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whappy happy nea land! |
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My own spot to rant about my day.
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wFriday, June 28, 2002 |
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Last night was another one of those times where I realized I'm in a different position in life than many of my friends. Dave and I went to dinner with Diane, Joey, HT, Neil, and Jackie. Diane thought she was moving home (up north) until yesterday, has to find a new apartment by tomorrow, and has two weeks to find a car. She was working on trying to get everyone else at dinner to share a house with her and Joey. Dave looks at me, and goes, "Will you be my roomate?" I realized that I have a roomate for forever, and that all those last-minute worries about finding a living situation and people to live with are gone. My life is settled into slow-mo, with many things to look forward to in the near and far-off future but not a lot going on currently. No big drama, no major events, just life. I feel so married.
posted by
nea at 3:15 PM
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wThursday, June 27, 2002 |
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This morning while driving to work I had this SUV cut me off. Now, it wasn't all that bad and I didn't really care (405 at rush hour and all that) but then the woman driving flips me off. For a long time. I find this wierd, so I put my hand up in a "What was that all about?" gesture. She responds with a SLEW of rude hand gestures. Totally random. Like she just totally went off. I started to think about my morning drive and hadn't done anything to this car my whole trip. I so did not get it. I thought maybe she had total road rage, but even that didn't explain how much she went off. So, as she gets off the freeway I pass by and look over, to see if it is maybe someone I know who was just in a crazy mood. As I do so, she does even more hand gestures out the side of the car. Some people have issues.
posted by
nea at 10:11 AM
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wWednesday, June 26, 2002 |
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During the winter, I get all involved in the holidays and forget how much I like summer. I like wearing tank tops and shorts. I like that Dave and I can go swimming every day if we so desire (it's still hot at 6 pm when I get home). I like a relaxed tutoring schedule and events every weekend. And next week is my favorite day to go home- 4th of July! Life is good.
posted by
nea at 2:49 PM
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wTuesday, June 25, 2002 |
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Lessons learned at work:
Going to the bathroom and having a very smelly person walk into the stall next to you makes you finish in a hurry.
posted by
nea at 2:49 PM
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I did some car shopping online last night. Did you know you can buy a KIA Spectra for $14000, new, with automatic transmission and lots of other goodies? I am very impressed. If I calculated things correctly, I could have one for less that $100 a month for 48 months. Very nice. Of course, I need to do some serious test driving. I am not buying a car unless it goes over the hill without wheasing and without me having to turn off the air conditioning. My poor Jetta.
Evite is so cool. It makes party planning so much easier. yay parties! yay dim sum and hollywood bowl!
posted by
nea at 10:02 AM
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wMonday, June 24, 2002 |
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Dude, I feel so productive. Dave and I made major progress on putting away wedding presents and boxing up our old stuff for a garage sale we will be having later this summer. We finally started using our new dishes and silverware. We also did our last round, hopefully, of returning and exchanging stuff. Macy's was horrible and incompetent, as usual ("No, you cannot cash our the 48 cents left on your gift card.") while Crate and Barrel was nice and easy and even gave us our credit in cash. Since we didn't have receipts for most of the stuff, I consider this amazing. Our apartment is going to look so pretty when we finally finish with everything.
posted by
nea at 10:04 AM
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wThursday, June 20, 2002 |
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How you know you have become a cult classic:
I've received several books, a few very good cigars, custom art, a home-made Alton Brown doll and a set of tea towels that have "Good Eats" woven into them in Klingon.
-Alton Brown
posted by
nea at 4:36 PM
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I don't understand my body sometimes. For the past few weeks, I've been getting these total hunger pains between 10:30 am and 11 am. I do not eat meals at this time. I didn't eat meals in Paris at this time. I so don't understand. The strangest part is that by 11:15 they are gone, whether I ate or drank anything or not. I hope they stop soon, it's really driving me nuts.
No tutoring for a month! Now to get the apartment together and start sending out piles of thank you notes!
posted by
nea at 11:03 AM
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wWednesday, June 19, 2002 |
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Today is my last day of tutoring for the school year. Although I hate driving through rush hour traffic in the evening, it will be so much nicer to get home at 6 instead of 9, 10, and 11 pm like I have this week.
I was trying to explain to Aaron, one of the kids I tutor, about how cool summer reading is and how half his class won't read the books so he shouldn't be worrying about it anyway. At my high school, they didn't start the concept of assigning summer reading until the summer before my senior year. I thought it was cool, since I went to the library like once a week to check out a pile of books anyway. I like the idea of being able to read classic literature over a period of three months, without all the structure of reading a book during the school year. I hated "read to chapter five," "lets discuss the theme of the color green" and other things that felt forced rather that interesting. With summer reading it was a chance to try and find the themes first, instead of having them stuffed down your throat. Aaron didn't quite understand this, but at least I got him to believe that some of his assigned books are actually good. I thought it was interesting that seniors at his school could read John Irving. Like he's appropriate for class discussion. "So, you're saying she bit her ex-lover's penis off because her husband liked to cruise up the driveway with his headlights off and he rearended the car she was blowing him off in?" "Yes, and what themes can we find in that?"
posted by
nea at 2:31 PM
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QOTD:
"I'm not dating you anymore, I'm your husband."
posted by
nea at 9:48 AM
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wMonday, June 17, 2002 |
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It is odd seeing old friends that you used to hang out with all the time. This weekend, my best friend and her husband were in town on their way to Mexico. So on Saturday night we went to Dave and Buster's in Irvine. Usually when I am in Irvine I will see someone I used to know, but usually it is a person I never hung out with and don't have a need to talk to. Saturday, though, we ran into my friend Ryan. I have not seen Ryan once since we graduated high school. Not even during the summer after when everyone had graduation parties, because he was always busy and out of town. It was kinda entertaining for Summer and I to both introduce our husbands. As far as I know, we are the only ones from our little high school group to be married. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to catch up at all. Too many people who would have been bored. C'est la vie. Nice to run into people you like. I wish it happened more often.
I will be lucky if I get home before 11 pm tonight. I have to tutor all the kids tonight after work, and one of them has her math final tomorrow. I thought yesterday we would have more time to work but a Father's Day dinner got in her way. So now I get to be there like three hours tonight. woo-hoo! Then I get to tutor the boys, which will be another fun adventure. At least tonight is my final night with one of the three, so that Tuesday and Wednesday can be a bit less crazy. I am SOOOO looking forward to Wednesday, when I shall be done!!!!!!
posted by
nea at 11:03 AM
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wFriday, June 14, 2002 |
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More on smelly people.
So training the temp yesterday wasn't so bad. I sat a few feet away, didn't face her so much, and things weren't so bad. During the training, we switched seats (this turned out to be my downfall). I noticed when I got back up to my cubicle that I could still smell her on me, so I washed my hands and face in the bathroom and put it out of my mind.
Five hours later, I get home and Dave says, "You smell wierd." We finally figured out that I smelled of stinky temp. At first I thought it would be enough if I took off my dress, but no, the smell had pervaded on to my skin. I had to shower to get the smell off of me. Gross!
posted by
nea at 9:19 AM
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wThursday, June 13, 2002 |
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So yesterday I took the day off in an attempt to spend some time just being at home and relaxing. Mission accomplished. I got to do some work on our office (four boxes of crap emptied!), sleep in, look at the wedding pictures again, and make Dave come home early so we could hang out. Very relaxing. I think it helped my stress a lot.
Work is good. My biller (hee hee, he's all mine!) is picking things up REALLY quickly, which is going to be a big help in the months to come. One of the goals my supervisor set for me for this year was to be able to train people to have a 10,000 spot count per month by the end of one year. I think Paolo will be able to do that in three months, maybe less. woo-hoo! In less fun news, though, I had to train this temp today that smells funny. yuck.
posted by
nea at 3:28 PM
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wTuesday, June 11, 2002 |
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Sometime in the near future I will have a few years where finals don't matter. I have finished studying for them myself, which is nice, but now I have to deal with the kids I tutor. Last night I go over to one of the two homes I tutor in to find utter chaos. The older brother has to shower and change for a football banquet, the younger brother has his chess tutor, and in the middle of all of this their mother and I are trying to figure out when the kids have their finals. Amazingly enough we have a schedule-this week yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Next week Sunday 9 am, then Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Poor kids have to see me four days in a row. And I haven't even coordinated with the other kid I tutor. I'm in for a long two weeks. But then I have a month off before starting summertime SAT tutoring. woo-hoo!
In other news, Dave and I picked up our pictures from our photographer last night. They are really good. There are normal looking pictures of Dave and his family (Dave carries a picture in his wallet of his family from almost 10 years ago because it's the last decent picture they took). There are lots of pictures of the wedding party. There are just plain lots of good pictures (like 200 or so). We also found out our photographer is running a special--um, if any girls out there need a hair cut and want to get me some free parent albums, please let me know. Long story, but I will probably be annoying people to go get their haircut by our photographer's wife.
posted by
nea at 10:10 AM
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wSaturday, June 08, 2002 |
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On Wedding Registries
For our wedding, my entertainment was watching what people bought on our registry. A lot of the real expensive stuff went first, then the dishes, and then the stuff in the middle price range. A lot of the cheap stuff, like a seven dollar whisk, was left unpurchased. We also got a lot of pretty crystal stuff.
My new entertainment is looking at registries of other people. My cousin is getting married in September and I have a friend getting married in two weeks. My friend registered for things I could never see buying (worse than our pancake warmer) like $110 drinking glasses. No, not a set. Each. They also registered at five places, but whatever. The current problem with my cousin's is it's not working correctly so everyone is buying the same stuff. Also, the opinion is she didn't register for enough stuff (though people said this to us, and we had plenty of stuff on there for people to buy). Her shower is tomorrow, so we shall see what she gets. It's odd, I guess, watching people buy things off of a list. But I'm really glad we registered. Who knows what would have shown up on our doorstep otherwise.
posted by
nea at 5:15 PM
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wFriday, June 07, 2002 |
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The fact that, at 7, my little sister is a sister-in-law strikes me as funny:
29. What is the weirdest nickname anyone has ever called you?
"Salty llama head" would come to mind first... that'd be my sister-in-law's name for me (she's 7).
Changing your last name can be quite entertaining. Yesterday I called a station for an invoice, and today it came in the fax addressed to "L. Lieberman." One of the supervisors picked it up and couldn't figure out who to give it to. She goes to one of her billers. They spent five minutes debating who it was (I heard the end of it). They went through people in the department, looked for Liebermans at Carat, debated on whether it had been sent to an L. Lieberman who then forwarded on the invoice, etc. Finally they decided that, since it was a political account, to put the invoice on my supervisor's chair. The funny part is that they both know my husband, and even thought about him but couldn't figure out why someone would send him an invoice. I find the invoice, go over to the biller's desk, and say "Me!" She just about died laughing. The problem is that I have a feeling I'm going to hear this same discussion happen with most of the people in the department. Eventually I'll be a Lieberman, really.
posted by
nea at 4:14 PM
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wThursday, June 06, 2002 |
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My goal in life these past couple of days is to find stuff for two of the new people to do. This is really difficult because we've had so many new hires lately, and people are moving slow to give them the correct access. One of the people didn't have a computer for two days. Two of them still do not have access to the system where we do ALL of our work. I've been doing what I can, but there is only so much stuff I can find for them to do. Yesterday I sent one girl downstairs to sort mail. I felt bad. Here are these people, all ready to start work and learn about billing, and I have them making copies and sorting mail. My supervisor (who should be helping me find stuff for them to do but hasn't) is running around doing a million things. I haven't seen her much since Monday. It's hard to be put in charge and have to basically leave people with nothing to do for multiple hours of the day. But next week everything should be in order and I'll feel better.
Ted, we're still waiting for the thongs. :)
posted by
nea at 1:02 PM
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wMonday, June 03, 2002 |
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Back to working life . . . blah.
So I came back to find that I had moved to a bigger cubicle. I also now have a phone with caller ID. Woo-hoo! Life is good when you come back to a promotion. Now, none of my stuff had moved, nor had the last resident cleared out her cubicle (I still have two drawers full of her crap) so I spent a couple hours this morning moving. Also having my computer update and having a bunch of stuff fixed. As suspected, very little of my work was done. So I will be pretty busy for the next couple weeks. Add to that having to train four new people (so far, there will be four more soon) and tutor and have a life and, well, things are going back to normal.
I am still having a hard time adjusting to people speaking English, and American culture in general. My rush hour commute this morning seemed totally off the wall. Eventually this will fade, I know, but for now I have this need to be back in Paris.
I have cut off my hair. Like really cut it off. Like over a foot of hair is gone and it doesn't touch my shoulders. Very odd, but quite comfy.
posted by
nea at 1:22 PM
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wSaturday, June 01, 2002 |
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I have drugs! I have drugs! I can see much better now.
Dave and I keep talking about the wedding. I realize that now, after almost two weeks (awww, our two-week anniversary), there are certain scenes that stick out in my mind.
The Ceremony
1. I coughed up this huge loogie before getting into the procession. the bartender was real nice and gave me a cup to spit it into. My dad and I weren't crying during the procession because we kept talking about where he needed to stop to pass me off to Dave. My dad forgot. He forgets things sometimes.
2. Dave and I couldn't look at each other much during the ceremony cuz we'd get all teary-eyed.
3. No one lit the candles so that we could light the Unity candle. My mom came up with matches. Her line, "First time a smoker ever saved the day."
4. Weston cracking up during the faithfulness part of the vows.
The Reception
1. It took two people to help me go to the bathroom. Luckily for Diana, Summer, and Quyen, I could reach around the dress and wipe myself. I've heard stories of people who needed help in that arena as well. Greg later told me he was relived (sp?) that Dave didn't need the same sort of help.
2. Food was good. Dave and I decided that dammit, we paid for our seats and we were going to have dinner. Why do people not eat at their own weddings? I so don't understand.
3. My coworkers are lame-asses that can't even show up to my wedding. Whatever.
4. My opa was the hit of the night. He knows probably every dance out there and was having a great time showing his skills. Dave's aunt Lois, "Who is that distinguished looking gentleman over there?" Dave, "That's Linnea's grandfather." "Oh, how old is he?" "76." "Oh" The sad part of this is that Dave's aunt, who is 20 years younger than my opa, is still too old for him.
5. My parents tripping out at seeing various members of each other's families for the first time in like 20 years. This also happened to my dad at my bridal shower. My families totally like each other; and my parents used to hang out with my stepfather's family 30 years ago, so I think it was nice for them to all see each other.
6. Greg's "other" ceremony. Dave and I have now been blessed by a flask of Chivas. There are days where I worry about Greg.
7. Flowers, flowers everywhere. Our florist did a really great job, and even surprised us by covering the area above the fireplace with a ton of greenery and lavender roses. It was REALLY pretty.
posted by
nea at 7:52 AM
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