Cruel And Unusual Punishment

Dear parents, soon to be parents, or anyone who ever plans to maybe one day become a parent:

The following is in regard to "Take your kids to work" day.

If you currently work for, or think you might someday work for, a company that sponsors a "Take your kids to work" day, it is important that you remember that there are laws against cruel and unusual punishment in these here fine United States. These laws - in addition to plain old common decency - dictate that this day not be used to torture your children.

Forms of torture include, but are not limited to,

• Forcing your child to quietly watch you make a hundred zillion power point charts ALL AFTERNOON LONG while sitting in an office FILLED with neato aerospace gadgets that he or she may not touch
• Trying to make your 8 year old feel included in any discussion involving modal analysis results and/or eigenvectors
• Subjecting your 12 year old to an hour and half long meeting on the current procurement status of 50-some-odd nuts, bolts, and washers - I swear I saw one child jabbing a pen in his eye to keep from being bored to death

Seriously people, we want to ENCOURAGE our children to grow up, get steady jobs, and become productive members of society... not terrify them into joining the circus at age 18 so as to avoid even the *chance* of one day becoming an overworked and underpaid engineer... in a cubicle... for a giant evil company. Well, on second thought... maybe those parents were on to something.

Maybe That'll Teach 'Em Some Manners

More and more places are cracking down on rude cell phone habits these days. The library at school has a "No cell phones in the library" sign every 6 feet... movie theaters remind you to not spoil the film for everyone with your annoying ringing... and most coffee shops won't even take your order if you try to hold a conversation on your cell phone and order a cup of coffee at the same time...

"Hang on... Hi, I'll have a grande, non-fat, half-caf... wait was that Becky? Are you KIDDING!? She said what? ... extra-hot, no-whip... SHUT-UP! Are you serious!!?? ... white-chocolate Mocha, please... That's ridiculous!!! I can't even believe... Ummmmm, excuse me, did you get the no whip???... Yeah, I'm still here, Becky, go on."

(I've seen it done!)

Well, the place I went to for breakfast today is taking it up a notch.

They'll charge you a dollar for talking on your cell phone while eating in their restaurant. They list the charge right there on the menu, in the "Sides and Extras" section...

Cell Phone Violation Fee.... $1.00

HA! Isn't that great!?!?! I *so* should have taken a picture. (But I was sort of afraid there might be a "no flash photography" rule and associated fee.)

Courtesy of K

I was tagged!!! How very exciting! Thanks k!
Well, here goes... my answers to some pretty random questions.

Five Movies You Can Watch Over and Over Again:

1. PCU
2. Pirates of the Caribbean
3. Thomas Crown Affair
4. Troop Beverly Hills
5. The Never Ending Story

Five Embarrassing Songs You Know All the Words To:

1. Baby Got Back
2. 90% of all cheesy country songs on the radio
3. Every song on the Aladin soundtrack
4. Gimme that nut – by E.Z.E.
5. The theme song to Tiny Toons – (“We’re tiny, we’re toony…) I watched a lot TV as a child

Five Memorable Halloween Costumes:

1. Circus Girl… complete with giant Paper Mache horse… and a feather on my head
2. Devil with a Blue dress on… smokin’ hot
3. Paris Hilton… complete with painted on tan, stupid tiny dog, and heels that were so high I literally couldn’t walk.
4. A devil, when I was 1 year old… my mom glued horns to my head! She later showed me the picture – when I was like 5 or so – and told me that the horns *GREW* out of my head because I was being ornery. Scared the crap out me. I was well behaved from then on.
5. My sister as a bunny… when she was 6 or so she went trick or treating a bunny… but her tights were itchy so she took them off… and she didn’t like the face paint, so she washed her face… and the ears bothered her, so she gave them to my mom to hold… and the costume was hot, so she just put on shorts and tee. By the end she was dressed perfectly normal… but still carrying a carrot. “Hello! I’m a bunny!” she informed everyone as she waived her carrot around. (She’s been called high maintenance.)

Five Celebrities You Believe May Secretly be Aliens:

1. Mary Kate Olsen
2. Ashley Olsen
3. Star Jones
4. Michael Moore
5. Tom Cruise

Five Occupations You Could Never Hold:

1. Doctor – I really don’t like blood and guts.
2. Anything in sales - I don’t have that slick, suck-up personality, and I don’t want to develop it
3. Therapist – I can’t imagine having to listen to strangers whine all day about how crappy their lives are.
4. Celebrity gossip columnist – I just don’t care
5. Product Team Lead in my department at work – all my P.T.L. does is make power point charts, update schedules, and fend off berating phone calls from the higher ups – why would anyone want that job???

Five Books You've Recently Read Outside of School:

1. The Pleasure of My Company
2. The Kite Runner
3. The Secret Life of Bees
4. East of Eden – well I started it…
5. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – currently reading it…

Five Ways to Perfectly Spend an Afternoon:

1. Swimming in a Lake / Hiking / Snowboarding – depending on the season
2. Reading in a park in the sunshine
3. BBQ-ing and drinking beer
4. Exploring SF with my sweetie
5. Enjoying a fantastic meal, getting a pedicure, and then going shopping with my sister

Not Your 5 Favorite Foods, But the 5 You're Most Likely Eating:

1. Something from the vending machine at school
2. Tuna sandwich off the lunch truck at work
3. String cheese
4. Wheat toast with peanut butter
5. A random vegetable

Five Lines You Blatantly Stole From a Movie, TV, a Commercial, or Song:

1. “I know!” From Friends
2. “You’re gonna wear the shirt of the band you’re going to see… Dude, don’t be that guy.” – From PCU
3. “If you want to hear G*d laugh, tell him your plans.” – Random country song
4. “No fighting! No biting!” – From a childhood book called “No fighting! No biting!
5. “You can do it” – From Waterboy

Five People Who Must Immediately Respond:
(Don’t worry “immediately” is relative)

1. Outside Oklahoma
2. Pink Sun Drops
3. Just Say Jes
4. Girl From Florida – if she has time (she has a new baby, you know!)
5. Tony – yes you may post on your myspace page

Still Waiting On That Penis

One year ago, today, I had the strange and sudden urge to share my thoughts, feelings, and random misadventures with the internet.

Well you know what they say, Time flies like an arrow... Fruit flies like a banana. :)

Check out my very first post... I Think I'm Ready For My Penis

I think the best part is that I never even had an intro post... I just jumped right in... with a penis post of all things!!!

A big hug and kiss to my friend Derek who introduced me to the word "blog" and showed me White Skinned Goddess's page. It was all downhill from there.

Happy Blog-iversary to me!!

Wow. They Really Have Nothing Better To Do

I am officially moving. To Oakland. Or to some other high crime area. Where the police officers have better things to do than to pull over innocent young girls on their way to work and write them $20 fix-it tickets for having one of their headlights out.

Grrr.

And the thing that REALLY chaps my hide is that, hello, it was DAYTIME! I didn't even *need* my headlights on. It would be one thing to pull a person over for driving with only one headlight at night - that's dangerous. But for driving with only one headlight during the day??? Hello? I'm still one headlight ahead of most of the other cars on the road - most people drive with *NO* headlights during the day! I was trying to be safe and I end up getting a ticket! What message does that send?

Ughh.

So now I have to get new headlight - which I would have done anyway *without* the fix-it ticket thank you very much! Flag down a police officer so I can show him/her that I have fixed the problem. And pay a stupid $20 processing fee. YUCK.

Way to punish people with safe driving habits, right? Good job guys.

Well don't worry, from now on I'll be sure to not drive with my headlights on during the day... for fear of another ticket in case the other headlight decides to go out.

Sheesh!

Where My Girls At?

I sat in my monthly mechanisms meeting this afternoon... where all (or at least most) of the mechanism engineers in my department get together to talk about what they are working on, ask questions, give advice, and share lessons learned. There were 42 people in this meeting... 40 boys and 2 girls. What is wrong with this picture? And it's not like it was a room filled with 60 year old dinosaurs, left over from a time when women weren't encouraged to go to college and pursue degrees in the sciences. These were *young* engineers. The average age in the room was probably 35... with at least a dozen people 25 or under. And they were all MEN. *This* is the next generation of great engineers! The future! So why does it look so much like the past? :(

Run In

So I was almost in a head on collision in the parking lot at work today... with my ex boyfriend. The same ex boyfriend who, in no uncertain terms, told me to never speak to him again and to "have a nice life" a few weeks back. Awesome. Have I mentioned how great it is to have your ex work at the same place as you do, where you can run in to him (no pun intended) all the time!? Have I?

Black Tuesday

Today is the end of an era. A day that will forever remain marred in my memory. Today my company blocked access to myspace. A moment of silence, please, while we all mourn.
:(

A Million Congratulations

A million congratulations to Girl From Florida and her husband!
Girl just gave birth to their first baby - a beautiful, healthy, perfect, little girl.

:)

Born: 4:19 am April 8, 2006
7lbs 2 oz
21 inches

YAY!

Is That a Cucumber, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me

The other night we went out on Haight St. for BBQ and pub trivia. The BBQ was delish - brisket sandwich, seasoned french fries, and half of Lizella’s mac and cheese. Yum! When we finished I was stuffed… but not quite satisfied.

If you know me, you that know I need a vegetable with all meals other than breakfast - and french fries are not a vegetable. So we walked to the pub for trivia and, on the way, passed a grocery store.

“I’ll be right back!” I yelled as I crossed the street.

When I got back to the bar I was holding one of those giant English cucumbers.

Well, you should have seen the incredulous looks from Kyle and Lizella as I proceeded to unwrap and eat the phallic vegetable right there in the bar.

Ehh, what can do you? Sometimes you just need a veggie, right. Right? Am I alone here?

Pictures From Moonbounce Party

Here are a few photos from the bounce house... and a few of the hokey-pokey.
Enjoy!

share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbOGjhw5ZtmUn

That's What It's All About

This weekend reminded me why I love being young in the bay area.

Friday night, my girl friends and I went to dinner in SF. The five of us split 2 bottles of wine. We laughed, talked, shared. It was lovely. Around 11pm, feeling sleepy and a bit silly with wine, I headed over to Kyle’s place to go to bed.

Well that didn’t happened at all.

I pulled up at his house and he was on the corner trying to hail a cab. I picked him up and we headed back out into the night. We went to a bar called Amber in the Castro with a few friends. We drank… we were merry. At 2am we shut the bar down and again I was ready to crawl into bed.

Nope.

As we walked out of the bar some strangers invited back up to their apartment for an after party. On the inside I said… “AHHHGGG. Why so you can drug, rape, and kill us???” On the outside I said... “Sure! Let’s go.”

We went up to their apartment… they handed us Coronas… and we drank and danced till 3:30am. And as it turns out, they weren’t total strangers - about 45 minutes into the after party, Kyle and I realized that we had actually met one of the guys *last* summer randomly at a bar in the Mission. So we were totally safe! (Note: that we were 3 boys and 3 girls… so I figured that, with 6 of us, the drugging and raping would actually be sorta difficult… so I never *really* felt uneasy.)

Anyway… we finally got to bed sometime after 3:30am.

Around noon on Saturday Kyle and I woke up and went to a leisurely breakfast… then ran some errands… and then headed to the Beer and Oyster Festival at Fort Mason. There, we ran into a bunch of friends and drank and ate the day away. (Have I mentioned how much I love the outdoor festival season in SF?)

After the festival, we went to a party at Luke, A.J., Old Man, and Laura’s house.

I love these guys… they really know how to throw a party. And this party was no exception - they rented a moonbounce. Oh yes. A freakin’ moonbounce! It was AWESOME. You thought moonbounces were fun as a child… try jumping on one as an (almost) adult. AWESOME! Granted my whole body ached the next morning… but we’re going to ignore that for now. We bounced and bounced and bounced some more. At one point we had upwards of a dozen people in the 4 person max fun house. Yeah, we collapsed it… it was sorta scary… but really really fun.

When we finished with the moonbounce we all headed into the kitchen for some more beer. That’s when the magic happened…

We were standing around the kitchen island, in a sort of a big circle, laughing about the childishness of the moonbounce, when someone jokingly brought up that we should do the hokey-pokey next. It literally went like this:

One guy says, “You put left your left foot in.”

A few people sorta giggle.

There’s a pause.

About five people chime in with, “You put your left foot out.”

Pause.

Everyone looks at each other.

And then… as though it were choreographed… like 20 people all belt out, “YOU PUT YOUR LEFT FOOT IN AND YOU SHAKE IT ALL ABOUT!!” (Complete with left foot shaking.)

Wow, that was fun... But then... it kept going!!!

Right foot… left arm… right arm… head… whole self, even!!!

It was fantastic!!! We laughed our asses off as we "turned ourselves about". So silly.

Afterwards we went out to a bar, played some pool, lost an hour to stupid daylight savings time, and then *finally* went home around 3am.

Kyle and I were worthless on Sunday… but after the weekend that we had just had, we decided that we had earned it. Seriously… that is what it’s all about! :)