Zeo's Thoughts and Wanderings

So, while trying to find my best friend's phone number, I started sifting through three years' worth of AIM chat logs. Haven't found her number yet, but I did find this exchange from 2 years ago that amused me:

Me: It feels so much later than 9.
Her: Long day?
Me: I don't know why, I didn't do much. But I did get up at 4 with Matt....
Her: That might do it.
Her: You're at seventeen hours already.
Her: Your bra is about to expire. :)
Me: Nah. I didn't put anything resembling a bra on until like 11:30.
Her: Ah, well then.
Her: (I still love that line, though.)
Me: It is very true.
Her: Which makes it funnier.
Me: That, and my period started yesterday. I'm trying to plot the pattern. Mid-March,
not in April, early May, mid-June, so I should skip July then have it early August?
Her: I started mine a few days ago. I think it was something like three weeks. I have no
pattern.
Me: Same here; I thought it was holidays (St Patricks Day, Cinco de Mayo were the last two)
but then I'd have started last Sunday on Father's Day. :-P
Her: Celebratory ovaries?
Me: I don't think even the Shadow knows.
Her: *snicker*
Her: Wrong organ anyway, he's more concerned with hearts.
Me: they all look the same once they've been through a shredder.
Her: So true.

Not sure WHAT was up with me that night. But it made me giggle, so I had to share.

...$115 to go.  

I'm trying to earn/save $130, half the cost of a round-trip plane ticket from Pittsburgh to Raleigh and back.  I want Ellen to come visit in October (one could almost say I NEED her to visit, especially after this past week), but she has her own financial troubles.  So, I looked up no-frills, low-cost airlines and found JetBlue has a decent price.  

So, I'm selling off more clothing that doesn't fit me.  I'm trying craigslist instead of eBay this time around: no fees for listing.  So far, I've sold two pairs of boys size 18 jeans for $10 (I picked them up in the women's plus section of the thrift store without trying them on, got home and realized they wouldn't fit on one leg) and 2 cardigans for $5.  The jeans paid by PayPal, and the cardigans will be picked up on Saturday (so most likely cash).  I have about $75 worth of other things listed, mostly dresses.

I'm trying to keep all the money made in my PayPal account, since I have a PayPal debit I can use as a Visa at jetblue.com.  We'll see how it goes.  

I'm half-tempted to draw up a simple thermometer with $10 hash-marks, put it in the sidebar of my lj.  :) 

Ganked from alessar


Choose a Ninja Burger Career at the
Ninja Burger website.

So amusing, because Jess and I got lost today trying to get to the museums. We found the museum, but couldn't navigate around the one-way streets to get to the parking lot and wound up back on Glenwood, but I found the mall instead.

We're trying again tomorrow. This time, Matt will be driving.

Ellen's schedule was changed to a later shift.

I watched the taped Dr. Who eps with Matt yesterday, and really enjoyed them. I think part of my wandering off Friday night was because of all the flipping commercial breaks. I've almost gotten to the point where I prefer to tape things and watch them later because of the wonderful fast-forward button. Which works well and fine as long as I remember to push the play button to get it to stop fast-forwarding. Repeatedly pushing the fast-forward button is not as effective, and just frustrates me.

I think Sci-Fi inserted more commercial breaks than what the BBC had. There just seemed to be a lot of really weird breaks that interrupted the flow. I already added the season one set to my wish list (not that I'll ever get anything on it without purchasing it myself, but hey). And I love that they're using the original Doctor Who theme music. I have a sci-fi cd, a collection of themes, and it's one of the ones I love. Made me want to start watching the original series.

Bacon Ranch Pringles are...interesting. Probably won't get them again.

Speaking of bacon, I wrote another fluffyish fic with a touch of Grissom angst. The opening line, "Her kiss tasted of peppermint and bacon" had been with me for almost a month. It was slow enough at work that I could map out the rest of the story in my head, and type it up last night. Posted to ff.n.

Alan's job was posted online; I went ahead and applied for it. Worst that can happen is they say no. Or nothing at all. (shrug)

One of my best friends is...okay, I don't want to use the words complaining, griping, etc, but she's been mopey about not having a significant other. And it hit me the other day, y'know, there's a guy down here that I think she'd get along well with. He's intelligent, caring, NICE...but she's in Columbus, OH and he's in Chapel Hill/Durham, NC. If distance wasn't a factor, I'd try to introduce them when she's down here in June.

Then again, I'm not totally positive he's straight. :/ I might try to introduce them anyway. Never hurts to meet a potential friend (well, unless said potential friend turns out to be an axe murderer with designs on your ears, but I'm pretty sure John's not an axe murderer).

Yesterday, Matt and I went into Carrboro to have lunch with John and Heather. We went to Spotted Dog, a local restaurant. John was thrilled. He's a vegetarian, and about 90% of the entrees on the lunch menu were vegetarian. His exact comment was, "Oh, so this is how the rest of the world feels!"

After lunch, Matt, Heather and I walked around a little mall across from the restaurant. It was cute, mostly if not all local stores, a lot of gifty-type shops with scarves and glass, and one store that sold a lot of Kubricks, Japanese toys that look a little like larger Lego people.

Came home, and I went back to sleep. That's about par for the course for me. Matt woke me up when it was time to make dinner. See, last night was Chris's last dinner here, so as a farewell, I made tatertot casserole. There were no leftovers. (pout)

So today, we're helping Chris move. Matt called in sick (mental health day, everyone needs one).

And I got McDonald's. I can't explain why, but for some reason, their cheeseburgers (and double cheeseburgers) just taste soooo good. I get cravings every few months. None of the other fast food chain cheeseburgers taste quite like them. Maybe it's the thin patties, the not-quite-white bun, or something. But when I start to crave them, I MUST have one. At least I'm learning control. Once in Ohio, when I craved them, I bought 4 regular cheeseburgers. Scarfed down three before slowing down. :-P Today, I just got a double cheeseburger and a value fry. Still finished them before we got home, but there was construction traffic. (innocent look) Well, there WAS.

And I had half a pint of ice cream when I got home. Now it's just lemon water for the rest of the night (hah hah, there will be some snackage during Sci-Fi Friday).

Well, this past weekend a friend of mine flew down to visit. So, a recap of the past few days.

Thursday: Jess calls me around 4 pm. Her plane, which is supposed to leave Columbus at 5, is still in Raleigh. Mechanical problems. Long story short, she finally got in at 9 pm. We stayed up talking until midnight, at which point I had to crash.

Friday: Spent morning talking until it was time enough that I could go to S&K and pick up my 3-day paycheck. So, we wandered around the Prime Outlets for a while. When I get to S&K, Franc, the manager, comes out and apologizes, saying payroll just mailed the check to my house instead of the store. Grumble, as that check was to be my spending money for the weekend. So, moneyless, Jess buys me lunch at Sweet Tomatoes, a soup-and-salad buffet in town. It's a limited chain, so there aren't any in Columbus. She loved it, and I think that turned out to be the high point of the visit. :-P Friday night was Battlestar Galactica's season finale. Now, Jess doesn't have cable, so she didn't know much about the series, but what she saw of it, she thought was okay, and I'd explained a lot of the backstory for her.

Saturday: Went to Latte Da!, a "retro cafe" and coffee shop for lunch. It's fairly new, and they've just started carrying sandwiches as well as their pastries, cheesecake, coffee/tea drinks and smoothies. It's a teenytiny cafe, and I really love it. It's a comfortable little shop to visit and the owner and the other girl that work there are really friendly and love to chat with the customers. After lunch, we went with Jay and Cyn to the $1.50 theater that just reopened. Saw Finding Neverland, which we all enjoyed, then went to Cici's Pizza for dinner ($3.99 pizza buffet). Later that night, she and I went to Jay and Cyn's to watch the second Bridget Jones while Jay went over to our place to watch Star Wars Ep 2 with Matt and Chris. Bridget Jones was a painful, painful movie. I'd have preferred seeing Star Wars. :-P

Sunday: Matt made honey-wheat waffles for breakfast, and I made a cinnamon syrup for them, since we were out of maple-ish syrup. Also had hot chocolate. He and I went to meeting from 12-2, Jess stayed at the apartment, talked to her parents on her cell and watched Animal Planet. We were going to try to go to one of the museums here with a butterfly room, but most closed at 4. So, we ended up just watching Animal Planet and talking most of the day. Matt and Chris went grocery shopping, and somehow it wound up that we went to Ash and Ryan's for dinner, which Matt cooked. Cheesesteaks, mmmm.

Monday: We sat around and chatted for a few hours, walked over to the office so I could pay rent and sign up for the community yard sale. I'm still shocked that it's only for three hours, 7 am to 10 am. I'm used to all-day yard sales. Go fig. But Jess decided she wanted to go for ice cream, so we went to Maggie Moo's. It's similar to a Coldstone or Marble Slab Creamery. I got the dark chocolate ice cream with cookie-dough mix-ins, and she got the raspberry sorbet with chocolate chunks and coconut. And she found out that yes, there is a Maggie Moo's in Columbus. ;) Then, she had to go to the airport, as her plane leaves at 3:25. And she's warned me that if the plane is 3 hours late again, she's not coming to visit again; we'll have to go visit her. :-D

All in all, it was a really nice, long-overdue visit with Jess. For some reason, Chris was telling her all the good points to moving down here, like he was trying to recruit her or something. We've decided it's just become second-nature now. And now I have a week to recuperate before my parents come visit. o_O

Some update on the situations here. Our friends Jay and Cyn just found out last week that Cyn is pregnant. They've been trying for a year. They've also had a cat into the vet twice for urinary tract blockage, and a bird in recently. They also have our friends Ashley and Ryan staying with them, with Ash and Ryan's two small children (2 y.o. and 9 m.o.). Yesterday around 9:30 am, Jay took Cyn to the hospital because she was bleeding. They didn't get home til after midnight. We still haven't heard what the problem was, if she's okay, etc. She's been stressing ever since Ash, Ryan and kids got there. So, today Ash, Ryan and kids are moving in with us until the 7th, when their apartment is ready. Just to reduce stress all around.

And, to top things off, my husband is sick. Severe throat infection spreading to his ears. He went to the clinic yesterday (another $100 we don't have), got some antibiotics. At least it isn't strep.

Still no word on the job front. I need to call Depot again today, see what's going on with the background check.

I'm currently in the waiting room here at UPMC Shadyside Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA. Lucky me there's a computer with online access here. My aunt was scheduled for surgery at 2 pm, so we had to be here around noon. A little after one, my parents and I went into pre-op to sit with her. Two pm came and went. "The doctor's running behind."

She finally got into surgery at 4 pm. We went down to the cafeteria arouond 5. It's now nearly six, so maybe another half-hour or so before we hear anything. I believe they told us it was a two-hour procedure. Needless to say, I'm not continuing my trip to WV tonight. The Dino Thunder marathon will start tomorrow. Oh damn, this means I brought the Mike's Hard Lime for nothing. No drinkie. :( Ah well. I'll survive.