ooh oooh

Backstory:


Last week I managed to procure a 3.5 ft tall cardboard Count von Count from the very nice man at the bank inside of Genaurdis by our work.

As Yassara and Kelly recount, I apparently made some coy face and batted my eyelashes, and the guy fell over trying to give me what I wanted.

It hardly went like THAT, but he was very kind and willing to help a girl out.



We brought him back to the office and made him our little mascot. We gave him a speech bubble that says "Velcome to zee Chamber of Science, Ah Ah Ahhh!". We also changed the book in his hand to be titled "1, 2, 3, how many nerds do you see?".

All-in-all, the Count has been a great companion.



Yassara and I decided that it might be a fun idea to prop the Count up outside of our principals office while he was in there on the phone or talking to a parent or a student or something unimportant like that.

So we did.




That was on Friday afternoon.


Apparently some time around 4pm on Friday, the Count was stolen by said principal and an accomplice. The girls went to work and found him locked up in a back room.

Poor Count.



Yassara then tethered the Count to my cubicle.



On Monday, he was stolen yet again, some time in the morning. He was literally cut off of the tether!!!!! Jinkies!

We proceeded to search and interrogate. Eventually the girls found that he was in our CAA's office. (aka BigWig, directly under the CEO!) Kelly is tight with our CAA so we were assured that the Count was being taken good care of.


Since then, however, we have gotten several ransom notes with the Count on it. The first one had him hanging from a tree from a noose! The second had him working out in the exercise room. He was even standing on a fit-ball.

We retaliated with a "Missing Persons" Ad.

To no avail... yesterday, we got a picture of the Count playing the glass armonica over at our Performing Arts Center.


We thought the Count might make a special appearance at our staff meeting today, but he did not.


And so....

I made this:

http://locker.palcs.org/~esamuels/missingcount.wmv


Kelly picked the music. Genius!






You will be glad to know that I have not done diddly-squat all week as far as teaching goes. Sigh.

Sweet Victory Is Mine

Despite my foul mood, work was extremely productive from both a school work and political aspect today.

I should say that my foul moods usually result in things like cleaning, getting things done, toppling empires, and the like.




So today was really no exception.


However, I currently have a ridiculously insane headache and, yes, I am still in a bad mood.




Let's start with this weekend.


Leslie came down from Ithica on Friday and stayed with me for the weekend. Her, Josh, and I went to get some DQ and chilled and watched a bit of Invader Zim. It was amusing when Leslie and I were not semi-passing out.

I was up at 7:30 on Sat, bright n early, to get ready to go dress shopping.

We met up at Paige's house (Paige, Brian, and Lea made the drive from far far away VA) this weekend so that they could visit and so that Paige could come dress shopping. I love my friends!

Anyway, my mom, Jon's mom, Paige, Les, and Jenn went to Anne Bailey's in Doylestown. Well, technically Fountainville. I really cannot say enough for this place. The women really are so helpful and they have a huge selection. I even got to try on my wedding dress again. JOY! I love it so much, Jon is going to need advil from smiling so much when he sees it.

We ended up finding dresses within an hour or two. They are really nice. Satin with chiffon overlay, a bit of a gather at the waist, spaghetti straps, boning. Oh, and they are moss green. It will go really well with our eyes. :)

I love the dresses! (Especially mine, I have to admit)


So Les and Paige went home... Leslie to a bridal shower, Paige to see to her chillun.

The moms, Jenn, and I went to lunch and hung out for awhile, which was fun.

Afterwards, I got to rest for the afternoon. Leslie came back and her and my parents and I went to Outback for dinner where we saw way too many people that we knew!


That evening, me, Les, Paige, Brian, and Eric met up for dessert at America Bar & Grill. I then taught them how to waveboard!!!! Haha. Les got to try on one of Paige's wedding dresses and we had quite a good bit of girl time. It was so fantastic to hang out with the two of them and talk about life. It is great to have friends like them, and I definitely needed the girl talk! :)

It has been really fun, in particular, to grow up with such wonderful women. It is fascinating to see how we are, for lack of a better term, blossoming into women. Paige being married, with a kid... Leslie moving to NY, with a fantastic job and a soon-to-be fiance... Who would have thought in 12th grade, or even earlier, that here we would be, 10 years later, with husbands and children and things like that?

It is a great feeling to know these girls so well, and to know that 10 years from now, we will be able to reflect upon this time together.

So yes, it was an awesome time, most enjoyable, and I really cannot thank them enough for coming into town!!!!! I have so much to look forward to!!!!!!




So then today was pretty decent, even though I am beat.

I had a meeting with one of our big-wigs and got approved for all of my fund raisers for the trip I am trying to plan. I also lifted the cover on some murky stuff within my dept, which was an oh-so-sweet feeling. I would love to tell you all the juicy details, but unfortunately I cannot divulge here. Let's just say that empires crumble when their leaders get too power-hungry. :)



Ahhh success. You taste so sweet.

I'm the gingerbread man...

Catch me answering 15 random questions while you can...

SARS

First of all, I sound like a phone-sex operator.

Secondly, I cannot sleep through the night because I am coughing so much.

Lastly, I am a bit ticked about work issues.




I might lose my part-time job, and I am rather frustrated with the whole situation. I work every other Sat as a per diem 2nd shift med tech. I work in Microbiology, Hematology, and Chemistry. And you know what, I am good at my job.

When I took the every other Sat (which was splitting an every other weekend position with someone else), I knew that if they found people to fill the spaces, I was gone.

Still, luck has prevailed and I have been paid $37/hr for a year now to look at other people's poop.

Not a bad gig, when you think about it.



Unfortunately though, this makes me low man on the totem pole. Everyone else there has more experience. I am still the youngest at the hospital, even though I have been there for (CRIPES!) almost 5 years now. I also work the least, which means I am, apparently, the least important... despite the fact that, as I said, I do my job well. It is a rare occasion that the supervisors are banging down my door saying I made a mistake.


That being said, I do understand that if they find someone who can work more, then I sort of deserve to get the boot.


Basically, two people decided to throw their hours up in the air and see what landed... it just so happened that they are now taking up nearly all of the weekends.

For some bizarre reason, there is still a Sat open, and there are like 5 Sundays open in a month.

Problem: I have rehearsal every Sunday, no matter the season.


I am not sure what is going to happen.... but I am hoping to convince them to let me stay on for the rest of the summer and fill in open hours... then re-evaluate at the end of the summer. Like, after I have bought a house, before I have gotten married.



But who knows. Each person I go to (which is my supervisor, a day supervisor, and the overall lab manager) seems to give me a different version of what I can and cannot do pay roll wise.

I don't know, I doubt they want to lose me... and I certainly do not want to lose them. Hellooooo mad money. But I think I gotta figureout my priorities.

Working one Sunday a month is NOT a huge issue... so worse comes to worse, I will do one Sat, and one Sun a month. But hopefully it will not come to that. :(







On the upside, I bought Dancing With The Stars.

And it is calling my name right now, in fact. :)


Time to go shake my booty!

crushing dreams

Well, I seem to be more or less destroying every fantasy my mother has ever had about me getting married.

My mom always thought I would have a giant wedding cake put on display... Jon and I are talking about ice cream cake from dq.

She wanted the invites to be perfect with little ribbons on them. Jon and I want to print them ourselves.

We decided to name our tables after Muppets... and for our wedding favors, we are buying a llama or two for heifer international and donating them.



Yeah... not exactly my mom's idea wedding.

I am not huge into flowers, and the church is not a gorgeous old gothic one.



The latest dream I have shattered was the dress shopping.

I got my dress today... it took an hour. Yes, that is right, an hour. We went to a wonderful place in Horsham. The set up is fantastic and I would highly recommend it to ANYONE looking for any sort of dress. I had an hour and a half appt with a woman dedicated to dressing me.

She had me put on a slip and stupid me, I forgot my strapless bra... so I (shudder) had to use one of theirs. She had set out a 34 A. I laughed myself silly and asked her if she got a good look at me. She looked again and changed her mind appropriately.

Anyway, I picked out about 8 dresses. The first three I tried on, I really liked. I tried on maybe two more dresses and the woman said, I have a dress for you. She came back with the dress. I tried it on and liked it. I tried on maybe 4 dresses after that... did not really like them. So then I tried on the first three one more time... then that one again. And that was it. I loved it.

The dress is everything I never thought I wanted in a dress. I would describe it, but that sort of has to be hush hush until my wedding day. Its really beautiful. AND it makes me look hot. Girls, you are going to wish you were me... guys, you are going to wish you were marrying me. You know I am not all full of myself or anything even remotely close... but I look hot in the dress, and i do not think I have ever said I look hot in anything before!

It is just beautiful and I feel beautiful in it. Like I said - it is nothing I thought I wanted, yet it is perfect.

The woman working with me had been doing this for 10 years, and she said you just get a feel for that person and for their body and then you can kinda suggest things. Well, it totally worked.


I also thought I did not want to wear a veil... but mom won out... and it turns out I really liked the veils. My mom and I are going to try to make one.

Let's just put it this way - the ones I was trying on were $250!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you freakin KIDDING ME?! Its a 5 cent plastic comb and like a yard of tulle. PLEASE.

So yes, we are going to attempt it and see what happens.


I would tell you what the dress cost, but I have no idea. Nan and my mom are paying for it and my mom would not tell me. Naturally, they take the tags off of the dresses before you try them on so that you fall in love and never look at the price.

So I am gonna guess it was WAY more than I wanted to pay... but what the heck, right? You get to look that hot once, and I will never really have the opportunity to be the way I am now again. Might as well enjoy youth... and non-saggy boobs. :)



Anyway, its lovely, and I am glad my mom and I got to go. She was a little bummed that we found it so quick... but she cried when I put it on, so I guess that is it.


My mom and I also went back to the flower warehouse and picked up everything we needed for the centerpieces, minus the hurricane lanterns. I am going to try to find them online for cheaper than they were there. We shall see.



So plans are progressing well, and I am happy. I love the dress. And I know Jon will love it too... so.... yay! :)

ummm

Please tell me THIS is real.




I have a propensity for fantasy movies... I loved Lord of the Rings... X Men... Chronicles of Narnia... Harry Potter....


And I admit, not all of them are great movies (ahem, X Men) but I still love the way they make me feel. Maybe it is the connection I make between the book and the movie... or... I don't know. These types of movies make me feel like magic is real and can happen.

Silly fantasy on my part, I am sure... but still, it is that wistful sort of feeling!



And as much as this movie trailer looks hokey, and it could be really poorly done... I don't care. I will totally see it on opening night and LOVE it.


YAY!

oh and

I also ought to mention that last Tuesday, I spent a lovely 4 hours in the ER as a result of my endometriosis. I am not sure what happened, but it hit with a marvelous vengeance that allowed me to get up close and personal with my toilet and bathroom floor for over an hour.

Do you know how amazingly good cold floor tiles can feel when you hurt so bad that you can only pray and you can't seem to manage to leave the bathroom because every time you try you need to either sit on the toilet or put your head in it?

Its great.





But on the more philosophical side of things, it is wonderful that no matter how much pain you are in, you can always pray. I don't think you could ever even really be in so much pain that you could not do that. Thank you God!

Oh, and thanks for the awesome drugs. They helped too.

I eat the insides last

Over the past year or so, a lot of semi-OCD patterns in my life have become very noticeable.


I am not sure when it started, but I have developed a number of peculiarities in my eating habit that really are, I think, a bit odd.

For example...


When I make a peanut butter (crunchy) and jelly (anything other than grape) sandwich, I first spread on the pb. After I am done, I wipe the excess pb on my other slice of bread, THEN do the jelly. This does have a purpose - no pb in the jelly jar.

Okay, so that one is pretty understandable.

Another food habit that I have is that when I make spaghetti, I will usually take one strand of uncooked spaghetti and suck on it. Obviously you cannot cook it in your mouth, but you can make it pretty gooey. I then proceed to break small, roughly even pieces off of it, and use the spit-lubed starch to glue them together into a little fence. Yup.

I guess that one is not particularly a pattern... but I do it almost every time I make angelhair.

Oreos. Oreos I can only eat whole if I have a cup of milk. I will their dunk the whole thing or precisely half until its soggy, THEN eat it.

If I do not have milk, it get a bit stranger.

I will take off one cookie and eat it. I press it against the roof of my mouth until it collapses under the pressure and saliva, doing my best not to chew it. I HATE getting oreo stuck in my teeth.

After that, I will use my fingernail to pry loose the double stuf from the other cookie. If I manage to succeed, I will then eat the other cookie in the same manner. If I do not succeed, I will separate them as much as possible before finally eating the stuf.

If I DO manage to get all the stuf out... I will then either eat the whole thing by itself... OR, if I am eating many oreos at once (I have no problem sitting down with 7 or 8 of them for a snack, so its a wonder I am not 300 lbs), I will make a triple decker double stuf oreo. Yes, that is right folks.... three delicious layers of double stuf between two little tiny cookies. I will then eat that in bites and savor it the whole way down.


Other bizarre food rituals:

When I eat goldfish, I try to crack one laterally (head to tail) and then stick another goldfish inside of it, thereby making a "goldfish sandwich"... which is really the dumbest thing in the world. It is just two goldfish eaten together.

When I eat a normal sandwich (not pb and j) that is on regular bread (not a roll), I will eat around the entire outside crust and eat the inside middle part last. Though I do not ALWAYS do this, I usually do... and I always do at Arbys. I also do this with PopTarts. I break off the crusty part and eat the center last.



I think the oddest food ritual I have is with smarties.

First, I divide them up by color. Next, I stack them up by color and line them up in a row. The largest column on the right down to the smallest on the left. The white ones are always the last on the left, which I will get to in a moment.
I proceed to eat them one by one from the largest column. To eat them, I usually bite around the edges, then I eat the middle last. One the largest column becomes even with the second column, I eat one from the one on the right, then one from the next column so they stay even.
I do this until they are all gone.
THEN, I eat the white ones. Now, some people might say that smarties all taste the same, but I beg to differ. White smarties are the tastiest. Which, taken out of context, would sound really awful... but its true. I just think they taste the best, so I save ALL of them and eat them last.
I am also known to pick out ALL of the white ones from a few packs, if I am eating more than one pack at a time, and save them all until I am done the rest.







So there you have it, part of my special-ed-ness. I am quite possibly slightly OCD.

Yet, it is patterns that bring sense to life itself, so I do not think it is all so bad to have that many. In a crazy world, where would we be without ritual? :)