Friday Favorites --- Tuesday Rage?

I missed 'Friday Favorites' last week so maybe that's why I felt so much rage on Monday (which has bled into Tuesday).  When I lived in Blacksburg, the local radio station had "Zach's Anger Diaries" and so I present to you today MY anger diaries:

On my way to work, there are a few traffic cops.  This is fairly new to me since they just let us give each other the finger and hit each other in Virginia.  There is one traffic cop at an undisclosed location where I need to make a right turn that acts like I'm going to plow through the intersection and hit him.  Seriously.  If I'm the first one in the turn lane, he will come over to the turn lane gesturing wildly like I'm the crazy one.  I drive a compact car.  I couldn't plow through that intersection even if I wanted to.  Also wouldn't I be accelerating if I was going to keep going instead of obviously slowing down?  There's no need for the wild dramatics, APD.  I promise you that I am slowing to a stop.

Yes, that is an elliptical trainer and no, I'm not raging because I hate using it.  It's actually my favorite piece of gym equipment other than the floor mats (I do love to sit).  However it has a touchscreen (as you can see in the picture above).  Riddle me this, internet, why would you put the magazine/book ledge in a place where it would lean against the touchscreen and press against the various controls?  I can't tell you how many times I am trying to read something only to discover that my incline is at 100%.  I don't wear my glasses in the gym so I can't read the closed captioning on the TVs and lately I've had to resort to my old stand-by of judging people.

The Georgia Aquarium.  I have nothing against the Georgia Aquarium.  My personal preference is for the National Aquarium in Baltimore but that is partially due to the many fond memories from my childhood there.  The issue that I have with the Georgia Aquarium is that it makes for a crappy adult date, despite what local ATL bloggers are saying.  There's no way of coming out of the aquarium without looking like you want kids tomorrow or you never want kids.  This weekend I'm pretty sure I came across like I was the witch in Hansel and Gretel.  There were kids everywhere --- ones bigger than me, ones smaller than me, and my archnemesis -- kids in strollers.  I have enough friends with kids (hell, I even baby-sit) to know how convenient a stroller is but you can't have 700 of them in an enclosed area without a traffic jam.  I also don't appreciate junior kicking me as you roll past me and/or hit me with the stroller.  Here's another hint for all you parents out there --- just because you tap me with your stroller -- I'M NOT MOVING.  It's a kid, not a disabled adult.  Wheelchairs, service animals -- sure I'll move.  Strollers, especially JOGGING strollers in an aquarium??  Think again.

So, yeah, who wants to keep reading my blog now?  ;-) 

Friday Favorites!

I can't believe it's just now Friday.  I was ready for this Friday about two days ago.  Quick recap of the week: long work days catching up from when I was out with strep throat, undisclosed drama, and a kidney infection.  Evidently kidney infections can follow strep throat.  Seriously?  There was a phrase I read on a blog recently that really speaks to me: We are THAT family.  Thing after thing after thing, right?  My body is not happy with some of the changes that I've been making in diet/exercise/stress management and I need to push through it to figure out how to make me healthy and whole again.

However here are my Friday Favorites that helped me get through this week:

Crunchy curls that are made from Lentils and potatos....I am so addicted and you get so many more a serving size than chips:

Favorite video for the week??  Who loves you baby?  OBAMA!  An infinite playlist of Obama's responses to people's I LOVE YOU shouts...which are actually "I LOVE YOU BACK".  If this doesn't make your day, I'm not sure what will.

Last but not least is my new bag.  I've all over the place during the day....work, lunch, gym, church some nights, VT events and even finding the time to hang out with or make friends.  I was carrying like 69 bags around everywhere and half the time couldn't find what I needed from place to place (oh i want to put my hair back -- oh thats in my gym bag.  gosh its cold i need a sweater -- oh thats on my desk at work).  I was turned onto the company Thirty-One right before I left DC and it's much bigger down south.  Probably because Southerns really love monogramming and I think it's starting to rub off on me.  Here is a picture of the bag style that I got but with my monogram in pale pink:

 Keep me in your thoughts and prayers the next few days that I'll get healthy and stay that way.

I'm not on a singles dating website damnit!

As evidenced in a previous post, I can be pretty creepy.  Therefore it shouldn't surprise anyone that I have a statcounter at the bottom of my blog [scroll down and see the pink thing -- got you!] and it shows me where traffic is coming from.  For most of you, it's Facebook or direct links that I spam you.  However tt appears that I'm getting a fair amount of traffic from a profile on a dating site that I am definitely NOT part of, which leads me to believe that someone is trying to use my site to pick up dudes/chicks/trannys. 

First of all, thank you for reading my site but tell that jerk to write their own funny shit!

Daylight Savings Time Wins Again.

Daylight Savings Time - 2 Megan - 0

That's right Internet.  I am 2 for 2 on days late to work after Daylight Savings Time.  The cycle has been going like this:

11pm - I really should go to bed now.  OMFG - Is that Jersey Shore on again?  Well I'll just watch it in bed and probably fall asleep.  [why was JERZATHON on this weekend?  Did MTV want the world to stop?] 

12pm - Oh that Snooki.  She's a riot.  I probably should make a better attempt to fall asleep.  Oh crap, what did the cat get into?  It sounds like she just broke something.  [side note, it was my ceramic crab that she broke and now I'll be supergluing tiny crab legs back on.  stop wondering why I own a ceramic crab and start wondering why you don't.]

1am - Usually asleep....or enjoying a snack.

6am - Alarm clock goes off.  Oh man it's so dark.  It's really like 5am "my time" [my birthday is when we 'fall back' and shall henceforth be called 'my time'].  I'll just hit snooze.

7:30am - OH NO!  I didn't hit snooze.  I turned my clock off.  Time to do the mad-shower-brush-teeth-make-lunch run out the door.  Rinse and repeat.

In other news, I feel a lot better and am so appreciative of all of my Atlanta friends that checked on me.  Being sick in a new city away from family and friends really sucks but my new friends really came through on offering to do things for me and help me out.  I need to work on being more like them...this is more like how I would be:

Friday Favorites

Hello, new visitors!  Since I posted my blog on a private Facebook status, I've had 87 unique visitors.  I wasn't expecting that many people to read my little corner of the internet or to respond via my Facebook status or comments so thank you thank you!

As you can tell by the timeliness of this update, this week didn't really end as expected.  I've been in bed the last two days with strep throat.  I don't even know how I still get strep throat?!  Seriously, what ADULT gets strep throat?  Evidently, this one.

My first favorite of this week is Passport Day in the USA:

For those of us who may or may not need to obtain a passport and who may or may not have been too lazy to make an appointment with their local passport agency (also known as a post office), this is great!  Today only you can go to your local passport agency and apply for a passport without an appointment.  I arrived a half hour early and there was already a long line.  Luckily, my loud mouth and crappy attitude helped me jump the line and this Atlanta girl may or may not be able to travel internationally in 4-6 weeks!

My next favorite of this week is Curtis Jay:

Curtis was in my stand-up comedy class at Relapse Theater in Atlanta.  In our stand-up graduation performance (above), he talks about how he will not kick anyone's ass for any white friend of his.  He totally stole this from a conversation we had where I asked him if I could threaten people and he could be my hitman.  He was not cool with this and it ended up in his routine.  It's way funnier coming from him than me and so I'll let him steal it.

Curtis has been pretty successful in the Open Mic circuit around Atlanta and has been pushing gently nudging me to continue performing beyond our class.  He knows that I've been a little reluctant and so he invited me this week to a more low-key Open Mic this coming Tuesday.  I'll keep you updated Internet on how it goes.

Hope everyone has a great weekend --- mine so far has consisted of Jersey Shore and my Virginia Tech pillow pet (a bonus favorite):

Stay happy and healthy!  

Auditing my Facebook friends

An auditor by day and a self-proclaimed IT nerd by night, I sometimes find that the two bleed into each other.  Case in point --- Facebook.  Say what?  I know Internet, stay with me here.

One concept in IT auditing to ensure that people don't have access after being fired or transferring jobs is the periodic access review.  Basically you want to make sure that someone is looking at all the users that have access to a particular system or software on some type of regular basis.  As an auditor, we prefer that this "someone" is actually someone that is somewhat related to the system and that this "regular basis" is at least quarterly and that they will take action if they find "someone" who should not have access. 

I've had Facebook since it was introduced for Virginia Tech in 2004 so I've had *many* friends over the years that have served various purposes (please help me with my homework was a big one).  I like to do a periodic access review now and again to get rid of people with annoying status updates, people that I have no real connection to, or just people that I don't think add any value to my life (also known as people that I stalk for no good reason but entertainment).  Recently, I started using the tool Friends List Tracker.  Oh.My.Gosh.  Trip down memory lane?  This was more trip down memory back alley.

This list tells you the changes in your friends list daily but it also gives you a list of people you may have once been friends with -- mine is 31 pages long.  THIRTY ONE PAGES.  Some of these pages contain people from high school that I'm sure I was friends with when Facebook first launched or people from college that I had class with at one point.  However some of these people are people I don't even recognize or haven't thought about in years.  This is further proof that I will pretty much friend anyone.  Seriously, how was I friends with people who I can't readily recall?!!  I know some of these were women whose names have changed but not all of them.

But as much as I was appalled by the number of people that I've deleted from my digital life, I was also slightly happy that I had been purging my friends list so frequently....am I that big of a nerd?  Let the button below speak for itself...

Tornado Weekend

Normally when I say a tornado came through my weekend, I'm referring to a crazy schedule or people coming to visit.  In this case, there were ACTUAL TORNADOS in Georgia.  OMG WTF BBQ LOL. 

Luckily, I could count on the local news to tell me everything I needed to know about tornados in Atlanta:

1.  You need to leave your mobile home during a tornado warning because it's, you know, mobile. 

2.  The news anchors would like you to send pictures until you send one of the funnel and then they have "trained paid professionals" for that.  In this case, they actually just want pictures of your ill-fated home and your crying children.

3.  You should remember the acronym DUCK: Downstairs, Underneath something, Cover yourself, Keep in shelter until the storm has passed.  However the news team does not want you to miss a minute of their broadcast so they will stream the broadcast for you to watch on your laptop in your shelter --- unless you lose power and internet -- then you should probably go take pictures of the damage to send in.

In all seriousness, it was a pretty scary night for me since we didn't really have tornados in Virginia.  I spent most of the night running around my apartment frantically texting my friends asking if I should be hiding in the bathroom with my cat (answer: no because I heard no sirens).  Also what happened to animals being able to sense natural disasters?  She slept in the window the entire time.  However I thought cats were also supposed to chase bugs and she seems quite content to watch them for about 2 minutes before walking away.  Happy Monday!