Sometimes, I'm an idiot.

I was just looking up the release date for Harry Potter 6. It's 11/21/08. I turned to Tianna and said, "How many months is that? Four!" She started counting the months off on her fingers and I was truly shocked to find out that November is, in fact, eight months away. I lose.

Rough Start

Today began when I didn't get up. Not until T came and informed me that I would need to move my car so she could get out. This was after 9:00. Blah.

I went out to move my car and all the lovely snow from yesterday had frozen into ice. This took some doing to get off, and since I completely forgot the snow and went out in my pj's and bare feet, it wasn't all that fun. A lot of the snow landed on my feet. Blah.

I went back in and didn't hurry too much getting ready--I mean, it was already really late; what difference would a few more minutes make? I finally left a little after 10 for McDonald's (because McBreakfast is the surest way I know to get an icky day back on track). As I was sitting in the drive-thru, I realized I had left my makeup bag at home. Since I can't survive a day without chapstick, this meant I had to go home again. Blah.

Fortunately, Tianna had called me just before I left to invite me to work in Orem today! (Of course, the reason for this was that she needed me to help out with oogliness...oh well.) This meant a 25-minute commute instead of an hour commute. Yay!

Then, on the way to Orem, Mt. Timpanogos was beautiful. And I had my camera with me! So I pulled over and took a picture. I'm still not sure if this is fresh snow blowing off of Timp, or just a cloud that got caught right in that nook. Either way, it was cool. Yay!Also, since I sewed up the hem of my skirt, I haven't caught my heel in it all day. Yay!

So, I guess the rough start...ended well?

Gorgeous...simply gorgeous.

You can tell it's Spring just by looking out the window. It's so beautiful!

Beautiful...like cat hair!

I just got back from my first Festival of Colors at the Krishna Temple. It was amazing! First, we waited in line for about an hour to buy color. (That part was not so fun, but I was in great company (Tianna and Carli), so it wasn't too bad.) When we finally got up to where we could buy it, we each bought three bags of color. It still wasn't time to start throwing, so we went upstairs and inside the temple. We had to take our shoes off before we could go in, and we all got red dots (bindi) on our foreheads. It's so gorgeous! There's a shrine that has the most beautiful, intricately crafted deities...just gorgeous. We were on our way downstairs when I looked outside and thought the windows I was looking through were tinted. Nope; the color-throwing had begun! So we dashed outside, put our shoes back on, and joined the fun. Immediately outside was a ginormous cloud of color. (There was a fair amount of coughing going on.) But it was so great! We wandered through the crowd, ostensibly looking for the friends we were planning to meet, throwing color on each other and strangers, and being coated by them at the same time. (We never did find the friends we were looking for, although we met plenty of other people we knew throughout the event.) Eventually, we used up all our color and decided to go home not long after that. Sadly, none of us remembered to bring a camera (so all the above pictures are just ones I found online). But once we got home, we took several of our own:
Check out my rainbow hair!

I love my car, but sometimes...

My car has a war wound. About 8 years ago, it went to battle for me, protecting me from the delivery truck that was doing its level best to crush the life out of me. As a result of my car's heroics, I was just fine. But it was never the same after having been run over; the driver's side door had to be completely replaced, and despite multiple attempts, it has never hung quite right. This results in a lot of air noise when I drive at high speeds.

It's exceedingly windy outside today, and this made the noise worse. It was actually whistling as I did my best to keep my car in my lane despite the bufferings that wanted to toss me about the freeway. (I even drove almost the whole way with both hands on the steering wheel. (Yes, this is unusual for me, but I suspect it's true of anybody who drives stick.)) I had to crank my music up in order to hear it over the high-pitch whistle. Thankfully, this only lasted about half an hour, until I got 'round the point of the mountain. Otherwise, I may have been driven completely insane by that horrible shrieking.

Rainbows make me happy.

That being the case, I thoroughly enjoy riding in T's car with my sunglasses on. Her side windows are very slightly tinted, and my sunglasses are polarized. Result: rainbow skies! I kid you not. I did my best to secure proof of my visions yesterday by taking pictures through my sunglasses. It was kinda tricky, though, and they're a bit blurry. Also, if you can believe it, the rainbows are even better in real life. The camera didn't preserve the colors all that well.

Happy Easter!

My old roommate, Melissa, has us up for Easter every year. Aside from an amazing dinner, the major draw is a phenomenal Easter egg hunt. Her parents hid small plastic eggs with our names on them around the house, and we had to find our egg before we could have our baskets. Easy, right? Except that they hide these eggs in the most amazing places! The hunt is indoors, and the entire main floor, except the bedrooms, is open for hunting. And by hunting, I mean snooping. We are encouraged to pry into everything. And that's good, because check out where some of this year's eggs were hidden! Mine was inside the fax machine. I had to open up the paper tray to get it. Another was inside one of those knick-knack jars full of colored stones (on a way high shelf, so you had to climb onto the counter to reach it). One was inside a model boat; you had to take out the seats to find it. Melissa's was hidden _inside_ a loaf of bread. Her dad actually cut holes into the middle of several slices of bread so that the egg could hide, without looking obvious. It was brilliant. They also hid one egg without a name on it, for whoever found it, with $10 inside. I actually found it--inside a speaker. Awesome.

Women

Our lesson in Relief Society today was based on Julie Beck's talk from the last general conference, called Mothers Who Know. She lists several things that women can be/do, but two stood out to me and really touched me. The first was nurturing, and all I could think of was the way my wonderful roommates have nurtured me during the last few months of insanity. They comfort me, listen to me when I need to talk and don't make me feel silly when I cry. They often take over the house cleanup when I just can't bear to act like a responsible adult. They humor me in my insanely stupid jokes. In so many ways, they have nurtured me and lifted me, and it has meant everything to me.

The last thing Sis. Beck mentioned was being strong and immovable. This struck me because it is included in the same list as nurturing, which the world tells us is weak. I have always believed in being a strong woman (and probably take it too far sometimes with my stubbornness and excesses of independence), and it meant a lot to me to be reminded that nurturing women, who care for others above all else, can also be strong. It reminded me of my mother, who is the strongest, toughest woman I know. I have always admired her ability to weather the storms of life, and look to her for inspiration during my own storms.

I am grateful for the amazing women in my life who exemplify the traits I want to acquire. Not only are they examples to me, but they have made me who I am and contribute to who I want to become.

Glowsticks can be rather entertaining, it turns out.

I went to a very fun party tonight with some good friends. We played an amazing game of Curses, during which I was required to keep my elbows straight, mimic my hero (the person sitting to my right), tell an outrageous lie every time I read a card, clap my hands and say "Attention class!" every time I spoke, yell like a drill sergeant, and shout out a kind of lunchmeat any time somebody made an animal sound. It was crazy, and a lot of fun.

Also, it should be noted that ice cream sandwiches made with Eggo waffles are divine.

So Worth It

Please note the beautiful number on the above screenshot: 10006!

Two weeks ago, Mike, my boss' boss, mentioned in passing that his birthday was today and that a wonderful gift would be to have 10,000 titles online. Tianna pointed out to him that we were a long way from this being possible, but then thought better of her pessimism. So, without Mike's knowledge, we decided to try and see how close we could get. T sent an email out to all of our sites, and everybody agreed it was a great idea and that Mike really deserved it.

So we had this goal: get approx. 2,000 more books online in two weeks. (This is as many books as is sometimes done in a month.) Everybody knew about it but Mike, and we all worked really hard. Earlier this week, T and Annaleise decided to put their other duties aside and Kofax so we could get as many books ready as possible. I also Kofaxed, but a lot of time was taken up with loading the books that were ready, as well as the traumas I went through with computers and software.

T and I both stayed at work until 7:30 pm on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday trying to get this done. Who knew that sitting at a computer could be so tiring? But when you do it for so long, it surely is. On Friday, I didn't even go in to work until 12:30 pm because of the extra hours I'd worked earlier in the week. But once I got there, it was even more hectic than I had expected. I was Kofaxing books, as well as loading finished books online. I was in Orem, but I remoted into my computer in SLC so that I could load from both computers at the same time. I loaded into 4 different collections that day (just to add to the mayhem, we had to start new collections, identified by different numbers starting that day). It was a lot to keep track of, and I confused myself thoroughly several times. Tanna was confused, too: at various times throughout the day, we thought we had already achieved our goal, realized we hadn't, and thought we couldn't. But then we did! Finally, about 7:30 Friday night, we were able to see the beautiful sight I've included atop this post. The only task left was to tell Mike.

We dropped by his house on our way home, and decided to tell him that there was a problem and we needed his help. If he had a computer nearby, Tianna said, we could show him. Of course, he was highly uncooperative and wanted to know the details of what had gone wrong and how he could help. Finally, however, we got him to a computer and were able to show him the stats. He was completely shocked! He just sat there for a couple of minutes, mouth wide open, looking back and forth between us and the computer screen. Happy Birthday! He was dumbfounded, and we spent another 20 minutes or so explaining how it had come about. And he agreed that not only had we gotten him good, but it was a wonderful birthday gift.

Fun with Jewish holidays!

Purim was on Friday, so on Thursday I attended Carli's Hebrew class, as they were having a party to celebrate. There was food, which was great, but the reason I got up for a party at 8:00 am was the play. It's traditional to reenact Esther and Mordecai's triumph over Haman, and Carli has pretty much the most amazing script ever. It was fabulous. Vashti had attitude, the king was full of himself, and Haman was hilariously evil. And we all had lots of fun cheering whenever Mordecai came on or was mentioned, as well as booing Haman. (Side note: noisemakers are way fun!) Apparently, the whole point of this celebration is to get so drunk that you can no longer recognize Haman, so Carli supplied the bubbly (yeah, it was actually sparkling cider, but we all acted drunk just the same).

Carli also has a rule that everybody participating in the play must wear something from the costume box. Haman, apparently, only has one good eye. There was much speculation that he may have had his eye put out by Mordecai and his whip. (Mordecai actually came eerily close to joining Haman in this lamentable condition, but I suppose he was being reasonably defiant, so maybe it would have been worth it? There is, however, no explanation for him having an Indian accent.)

Misery loves company...at least, I love company when I'm miserable.

Is it bad that it makes me all kinds of happy to see others plagued by the same annoyances that beset me? This actually happened a few times today:

I overslept today, by a lot. This irks me greatly...every day. But when I stumbled to the front of the house, on my way outside to move my car so Tianna could get out of the driveway (because she would obviously be leaving before me), I espied her sitting in her bedroom. In her pajamas. Likewise not leaving on time. Not only was I spared the trouble of moving my car, but I had company in my slothfulness!

Midway through the network traumas I was having today, Annaleise announced that she had been kicked off the server. I was comforted.

I later overheard Elder Hendrix on the phone with our Hawaii site. They were also having problems mapping a drive. It's not just me; the hatred has spread into the Pacific!

When I got down to Orem, I sat next to this cute senior sister missionary who was having problems with Kofax (the software we use to process books). She had cropped the images, but after they were processed, the cropping on some of them went all wonky. One of the pages was cropped in half. Elder Hendrix turned to me and asked if I'd ever seen anything like it. I got to explain how this happens to me every time. My crops just come undone. I have learned to accept it as a ridiculous and annoying part of my life. But today, it wasn't just me! I felt vindicated.

(Actually, I suspect that Kofax sensed that I was sitting at the computer next door, as well as the fact that my insane day would not allow me to Kofax anything of my own, all day. Realizing this, Kofax lashed out at my neighbor. This is unreasonable, but what can you expect from such hate-filled software?)

Hated...by the Networks?

Today, the world is against me. At least at work. I went to work today, and signed on to Tianna's computer (she has evil genius "duel" monitors and was working in Orem). According to the computer, all my network drives had suffered some kind of death...I can only assume it was gruesome. So I set myself to the task of re-mapping them, which I only learned how to do a few weeks ago. But I'm becoming quite proficient at it, as my network drives are apparently very wussy and die fairly often. I had to map them to my computer again yesterday! I don't know why I am so hated by the networks. Or maybe I intimidate them? Anyway, today, they just wouldn't map. I had to get Annaleise (she's an angel) to come and help me multiple times. And still couldn't get anything better than read-only access to the SLC server. All this, of course, kept me from accomplishing anything at all.

Luckily, Dennis (my boss) had a favor to ask of me; could I please deliver a cart to Orem on my way home? Sure thing. And Tianna had the brilliant idea that I come on down to Orem then, where I could actually use the networks instead of fight them. So I did. Of course, the Jess Hatred continued...

Once in Orem, there were further issues with disconnected drives (naturally, as it was the Torment Tool of the Day). And since the computer I usually use in Orem was occupied, I got to use a different one, which was lacking some software I needed, which meant I got to remote back into my comp in SLC. Such convolution. [Skipping a bunch of heartache and trauma because it's too work-detailed for anybody to care about. Just trust me, it was there.] Since I stayed so incredibly late tonight, my computer finally opened up, and I switched over to it...you know, to make life easier. Of course, it wasn't mapped to a drive I needed! It got to the point where I felt I would surely go mad if I had to map one more drive one more time. I even threatened generic (but forceful) CONSEQUENCES.

Such a frustrating day. But now I am home, where the networks and drives can't hurt me. Of course, they're probably disconnecting from my computer(s) even now...

Weirdness just COMES AT me

On my way to work today, I stopped at a stop light next to the Salt Palace, and there was this guy crossing the street in front of me. Mid-twenties, I'm gonna guess. Point is, he was tucking in his shirt as he walked--with his pants undone! I could see his belt flapping in the breeze. Took me a minute to realize what I was seeing, because really, who does that? I can honestly say I have never undone my pants in public, and I think I'm actually normal in this way.

(This next part didn't actually happen today, but I was reminded when I went back to Wendy's.) Last week, I got lunch from the drive-thru at Wendy's. I ordered a plain double-cheeseburger because I am not a fan of death on my food. After I picked up my food, I went to leave the parking lot, reaching for some fries as I went. In so doing, I noticed the extreme oddity I had been given: hamburger patties. That's right, two hamburger patties in a plastic container. (I later noticed a set of plastic silverware I was graciously given to eat them with.) I was confuzzled by this, of course. Since when does "plain double cheeseburger" = hamburger patties?! So I threw my car into reverse and parked so I could go in and inquire this of someone who might know. But the guy at the counter was just as confused as I was. Actually, the look on his face when I showed him my patties was kind of awesome. He went back and asked whoever was cooking/assembling stuff for a plain double cheeseburger, and I got to hear him explain what that meant, which made me laugh. He came back and apologized: "They usually ask if they don't understand." How cool is that?

Update!

Apparently, this Anonymous Tree doesn't like to be called such. He sent out "help me" vibes to his previous owner, JP, who came to check on him. Actually, she thinks he's already happier than he was before! Go figure.

Also, she named him. He is now...wait for it...Beauregard. (And there was lengthy discussion as to his gender. Please note the lack of an "e" at the end of his name; this is because he is male.)

Lives for Which I am Responsible

There are several plants in my cubicle at the COB, and I am in charge of keeping them alive and healthy. Really, though, it's only a matter of time until they perish. Before that happens, I thought I'd document their fleeting existences here!

1. This Wandering Jew is already getting discolored on top, which is very sad, as it used to be quite lovely.
2. I really like my China Doll, and I hope it sticks around for a little while, at least.
3. The Pothos is supposed to be really easy to grow; we shall see.
4. I'm not supposed to get the white sap of this Rubber Plant on my clothes. I wonder what would happen?
5. My Wax Plant will flower if it gets enough light. I don't think this will happen.
6. This tree is a Croton. I like the weird colors, but they'll only stay if it's grown in a bright location [sigh].
7. This plant is called Dumbcane, and it's poisonous. Just the thing to have in a nurturing work environment, methinks.
8. This tree, I'm actually supposed to be reviving. Right. It shall remain anonymous to protect...well...everyone.

Things I Want from IKEA

1. My very own frog prince. You can zip his mouth shut! This is a highly desirable trait for any guy.
2. This heart pillow--it's just so stinkin' huggable!
3. This turtle, just 'cuz he's way fun.
4. This chaise is super comfy.
5. This rattan chair also has you sitting with your legs out in front, and it has great back support.
6. This office chair is just awesome. The high back swiveldyness makes you feel like an evil genius (and who doesn't need that when they're working?)
7. This chair grants enlightenment to all who sit in it! It's amazing (although, in this pic, it doesn't look amazing).
8. This chair and footstool combo are just heaven.
   
   
   
   
   
9. This is the coolest bed EVAR! Also, the measurements say it's big enough for an Amazon like me to stretch out on, which I didn't think was the case when I actually saw it, so I didn't try (sad.) (Note to any hypothetical readers of this hypothetical blog: I am the only person allowed to call me an Amazon. If you try it, I will kill you dead. (Or at least chase you around a parking lot and then slap you. Just ask Ryan.))
   
   

A first-time-in-my-life experience

So, I stopped to get gas on my way to work today, and I washed my windshield on a whim (it wasn't even that dirty). Before I could squeegee it off, the cleaner froze! I had to scrape my windshield, right there at the pump! But at least it was clean...