New Toys

I was a very bad girl this weekend. I bought manyt new toys. I can't help it. Sometimes, my penny-pinching ways go right out the window. It happens for many reasons, but this weekend was plain old stubbornness. I wanted a new toy. So there. Not that I was immature un uneducated about purchasing said new toys. The first I've been thinking about for at least 3 months...ever since I got my new phone. I decided that rather than buy an expensive MP3 player, I'd buy a card for my phone. It acts as an MP3 player of decent quality, plus I can then answer then phone when I want to. So that was toy number 1. Toy number 2. was new running shoes as I've worn out my old ones. Toy 3. was supposed to be superfeet for my new running shoes...

Toy number 3 ended up being a set of skate-style cross country skies, bindings, boots, and poles, with toy #4. being the superfeet insoles for my running shoes. Oh, and I got more socks. I'm such a sock snob.

Today I went out and played with my new skies. I skied only 3 miles on them, but it was enough for the first time out. Enough to realize that I may return the poles and get different ones if the other REI has the poles I need. I'm going to call them either Monday or Tuesday to find out. The ones I have are a bit too big in the basket for my hands, especially if I get different gloves for them. Still, I'm loving skiing - now if only we had some snow...

A slight change to the formula


So, I did it, the hairs have been cut. I meant to post this earlier, but the bloody website didn't want to load the pictures. It's not all that short, more the length it was in New Zealand, but I have stopped Getting it stuck beneath me when I sleep, or in my backpack straps, or behind me in the chair during class. Also, it doesn't snarl as much. Whee.


The day I had it cut, I had her straighten it. It turned out way better than when I straightened it myself. It looked like I really did have straight hairs. I look so different, but it was fun and I think I'll probably buy myself a straightening iron. That night we had our anti-valentine's day party, so many of our friends got to see me with straight hairs. Many people didn't recognize me.



Here is the cake from said party. I love the ice-cream cake. Yum. We stabbed the hearts (you know you watch too much Buffy when...) And managed to make the cake into small enough sections to feed the 25 or more people at our house. We had anti-love music playing in the background. It was great.

Now I'm trying to decide if I want to pay the money to get metalic highlights in my hair. I was thinking copper, bronze and gold...and maybe silver if they have them :) Not a whole lot of them, just a few streaks. I thikn it would be fun. Highlights are expensive though, so I think I'll hold off a few months (or at least through the job interviews that are (hopefully) just around the corner.

Variations on Hair in C

I'm getting my hairs cut tomorrow and trying to decide how drastic to be....any suggestions?? The appointment is at 2:15, so let me know before that

Short Hair:

Bad lighting and bad color job, but you get the idea...longerish on top and really short on the sides
hard to tell, but this is short in back but long enough on top to pull into a clip. sorta short sides

The origional short hair cut. Just past the ears

Mid length:

No, not the sheep. Just to the shoulder. This picture is from May/June 2005

Long Hair:

The past the shoulders look from September 05. Man my hair grew a lot in 4 months.

You've seen the picture of how long it is now...at least the ones from CO and the one with it straight (and no...straight all the time is not an option!) Ideas?

On Rejection

There are many forms of rejection in this world. You can be rejected as a person – by someone you’re crushing on. You can be rejected from a school you are interested in going to. You can be rejected from a role you tried out for, be it stage or screen. You can have self rejection, which is a cocktail of self pity and self denial and self loathing. Three is also job rejection.

Let’s focus on the last for a while, shall we? Within the category, there are subsets of rejection. There is the no call, no letter. This is the time honored “maybe if we don’t talk to her again, she’ll go away and not ask about the job again” method. It’s favored by many large ‘application only’ type jobs. There is the rejection letter. A nice (usually condescending) impersonal letter telling you that you aren’t good enough. There is the ‘smack down’ method. In this method, the interviewer (or company) does everything in their power to make you feel like the lowest and most unworthy type of person. There is the “we’re really sorry, but…” type. Here they tell you that, no surprise, they are really sorry, but the position is filled, you don’t qualify completely, they aren’t hiring at this time…etc. And then there is the most positive side of rejection, which is what I heard today.

The company called back and told me I interviewed really well, and it was a really hard decision because ‘for once’ all the candidates were supremely qualified and it was an extremely had decision but they do not have a position open for me at this time. They went on further to tell me that they are working on trying to find me something and will keep my information close at hand. They really hoped it would have worked out, but no such luck.

I felt like they were telling me that they wanted to ‘just be friends’. It was the same type of speech. A necessary evil that no matter how you spin it, just sounds shitty. And really, would they really have interviewed (at that stage) non-supremely qualified candidates? I guess what was meant by that was that everyone’s personality was a good fit for the company. They are really into that these days. They interview in the ‘behavioral style’ ie. “Give an example when you had a conflict of interest with someone, be it a classmate, coworker, etc. and how you resolved it.”

A friend and I were discussing just such an interview style on the bus yesterday and decided that if you get along with most people, and have never really had major confrontation/conflicts in your life, you are just not going to get a job. I had to struggle to find times where there was conflict or something….those types of stories aren’t on the tip of my mind. We came to the conclusion that we should go out and stage a very public fight between ourselves so we could answer, “There was this time where a classmate and I had an extreme difference of opinion over which sports team should advance. There were harsh words and a few blows exchanged, but in the end we decided that our friendship mattered more than a sports team, bought each other a pint, and decided on a compromise team we both liked in a different sport.” Or something like that. So…..anyone want to fight???

Grrr. Call me back already. I hate not knowing. It's driving me batty! Have I been rejected? What is the purpose of your call? Why do you leave me a voicemail with no hints.

Please..call.

Oh Dear

This weekend was great. Nice and relaxing, which is what I needed. Went to see Underworld on Friday w/ Katie and Karin. Great flick. Have to go again sometime. Saturday went dancing. Had a great time and I straightened my hair!! Whee. See? Don't I look different? Even though straight wasn't perfectly straight, it was close enough... I also decided my hairs are too long so next Saturday I'm going to cut them. My only question is do I go back to REALLY short, or just medium short, or medium long? Maybe I'll put up some pics and have a poll.



Sunday I went swimming and watched part of the Superbowl. Monday in I learned that I probably didn't have the job I interviewed for, because I learned that one of three positions was filled. I hadn't heard yay or nay though, but resigned myself towards nay. Today I got a call from the person in the company while in class. I have to call tomorrow AM to find out which way it goes.

I'm really not sure which way I want it to be. I was excited, and had gotten myself used to the moving idea and then I heard the news on Monday. Now I'm not certain I'm ready to psych myself up again. I've decided that I'm going to assume it's a no until I talk on the phone tomorrow. Even having decided that, I still have butterflies. SUCK. I'll keep you posted.

Weekend Bliss

Wow, I feel like it's been ages since I had a weekend home and mostly free. I get to do as I wish this weekend, as long as I get homework done and do the few things for school/work I need to do. I can sleep in, go dancing, do nothing...whee.

I went to see Underworld Evolution tonight. I quite enjoyed it. I now have a major urge to kick butt and wear vinyl or leather. I'll have to remedy that tomorrow night and go dancing or something. I think now I'm going to go to bed and enjoy whatever dreams I create. With all the fodder for dream making of the last week, it may be an interesting night. Oh, and I can sleep in tomorrow until whenever I wake up.

The only question is, what do I do with my 'free' time tomorrow before dancing?

Kinks

I'm working out the kinks of my new computer. As in, deleting all crap software on here that I'll never, ever use. I'm going to play tomorrow and install a second CD-RW write drive and maybe my floppy or zip, and check to see if my old ram is compatible with the new ram. This think is half again as memory full as my old one, though three times the processing speed. Hard to process what you dont' have in memory though. Harumph. Then, it's going to be time to play with other programs...like, Macromedia if I can find it, and also this blog. It may just be time for a change. We'll see though :) I may just nap and read and knit.

I like the weekends.

F-ing bus system, F-ing criminals, Reah!

Today started out well. I woke up fron another of my crazy dreams, remembering most of it and being totally confused. It's gone now though, I really need to get out my dream journal again. I had showered last night after my great workout, so I just had to clean up, get in my contacts, eat, and catch the bus.

Catching busses today seems to be as hard as finding needles in a haystack the size of Kansas. I looked at the schedule last night and wrote down when I had to catch the bus (there and back) to get to the Minnesota Department of Health Public Health lab (MDH PH lab) where I am working on my Master's project. I looked at the schedule, I wrote it down - wrong apparently - and that is where my troubles began. I missed the bus by about 1 minute because I wrote down 8:49 instead of 8:46. I had to wait for the next one. I got to the place where I changed busses and had to run to catch my connection. I made it though and went downtown. On the way I got to listen to the bus drive tell a senior citizen that unless he showed picture ID she would not give him senior fare. This guy was OBVIOUSLY over 65. Over 75 too probably. It wasn't hard to tell he'd get the rate, but she made him find his ID. I think he suffered from some form of disability, because he had trouble digging it out for her, or understanding what she wanted from him. Mean woman. The gentleman in front of me and the lady by him started LOUDLY discussing how obvious it was he was a senior, and how they were taught to respect their elders. The mean bus-lady just gave evil glares at them in the rear-view.

At the lab, we worked through the last of the pitfalls and false starts that are new scientific experiments. We had to find new connectors, or this or that, and there were many trips between the upstairs lab and my lab. Finally we were set, we calibrated, we attached, I transfered the first of my samples into the sample chamber, and then...Put Put Arrrg. No more pump. Again, start up, and die. We detached a part of the system to see if that helped, and it did but we need that part or it's not the experiment, so we reattached it after the pump found it's hood-legs (or something). We're working in a fume hood. It dies again. Finally we gave up and reduced the flow rate so that it didn't have to work so hard. Finished that, and labeled my samples for tomorrow and then left. I'll discuss more about what my experiment is and how sweet my setup is later, after I can be sure this first set of samples worked. For now, it's too much in the middle of things, and I'm in the middle of a rant at the bus system.

Back to the rant...So, I get to the bus stop to go home. I think I'm early, but I'm not...I'm a few minutes late, because I had misread the schedule - agian. So, I'm standing there waiting (I think I have 6 or so minutes to wait) when the bus goes by me. Right past. Ignores me completely. I wonder if I magically turned myself invisible in my experiment...but decide that my compounds don't work that way. (Ingested or inhaled in large enough quantities, they may cause the user to believe they are invisible, or more likely invincible, but we have nowhere near those quantities in my lab...and the stuff is scary.) So, I am really really getting grumpy at myself for my inability to read bus schedules, at the bus, for seeing me but NOT stopping, and at the day in generaly because I realized I had read the inside the bus shelter schedule wrong too when I got there (5 minutes before) and I still have 9 minutes to wait. I think to my self: I must have bad bus karma from something...it's just not my day. A different bus goes by. I know it goes to Campus, but am unsure if it goes to my transfer location. (I could have looked this up, I realized afterwards, I had the bus schedule in my bag. But again, bad bus karma and I'm grumpy and not thinking right at this point.) So I wait for the number bus I had planned to take. Get on, sit down, and prepare to be bored and avoid unpleasant situations and smells for the next 17-20 minutes while getting to my transfer. That bus route is rather...lively. About 5 minutes later, we turn onto the main drag of this bus route and see the other bus, the one that ignored me, pulled over by 3 cop cars. Everyone is off the bus, and some people are in handcuffs. I think to myself, "perhaps it's good I was ignored, or maybe that was the reason." So on we go, come to the next stop sign, and see a man run through traffic pursued by another man. Turns out, the second man was a cop and the first trying to escape him. The cop caught him though.

By the time our bus had picked up all the people missed by the first, and all of those for our bus, plus...the bus was late, it was at least 10 min late. We got to my transfer stop and I got off, and waited at the light while watching the bus I need drive off. I had to wait another 10-15 minutes for the next one and in that time I realized that I didn't have my housekeys. That was it. I called to say I wasn't going to be able to make my appointment for the afternoon, called to find out if anyone was home at my landlord's business w/ keys, and then hoped. I FINALLY got back, got keys, and got in the house. I decided to bake cookies to relieve some of the tension.

The cookies helped, as did shoveling the walk, and then eating curry for dinner. Yum. Now I'm cold and tired, and ready for bed. It's only 6:45. Hm. Nap?