. :)

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Om nom nom… slurp?

August 12th, 2008 - 2:14 pm | No Comments | Posted in Uncategorized

A few weeks ago I asked the instructor of our kickboxing/Krav Maga class if he had any nutritional info that I could have. He told me that sure, he had a packet of info that he’d be happy to get for me.

Well, last week he finally got it to me! Horray! I was somewhat surprised at it though, because while I was expecting something along the lines of “eat x amount of x type food” I got the below list.

Monday/Wednesday/Friday

    Breakfast

  • 2 whole eggs, 2 egg whites
  • 1 cup mixed fruit
    Lunch

  • Tuna sandwich on whole wheat
  • Banana
  • 1 cup cottage cheese
    Dinner

  • 6oz grilled salmon
  • 1 cup steamed broccoli
  • 1 cup brown rice

Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday

    Breakfast

  • 1 cup oatmeal with brown sugar
  • 1 banana
  • 1 cup green tea
    Lunch

  • Sandwich on whole wheat (any lean meat)
  • Fruit salad with 1 cup cottage cheese
    Dinner

  • Pasta with chicken
  • Cooked squash and zucchini
  • Spinch salad with veggies

Really, really specific. I guess it makes shopping easy though! :D

He also included something called Myoplex on the list that he suggested I have 3 times a day, between meals. It’s a protein and nutrient shake, and the idea behind it is to steady the body’s energy levels during the day. It’s kinda like eating more smaller meals, except 3 of the meals are a slurry - and they taste like someone put chalk and chocolate in a blender.

The Myoplex is also somewhat pricy - about $40 for a week’s supply. Somehow I don’t think my budget will like that much at all. I’ll have to find some kind of alternative.

That can’t be healthy

August 5th, 2008 - 3:27 pm | 1 Comment | Posted in Life in General

I’m still struggling to get used to things like food expiring, so I’ve been trying to keep that in mind as I work my way through what I have in the fridge.

It doesn’t help that Jess’ mom will buy me things like a gallon of milk, a pound of bacon, etc.

Anywho - in an effort to not have to throw it out, I had a sandwich for dinner last night with ten slices of bacon on it.

Kinda like a BLT, except more like a BBB.

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Selfish jerks!

July 30th, 2008 - 3:46 pm | 1 Comment | Posted in Life in General

Dear jerks I work with,

If you expect me to drop everything to help you with something, then you better damn well be prepared to return the favor.

Die in a fire,
Me

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Keys and computers

July 29th, 2008 - 11:05 pm | No Comments | Posted in Life in General

Thar be keys in mah door!

Thar be keys in mah door!

So this morning, like every other, found me doing my usual frantic rush to make sure I had everything I needed to head off to work. Got the wallet, got the phone, got the keys…

Hmm. Don’t got the keys. They’re not on the counter, not on the table, and not on the desk. That’s kind of odd since I only ever put them in one of those three spots.

Just because it was early and I could barely see, I checked all those spots again. Nope, no keys! I just stood there for a minute thinking about where I might have left them when a thought suddenly struck. I slowly turned, looking at the front door to my apartment. The deadbolt has a knob on the inside, not a keyhole, so no keys there… but there’s a keyhole on the outside.

I went to the door, opened it, and guess what I found? Anyone?

/facepalm


Saturday morning I got a call from my mom. Well, technically my mom left a voicemail - there was no way I was gonna get up to answer the phone at 10am on a Saturday. Apparently my grandmother’s computer was having some kind of problem accessing the internet, and she asked if I could go over there to fix it.

Now, this touches on an issue that’s rather prominent in my life - displaying any kind of computer skill will automatically make you a computer technician, for free, for your extended family. It’s just like that uncle you have that knows how to fix cars; everyone goes to him with all their problems. Normally I get a bit resentful when I get volunteered like that. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem helping people - it’s just that being told to help someone without being given the choice is somewhat different, and usually rubs me the wrong way. It doesn’t help that it came from my parents, either. My mom is pretty computer proficient, but my dad will call me every time the email has a problem.

I’m dangerously close to going off on a tangent, so let’s get this back to my grandmother. I figure yeah, what the hell, I can go look at her computer, and Sunday afternoon I drove across town (well okay, not across town, but it’s a good 20-30 minute drive) to see what I could do. She fired up the laptop, showed me what she usually did to connect, sure enough it didn’t work. Luckily the problem was easily fixed, only requiring a trip back to the apartment to download a software update she needed. (She uses dialup - I wasn’t gonna hang around for three hours.)

After I got the computer fixed, she gave me some cake - oh, so very yummy cake. Triple layer carrot cake/cheesecake/carrot cake, and all slathered with cream cheese frosting. It was just absolutely delightful. And of course we talked while we ate the cake. She told me about her eye surgery (they’re correcting her vision to be damn near 20/20 o.o), her upcoming birthday, and just all the little family stuff that I never really hear from my parents.* All in all, I think it was a really great visit, and she was thrilled to see me, and pleased to have her email back. I had to stifle a laugh when she was telling me how - before I fixed it - she never used it anyway, and she’d rather use the phone, and she was about ready to just cancel the service… but then she gave a little cheer and hugged me when I got it going.

*Footnote, just because I didn’t want to interrupt the previous paragraph. My parents never tell me anything. My cousins that I thought only had four kids? Pregnant with their sixth. My other cousin who lives in New York? Comes back to Jacksonville this week. My uncle retires in a month. Looks like I need more computers to break just so I can keep tabs on everything that is going on.

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The ladybug picnic

July 25th, 2008 - 9:16 pm | No Comments | Posted in Life in General

One of my jobs at work is loading blank tapes into the backup server. They just happened to be stacked in groups of three, so I was counting “1,2,3 - 4,5,6″, and so on.

I got to 12 and out of nowhere my brain finishes up “12 ladybugs, at the ladybug picnic.”

I tell ya, I never fail to be amazed by some of the stuff my brain digs up.

Life is a highway…

July 24th, 2008 - 1:13 pm | 5 Comments | Posted in Life in General, Travel

We have a little web-based time clock here that all the hourly employees have to use (*grumble mutter*). It’s slow as hell, and kind of a pain, but one of the few useful things it can do is keep track of sick, personal, and vacation time.

I’d never really looked at the totals before today. I mean, I know I have vacation time - it’s just a matter of getting everything here at work set so I can actually use it. This morning I was somewhat curious though, so I flipped over to the tab to see what the numbers said.

*sigh* And trying to open it up just now for the exact numbers, it made my other computer seize up completely. These people shouldn’t be making software, they should be making automotive brakes.

Anywho. I have some carryover vacation from last year (which is technically not company policy, but my boss pulled a string with HR), and some comp days from working a holiday or two. With that added to my normal vacation time, I have 15 paid days off.

I could just up and disappear for three weeks. This is made further appealing by the fact that Jess doesn’t have a job, which makes it FAR easier to coordinate.

Three weeks. I love road trips - I wonder where we should head off to?

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Every summer afternoon

July 23rd, 2008 - 12:00 pm | 1 Comment | Posted in Life in General

I went to lunch ealier and it was blazing hot outside, no clouds, high humidity - like 95 degrees. Less than an hour later and there’s a really strong thunderstorm.

Gotta love Florida weather.

It’s like this every day, really. I still have a fully loaded car from stuff I was moving out of my parents’ house that a storm prevented me from unloading. The same storm also started a fire in a neighborhood just down the road from my parents via lightning strike.

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A foghorn, perhaps?

July 23rd, 2008 - 9:22 am | No Comments | Posted in Life in General

Lately I’ve been having trouble falling asleep at night. Doesn’t matter what time I lay down, I almost never fall asleep before midnight, and lately it’s been closer to 1 or 2 in the morning before I finally drift off to sleep. Getting up, as one might guess from the lack of sleep, is also something that’s becoming progressively more difficult to do.

It’s particularly annoying when something really soft such as my computer randomly turning on at 3 in the morning (okay, seriously, wtf? I have no idea why it did that. It wasn’t even the beep that woke me, just the soft whrrrrrrr of the fans coming on) will immediately snap me out of slumber, yet I’ll sleep through a very obnoxious and loud alarm for an hour and a half.

So last night I thought to myself “Self, I’m pooped. Let’s go to bed early.” Martial arts class was skipped, an early dinner was eaten, and I was in bed by 8 pm, looking forward to a glorious 9 hours of sleep. To my surprise I woke up before the alarm went off. I sat up in bed, and as my brain slowly kicked into gear I realized I didn’t feel like I had slept for 9 hours. In fact, I was still really tired and groggy. I scraped enough sleep from my eyes to be able to focus on the clock, then blinked dumbly for a moment at the time.

12:03. *sigh*

It was 2:30 before I was able to fall asleep again, and I still have absolutely no idea what woke me up.

Oh, and I slept through the alarm again. >.<

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ltrs r imprtnt

July 10th, 2008 - 2:58 pm | No Comments | Posted in Life in General

One of the quirks about Jacksonville (and I really imagine it’s not just our city, but I haven’t been in enough to compare properly) is that no matter where you begin or end a road trip, you will drive through at least one area where the road is under construction. I may have a slightly skewed perspective on this since the road immediately outside of my apartment is being gutted and expanded to four lanes, but for the moment we’ll pretend that doesn’t matter. >.>

One particular highway that lies between my apartment and work is also in the midst of some massive roadwork - flyovers being built, new medians, drainage areas, just tons of work. There’s cranes swinging in the air over the road, bright work lights (It’s still not entirely light when I go to work), and dump trucks racing to and fro with loads of dirt. Because the drivers in Florida aren’t always particularly aware of what’s going on around them, the state has large programmable signs that flash text messages.

TRUCKS ENTERING AND
LEAVING HIGHWAY USE
CAUTION

There’s one specific sign that’s right next to the on-ramp that I use every morning that sends, at least to me, a slightly different message. Instead of TRUCKS, it just says TRUCK, which makes me giggle every time I drive past it and envision a single dump truck swerving on and off the roadway, slaloming around those little orange barrels.

Letters are important!

In WoW there is booze. Booze gets you drunk, and drunk makes you slur your speech - the game will randomly take the letter ’s’ in words and change it to an ’sh’, as well as adding ‘…hic!’ to the ends of sentences. Sometimes it tweaks words in amusing ways, like the following emote we saw one night at a group RP session.

Zhalen shits with a huge thud.

Be kind to your letters, or they will totally sabotage the meaning of your sentences. ;)

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