Enjablog

- Halloween donuts
- Free Chipotle
- Got a second monitor set up in my office
- Mrs. Boss and baby + costume
- Halloween cookies
- Having a friend ask me for advice, after reading my blog, as to whether she should buy Transformers without watching it first. Total no-brainer.
- Boots arrived today!

(I maybe need some time to get used to them. They’re very comfortable, but I kept getting caught on things and misjudging my foot placement.)

- Picked up prescription. Starting tomorrow: back on adderall!
- Hallowine

Also, I got all my forms sent out for to register for the PE exam. I was frantically double-checking my forms when I realized there was a possibility that I lied to myself and wrote the wrong date on my calendar to make sure I got everything filled out on time. The only problem is that I have no idea what the actual deadline is and I couldn’t find it on the website. So… I’m either going to just make the deadline or I might be early. I don’t even know how I’ll find out.

QOTD from Bones: “I’m sorry you had to kill someone. I know you don’t like doing that.”

Yay candy!

On a whim this weekend, I bought some rollers when I was in CVS. This is strange for me on many levels. I know. But just go with it.

Ever since I got my hair cut in January, I’ve been wanting it to look like actress hair, but without all the effort. This was the original look I was going for:

And my hair has grown out a lot from that now. But I’m still trying to get my hair to flip outward like this (it naturally curls inward toward my face):

So, while I was in CVS, I went to look at hair stuff since I broke one of my hair clips last week and will probably want to replace it at some point. And I saw these rollers which seemed kind of cool:

I told Yenny they were like velcro tubes and your hair acts as the loop side of velcro. Then, I consulted the internets as to how to use them (wet vs. dry hair, techniques for getting them to stay, etc.). And what do you know… they’re called “velcro rollers.” I guess because they’re not like velcro; they are velcro.

Anyway, I put them in yesterday morning before I started ironing my clothes for the day. Took about 3-5 minutes to put them in, so not too bad. Left them in about 10 minutes and got exactly the look that I wanted. I was so excited.

So, I got in to work and the first person in the department to get in after me came straight into my office.

“Oh, I know you’ll appreciate this!” He pulls his phone out and starts looking for something*:

Awesome. The helmet has several lines recorded to play back and it can alter your voice to make you sound like Optimus Prime. So cool.

This is followed by two other people this morning discussing Transformers with me. Wait, let me re-emphasize. Not “… people… discussing Transformers with me.” But “… people… discussing Transformers with me.” Both before and after our department meeting. Conversations not started by me.

I guess I’ve made my pro-Transformers agenda clear. I’m glad everyone else is finally on board! I’m liking my coworkers today. :)

Oh yeah, and uh, I think I’m probably not going to bother curling my hair for work. Those 3 minutes will totally be worth it for going out to a party or something though.

—-
*Not actual picture. Actual helmet:

While watching the World Series last week, Ian and I got into a discussion about the wad of gum that Terry Francona was working on. I hypothesized that he just kept adding a new piece of gum every time the flavor started to fade. If that’s the case though, how often does he add a new piece of gum? Would it make more sense to take the old piece out before adding the new piece? Is there still flavor left in the old piece when he adds the new one? Probably. So, what is the half-life of bubble gum flavor, not in terms of time, but in terms of chews? How many chews does it take to integrate a new piece of gum into the growing tasteless mass? Does it depend on the individual’s saliva pH? What would it be on average?

It seems like this is along the same genre as how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll tootsie pop. There are tons of people who have done experiments to determine this. They aren’t all scientific or result in repeatable conclusions. But they have been attempted. I looked up bubble gum flavor half-life, and there have been no studies on this scientific or otherwise. There is no way we’re the only ones who have thought to question the long-lasting flavor of gum. Shouldn’t the gum companies have studies to back up their claims that their gum has longer-lasting flavor than the competition? I have so many questions that need to be answered.

EDIT: Oh, wait! I found something. A blog post mentioning a coworker’s daughter doing an experiment. Where are the results?? Now I feel like I need to go troll high school science fairs to find the answer to this. They’ll have to be just the individual school fairs though, because I don’t think this would make it past the first round. I don’t even chew gum. Why am I so obsessed?

The second time that I watched Transformers this weekend, I noticed that the big battle is fought in Mission City. I was making fun of that for a while, until I went to go track a package today and saw that it went through Earth City. I figured I should look and see if Mission City is a real place before I continue making fun of it: Mission City, FL. Although this is nowhere near the Hoover Dam, it’s still technically a real place. I guess I shouldn’t make fun of the name. I apologize to Transformers. They are indeed more than meets the eye.

P.S. Transformers on DVD was even better than I remembered it being in the theaters. And I thought the first time around was *awesome*.

My latest completed project:

There’s a pocket up front to hold my pink phone. :)

Aw, just got an email from Carolyn Hax!

From last week’s ALS Walk:

We’re closing in on $12k! Thanks, everyone! (On the front row, starting from the left, that’s Nick, Zuzu, and Carolyn) :)

Whoa. I was nodding off at my desk again today, so I decided to close my door and take a quick nap. I looked at the clock on my computer and it was 2:00. I put my head down and woke up with a start, wide awake and refreshed. Looked at my clock and saw that it was 2:03. My screensaver hadn’t even turned on.

*gasp*

I’m home watching the VT-BC game tonight, thinking that I could watch while the DVR records NBC’s Thursday night lineup. And well, I can watch something while it’s recording… But not while it’s recording that and Survivor.

No wonder Ian went out to watch the Red Sox game tonight. (Papelbon did the intros for the starting lineups though.)

*grumble*

Edit: What the… I shouldn’t have wasted my time watching. Really? Lose the game in the last 2 minutes? You couldn’t hold out another 11 seconds? Sigh…

My keyboard at work looked kinda gross. So, I turned it upside down and shook it. I confirmed that it was, in fact, really gross.

Note to self: Shake keyboard over trash can next time.

Happy birthday, Sonny!! :)

Man, I shouldn’t have mentioned how many days in a row I’ve blogged. I went through my archives and saw that I had tied my record. So, now I’ve set a new record. But I don’t have anything I feel like writing about today. So, congratulations. You get to suffer through reading this. Sorry…

I fell asleep around 10 o’clock last night without making any headway on my homework. I thought it was food coma from the big dinner at my parents’ place. I just realized that I only got 3 hours of sleep the night before. No wonder I was so cranky yesterday.

Oops. I’ve had so much going on this weekend that I forgot to attend recitation today. I got caught up watching football and then left to go to my parents’ house for dinner tonight for Lenny and Grandma’s birthdays… And only remembered when I got home because our TA sent out an email changing the time for next week.

This weekend… Friday was NewGirl’s and Ian’s last days at their respective jobs. Our floor took NewGirl out for happy hour. I skipped out a little early to have some quality BFF bonding time. Saturday started off early with some homework, cake, cookies, and catching up on last week’s TV shows. NewGirl’s going away bash was Saturday night, so I ran some quick errands at Target, Rack Room Shoes, the office, the bank, and Popeyes before arriving a fashionable 30 minutes early. I really thought everything would take longer. The longest stop was at Popeyes where I bought 30 chicken fingers and the girl behind the counter asked if I could wait 4 minutes for them to cook up more. Uh… yeah, I can wait 4 minutes.

The party was really fun. The U of M game was on and there was lots of gossip, food, and drinks. Of course, the purpose of the party was bittersweet, but it was definitely memorable. We had a gallery for my office art shelf, which consists of drawings NewGirl has created over the past year. There was flip cup, which apparently Boss got talked into playing. I’m kind of sorry I missed that part of the evening. Skunknut was sick and missed out on all the chicken fingers, but otherwise, I think everyone else NewGirl was expecting made it out to say goodbye.

After the game, a bunch of people started to head out, so NewGirl, NewGirl’s reason for leaving (a.k.a. boy-toy), and I made our way over to Boss Jr’s haunted house. It was definitely an adventure driving over, especially since I was driving and have no concept of direction in DC. But an hour or so later, we made it and, after signing a lengthy waiver, were thoroughly haunted. Boss Jr was a convincingly creepy clown. NewGuy had a zombie look going on. There was also a nun, an awkward mad scientist/doctor, a dude in a cage, and other random bodies strewn about. It was definitely fun and games for us since the three of us walked through the house together. But I think if I had gone through by myself I would’ve screamed like a little girl.

We got out of the city without incident, but then wandered Arlington for a bit trying to drop NewGuy off. I’m really bad with directions in Arlington and he may have been a little drunk mixed with unable to figure out where we were fast enough to tell me where to go. In any case, after about half an hour of extra bonding time, we successfully dropped him off. We promptly got lost again trying to find our way back to Alexandria, but we found NewGirl’s yellow brick road and were on our way.

So, I got home and was fast asleep around 4am. I woke up a few hours later to go meet my advice columnist hero at the ALS walk. It was interesting… I was so excited to meet Carolyn Hax, but then she was just a regular person and I totally felt like a nerdy groupie. Which was ok because then I met a group of girls who were also readers and came out to meet her like a bunch of groupies and we all hung out and chatted for the entire walk. Robin, Emma, Laura, Brooke, and another girl whose name I don’t remember… They were all so nice and welcoming. A couple of them came together, but the rest of us showed up solo and didn’t know anyone else. So, it all worked out. I also got to meet Kenny and Nick. And the kiddies were running around climbing over both of them, but I have no idea which one was which. I am so impressed by their whole family dynamic. I can only aspire to such maturity in my life.

On the charity front, our team won a second place award for the rookie team to raise the most money. This team was formed 30 days ago and raised over $10k. Our total doubled in the past 3 days and we were ranked 9th overall. It was all very exciting.

Afterward, a bunch of us were deciding which metro to head toward or what we were going to do with the rest of our day. I ended up heading over to the Freer Gallery of Art with two people and hung out for a while. Then I got a call from NewGirl letting me know that she had rented a cargo van to deliver her recliner to me. We ended up having to get past the mean front desk lady, but we got away with moving in furniture on a weekend anyway. We had a heartfelt goodbye and then they were off to get more stuff done before heading out for good tomorrow morning.

I went back upstairs to finish watching the ‘Skins game and then got a call from Lenny asking if I had baked a cake. I decided to head over to the parents’ a little early so I could head out right after dinner and work on my homework some more. Instead, I just hung out there longer and decided that it was very important for me to blog a bunch before doing anything actually useful or productive.

And now here we are. This is why I forgot to show up for recitation this afternoon. I kind of suspected I would forget since every time I looked at my calendar to see what I had scheduled this weekend, I was surprised to see recitation on my calendar and was concerned that I was going to be too busy. And well, I was. I least it’s recorded, so I can play it back and see if there was anything useful.

Ooh, I just noticed that this is the 20th day in a row that I have blogged. That’s pretty good for me.

Ok, I’m out.

Baked cookies today for the first time in months. I really need to resurrect the cookie exchange. Especially now that Sonny’s overseas again and needs a care package.

So, I made a rookie mistake today while baking. Don’t worry, I used the right amount of butter this time. I checked twice before I started, once as I was mixing, and again after I taste-tested for quality control and was just sitting in my room. I’m that paranoid about measuring butter.

Anyway, I took the first cookie sheet out of the oven, put the second sheet in, waited 2 minutes, then moved the first tray of cookies onto the cooling rack. I then rotated the cooling rack to the other counter and moved sheet #1 to the stove to refill so the other cooling rack would be ready for sheet #2 when it came out of the oven. Repeated: sheet #2 out of oven, sheet #1 back in, wait 2 minutes, move cookies. Then, I attempted to move sheet #2 to the stove… with my bare hand. And I whimpered like a dog that’s been kicked.

It felt like a full second that my hand was on the corner of the cookie sheet before my brain registered that I shouldn’t be touching that. It was seconds after I had whimpered, pulled my hand away, and Ian called from the other room to find out what had happened that I realized what a dumb move that was. Whoops. Put some ice on it, good as new.

I haven’t burned my hand baking cookies since junior year in college. And that was because I didn’t have an oven mitt. I grabbed the pan with a potholder and the potholder slipped just enough that my thumb was touching the pan, but I couldn’t do anything until I finished putting it down on the counter. (No way I’m dropping fresh-baked cookies. I’m not that big a wimp.)

The cookie sheets I have now are fantastic. My mom got them for me a few years ago. They’re thick aluminum like I see all the fancy people on Food Network use. Distributes the heat evenly and I have never burned cookies on those pans. But they also hold the heat in really well and I don’t use them often enough to make sure I remember. I guess I’ll remember a few weeks longer now.