Education time!

Alright... here's another pet peeve. People who use "XST" for all of their times, even when we're in Daylight Savings Time. I think a lot of people think "standard time" means like "official time" or something along those lines... it doesn't! In this context, it basically means, non-Daylight Savings Time. And it DOES matter!

In Oregon, from October - March, you should say PST. From March - October you should say PDT (Pacific Daylight Time)! That differentiates. I understand that it doesn't matter 99% of the time, but it does in a few instances.... for example:

Last night, Geoff said "what time is 10 PM MST for us?" I said it's technically 10 PM for us too, because we're still in Daylight Savings Time, so 10 PM MST = 10 PM PDT. But I also told him that MOST people don't use the ST/DT designations correctly, so it was more likely 9 PM PDT, just because of a usage error.

Also - if you're trying to talk to someone in a state like Arizona that doesn't use daylight savings time, the designation also becomes important. If I want to set up a meeting with someone in Arizona and they say it's at 8 AM MST, they really mean it - so it's 8 AM PDT or 9 AM PST.

The lesson learned here is just be aware of your ST/DT designations and realize that they DO mean something different. If everyone starts using them correctly, then we can actually use them for what they're intended for. YAY!

Edited: one more thing I thought of. When in doubt - just say PT/MT/CT/ET. No reason to specify standard or Daylight time if you're not sure!

Stuff

First of all, I'm sick of coming up with blog titles. I rarely blog about something that can be neatly wrapped up into some small little title. Nuts.

Moving on, I have a confession. I am actively avoiding someone who works in the same building as me. It's a sad situation. I know when he/she eats lunch, so I have REARRANGED my lunch schedule so that I eat at a seperate time. Like I'm seriously afraid to see him/her in the cafe! Only I'm not really afraid... it's like I know this person as an acquaintance but don't really have anything in common with him/her, so I feel it's awkward when we talk. So instead of chancing running into him/her and talking, I avoid him/her. There is an entire part of our building I won't go to because I know he/she works there. I should just get over myself. What a fool.

I called into a radio show for the very first time this morning! I listen to 104.1 the Fish in Portland, and every morning on the Pete and Brenda show they have the Nearly Impossible Question. I have a decent guess for the answer about 20% of the time, although I'm not always right. And a lot of times they give a hint anyway. So this morning's question was "Up until recently there were very few books written about this topic, but there have been almost 100 in the last 3 years". I got in the car about 10 minutes after they first asked the question, so they were giving a hint when I was driving to work. Tthat clue was “car carriers, car seats, and strollers”. So a bunch of people guessed babies and stuff, which I thought was dumb because think of Dr. Spock in the 70’s! There are tons of books on that. So I was like “you idiots, it’s obviously multiple babies” (cause of all the infertility treatments and stuff). So they gave the phone number and I called it for the very first time!!! Pete himself answered (he’s the host!) and said “Pete and Brenda, nearly impossible question, what’s your guess?” I said “um, multiple babies” (I was thrown off by him answering!) and he said “no” and hung up. DANG!!!! I ran into work (cause I was in the parking lot when I got through on the phone, took about 10 busy signals before I did) and listened on the computer… they didn’t play my answer, but they played someone else who said multiple babies without the um. But it was fun!!! I’m going to call every day now, at least if I have an inkling (I probably have an inkling about once a week). You win great gift certificates to restaurants and stuff!

By the way... the correct answer was "Baby Name Books". LAME.

Patrick sent me the menu for where he works today - it was SHOCKINGLY similar to the menu where I work. I was going to just link the menus, but I'll just post a sample instead:

Patrick's work:

Tuesday
Au Bon Pain Soup - Potato Cheese - $2.39/$2.89
Breakfast - Breakfast Sub - $5.59
Exhibition - Pasta Primavera - $6.29
Wild Greens - Garlic Roasted Shrimp Salad- $7.29
Deli - Roast Turkey, Provolone Cheese and Bacon Stacker - $6.29
Entree - Lemon Pepper Chicken - $5.99 - $6.99
Grill - New York Deli Burger - $6.99

My work:

Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Soup - Ham and White Bean, Red Bean, Beef and Collar Greens, Cabbage and Rice - $1.80
Breakfast Grill - Breakfast Croissant Sandwich - $2.25
Lunch Grill - Tuna Melt with Fresh Avocado - $3.25
Healthy Grill Entree - Hazelnut Encrusted Chicken Breast with Dijon mustard Sauce - $5.50
Crossroads Menu - Mustard Braised Pork with Roasted Red Potatoes, Vegetarian Leek and corn Stuffed Peppers served with Steamed Broccoli - $5.25/4.95
Personal Pizza - Enchilada Chicken with Grilled Onions and Peppers - $4.25
International Station - Bento Chicken with Jasmine or Brown rice and Stir fry Vegetables - $5.50
M-F Off Shift Crossroads - Chicken cordon bleu with Cream Sauce - $5.25
M-F Off shift Grill - Chipotle Chicken Wrap - $3.75

I was just VERY amused at how similar the two menus were! I guess corporate America is all the same....

Has anyone else noticed how much bank the Facebook peeps are raking in with the "gifts" they sell each day? They have "today's new gift" every day, and the availability of these gifts is generally 1 - 10 million. At $1 each, that's up to $10 million a day, provided they sell every one. I'm quite sure they don't, but SERIOUSLY! $10 million dollars a day for being able to create a graphic and allow people to select it, pay for it, and post it to someone else's "page". That's nuts. I wish I was so brilliant! And now by mocking this I have probably ruined what little chance I had to work at Facebook.... which is unfortunate, but I guess that's something I'll have to live with. Every time I check they have no jobs for me anyway!

Weekend in review

This weekend was pretty good! Friday night Geoff and I went to PF Changs. Normally I put PF Changs in the same category as Cheesecake Factory - overrated and overpriced! They're decent food, but just because they turn the lights down a little lower than Chili's do they really need to charge twice as much? People seem to rave about these places, and it's just lame to me. Needless to say, PF Changs REALLY hit the spot Friday - I think it was better than it has ever been before on Friday night. Yum! Oh, and we watched Evan Almighty, which was very lame as predicted. Geoff thought it was cute.

Saturday I got up around 8 and went to visit Addy at Target... that was fun! Saturday night Geoff's parents had a birthday dinner for him - his birthday is tomorrow. His mom made tacos - his grandmother is Mexican, so the tacos are super good. I have only had these tacos once before and they are VERY tasty. They're going on the list of things to make in the camper. :) We had a really fun evening with his parents, as well as his grandmother and cousin!

Sunday night we went to Tim and Shannon's (Tim is a coworker of Geoff) for dinner and a movie. They made great steaks, cauliflower with cheese sauce, and salad for dinner. TASTY! And a strawberry cake with cream cheese icing for desert. Then we watched The Holiday. I absolutely adore that movie!

And now it's Monday... 3 and a half more work days until CAMPING!!!!!!

Update on Google Chat

My sister got it and now we are chatting away from here to Spain!!! LOVE IT!!! Everyone should get it!! Oh and Patrick plugged in his headphones to his microphone jack and left me a voicemail, it worked well.

GOOGLE TALK!

So this morning, while I was doing some user acceptance testing of a new system at work, I was GChating with my friend Andy. As usual, I was lamenting the fact that GChat doesn't blink when you have a new IM, because it was lowering my productivity (I had to check back and forth between what I was doing and the GChat window to see if Andy had said anything). Andy informed me that he used Google Talk to cure just that. I said that I had it at home, but didn't use it much because I don't use my home computer much. I didn't have it at work because you can't easily use most IM services through work because of our firewall. Andy said this was similar to GChat and worked fine. So I installed it - it is the CAT'S MEOW!!!!

Andy had to go run some errands, so I IMed Patrick and forced him to get it too. He got it and then he pressed the "Call" button on there to call me. I answered the call and we were like "what does this do?" Then he said he could hear me typing!!! So I spoke "Hello?" and he typed "I can hear you!!!" He didn't have a microphone so he couldn't talk back, but I yammered at him for a while.

Then I had some meetings and stuff so we had a hiatus... then just a while ago Patrick and I were IMing again and I saw a voicemail option! So I left him a "voicemail" - basically it's just an audio file that is sent to your gmail! It's super cool! And there is a British woman who tells you to leave a message at the "meep". It is too frickin' funny. I absolutely love it. Now I'm trying to get my sister to download it so we can talk while she's in Spain. And by "trying" I mean "sent her one email and she's currently downloading it on the slow Spanish internet". SWEET! Up with Google Talk!!!

The one drawback: the smiley faces don't turn like they do in gchat. But they do turn blue...

Just life

First off, I made this recipe for Spicy Bean Soup the other night. VERY tasty! I only used 1/4 cup of chili powder instead of 1/2 cup... 1/2 a cup of chili powder in anything is just nuts!

I moved up to "Full Member" from "New Member" status in the RV forum I've been reading... YEAH!

Tonight is book club... I finished the book on Monday night. It got so intriguing at the end that I couldn't stop and I just kept reading, which is too bad because I rushed through finishing it and I didn't read as thoroughly. It was still good though.

We're going camping a week from today. I can't wait.

I got the Hood to Coast registration all mailed in yesterday. I didn't go to the actual post office, but I did go to a blue post office box which I believe to be just as good. I dropped it off about 1:15 and pickup was 2:45 so I should be safe. Now we just have to wait 6 weeks... oh, and I'm extra excited because my friend Kathleen from high school is going to run with us! So I am really hoping that it works out for us to run again next year. Some people have run like 25 years in a row... that is just nuts. In the beginning it was obviously easier to get into the relay, but the last 5 or 10 years have been much more difficult. But if you're fast, then it's easy because the top 6 teams from every division get automatically accepted each year. It also helps to be old, because there are fewer teams competing from the older divisions. But as long as you have even one member below 30, you're not eligible for any of the "old" divisions. Ha - I love that, 30 is old. Geoff is only 21... we have at least eight years to go until we can be old. And it's not like we're all of the sudden gonna rock the 30 year olds... maybe when we're all over 50. Just 29 years to go! :) Wow I just spent quite a bit of my life (and yours) on that. Good thing I type fast.

I took a typing test after I wrote that to see how I did. I went to www.typingtest.com and just did all of the defaults - ick! My net speed was 89 words per minute, accuracy 94%, gross speed 94 words per minute. That is not very good for me. I usually come in over 100 words per minute with 98 or higher percent accuracy. Chalk it up to being too early in the morning? Maybe I'll try again in a week or so.

Speaking of typing - yesterday I had a headache (apparently this will be the long winded version of this story) so I went home from work around 1 and slept until 7 PM. I went to bed again around 11 PM and fell asleep, but I was up quite a bit during the night. During one of those times I was awake, I was thinking about how cool it would be if when you were at the dentist's office, you got a little computer that you could type on so you could talk to the hygentist. It's always awkward when she has to be a talk show host and just yammer at you the whole time, it'd be so much cooler if you could just type what you wanted to say and it would talk back to her. Maybe I'll implement that at my dental practice. Which has gone nowhere, by the way.

Hood to Coast Day

So today is the day that Hood to Coast entry forms must be mailed in. This morning I double checked my application, had Cindy review it, copied it, added the check, and put it in the envelope. Cindy was like "why'd you wait until the last minute?" No no... this isn't the "last" minute, this is the "only" minute. Only forms that are correctly filled out, have the correct check with them, and are postmarked ON October 17th will be considered. Then it's a lottery from that point. That's why I was so careful about making sure it was done correctly - this is my only chance to get it right! I will have 11 other team members who will be disappointed if we don't get in... and there's still a high chance of that, but I certainly don't want it to be my fault. I will drive to the post office (don't trust the work mail for this one) during lunch to get it mailed off! Scary day.

Random Stuff

Yesterday Kristie and I went apple picking (sorta... that's a story for another time) and then made apple pies! We had a blast and they turned out really well. :) Yummy.

Today I sorta felt like taking a drive around... so I went to the Dollar Tree. In the past, I have not been a big dollar store patron, but it is a perfect store for camper items. I have found that the Dollar Tree is much bigger and better than Everything's a Buck, which is much closer to my house. Today I bought ten items - two packages of "snack size" chocolate chip cookie mix (makes like 18 cookies), two bottles of body wash for me (one for home since I'm running low, one for the camper), one small bottle of body wash for Geoff (for camper), a two pack of loofahs (for home, Geoff uses them too), and 6 pack of mini-loofahs (for camper), a little set of tweezers / nail clippers for the camper, a 500 piece puzzle for camper entertainment, and a two pack of small Purell-type stuff... after we're done getting the camper all hitched up to the car and we're ready to go, it'd be nice to clean our dirty hands. I also went to Ross but couldn't find anything the camper couldn't live without. I really am trying NOT to buy too much stuff for the camper, since it really doesn't need the extra weight, but it's so fun to outfit our mini home! Way more fun than the real home. I think because you have to actually think about your space and weight restrictions, so you have to try to find good, small, useful purchases. That's one thing that makes the dollar store so attractive, they have smaller sizes of stuff. I also went to Big Lots the other day... they also have good camper stuff. But nothing I couldn't live without there. Just a place to keep in mind if I do need anything for the camper.

When Geoff gets home from work today, we're going to Ikea with Kristie! I love Ikea. :) So might the camper... ;-) Just kidding. Sorta.

A few months ago I started noticing more and more of these little stick people on the back of people's cars. Typically minivans, occasionally an SUV. I mentioned it to my friend Patrick, and he said he'd noticed them a lot too!!! We both think they're absolutely awful. No one needs to know about your family, how many kids you have, and CERTAINLY not how many pets you have! One of us found ourstickfamily.com, where you can even custom order your stick family. Now we always text each other when we see a stick family, especially if it's "custom". The other day I saw a lesiban stick family - they had a rainbow bumper sticker that said "FAMILY" on it... and then above it they had two mommies, two little girls, and a dog in stick family stickers. Patrick replied by text that that seemed dangerous, "you never know what kind of right wing psycho is driving behind you". Funny. Today I texted him to inform him that I saw a stick family all wearing Mickey Mouse ears - no reply yet on that one. And now there probably won't be a reply becuase he won't want me to blog it for the whole world to know. ;-) Anyway, the stick families are taking over the world. Do your part and DON'T buy a stick family! If you do though, be sure it's a custom one of something absolutely ridiculous so I can mock it.

Now back to reading my book for book club - The Drowing Tree by Carol Goodman. It's not bad.

Becoming a dentist

I've been thinking lately about becoming a dentist. I have a couple of issues with this: (a) I never took biology or organic chemistry and (b) my grades aren't good enough. I wish I'd had this brilliant idea while actually in college and I could have done something about it. Although I suppose I could take orgo and bio at Portland State and get As in them, then do well on my DAT and still manage to get into a decent dental school. Volunteering at a dental clinic would also help. I (totally unrelatedly) have a dentist appointment today, so I might talk to them about becoming a dentist. I'm not sure if I'm ready for that though... might just continue to research for now and then go from there.

I'll keep you posted on what I'm going to do with my life...

Quick...

Just a few comments from my family (who for some reason refuses to comment) on my pictures from the first camping trip:

"It looks like your bear is passed out from all of the camping fun!" - Mom

"I thought the Tahoe was big, but next to the trailer it looks like a Smart Car!" - Christine

Not much else going on... there is some talk of a gals excursion to go pick apples and maybe bake apple pie this weekend. SO EXCITED! Might even turn it into a camping overnighter, we'll see. :) Fun either way. Have another camping trip planned for the end of October, Geoff's mom is going to join us for a couple of nights on that one. I am planning on taking a quilting class, but I realized I might need to learn to sew first, so I have to stop into Jo Ann's to figure that out. I don't know why I've had a quilt obsession lately. Am I 80 years old? Northwestern won in OT last weekend... wish I was in Evanston to see the purple clock tower. That's all. I want to go for a bike ride but I will probably just go run at the gym instead. Hood to Coast 2008 is in just 10 months... want to run on my team? Email me or comment.

Second camping trip!

We went camping again! We went Thursday through Monday and had an A-MAZ-ING time. Our friends Kendra and Beau joined us for Thursday night through Friday afternoon, then Saturday Geoff went into work (we were camping nearby at a new state park!) and then Sunday we went to a birthday party. But really, we camped. It was so relaxing and nice to just be together. Some pictures...

Kendra, Beau, and I all knew how to play "Mexican Train" dominoes. Geoff did not. So we taught him... and he LOVED it. He was like me when I first learned how to play - wanted to play nonstop. I think that's all I did spring quarter senior year of college. I had Double Nine dominoes that I brought along, and Geoff decided he wanted to get a bigger set. So he got Double Fifteens when we were out on Sunday... this is him unpacking all of his dominoes!

This is the results of a round of Mexican Train Geoff and I played Monday night. Yes, this seriously is from ONE ROUND played by two people. Double Fifteens is nuts!

Our beautiful campsite! :) Number 54 at LL Stub Stewart State Park.

Geoff's early birthday present (his birthday is in two weeks). A fancy new TV in the camper... we used our Costco rebate check for it.

Beau and Geoff. This picture turned out really crummy!

A random shot of our kitchen??

Another campsite shot. This one is mostly for Patrick to mock - note me reading. ;-)