Category Archives: randomness

random ramblings of Yours Truly.

randomness 3 Comments

Quick Update

Friday: Day off of work. Slept in. Opened National City bank accounts. Went to Pietasters show in Cleveland. Good openers, rowdy audience, great showing by the band. Awesome show. Bought a $10 shirt. Got a $10 parking ticket for a meter that ran out just 20 minutes before we got out of the show. We paid the damn thing $1.75 for the four hours it gave us, and I’m pretty sure it shorted us some time. At least it was only ten bucks, though, even if the cop had to have been sitting there and waiting for the meter to run out.

Saturday: Afternoon in BG. Madhatter is closing July 14th; it’s the end of an era. Cosmo’s coffee shop (where Aaron and I had our first date) is closed, too, among other former BG staples. Outskirts of town are booming, though. Had ice cream at the Marble Slab Creamery downtown. Party at James’s house in the evening. Food and adult beverages and music and fireworks out in the country. Good times.

Sunday: Took a closet full of stuff to the thrift. Played Wii. Ordered an ice cream maker online. Made fettuccine alfredo for dinner. Normal laundry and shopping bit. Chilled-out sort of day.

Today: James’s last day at Sky before going to his new job at BGSU. Spent the afternoon manning the front desk, and so managed to miss most of his desk-cleaning spree. Skipped aikido in favor of job-hunting this evening. Got sidetracked by an alert about some LSM forum spam that desperately needed taking care of. Ended up not being able to submit one specific job app yet because I need full reference info.

And that’s the weekend in a nutshell.

When I get a new job, maybe I can do like James and fabricate myself a week vacation between gigs. I shouldn’t feel like I need another vacation… but I do.

randomness 3 Comments

Fickle Brain

So, for the past few days, I’ve been trying to get myself onto a decent evening schedule. Turn off the computer around 9:30pm, make tomorrow’s lunch, pick out tomorrow’s clothes, read for a while, and have lights out by 11pm. It’s worked pretty well, and I’ve been waking up more refreshed (if not always on time, as per usual).

Tonight, I’d like to stay up later, since I’m taking the day off work tomorrow. (We’re going to a Pietasters show in Cleveland tomorrow evening, and there’s NO WAY I’d be able to stay up for a late show if I went to work.) I spent my evening playing Wii — oh, by the way, Aaron bought a Wii this week! — and just realized that I missed my favorite TV show again. D’oh! At any rate, I thought that I could stay up a little later, do some websurfing (or something more productive), or maybe play some computer games now that I’m done with Wii Sports… but no. My brain is all, “OK, time to start shutting down for the night!”

Dammit. Why must you be catching onto this schedule thing so well?

randomness

Dinner Date

Went to dinner with some former co-workers after work today: Loni and Angie, with whom I worked in Lockbox; and Jen, who worked in Lockbox after I’d left, but also worked in Loan Corrections with me until recently. We looked at Jen’s wedding pictures and my Japan pictures, and talked about our job prospects after the upcoming merger.

I hadn’t really been in the mood to be social until I got there, but I’m glad I went. I’d forgotten how fun it can be to swap stories and just socialize with people other than Aaron’s friends. Granted, I do like Aaron’s friends, and most of them I can count as my own friends by now. It’s a little different to go out with The Girls, though, and talk about old times and future plans.

I don’t think I’m “outing” Loni by publishing the fact that she’s planning to start a Lockbox business of her own in short order. She’s talked to an attorney, potential clients, Sky’s HR department, and the company that develops the processing software, and she seems to have her ducks all in a row. It’s awesome that she has a plan for the remainder of her pre-retirement years (and she does have a while yet), but it’s funny that she’s going back into the business that we all so vehemently tried to escape. She knows what kinds of mistakes not to make, though, and how fast she can grow, how many accounts she can take on, things like that. I’ll be curious to keep tabs on how her business fares.

Angie noticed that I’d lost weight since I’d seen her last — looking at my handy-dandy historical weight chart, I see that I’ve lost about fifteen pounds since then. It made me feel pretty good that, despite my uber-slow weight loss of late, she noticed as soon as she saw me that I was looking slimmer than before. I also mentioned that I’ve been doing strength training and following the Body for Life program… then I ate a shrimp quesadilla while she stuck with the taco salad. Meh.

All in all, I enjoyed my visit with my old co-workers. Yeah… sometimes I forget that there are other people out there who really do give a damn.

anecdotes

Interesting Visitor

I just had the most interesting experience. I was down in the basement, messing around online, when I heard a knock on the door, closely followed by the doorbell. I had the door open and the screen door locked, so there was no pretending I wasn’t home once I saw that it wasn’t UPS. It was an older gentleman, bearded, tallish, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts. No clipboard, no nametag.

“Hello,” I called from the screen door.

The man introduced himself by telling me that he lived on the other side of South Avenue, was a retired English teacher and amateur astronomer, and was working on his third novel. He said that he takes a long walk every day — I was his last stop, and he’d walked three miles already — and that he stops along the way to ask if there’s any yardwork or odd jobs that he can do for a couple of dollars. We talked politely for a moment, and I assured him that, no, I’d pass on the offer of yardwork.

Then we chatted for a while longer, briefly discussing his trip to Ireland, where palm trees apparently grow in people’s back yards, because of the warm Gulf Stream bringing the large seeds up to the isle; his trip to northern Canada, where the nights are short and late and the sun barely moves from east to west; our trip to Japan and the accompanying God-awful airplane flight; his novel-writing experience and our mutual respect for short story writers; and his stint in the National Guard during the May Day riots in Washington, guarding the White House, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Vietnam vets who were accustomed to shooting human targets and feeling mighty uncomfortable about it.

Then he apologized for taking up so much of my time, and I assured him that I’d enjoyed talking with him — which, oddly enough, I had. He said, “Dou itashimashite,” which means “You’re welcome” (I think that may have been all the Japanese he knew, but it’s more than most). I couldn’t call up an appropriate answer in Japanese, so I answered him with a basic hai, and bid him enjoy his three-mile walk home.

I’m not entirely sure how much of that was factual, but he was certainly an interesting fellow. I didn’t mind talking to him, really. If he came back some other day, I’d probably talk to him again, and ask him if either of his novels have been published.

randomness

Ack.

Feeling quite busy. Have job-hunting-related projects to complete. Have websites to maintain. Have to CLEAN MY DESK OMG. Only getting one major task accomplished per night, and blogging about Japan is falling to the wayside (for now).

I’m proud of myself that I’ve still been working out every evening, without fail (except on my Saturday off), and have continued to pre-pack my lunches for the next day.

If I ever manage to get caught up with all the things I want to accomplish in my life, that’ll only be because I’m dead.