Ejercicios para personas mayores

so good

in other news, i never did get that prize that was promised to me. "by the end of the week." as in, last week. so fucking typical. feeling humiliated by my hopes and dreams.

i can't believe this is really happening to me!

---

From: Amy Williams
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 4:39 PM
To: Get It; Aerry Rasmussen; Linda Crecraft; Poppy Preston; Megan Harrington
Subject: baby prize!

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to let you know that Megan Harrington was the winner of the “guess the baby’s weight” game that we participated in at Aerry’s baby shower. As you have probably heard, Sienna weighed in at 7 pounds, 11 ounces. Megan guessed 7 lbs, 14 oz. Peter came in at a close second place with 7 lbs, 7 oz. Michael tried to cheat by altering the entries but fortunately confessed to his crime! Megan will receive a prize at the end of the week!

Thank you all for participating!

Amy Williams

oh my god! this is so exciting!!

my view and the weather depress me

and here is my view today

you can probably expect some kind of time lapse photography over the next... like... period in which i still find this interesting.

pictures

this is what it looks like outside my office window








and this is what cute animals look like

bulletin from poppy

GO GET YOUR MAMMIES GRAMMED

This is hysterical! Make sure you read the whole thing. There is a serious message at the end, but you get to laugh on the way there.

For years and years they told me,
Be careful of your breasts.
Don't ever squeeze or bruise them.
And give them monthly tests.
So I heeded all their warnings,
And protected them by law.
Guarded them very carefully,
And I always wore my bra.
After 30 years of astute care,
My gyno, Dr Pruitt,
Said I should get a Mammogram
"OK," I said, "let's do it."
"Stand up here real close" she said,
(She got my boob in line),
"And tell me when it hurts," she said,
"Ah yes! Right there, that's fine."
She stepped upon a pedal,
I could not believe my eyes!
A plastic plate came slamming down,
My hooters in a vise!
My skin was stretched and mangled,
From underneath my chin.
My poor boob was being squashed,
To Swedish Pancake thin.
Excruciating pain I felt,
Within it's viselike grip.
A prisoner in this vicious thing,
My poor defenseless tit!
"Take a deep breath," she said to me,
Who does she think she's kidding?!?
My chest is mashed in her machine,
And woozy I am getting.
"There, that's good," I heard her say,
(The room was slowly swaying.)
"Now, let's have a go at the other one."
Have mercy, I was praying.
It squeezed me from both up and down,
It squeezed me from both sides.
I'll bet SHE'S never had this done,
To HER tender little hide.
Next time that they make me do this,
I will request a blindfold.
I have no wish to see again,
My knockers getting steam rolled.
If I had no problem when I came in,
I surely have one now.
If there had been a cyst in there,
It would have gone "ker-pow!"
This machine was created by a man,
Of this, I have no doubt.
I'd like to stick his balls in there,
And, see how THEY come out!

Mail this to 13 other females. Now, don't break the chain! One female broke the chain, her plumbing became so bad, she now has an outhouse! OK gals, now that you have had your laugh, remember...Breast Cancer Awareness... Go have those boobs checked out and stay healthy! Pass the message on to your mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, cousins, friends, --- and even your enemies. Because the WORST enemy is Breast Cancer

much better

today so far more or less blows

i have a flat tire! and i had two last week! so this seems bad, and possibly ominous. and they are each new punctures, and the tire and rim were checked METICULOUSLY for wayward glass shards before the tube was carefully reinserted....
i got today's flat tire on the 205 bike path, and then i jogged along with my bike about 1/2 or 3/4 of a mile to the clackamas town center... where i MIRACULOUSLY caught the 79 bus, which only comes once in a thousand years, and was only 8 minutes late to work.
but THEN...
i reached into my bag to find my nice office sweater and clean, unsweaty bra and...
THEY WEREN'T THERE! BECAUSE I LEFT THEM AT HOME!
so. i am in a (sweaty) sports bra, biking shorts, slacks, and a black tank top. which, as you know, frankly will not fly.


but there was no time to lose! disasters were afoot. first of all, today is the deadline for airfare deposits from students. one student (who is totally essential due to his construction experience) is pulling out from the program. other students have not contacted us and are nowhere to be found. i will surely be driving the company car every which way after 5pm retrieving checks which will then need to be overnight mailed to sustainable travel. which forced me to cancel my 5:30 appointment to meet with a woman from Portland Impact so that i can be a friendly visitor to oldies in their homesies.
then! i forgot that we'd changed a conference call from 10 to 9:30. so in a panic, i called everyone late! and couldn't get through at all to the nicaraguan architect! so we had the call without him! but he was the whole point of the call!
then i started to feel cold inside my sweaty sports bra.
my plans for the day include:

• using my lunch break to buy an officey sweater and a stick of deodorant from fred meyer. also probably a comb and a hair dryer.
• avoiding my boss whenever possible
• not eating my lunch yet
• kicking and spitting on my "bicycle"

aerry sent to the whole office the following :

blivionmovie!

or go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLHBnt2MepE for possibly higher quality, faster loading?

finally my good work is getting some attention

see link.

wow, and christmas

things are great.

today i went out for lunch with patience, poppy, and keren.
i received:

• a holiday bonus ($250) (!)
  
• back pay for my raise ($400) (!)
  
• many headbands
• also a cute fuzzy headband that looks like christmas lights and lights up at the tips.

• a snowman candle and candle holder (ugly variety)
• fancy lunch out at restaurant (portabello burger)
• a fancy pen
• permission to leave early
• an actually nice scarf (black)
• 4 jars of homemade jam (made by keren's hilarious sister, donna, who is currently in the hospital)
• a lot of information about why everyone we work with at the office is terrible and lazy but why we are so great
• christmas socks

i am instructed that i must spend some of the ridiculous amounts of money i just got on clothes. which is fine by me. also the other day i discovered that patience is also harassed about her wardrobe. so. that's awesome. i also discovered the other day that patience and poppy are my friends. either that or i'm losing my mind.

keren was very sweet and has not even brought up the fact that i skipped work on wednesday. here is a picture of my very nice boss, keren.

nsf ,ppf

the title is code for "bad mood." the code is that both of my hands were one space the the right of the correct placement. and the reason for this code is so that you would not be turned off to reading what is sure to be an excellent and enlightening post.

i am in a bad mood because my boss keren is sometimes mean and/or disrespectful.

here is a picture of keren:

you will hear more about keren in parts 2-12 of tara's very popular holiday party blogging extravaganza.

i guess i don't feel like going into detail because it is actually quite stupid and petty, and because i just told kai over gchat.

but i really really do wish that my workplace were not so stupid.

also, i attended aerry (human resource lady) 's baby shower today and i bought her

1. a hanging whats-it-called with danglies... a... shit. mobile. i guess. with a butterfly or other flying bug type thing with wings that crackle
2. baby washcloths, cute variety

i am feeling crabby and also i am probably premenstrual again which leads me to believe that

1. this blog is keeping me better in touch with the various issues of my menstrual cycle and that
2. i hate my menstrual cycle

WAIT!! BREAKING NEWS!! this email LITERALLY just arrived in my inbox, from poppy of course, WHILE i was blogging.
so fresh off the press we have:

Holiday Part: Part I - The Trek

Holiday Party

Part I

The Trek

I left work earlier than usual last Friday so I could get to Megan's holiday party on time. Megan's work was throwing their annual holiday party in a Milwaukee restaurant and I, as "guest," was chafing under the awesome responsibility bestowed upon me. The day before, I had been giddily looking forward to an evening of detached judging, mental note-taking, and free food eating, but as the time of departure approached, I found myself growing anxious about the impression I might make on people. Would I, wearing slacks and a common sweater (but not a sleek holiday dress with matching earrings) deepen Megan's reputation as a lax dresser? Would I falter under the conversational strain of Megan's uber-intense boss, who had apparently "scared" Taya when they interacted in the workplace? As the tension built up in my brain, I realized that my stomach and lower intestines were the body parts actually bearing the brunt of my struggle. Four blocks from my office and one block from the bus stop, I ducked into the enormous Office Depot(c) and took refuge in anonymous restroom time. Fifteen or twenty humiliating minutes later, I darted up the escalator and ran to the bus stop, where, as my fifth sense had correctly detected, the bus to Milwaukee was approaching.

Megan was slated to get on the same bus as me further into the route. Sure enough, only minutes before our stop approached, a fuzzy hat and skirt-clad Megan stepped on board. "So," she asked skeptically, "we're supposed to get off this bus in 3 minutes? Does that seem right to you?" The bus driver, who had already won my heart with her chummy conversation with a cyclist earlier in the ride, soon called out our stop "SE 26th and McGloughlin!" and wished us to "be safe out there."

The bus rolled off. Silence. Our eyes warily scanned the dark forest flanking either side of what appeared to be a busy highway to nowhere. "Oh man," lamented Megan, "is this really our stop?" "Err..uhhh," I concurred, with equally helpless confusion. "Excuse me," Megan said, turning to the teeny bopper to our right, the only other passenger who had chosen to join us in this no man's land. "Do you know where Amadeus Restaurant is from here? We know that it's on 22nd and Sparrow." "Hmm," said the teeny bopper, only half-thinking about the question, but fully sizing-up our sorry predicament, "I don't know where that is, but you shouldn't have gotten off at this stop. There's nothing 'round here." "See that," she said, pointing toward a shadowy cluster of trees and bushes, "that's all residential. There isn't any restaurant 'round here." Megan continued her inquiry, seeking out last ditch specifics. I chimed in with a couple point of clarification questions. "You shouldn't have gotten off at this stop," she scolded again before running past a first lane of traffic. "Gotta check for cross streets; next time check for cross streets!" she shouted back at us maternally and futilely as she disappeared into the night. "If there isn't anything out here, then where the hell did she go?" I wondered aloud. We gazed into the blank night. "That's a good point," answered Megan.

Our disapproving guide had pointed us in a plausibly correct direction; the otherwise worthless Tri-Met printout had instructed us to go west. Unfortunately, thirty seconds after our fellow bus rider had vanished into thin air, Megan and I were disagreeing on where exactly the girl had been pointing when she was saying which way west was (Ed. Note: Megan turned out to be 100% correct). We took Megan's route, and after treking past a bus stop for the bus we had just been on, we approached a lit intersection.

Our first task was to run across the street to the 7-11, where the employee inside revealed that he couldn't tell us which way to go because he wasn't from around here. Thankfully, he didn't keep trying to help us find our way for too long after that crucial piece of information about his shoddy location-finding qualifications had been revealed. We were starting to get worried about being too late for the party. The time "6:00 p.m." had been engraved on the email dinner invitations, but Megan had discovered through passive eaves-dropping in her office breakroom that arriving this early would result in a lengthy, awkward waiting period. But now, we feared that "fashionably late" would turn into "shamefully tardy."

We did know that, at a minimum, we had to get from 26th to 22nd street. After some hope-filled scurrying, we found that the street above 26th was 27th Place and the street below was 27th Avenue. "Nooooo!" I cried out at our Hitchcockian dillemma. But Megan, overcoming the pain in her high-heeled feet, charged us in a direction that turned out to be westward. Feeling our way toward the holiday cheer that filled us with such dread and with the assistance of two super helpful dudes standing outside a motel, we finally came across a sign: "Amadeus Restaurant." "Yay!!!" we cheered. Then we suppressed our levity to make room for the quiet determination needed to rapidly scale the winding road leading up to the castle-like establishment. Under cover of darkness, we made the final touch-ups to our new personages. Stray hairs were tucked; bright leg-warmers were removed; last giggles were expelled.

Once we went through the doors, I could tell that Megan and I had entered a world of elegance previously unknown to us. A white-haired lady sat at a baby grand. I wondered if she had been plucked straight from the church-organ circuit just to play for this hoity-toity gathering. Several chandelier-style light fixtures hung from the ceiling. Even nature had done itself up for the occasion--a formidably large pine cone, a maple leaf, and a walnut adorned the top face of the piano, each gilded in pure, 40 carat gold spray paint.

"We're with Concepts in Community Living," Megan announced professionally to the matre' d. He showed us down a flight of stairs into what had surely once been a medieval dungeon (it was freezing). A standing pool of perms and ties had collected down there. "There are a bunch of people who aren't even here yet," Megan whispered to me, "We came at the right time. If we would have gotten here at 5:57, we would have been screwed." I shuddered at the thought.

i'm feeling very concerned about tonight

tonight is the staff holiday party. i am bringing tara. it has been an interesting day at the office, with yelling, and tensions, and now culminating in my boss drinking wine in her office next door with two of her friends. at 3pm.
my boss called me into her office to say,

"so, are you going to get a perm before the party?"

she also said,

"you have NO idea what i am getting you for christmas, ha!"

implying it has something to do with my appearance. my appearance having been a running and painful theme for weeks now.
at some point during the weekend you can expect a post with a detailed analysis of the party, hopefully featuring a guest blogger, the hilarious and friendly tara anderson.

well well well

two can play at this game, my pumpkin

my darling

my.... minion.

straw poll

who is a better blogger, me or mercedes?

(note: blogger quality is to be measured solely by number of blogs/month. other criteria--such as interestingness, cuteness, and the level at which the blogger is missed by the judges--are not permissible.)

pinkeye

i have pinkeye. but that's ok. sort of.

holy fuck

i just got my computer and it is fucking goddamned awesome.