See? Water. Fish.

"My morning appointments and Stephanie dr appt make Friday tough the schedule!"

Allison! Come teach my boss English.

It's so hot!!! How can it be 50 over the weekend and 85 today? My tricking Spring didn't work, we skipped it completely, according to my brother. He's the new Punxsutawney Phil of the summer. When he comes out of the house and just about dies from heat exhaustion, you know summer has come.

On the downside, I really hope one of us was adopted, because as cute as Phil is, I don't want to be a groundhog as I would be if my brother was.

I think that my problem is that I don't want to make the wrong decision and be button-holed into something that turns out to be wrong for me. And so I don't make any decision. Or maybe it's that I don't think I'll be good enough at anything, which is dumb because I imagine anyone reading this knows that I have a pretty healthy opionion of my intelligence.

I'm up to three different future plans. And some side trips that I wouldn't mind taking.

I am having a bad week. I've had so much stuff to do I've been skipping lunch and staying late. But then I'm all stressed about everything I have to do tomorrow and I can't relax, so I just sit and zone out in front of the tv. And we're short-staffed at work with people on vacation and sick and on assignment elsewhere. Responsibilities are being passed around and balls are being dropped. Hotels are cancelling reservations and NO ONE WITH ANY AUTHORITY WILL GIVE ME ANY ANSWERS.

May will be good.

Some day this week is Administrative Professionals Day (I don't know which day). Is that the saddest thing. Veterans, mothers, and administrative professionals: these are the people who deserve days dedicated to them.

Some people are taking a couple of us "administrative professionals" out to lunch later this week. Hey, at least that should be interesting.

My blond moment.

I pulled up to a four-way stop double-marked with a blinking red light. And I sat there waiting for it to turn green.

I realized today, or was it yesterday, that I'm a snob. It's true. Not as much as I seem sometimes, I suppose, but I am anyhow. I wonder how I got this way.

I don't think my skirt plan is working. It's gray and raining today.

My family makes me so insecure. I love them, and we have fun together, but I realize that they (and me too) love to make snarky comments behind everyone's back. Everyone else is immature and inconsiderate, but of course they are perfect. And they get all up in arms if someone makes a suggestion about their or their childrens' actions and immediately start attacking the attacker. No so meanly as it sounds of course, but every one has a holier-than-thou attitude and wants to judge everyone else and not be judged themselves and ahhhhhhhhhh.

And I never hear things about myself, but they must talk about me when I'm not around.

I bought a dress last weekend and I wore it to work today and I felt pretty all day long. Dresses are good. And it was sunny and nice today, but, as someone as work said, today could have been both the beginning and end of summer, our one day of summer.

I killed my neck!!

Okay everybody, you've got to help me. It's like a telethon, over the internet, and I'm not asking for money. This week is skirt week. I'm trying to trick Spring into thinking that it's already time to be here. And technically, it is, even though it's just April and we're still in-ing like a lion. I figure, if it sees skirts, it will figure that maybe it hasn't done it's math right and it will come sooner. It works with me, I forget what day and month it is all the time.

Switching gears, I'm going to see about reserving that condo I emailed some peeps about. I want to go, and if no one else does, well then, I'll have a really expensive and quiet week to myself in Maui.

I feel like I need to re-invent myself musically. I want to be into obscure, indie, crazy music that does what no other music does.

Spring is finally here, for today at least. Who knows what season tomorrow will bring.

I had the dumbest bout of nostalgia a little bit ago. I saw, like, six yellow jackets fighting on a lamp post and I missed the days when we all sat outside for lunch and had to run away from the bees. Especially Cassie. I'm thinking I need to take a 3-day weekend and go visit her.

I've been so sleepy the past couple days. I don't know what's going on. Or I guess I don't want to know what's going on. It doesn't help that I'm sitting down all day long. I've been having mini rock-out sessions to the music on my computer to wake me up. Unfortunatly, it looks like I may need very large rock-out sessions to do any good.

Sleep is such a precarious thing.

We are calling Maju's visit a success! Even though we didn't follow my plan (at all), we did lots of cool things. Even though we got lost in downtown Seattle several times, we always found our way to where we were going. I think we did everything that someone visiting Seattle has to, touristy, historical, outdoorsy, nightlife, and lots and lots of good food!

So, if anyone is interested in coming to Seattle, here is a sample itinerary of the super exclusive but not too expensive Seattle Tours by Jessica. I even ordered the rain, because what would a trip to Seattle be without a little (or a lot of) rain?

Friday:

• Lunch at my current favorite American-style diner. Not fancy or exotic, but good food a little different from what you'd find elsewhere and a huge menu.
• Shopping trip to a local Asian food store for supplies.
• Trip to the east for a spectacular waterfall view and a lovely walk in the rain.
• Dinner at a really good India place (lucky guess, I had never been before).
• Back to a downtown Seattle poolhall to meet with old friends and make fun of the horrible DJ controlling the dance floor.

Saturday:

• Indian food is even better the next morning!
• Pick up the client's dad at the airport and straight back downtown to the Seattle Underground tour. Too complicated to explain, you'll have to come and I'll take you. Totally fun and unique experience. Where else does a city build an 8-35-foot retaining wall around every city block? Hey, at least they put in ladders at the corners.
• Lunch at the Cafe Poloma. Yummy mediterranian food (also a lucky guess).
• Door to door taxi service during crazy construction around hotels
• Back to Tour Headquarters, and I allow the client to cook for me. Yummy yummy!
• Downtown again to the supposed Salsa nightspot. Unfortunately, Seattle does not boast a large latino population, and that it does boast doesn't seem to have inherited the dancing gene. But good music!

Sunday:

• Early dim sum lunch at House of Hong in Seattle's attempt at Chinatown (it's called the International District). Hey, at least the food is good. I highly recommend the coconut mochi (or whatever they call in it China)!
• Shopping at Pike Place Market. Hey, I'll even help you spend your money!
• Meet my grandparents and get a cool gift. Eat a cookie (or three) and scram for the airport.

Not a bad itinerary for a little over 50 hours.

I've been speaking with a Transylvanian accent (or my version of one) every once in a while for the past couple days. I wonder what that's about.

So the conference. Even though I was getting hit on by guys who work with sewer water and probably never finished high school, it was fun, better than being at work. It never got too weird, there was a table between me and them and I'm sure that the engineer I was there with *who's like 6 foot 28 inches* wouldn't have let any of them actually kidnap me. It was actually kind of funny when we went to dinner at the casino (along with about everyone else from the conference) and some of the water people got drunk and started playing random songs on the piano. Besides the fact that they were playing and singing different songs at the same time, they were actually pretty good.

But instead of sitting at the computer doing who-knows-what all day long, I got to harass people to come over and talk to me all day long. Not that it wasn't tiring, but at least the only thing I did on a computer that day was check my email and read the gossip pages.

I am blogging from my first business trip. Isnt's that cool? We'll see how it goes tomorrow before I indicate whether I want to repeat this experience. I'm in Ocean Shores, WA: not the most glamourous of spots, but not bad. It's here:


I'm sitting in my hotel room with a view of the beach on their wireless internet. This is a hundred times preferable to sitting at home.

However, even though the company is paying for food, lodging, and gas expenses, it's been an expensive trip! Couple of new purses, a pair of earings or two...a really cool lamp from Bali. I just hope it doesn't get squashed on my way back, it's 4 feet of fragile wicker-type stuff. Fortunately, in a way, the stores don't open until 11 and they close at 5, so there's only a limited amound of time I can have my credit card out. And we thought Aliso Viejo was bad!

Lately, I have been desperate to be around people, anyone. But I just want to be alone because I know I won't get what I want out of anyone. What do I want? Not quite sure.

It started Saturday, and it was a bad bad day. I felt like that girl in elementary school who was always chasing after her group of "friends" and you felt sorry for her because she was so desperate and everyone thought she was pathetic. I kind of came to terms with it on Sunday. More like I just gave up and sought silence.

For some reason, I was really cheerful and energetic on Monday at work. Until I got home.

There's probably more, but I have to go.

Woo hoo, it's the weekend.

I'm on this new nightly routine. I switched to taking showers at night because I always try to convince myself in the morning that no one will notice if I don't take a shower. So now I shower at night, and it's working great, I think. It's only been about 3 days, so we'll see if it keeps up. The only complaint is that I've been getting really hot during the night. I don't know if it has anything to do with the showering thing, but it started the same day I did, so I'm suspicious.