The company I work for moved into our new building today. I totally lucked out and got a cube by the window. This is my view if I just slightly turn my head to the right while facing my computer. Sorry the pic is a bit blurry. I just pulled my point & shoot camera out of my purse and snapped a few quick shots. There will probably be plenty more pictures of this sort in the future because it's so cool and will take a while for the awesomeness of it to wear off. But right now there's a lot of management walking around checking out the new facilities so I don't have the time to stop and take really good pictures. I would hate for them to think I'm too obsessed with the window and decide to move me. Even though it's true.
All it takes to entertain Takara is an empty plastic bag. All it takes to entertain me is watching Takara with an empty plastic bag. Which statement is sadder?
The Watson Family Reunion was today at Roaring River and then after that was over I had to go and have a talk with the chick who's supposed to be buying my trailer from me but who hasn't paid me anything since March. Fun, huh? After all of that, I headed over to mom and dad's to relax with them for a while. And during the summer, almost every time I'm there, I take pictures of hummingbirds. I don't know why.
I love playing Fantasy Football and I am so happy it's that time of year again. Tonight I was "one of the guys" and went to Flame after work for a happy hour hamburger with Scott, Charlie, Jamie & Tim. Then we all came back to the house and logged in to do our live draft. Tim was just diagnosed with diabetes recently and before the draft started he checked his blood sugar and decided he needed to give himself a shot. Charlie hates needles and got trapped in the corner of the kitchen when he turned around and noticed what was going on. Luckily my camera was right beside me and I got to capture Charlie's shuddering at the sight of the needle.
If you can't tell by the picture, it's bowling league time once again. This year we just have a 4 person team of me, Scott, Larry and Lisa and we bowl on Thursday nights instead of Wednesday. I was so excited to be back at the bowling alley. There's something about the atmosphere that's just so fun. And the food is good too. Our team name this year is Brooklyn Or Bust because Scott and Larry both hit the pocket on the Brooklyn side more often than not. I think we're gonna have fun with it and order bowling shirts too. My score wasn't very good tonight, but I bowled cold and hadn't bowled since league ended last year so I was just happy I didn't fall. Expect more pictures from the bowling alley since that is what I'll be doing every Thursday.
I was outside on the back patio this evening with my camera just looking for any type of photo op, when Scott stepped out to chat for a few. We left the sliding glass door open behind us, so naturally Takara came over and had to sniff around. Scott had a pretty good angle on her from where he was, so I handed him the camera and he took today's photo. Too bad this silly kitty is so pretty. She's such a brat her looks are the only thing that saves her. Lol.
Over the past 2 months at the new job, Charlie, Jamie, Christie and I have developed a pattern of taking lunch together and sitting at the table closest to the TV in the break room. Since there are limited channels the TV has access to, we have settled on a routine of watching "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader" followed by "Deal Or No Deal". Now the fifth grader show is fun because we get to see if we can answer the question correctly and get to make fun of each other if someone goofs up. But it's Deal Or No Deal that really gets us riled up. I never really watched the show before and I'm not normally a person who watches game shows, but every day we sit and wait for this fun to begin. 
On this date, 22 years ago exactly, I first met Lisa at Crowder College. We were both incoming freshman that year. I had moved into the dorms as early as possible and was sitting in my room reading a book when chaos broke loose. Lisa's family had arrived to drop her off. They are a loud (in a good way), talkative bunch and after they helped her carry everything to her room, they turned tail and headed home. So Lisa decided to talk to me. And so it began. I will always remember the date because it is Lisa's birthday. Actually it's her twin sister Shelley's birthday too, but Shelley didn't go to college at Crowder so I didn't meet her that day. I met Lisa on her birthday, Aug. 23, when she turned 23 years old. I was 17. Trust me, I thought she was very worldly. And she was. She had been married & divorced, had already been to a good sized university, and she was of legal age to buy alcohol. There are a lot of stories that we could tell, but that's neither here nor there.
I am slowly expanding my very small range of cooking. Today I made oven-baked barbecue country ribs. They turned out really good. I will definitely have to buy them more often. It's not a great picture, but we also had peas & carrots, garlic bread and deviled egg potato salad. Very delicious if I do say so myself.
Last night, right before the amazing Switchfoot concert (pics are HERE), I called mom & dad to tell them about my broken car and beg them to come up in the morning and help me fix it. Which didn't really take any begging cause they're cool like that. So this morning they drove up and we went over to check it out. Dad was able to jump start it by taking off the plastic case around the battery and hooking the cables up directly. I sat in it and revved it up for a good 10 minutes, then I took off towards WalMart and they followed. I had no problems getting to WalMart so obviously my only issue was a dead battery. It's a 2006 model and I bought it in 2006 and had never replaced the battery, so I guess it was due. We bought a new battery but because they were short-handed, WalMart wasn't able to install it for me. So poor Dad had to do it in the parking lot with my set of my girlie tools and a few tools he had to go into WalMart and buy. It took quite a while to break the terminals loose off the old battery. And it was soooo hot outside. Mom sat in the store where it was cool, but I felt bad that Dad had to do all the work so I stayed outside and suffered in the sun alongside him. After we got the new battery in I threw my parents in my car and treated them to Golden Corral for their trouble. Old people sure do love that place. I am so lucky I have parents that will do these kinds of things for me.
Because of the whole "bunch of new people added to tiny office building" I mentioned a few days ago, all of us who were hired in recently have to park a couple of streets away from our building and ride a shuttle (crappy van) over to work and back. Which means if we want to go somewhere other than Subway or McDonald's for lunch, we gotta ride the shuttle (crappy van) over to our cars. Which is what Jamie, Charlie, Natalie and I did this afternoon. I drove us to Riad and we went in and had an excellent Mediterranean meal. Unfortunately when we decided to head back to the shuttle (crappy van), my car was dead. Natalie thought she may have jumper cables in her car, all the way back at the shuttle (did I mention it's a crappy van?)area, so she took off walking to her car to check. It took her a while to walk there so in the mean time the boys gave my car a good looking over. As you can see, they weren't much help. But I love the photo so it's okay. Meanwhile, Natalie should have had plenty of time to reach her car and drive down to us. But we were still waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Finally, off in the distance, I see a figure who resembles Natalie walking towards us. It seems Natalie is so blonde that once she got to her car and verified that she did not have jumper cables, she WALKED back to tell us... INSTEAD OF DRIVING HER CAR! It was so hot that day, I have no idea why she did that. By the time she got back we were already like 15 minutes late getting back to work after lunch so we decided to give it up for now and walk back to work. I didn't cool down the whole rest of the day. It sucked. 
Another night of playing WoW. Which means I didn't do anything worth photographing. So you get a self portrait. Yay you!
Since starting my new job at the beginning of July, all 22 of us have been crammed into a conference room because the current building is out of space. They had already acquired a new building before I was even hired, it just hasn't yet been ready for anyone to move into. But that is all about to change. On Monday, Aug 30, we get to move into our new building. Each of us will have our own little cubicle and there will be room for us to actually set stuff out on our desks. Plus, we'll have our own chairs that no one else will take, instead of coming in every day and wondering who will have chairs and who won't. This is the space that Charlie and I currently share. It sucks. I can't wait to move.
I've been playing World of Warcraft heavier than usual lately and since I've got WoW on the brain so much these days, I thought I'd show off my extremely nerdy WoW plushies. The cute little white one is a Murloc and the one on the right is a baby Gryphon. Gryphon's are one of the main flying rides in the game and when I bought this one, it came with a code giving me a free baby Gryphon pet that follows me around in game. Totally worth it. Even when I consider that fact you all think I'm mental... still totally worth it.
Since I got a new zoom lens a few weeks ago, I got the bright idea tonight to try it out on the moon. I don't have a huge lens, so it's not amazing, but I was excited to see that I could take a picture of the moon and actually see some detail (if you look closely at the bottom edge, you can see some craters). I may have to take pictures of the moon more often.
Halestorm is a sister/brother band out of Pennsylvania and they are VERY up-and-coming in popularity. Already extremely popular in the alternative music scene, they are breaking into the mainstream quickly. They were also at Pointfest this weekend and although I didn't get to see them on stage (they performed before we arrived), I was in the right place at the right time when they were interviewed by the radio station that sponsored the festival. Lzzy (yes, that's spelled right) had recently gotten her hair cut and some color splashed into it and she looked so adorable.
Flyleaf is my favorite band. I love the way Lacey screams. Man, she's got some amazing lungs. I am so excited I got to see them in concert today. It was totally worth spending 6 hours in a 105 degree heat index and dying of dehydration. TOTALLY WORTH IT!
Sure, preseason means nothing. Sure, I got bored after the first quarter and stopped paying attention. Sure, they lost... as usual. It's still exciting. It means that in a few short weeks we'll be watching some serious gridiron action.
Stupid air conditioner froze up this morning and had to be shut off all day. It's gonna be a long night.
Dear Sun,
I was so super excited to see that my Lady Gaga tickets came in the mail safely today. What I'm not excited about is worrying about how to keep from losing these things for THE NEXT 7 MONTHS! Good grief. I sure can't wait for next March to get here. It's gonna take forever.
Anyone remember Fantasy Island? Anyone? Bah. Google it. My parents loved that show and we used to watch it every week. 
I spotted these guys all excited over a dead armadillo. Yuck. 
Tonight Scott and I went to Carlos O'Kelly's and chowed down on lots of cheesy goodness and then went to the Campbell Cine 16 and watched Dinner For Schmucks. Excellent movie. I loved it.
What is Jungle Speed? It's actually a crazy, fun game we played tonight at Charlie and Rachael's house. After they fed us an amazing dinner of spinach ravioli bake with fresh salad and garlic bread. In this game you deal out the deck of cards to everyone and the cards all have funky patters on them and the patterns are all colored. You each take turns flipping over your top card (you never look through your cards) and if it matches someone else's on the table, you and the person you match both try to be the first one who grabs the wooden "totem" sitting in the middle of the table. So it gets kinda crazy, like the old card game Spoons we always played as kids. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves playing games. It's fantastic.
After work, Angie, Kim, Chip, Mike, Phil, Canadian Steve and I went out to Parlor 88 on Republic Road for happy hour. Tim and Scott joined us after a while, but before they did Angie had gone out to call Tim and when she came back in she told us there was a poor little baby bird out there that must have fallen out of it's nest. Of course I immediately had to run out and take a cell phone pic of it. Angie worried about that thing the whole time we were there. She kept trying to talk me into going out and giving it something to drink. Umm... no.
Because Wendy and the kids came up and played with us Saturday night, I had a good excuse to go to the store and buy junk food. Including ice cream and Reese's Magic Shell topping. And of course we didn't eat it all Saturday. I have been looking forward to this all day.
The heat index is supposed to be around 105 all week long. Ugh. I already hate mowing the yard and try not to do it as much as possible (sorry Scott) but even though it's looking rough... there's no way I'm gonna do it this week either (sorry again Scott).
While I was at Grandma's today for Sunday lunch, Mom called to invite me down for dinner later in the evening. Woot! Two free home cooked meals in 1 day? Yes, plz. Plus I got to bring home leftover from both places. Bonus. After dinner at Mom's, we were all visiting and relaxing and I looked out the front window to notice there were like 13 hummingbirds swarming the two feeders on the front porch. So of course I have to go out to the car and grab my camera. All the birds scattered when I came outside, but when I came back I positioned myself in the corner of the porch against the wall, put my camera to my face and then didn't move. It took several minutes, but finally the birds started coming back one by one. I snapped a lot of pics, but honestly there was so much activity that this one of the single bird is the only decent ones. The rest were filled with blurs of incoming and outgoing birds. They sure do love their sugar water.
