~*~Workin' Hard Today~*~

...No, no sarcasm. The phones are still down today, so we have one line. It is really annoying. Guess changing phone companies is not a good idea. Luckily I don't, and won't have a main line, at least not for a while.

So on my way to work this morning I had someone behind me who was riding my ass and then went around me and cut me off. Turns out it was a Geico car, you know, the insurance company? I was thinking to myself how strange it was to have someone drive like crap when they were advertising insurance that "promotes" good driving. Funny how people work. Also, this morning I saw a truck that had the trunk painted to look open with a bunch of open wine bottles sitting in it. It was pretty funny.

Right now I am sitting at work, waiting for the day (er, night) to be over. My boss is sitting downstairs watching a reality show in Hebrew. I laugh because although I can't understand a single word, I know exactly what is going on by the music and the tone of voice. These shows are all the same. It's amazing how often the emotion changes. One minute people are laughing, then it's serious, then they are all goofing off, then someone is crying, etc. I would guess that the reason these shows are so popular is because it causes so many emotional reactions. I can see why, when one minute they have you feeling low, then make something funny happen so your reaction is stronger. I'm not anywhere close to being a Psychologist, but that is my theroy non the less... I have nothing better to do.

I am almost halfway through with my hat I am crocheting. Once I got past the beginning it hasn't been very hard. Mostly just a matter of keeping count of where I am. I am excited to finish, hopefully by the end of the week! *fingers crossed*

I need to do the Chistmas Tree!!!

The Wonderful Wizard of Rants.. he's so oppressive!

Ahh, what a world. I'm reading Son of a Witch, so of course I have to give a shout out to Elphaba!So, blogging hasn't turned out to be a strong suit of mine, but hey I'm trying. Life has been crazy recently.
I didn't even work for Hollywood Video for six months before I got laid off, but I don't feel that bad seeing that the store closed a week later. I just miss most of the people I worked with. I made some cool friends, but now that I moved to the east bay seeing them is going to be a rare treat. That was an interesting experience to say the least. When I got hired it was an awesome place to work. My co-workers and higher-ups were really awesome, well they still are of course. When we got our new manager though, it got ugly. Yuck. Don't even want to think about him. Worst manager ever. "Hey do this, do that. I'm just going to follow you around and talk about myself. Blah blah blah. Oh, you're trying to read? Blah blah blah" Haha. I was afraid to read ever because I knew as soon as I picked up my book he would start talking to me because I wasn't busy. Awful. And then for about a month, maybe two, I wasn't sure if I would have a job by the end of the week. Not to say that getting 10 hours a week is much of a job. At least I threw my "Goodbye San Francisco" party and got to have everyone over.
Ya so, I don't live in SF anymore. Crazy! After being there for 5 years, and loving it, mostly.. I don't actually miss it much. Maybe because I have been so busy. But the place we live in now is really nice and we don't have any adjacent walls with neighbors. We also have a WORKING dishwasher and a garbage disposal which I haven't had for what, four years? I guess what I miss most is SFSU. I frakking love that place. I want to go and visit. Just get a bagel and chill on a bench with a book. That would bring back some awesome memories. It's funny though because after taking German with Dan this semester I remember how much I hate school, but I love the memory of it. Maybe being on the other side of the classroom would be more appealing.
Speaking of which, I need to get my butt in gear and take a class, or get a book, to prepare me for the CSET. It looks really hard. Maybe because I'm a Euro History major, I dunno. But you need to know world history (not so bad), American history/geography (I know a thing or two), the constitution (okay, not that hard to learn), government (hmm...) and econ. (oh dear!) All this split into 3 parts of a test. It's nice because you don't have to take them all at once, but it sucks because you really have to know your stuff. I looked over an example of questions, lets see... Here are some;
World History:
Ancient Civilizations~ Describe and analyze the religious, social, economic, and political structures of the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Kush, Greece, India, China, Rome, and pre-Columbian America, and describe and analyze their intellectual, ethical, scientific, and artistic accomplishments and values.
Medieval~ Analyze the political and religious transformations caused by the Reformation and their impact on Europe. (Easy!!)
Modern~ Analyze the origins, course, and consequences of World War II, including the human cost of the war (e.g., the Holocaust), the resulting redrawing of boundaries, and the movement of peoples in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. (The movement of people?)
Etc... And that is just world history. Anyone want to answer those questions? Those are just one of about 5 examples for each section. American history has these topics; Pre-Revolutionary Era and the War for Independence, The Development of the Constitution and the Early Republic, The Emergence of a New Nation, Civil War and Reconstruction, The “Gilded Age,” The U.S. as a World Power, The 1920s, The Great Depression and the New Deal, World War II, Post-World War II America, Post-World War II U.S. Foreign Policy, okay that's enough. I'm not going to finish the list. Ha. I also have to know Californian history, which is extensive. Not to say these topics are extremely hard, it's just a lot of details. I can easily answer most questions about America and Europe, a good amount about the Near East as well, but when you get into Africa and Asia.. It gets hard when you get to the next sections. Ah jeeze, I didn't mean to go on a rant about the CSET. Oh well, too late now. I guess the thing that bugs me the most is that two of my years in college were wasted on GE's which was mainly a repeat of what you are SUPPOSED to learn in high school. What is the point of going to high school if you have to spend a shitload (pardon my Französisch) of money to take the classes again? In Germany (of course) when you get to college you start out taking classes for your major.. from the beginning! Not your junior year. They take their "GE's" in their equivalent to high school. Rant, rant, bitch, bitch. I'm done!
I applied to Contra Costa County as a Librarian assistant. But knowing how the government works (I have to to pass the CSET so I would know!) I won't hear anything for at least another month. I applied at the end of November and online it still only says Application Received.. Oi But I am excited. It would be a very interesting learning experience and who knows maybe I would absolutely love it and become a librarian. Shoot, I don't wear glasses!
Yay! It's almost noon. Only 5 1/2 more hours of work! Go Saturday! Tonight we are decorating the Christmas tree! Tomorrow we brew 1348 *Black Death Stout* and next week I get to sleep in! Life isn't all stress. : )
<3 and sorry about the ranting. I guess that's what happens when you're bored and let your mind wander. Back to reading.. my pretty! *cackles*

Ein Gutes Tag

Today was such a good day! I finally got the first build for the Sims 3 expansion I am working on---doing the manual for---and I'm actually installing it as I type. I can't wait! I have always been a Sims fan, I never would have thought I would be writing the manual for it. Amazing.


I also started German class today with Dan. It was a shock to see my German 2 Instructor from the university is teaching it. And the more I think about it the more I remember her saying she was going to change to city college. I think it will be a fun review class, but it does feel a little slow. Then again it is only the first day, so of course it is painful. I think it will be great fun to not only tutor Dan, but to help other students with understanding in class when we do activities and such. I still remember being confused out of my mind the first couple of weeks. The only hard part is to bite my tongue and not answer everything she asks about right away. I don't want to look like the know it all and take away from other students learning. Sigh, but still! I bet I could finish all the workbook assignments tonight... in an hour. But, besides that I am excited. This will be an easy class for me and it is such a great feeling to be sitting at a desk again. I missed school so much!

Bier!

So we are now on our second brew, and of course we have to start out strong and have jumped right in on making a hefeweizen. Yum! We have heard that hefs are really hard, but we will see. Maybe people who say that just suck at making them. :P

It was fun to see the difference between making our amber and our hef. With the hef you have to add a bunch of yeast and stir it in. Of course that was my job, being the wonderful mix master of the house. Also, we didn't use our airlock we used a blow off tube since our yeast is really active. That basically means we stuck a tube in the top and put the other end into a water bottle to ease the pressure. It also has been letting out yeast. It's fun to go in the closet and watch it. It even smells like beer. I am really excited to taste it. Hefs sind die besten!

That reminds me. Next week, (that came quickly) Dan and I start German class. I know it's only German 1 but I am still really excited. I can freshen up on my German and help him with his pronunciation... sorry baby, but you need a little help with that. Knowing Dan he will learn so quickly but this time next year he will be ready to take our trip to Germany and speak not a word of English! How fun would that be?!

Well time to head off and go to the pub to hear about Jim's adventures in Eastern Europe. Jeez! I can't get away from Europe even if I wanted to!!

...which I don't.

Tori Amos is fucking amazing! I had sooo much fun seeing her.

A Gamer's Life For Me

Yo Ho! So I have been going back to my roots. I didn't do it on purpose it just kind of happened. We downloaded Wolfenstein 3D which is awesome. It is really hard not to try and aim, but the "auto aim" is really good. Just point in the general direction of the Nazi and fire. "Mein Leben!" It is a lot more fun now because we are cheating and looking at the maps. We would never find all the secrets otherwise. Running along walls clicking as fast as you can gets old.. This game also reminds me of the old maze screen saver. I used to have so much fun with my friend watching that stupid thing. Wow the things we used to do for entertainment. I am glad we have better things to do than watch screen savers nowadays. I also just downloaded a pack of games that comes with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, DOS style! It is so awesome! I remember it so well. I was looking up pictures and am so excited to go home and play.

Ah! Venice.. It finally finished downloading this morning. It also came with Full Throttle! Hell ya. I played that game with my mom. Haha. She was a good sport. All these old games makes me want to bust out Myst again.. So good! And maybe that random Star Trek: TNG game I could never figure out. I wonder if I was just being stupid or if it had a glitch.... probably the latter.

Lost Odyssey! I am almost done with it by the way. I just did the Temple of Enlightenment last night. Oh my god! I had to use a YouTube video to guide me through. I would have been up all night trying to figure that stupid thing out. Luckily after the boss fight I was able to find my way back to the closest save point without meeting any enemies. I went in there low level, so the fights take forever. I was so tired this morning! But this game is amazing! I am soooo pleased with it. The story is great, the graphics are awesome, and I always enjoy a good turn-based RPG. A cool quark I found was that I set the language to German, but the subtitles are still in English. That just makes the cut scenes that much cooler. I also love the fact that Nobuo Uematsu did the music! Yes that is the same person who did all the Final Fantasy music. He is definitely "the John Williams of video games." And John Williams is no joke! He is so cool he has the same birthday as me! I <3>

I love tangents! And wow did I run with that one.

But ya.. anyway. I will be sad when I beat Lost Odyssey because I will not have another good RPG for who knows how long. I don't want to buy a PS3 and I don't want to play something with bad graphics. (yuck!) I guess I will be forced to play Mass Effect again. Poor me.. I still need to play the expansion for Fallout 3 as well. I guess I could play some more sims too.. Guess I won't be running out of things to do after all.

Weekend Wonders

So talk about an adventurous weekend! Not a moment of rest.

Friday Stacy threw Dan a birthday party at Asia SF which was craziness! Let's see, John and I met up with everyone at Offbase. Stacy, Steve, John, James, Dan, Pha, and I all proceeded to Asia SF, which was amazingly entertaining. You should go! Here is just a glimpse of what we saw.


The lovely ladies of Asia SF got up on the bar and would dance to awesome songs.
She was my favorite. It was hilarious too because they managed to get Dan up to the stage twice to get his face well...
I think it was because we got in there literally when they opened and got a chance to talk to our table.. that and he's so sexy!

They had a set menu which was delicious! They even accommodated the black sheep of the group (me) and gave us veggie substitutes for some of the meat dishes and they were really really good! They know how to cook some tofu! They had great drinks too. Ha the best was the Amber's sex kitten. They knew I was coming. Well, actually one of the lovely ladies was named Amber, and I actually think she was the other lady to get Dan's face in her chest. I knew he would get confused by the end of the night. At least he didn't go home with her... hehe.

So speaking of drinks, since it was Dan's birthday, he had to give our waitress head. Don't worry it's not as dirty as it sounds. :P She ended up having to help him out in the end, guess he really needed to suck harder. Oh the jokes we made that night....


And of course since Dan was a favorite he couldn't leave without getting a lovely goodbye photo.


After we dragged ourselves out of the place we hung out at a pub, and then went dancing with Stacy after everyone else left. I would go into more detail, but that was just Friday I still have to talk about Saturday and Sunday. But it was a lot of fun! Dan barely even made it to the bed. I had to de-shoe him and push him onto ONE side of the bed.

Soooo, Saturday was awesome too! Well, the second half. We woke up with massive hangovers, Dan's was worse... wonder why? Anyway, so during the day we just hung around the house and recuperated. That night we went and saw Yoshida Brothers at Yoshi's in the Filmore. Oh My God! They were sooooooo awesome live I wanted to go again Sunday.


They play the shamisen and make it sound absolutely amazing. They had a drummer play beats and sound effects, but there was no singing or anything. Definitely check them out, because they are really different. Dan and I were trying to figure out what genre they would fall under. I think we chose traditional japanese rock. Haha. Yoshi's is a pretty cool place too. Dan got a chicken burger which he really liked and I got a roll of sushi. It was really good and we were able to eat during the show. It normally would seem to late to eat, but we had had a late lunch. It was a little pricey, but totally worth it for our first time there. Next time we should stick to cocktails or just a nice cold beer.

So on to Sunday!

We woke up and right away got out on our bikes and rode down to Golden Gate Park to watch some Bay to Breakers action. The name shows exactly what it is, a walking marathon from the bay to the ocean, but really it has become much more. It is basically another reason from San Franciscans to dress up (or down) and get drunk in the morning and hang out in the park. It was perfect weather for our ride. Once we got in the park we had to get off our bikes because it was sooo crowded. We eventually moved out of the crowd and rode down to the beach, sat and watched the waves for a bit. It was wonderful to get some sun. The best part was that they had closed the Great Highway for B2B so we were able to ride down and back up it without any traffic.. oh wait, well foot traffic and an ambulance... so mostly no traffic. It was a beautiful ride, but it also showed me that I need to get out on my bike more! Whoo. Well, now we have the perfect weather, so I will finally force Dan and me to go on our Sunday rides. We will go over the Golden Gate Bridge!! We will!!

After we made it home it was chore time. We finally got around to washing our carpet and we now have super soft carpet! :) Then David came over and brought us some fun movies. We got to watch Crank 2 which, oh my god, was absolutely amazingly funny! It was so rediculous, just like the first one. I laughed the entire time. We barely watched Max Payne afterward, how could anything be as entertaining after Crank? And of course we ended the night with Dan asleep on the couch and David and me watching Trigun.

end.

What is broken must be fixed!

I'm thinking of a flower that starts with an......E!

So good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first? The bad? That's what I thought.
So I think our computer has a virus. I know it sucks big time. Google searches will not always direct me to the website I want. We need to download a new version of Webroot, but I should wait till Dan gets home to figure that out.
Also, the guy who came to fix our heater (very nice guy) found the problem! He had the part he needed to! ...but, he found another problem. I guess some old piece that is obsolete now broke and he had to go run around trying to find it. He left about noon and still hasn't gotten back. Looks like another cold night for me. Go space heater go!

Now for the good new. So I missed the third delivery date for our XBox to be dropped off because I was in Danville, but they forgot to take it off the truck and dropped it off today! Yay. I didn't have to bus it down to the Mission and back. That was especially great since the electrician was here.

Since I didn't get to leave today I made some goodies. I roasted a bunch of garlic so that will constantly be on hand. I made blondies, which are like brownies without the chocolate, and cornbread. I need to bake more, so I did some today. The best part is they all turned out yummy.

On Tuesday, I rode my bike down to BART and then from Dublin BART rode to my Oma's house in Crow Canyon. What a great ride! The Iron Horse Trail starts at Dublin BART and took me straight there! It was so beautiful too! Butterflies everywhere, flying with me and just making the ride so great. I am guessing they were Northern Checkerspot Butterflies, but I'm no expert.

I actually looked it up on a really cool website (if you are interested in butterflies).
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/map?x=12&y=108&_fc=1 Just click on the county you are interested in. Pretty fun to see. Anyway, the bike ride was awesome! It was so nice outside and it was great to ride on flat ground for once. I passed right by Cory's house and I am thinking that maybe next time we go over there to just ride our bikes. :) Just no drunk biking allowed! Don't want to hurt our bikes.

Tea was great fun. Oma took me out to lunch with both my parents and then we relaxed on the couch and just the two of us had tea time. She actually gave me her Edelweiss cup too! Oh my gosh it is so pretty. I didn't bring it home yet, because I didn't want it raddling around in my backpack, too precious. I also ended up spending the night so I could paint my mom's bathroom. I rode my bike from Oma's and actually beat my dad home! :) After I painted and wanted to head home I got to ride the IHT to Walnut Creek. Just as beautiful, but amazingly different. Besides the fact that this part of the trail is much more populated, it also was more like being in the mountains than in California's golden fields.


Gotta love those Poppies!!

There's a first for everything..

So I thought what the heck? Why not start a blog. Between starting a new email and this I have spent my whole day trying to figure out all these new goodies. It sucks because now I have to wait to go to the gym till after I go to my interview tonight, which will probably not be fun. It's with a Chiropractic Therapy center in the Marina. It sounds like a really good job, but since it's a group interview I have a feeling that there will be a lot of people there, some with more experience too. But, maybe not! Maybe I will be so awesome that she will point to me and say,
"You! I want you to work here now!" ...hehe.

I'm wondering if it would be weird to bring my gym bag with me. I guess I could always stuff it all in my big coach purse. I am good at mistreating my purses. That's why I make them! Speaking of which I am hoping to find a cool pattern for a summer dress. We shall see. Fabric is expensive! But first I need to patch up John's pants (three pair?) for him. I think I have had them for too long..

Tomorrow I am going to ride my bike to Oma's for the first time. Well, I am going to ride to BART go out to Dublin and ride to her from there. The beginning of Tuesday Tea. That is unless my dad keeps me nice and busy with redoing the neighbor's siding. It's so much fun! I get to work with my dad (an easy boss) and Oma makes us lunch, which actually is a bad thing because she feeds us so well, the second half of the day we just want to sleep and relax in the sun. But, I am learning a lot from her when it comes to the kitchen. Little tricks here and there and some good recipes I can easily make veggie.

Oh my god! I hate UPS! I just went up to see if they had brought back our XBox today and they had left a little note, about 30 minutes ago!! They didn't ring the frakking doorbell! What the hell?!?! I won't be here tomorrow and I don't want to go halfway across the city to pick it up. This sucks! I miss my XBox! Bah!