I found a great school for you!

This was an ad on a website this morning. Looks like it's a great school!

From September 2008

More RNC protest pics

These are from Thursday afternoon. See all pics

From RNC Protest Thursday

RNC Excitement!

I know you've all been excitedly waiting for my photos and report of the RNC protesters. Well folks, things have been exciting here in Downtown St. Paul! Super exciting!!!

There have been marches in the afternoons every day so far this week and everyone here at work has run excitedly to the window to watch them go by. We've been told there will thousands of people marching by in protest - disgruntled poor people! Secret Service guys harassing anyone and everyone who didn't look like they belong in a Republican family values brochure! unwashed hippies assaulting the good citizens of St. Paul with their smell! herds of cops on horses and bikes in riot gear ready to take down anyone who looks like they'd never even consider wearing a tie or pearls! black-clad, bandana'd, feces-flinging anarchists! By all accounts this was shaping up to be a good show.

Tuesday's afternoon march was by the Somali Union. It consisted of about 20 people, half of whom were skinny blond white boys in tie-dye t-shirts. Hmm. I can only speculate that the overcast skies and occasional drizzle kept the masses away.

We didn't let Tuesday's disappointing protest affect our excitement on Wednesday. It was a beautiful day - sunny and mid-60's - perfect for an afternoon of marching, chanting, sign waving, mass chaos, etc by the Scholars for 911 Truth group. Halfway through the morning we spotted a bald eagle circling over the next block. It was a sign! A majestic symbol of American freedom and democracy! The 911 conspiracy theorists must have viewed this as a sign from God himself. Shortly after 1PM the cry went up - here they come! We all lined up at the window and saw... this.


(can't see the slideshow? see my blog)

I counted a total of 44 people plus one dad with a little boy on his shoulders who was running about a block behind everyone else (must have been delayed by a diaper change or something). We actually felt a little sorry for the protesters - all they could drum up was 45 people? (I don't know anyone young enough to still be in diapers who understands concepts like 'government' or 'conspiracy' so they don't count in my protester total.) I think there were more people waiting in line for The Daily Show tickets.

I will not let my disappointment in the previous protests dampen my enthusiasm for today's protest by Youth Against Racism & War. I'm guessing the younger they are, the less afraid of getting arrested they are - and the better our chances for seeing something good. This protest group might even make it worth my while to run downstairs and take pictures at street level!

Baby Josie

8/26/08

Josephine Marie

9 lbs, 20.5 in.

I may be biased, but she's pretty darn cute.

And she has pretty dark hair, just like her mom!

Things have been interesting at work this week. I have a prime spot for watching them set up for the RNC. This morning we've been watching them haul equipment into the History Center for that show with Jon Stewart. There are fences with barbed wire by the freeway and helicopters have been flying around all morning. Soon there will be portable toilets in front of the Capitol (classy!). I am one of the few (the brave!) planning on coming in to work next week. It should be really interesting. I'm in a prime spot for watching the marches/parades/protests - they will be going right in front of our building. I'm not sure what it's going to be like next week - it could be really fun, it could be a huge pain in the butt and it could be a little scary (probably nothing to worry about, but we've been hearing about all the emergency plans/procedures for our building - you never know exactly what's going to happen when you've got 10,000 protesters right in front of a clearly marked government building). I just hope I'll be able to get in and out of our parking ramp and downtown!

Pictures - Duluth and Sammy

Click on any pic to see them all. (hey, I never said they were good pictures! :) )

From August 2008

From August 2008

From August 2008

More pictures - Alexandria and Spike

From June 2008

From June 2008

From Spike

This past year has gone really fast - and really slow all at the same time. My cousin and her boys have been here for a year (I'm not going to go into why here; I don't want to think about it right now). They're going back to Germany this weekend. My cousin moved to Germany when she was pregnant the first time and they've lived there ever since (I can't believe it's 7 years! Trevor will be 7 in two months!). I've only really seen her kids when they have been here for a visit or when I have been there for a visit, which probably works out to about once a year. So I feel very lucky to have gotten to spend a whole year with them. But now I don't know what I'm going to do without them! No one else gets all excited to see me or wants to sit next to me or hold my hand or play Indiana Jones with me. To fill that gap I will be taking applications for new members of my fan club, if any one's interested. ;)

At least Trevor learned how to read this year at school (1st grade) so I can send him emails about Indy and Lego Indy. I tend to get a little obsessed with stuff and it's been nice to have someone else to talk to who is obsessed with the same thing. Trevor is also really into Star Wars so I told him that Indiana Jones and Han Solo are played by the same guy. He seemed pretty surprised by this. Then he asked "How did you know that?" He seemed to really like the idea that there is a link between Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Last weekend we played with his action figures. Our team of good guys consisted of Indiana Jones, Desert Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Marion, Young Indy (played by an army guy - "he's like Young Indy because he doesn't have a gun or a whip and he's wearing green") and Young Indy's boyscout friend (played by a small figure of Diego from Dora the Explorer). I wasn't quite sure what our good guys were trying to do, but I think we were trying to destroy the Death Star.

Alexandria, June 2008

A few pics from our week on Lake Ida in Alexandria.

All I can say is that I'm glad SOMEONE was serious about driving the boat.

Pictures

I'll get the toolbox!

This is why I call him Snugglebutt.

Trevor and I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie. Unfortunately we picked an afternoon with storms - in the middle of the movie we had to spent 45 minutes sitting in the hallway under the stadium seating waiting for a tornado to pass! (but we still think Indy still rocks! I don't know what I'm going to do when Trevor goes back home - who's going to be Indy-obsessed with me? I'll have to find a new best friend.)

We have been having too much weather lately. This is lightening from the first of today's storms. I really love having a window cube at work. :)

REM

Anyone want to go see REM? email me!

Cute shoes

Yes, it's me - the most boring blogger in the world - back again to thrill you with stuff you don't care about. :)

I just can't get over how cute these shoes are.





(and also, we have some very lovely carpet at work, don't we? I should find a better place to take photos than under my desk.)

Saw a show tonight. You guys must know who that is. :)

You'd never guess where I am tonight!

I am in fabulous Branson, Missouri. Yes, I'm at a vacation destination known for it's shows featuring patriotic music, hillbilly humor and country music stars from the 70's. This isn't where I'd choose to vacation, but my parents offered to take me with them and things have been so horrible lately (ok, like in the last 6+ months - but hey, I'm on drugs so at any time now things should be looking better, right? Right? I'm well into my second year of these and things are only marginally better. But I guess that's better than nothing. and I'd hate so see what I would be like now with nothing. this is all probably tmi - sorry. but you know I'm good at that. ha!) that I would pretty much jump at the chance to go anywhere right now just to get away. And at least the weather is warmer here - no snow either!

I saw a show featuring1950's music tonight. It was a pretty good show and I took pictures like I always do. But I can't show them to you because the hotel we're at has their wifi all nice and secured with WPA. Which makes it pretty hard for people without a password to connect to their network. The guys behind the desk tell me that I don't actually need a password, I can just hit enter and their network will let me connect. Except that it doesn't - it just tells me I need a password to connect. (This is totally beside the fact that there really isn't much point in securing a network and then not actually having a password. but whatever. This obviously isn't their forte.)

So this is a pretty pointless blog without bad pictures of an Elvis tribute artist (not impersonator!) on stage. but I don't care! so there!

And I'm kind of thinking I should tell my parents to go on their drive without me tomorrow. For one thing, just driving around in the mountains doesn't excite me. And then there's that small issue of me getting car sick almost every time I get in a car. Pointlessly wandering around in the mountains is not car sick compatible. (I could always take some motion sickness pills, but then instead of feeling like shit I'd just be asleep. :P) And I have to admit that I want to stay here at the hotel with my computer so I can watch Andy Roddick play at Indian Wells. I'm still obsessed with this whole tennis thing and I know it's not normal but I can't help it. Andy's been doing so well the last few weeks. He's been awesome and I really hope he can keep kicking butt this week. That would be so much fun. :)

Of course, for me to be able to watch Andy play on my computer I need to have a wifi connection. Which I don't have at the hotel. Do you think they'd mind if I just camped out on the computer in the lobby for the whole match? Or they could just un-secure their wifi. In fact I could even do that for them, I can see their computer in the lobby if I lean over the front desk far enough... hmmm... (sometimes it is hard knowing all this stuff like I do. ;)

Finished Falling Leaves Socks

What does it say about me that none of my coworkers even looked at me funny as I took these pictures at work in the middle of the day? I think they're used to me taking strange pictures at work. Or maybe they're just used to me being strange.

These fall socks should have been finished... you know, back in the fall. It didn't happen.

Pattern: Falling Leaves
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersocke, Indian Summer colorway
Needle: US 1½ / 2.5 mm
Pattern mods: Substituted a different toe, made them longer to fit my big feet. They're very comfy - they fit perfectly!

New computer (part 2)

I was going to post the specs about my new computer in that last post, but I got distracted by pics of the cat. lol I've had a few people ask me though, so here's what I got:

Inspiron 1520
Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 (1.5GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
System Color: Midnight Blue
Memory: 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
LCD Panel: High Resolution, glossy widescreen 15.4 inch display (1440x900)
Video Card: 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS
Hard Drive: Size: 160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition
Network Card and Modem: Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
Combo or DVD+RW Drive: CD / DVD writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)
Sound Card: High Definition Audio 2.0
Wireless Networking Cards: Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini-Card
Camera: Integrated 2.0M Pixel Webcam
Battery Options: 85Whr Lithium Ion Battery (9 cell)
Bluetooth and Wireless USB: Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR)

I had no problems buying from Dell. I like how they let you customize your computer, but they have so many choices it's not easy to choose. lol I tried to go for the middle of the line on some things to balance cost and need. I spend a lot of time on the computer, and even if I'm not actively doing something on the computer I have it turned on. I use my computer for email/im, the Web, music and photo editing/storage. Sometimes I do a little video editing (nothing fancy) or play games. That's pretty much it. I had a hard time choosing the processor - how on earth am I supposed to know how much/how fast I really need? I used my usual method of choosing when I have no idea what to choose - I pick something that's not the cheapest/lowest or the most expensive/highest. That usually works pretty well. lol

I was a little nervous about going with Vista, but I haven't had any issues with it. I'm kind of wondering what people were complaining about. I haven't had any problems plugging stuff in to it (camera, mp3 player, printer) but then again I usually don't bother installing all the software that comes with these things (all that unnecessary software just seems to screw things up and make things harder to use. :P). I haven't had any problems installing software either.

The only thing that I'm not sure I like is the screen. I chose a higher resolution screen (1440 x 900). I love how it makes pictures big and crisp and I do like having that extra screen space (I'm so used to having two 17" monitors at work that the one dinky little screen isn't enough for me anymore lol). But it makes all the text so small! They always bug me at work about having tiny text on my monitors (they've all got to get out their reading glasses to read anything on my screen lol) but the text on this laptop is super tiny. I've been able to make it bigger on a lot of things, but not all websites will let you do that. I'm getting used to it though.

There's one little thing I love that I haven't even thought about before - the touchpad has these little scroll bars on it. That's the worst part of using a laptop without a mouse - scrolling. But I can scroll just by moving my finger up/down on the touchpad. I can even flick it and have it keep scrolling until i tap the pad again. I've never seen something like this on a laptop (although I haven't used too many recent laptops lol maybe this is a standard thing now). Sometimes I don't even use my mouse anymore, that's how much I love this feature. (Although I'm constantly trying to do it on my work laptop - a basic black work-issued ThinkPad T61 - which doesn't have this feature (or at least I haven't found it yet!). And of course they don't understand why I want a wireless mouse to go with my laptop so they won't buy me one. :P)

I got the matching blue wireless mouse to go with the laptop. It's the only wireless mouse I've seen where the USB thing snaps into the mouse when you're not using it. This means I won't loose the little USB thing and make the mouse useless. Yay! Plus when you slide the USB part into the mouse it turns the mouse off so the battery will last a super long time.

and just in case you didn't already know this - I'm one big giant dork. This laptop has made my life complete. I can now spend every Saturday night snuggled up in bed with Spike reading Pirates of the Caribbean fan fiction on the Internet and eating ice cream. My snugglebug (Spike), flannel pj's, my computer, cookies 'n cream and Captain Jack. What more could I ask for? (hmmm... don't answer that. ;))

New laptop! Spike has issues.

As most of you know, I got a new laptop a few weeks ago. I'm loving it! My old computer is about 4.5 years old, which you all know is ancient. lol This is so much nicer. This time I got all the extra stuff I wanted instead of just getting enough to get by. I even got it in a pretty metallic blue color. :)

I also finally got DSL and set up wifi. I love being able to tote it with me from chair to chair. I've even been using it in bed. Ok, not just using it in bed, but taking it to bed with me and sleeping with it under the comforter and everything so I have it right there in the morning. lol

Spike is having a few issues with the laptop. The laptop keeps getting in his way, even when we're snuggled up in bed at 3 AM.(I think taking it to bed with me was the final straw!) He's finally come up with a good solution. There's no way I can ignore him now... Every time I'm away from the computer for more than 5 seconds this is what I find when I return!

Pics from New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve 2007 Pics