here's to the present. raise your glass on high.

chattanoogie in paris?!

yup. believe it. while adrift in paris oh-so-long ago, i came across.... chattanooga! what?! why?! yeah, i don't know either. makes no sense. i don't get it. please explain. quite amusing though. :)

if you look closely.. it says "surf and skate".. umm.. surf? skate? 1) 'nooga is landlocked. uh huh, and you definitely can't surf in the tennessee river. 2) skate? like hawaii/california skateboard? no sirreeee.. i don't think i've even seen rollerbladers.



it's a fancy clothing store! chattanooga's full of fashionistas? in paris?

RIP kitty pumpkin

our kitty pumpkin died. my roomie found it eaten alive by white and black mold/mildew/evil this afternoon and threw it in the trash before it could infect mr. smiley. some combination of the warm, non-circulating air of the apartment and not getting rid of 100% of the pumpkin guts probably did it away. poor pumpkin. we got a new one to replace it; we just have to carve it now.

man, mother nature's a bitch.

i got 2 cute pun-kins for you

ahh yes, it's autumn in DC. october somehow came a lot faster than i expected, and suddenly, it's almost halloween. so we bought pumpkins. why not? i've never really carved a real jack-o-lantern before... except for once a long time ago, in the parking lot of a church?? yeeeaahh.. maybe that was just a dream.. i dunno, my memories have faded.

anyway, so there's a cozy little farmer's market near me. and last weekend, me and my roomie went and found us two pumpkins. one bigger, one smaller. and in honor of rascal, the 12-year old diabetic cat of apt. 432 (that's me), the big pumpkin got whiskers. aaand the littler pumpkin got a cute face, haha.

kinda makes you get into the season, huh? they're just so adorable. :)

torus heaven, hehe

the best.
and i just ate my entire day's calories in 2 donuts. woohoo!

2000

if you haven't heard, the number of US casualities in iraq has reached 2000. as of yesterday. and though i agree that this number is ridiculously high, i don't understand its significance. why choose 2000 to be a number to commemorate? was 1500 not good enough? not enough? what about 1200? 800? 450? 30? those are all deaths. is 2000 good for shock value? even as bush, in response to the rising casualties, specifically notes that more deaths will come due to continued fighting? great.

and as the american side, we only notice the number of useless (or useful, whichever way you want to see it) deaths of our soldiers. what about the iraqis? what about their soldiers? or the innocent, accidental deaths of bystanders and uninvolved citizens who happened to be too close to a suicide bomber? we're ignoring those numbers (if they're even counted)...

hummmm...

i don't wanna grow up
i'm a toys r us kid
there's a million toys at toys r us
that i can play with
from trucks to trains
to video games
it's the biggest toy store there is
i don't wanna grow up
'cause if i did
i wouldn't be a toys r us kid



phew.. yay.

no honey, nuh uh.

(warning: massive rant ahead. massive)

i am NOT a secretary, damn you. i wasn't hired to be a secretary, and if i wanted to be a secretary, i wouldn't be one for this organization. no way, jose. i have better skills and knowledge to be applied, and if i won't be using them, then i'm leaving.

having spent 7 hours last friday calling all 100 senators' offices and asking for the name of their health legislative assistants, i assumed that it was just a task that needed to be done. and alan didn't have time to do it. fine, that's okay, i don't mind.

today however, i have to send out 100 emails to all those stupid fucking health legislative assistants, attaching a memo that our org has written, concerning a recently approved piece of biosecurity legislation. of course, me being some lowly college grad, i didn't actually write the damn memo/paper/comment. i simply get to email it out. WOO-fucking-HOO.

there are only three interesting things i'm discovering amidst all this work:
1) there's a senator with a last name of crapo. seriously. Senator Crapo. how much does that suck?
2) some girl's name is danielle turnipseed. man, i hope she likes turnips.
3) some dude's name is jason money. i wonder if he ever yells "i am the money!"..

yeah, that's it. that's all i've learned. that, and microsoft outlook sucks balls.

so here, let's do an evaluation:

PROS --
it's a little company, no big shitty bureaucracy crap.
people are generally nice and relatively interesting.
information is intriguing, biosecurity is a relevant topic to our times.
new perspective on biotech, biology, research, etc
organization is decently lax on dress code, time of arrival, and vacation days

CONS --
we're dealing with the government, and the government is retarded.
everything's based on an ideal world -- "this is what we should be doing".. but nothing ever really works that way. fine, call me jaded.
we aren't actually able to do anything besides offer advice and commentary. it's completely up to the senator or whomever to listen and act. in the meantime, we just sit and hope. that stinks.
alan, the boss, is still coughing. i'm gonna secretly gag him one day. he's also, as i've discovered, still a newbie at all of this -- he's only previously worked for one year at DHS.. so really, he's kinda still figuring this stuff out. ehhh. and he's one of those slightly-socially-inept-too-serious scientist guys. agh.
one of the CEOs of the org is kinda lame.
sitting at a computer all day long is my idea of blah. flabby butt, numb toes, symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, fuzzy sight, too much coffee.

okay so.. where would i rather be?

let's dream --
being outdoors sometimes
talking to real people!
slightly more practical stuff -- hands-on, with a real effect at the end of the day, i like results (and even a deadline or two)

oh me, oh my. moo.

flab is easy

i admit it: sometimes, i'm a little lame. this week, for instance, has been a shining example of my lame-ness. i only went out once this week (!! which, trust me, is a GINORMOUS contrast to my usual goings), and i stayed in yesterday night. and tonight as well. go me! but really, after such a wondrous vacation, i have to settle back into normal life... otherwise, all my daily "adventures" would seem incredibly lame in comparison to my traipsings through paris. does that make any sense at all?

anywho.

so i went errand-running on this dreary saturday. and discovered a dramatically bad aspect of american life. as you've probably noticed, healthier foods are always more expensive than fatty, clog-inducing, cholesterol-filled foods. well, i've realized that it applies to habits too. this afternoon, i went to a nearby sports club to check out their (woohoo!) indoor pool facilities and see whether or not i'd be interested in joining (i miss swimming; the poor pool at my apt bldg closed on labor day). sadly enough, the big bubble over their indoor pool was still being set-up, and thus, the pool wouldn't be open till monday. instead, the enthusiastic but rather stupid membership director took me on a huge tour of the club's facilities.. and mentioned -- oh yeah, and pricing:

$149 initiation fee (but special this month! half off! only $74.50!)
plus $105/month.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??

$105 each month? that's.. unbelievable. ridiculous. insane. horrifying. horrendous. terrible, horrible, no good, very bad.

dude, i am NOT rich. and even if i was, $105 per month would be still be.. uh.. a bit much? don't you think?

okay, so i'm still hesitating at joining the rock climbing gym too (i've been going.. umm.. for free for a little while, hehe). it's $95 initiation and $70/month. still on the expensive side, but shit, in comparison, it's hella cheap. so rock climbing it may be. and really, i can't be too sad about that.. rock climbing's fun, the people are cool, and i won't smell like chlorine constantly.

... but i like the water!
sigh.

okay, so back to my original point. why is it that maintaining a healthy lifestyle is so incredibly expensive? $105 per month. add to that the cost of sports equipment (swimsuits, running sneakers, whatever you may use depending on the sport of choice).. and phew, it's massive dough.

on the other hand, cable tv (LOTS of channels) is what.. $60 per month? something like that. netflix isn't $105/month; tivo isn't $105/month. i could watch so much tv and buy so much food for $105!

aye-ya. no wonder america is obese. it's too easy.

on that note, i'm gonna go running. fight the flab!

1:35 am

i spent 7 hours today calling senate offices.

due to rain and wind, i had to eat lunch at my desk. moo.

i have a bug bite on my thigh, and it's super-duper-insanely itchy. scratch!

i STILL forgot to go get my pants from the dry cleaners -- i think they've been there for 3.5 weeks by now. ruh roh.

but i did have an appletini at happy hour.. ate some yummy free sandwiches. and i talked to my favorite people tonight, went running, got sweaty, and did abs with leno and conan. looked at awesomely wonderful photos too. maybe i'll watch a movie or something.

amen, a successful friday. :)

chronicles of flying mishaps

i decided that i really should record all the horrendous delays/cancellations that i encounter every. single. time. i. fly. i dunno why i'm targeted -- really, i neither look nor sound nor act like a terrorist, and my current job should dissuade even the most fervent check-in people and bag checkers from believing that i have ulterior motives when i get on a plane. seriously people!

sadly (or maybe it's better -- i block these things out of my mind), i can't remember all the incidences that i've had to deal with. but there's no better place than my blog to post my more memorable (and/or most recent) airline problems.

1) oct. 16, 2005: paris (cdg) to dc (dulles) via london (heathrow). missed departing paris flight by minutes! seconds! damn! forced to take a slightly later flight to london, arriving late morning. strike 1. confirmed on SEVEN PM flight from heathrow to dulles, placed on stand-by on 3pm flight. 7pm departure means that we'd have to spend ~8 hours sitting in shopping-mecca-airport = blegh.ugh. strike 2. discovery that the one piece of checked luggage (checked under my name, which is the wrong one) has been directly transferred to 7pm flight.. instead of being released to passenger at heathrow. strike 3. breakdown, vow of angry revenge at the airline community in general. calm, british-accented request to lovely british airways reps at heathrow reveals that... voila, 3pm flight has availabilities. and voila x2, baggage can be changed to new flight! hallejujah! remaining euros exchanged = 9.5 pounds... perfect for lunch. phew. british airways, you're okay after all.

2) oct. 9, 2005: dc (dulles) to paris (cdg) via london (heathrow). delayed in london for hours... transferred haphazardly to another flight. lame.

3) sept. 26, 2005: san jose (sjc) to bwi (baltimore) via las vegas. red-eye flight (leaving around 6pm, supposedly arriving at bwi around 5:30am on tuesday) has been canceled. grrreat -- transferred from frontier air to america west. america west rep is total asswipe, tempted to kick her in the boob. will arrive at bwi around 7am. massive traffic from bwi on 95S to home, then back out to work in dc, arriving a leetle bit late... sigh.

when else did i fly this year? christmastime/january.. too long ago, can't remember. spring break in march to DR... must've been smooth, no horrid memories. although i do think they went through my bag at security and body-scanned me. grrr, i'm scary. right.

pause in reality

hi. it's friday finally, of a slightly gloomy week. cold and wet and gray outside, i'm trying to ignore the uber-blegh atmosphere and instead focus on the memories of my stupendously wonderful vacation in paris last week.

i visited paris 5 years ago, as a rising senior in high school. after 4.5 weeks in rouen, our "summer study abroad" group celebrated the end of the trip by spending a few last days in the city of lights. it was a hectic, whirlwind tour of the french capital with timed stops at all the renowned tourist sights and a bit of "legal" drinking.. haha. but it was fun... and since then, i've always wanted to go back to visit.

maybe it's 'cause paris is the only european city i've really been to. who knows..

so i went back last week. with my man. hehe. :)

and it was soooooooo good. in all honesty, i can't come up with a better word than "good" -- it was solidly good. magical and relaxing and wondrous and lovely and funny and good. go find a thesaurus. we arrived, via london heathrow (more on this later) on british airways, on monday afternoon.. and left (sniffle) paris the following sunday morning.

we visited most of the typical touristy places -- le tour eiffel, arc de triomphe, la place de la concorde, l'hotel des invalides, musee d'orsay, louvre, notre dame, sacre coeur, le champs-elysses, etc.. (apologies, but i think in french not english names). but we also spent so much time just wandering around the non-touristy neighborhoods... and those were the bestest.

bookstores and little toy shops and open, fresh food markets (oh yummmmm). lots of boulangeries and patisseries (bread shops and pastry places, more yummm).. wine and cafes and doing the french thing by watching people pass by. benches in church plazas, cobblestone streets next to middle schools, kids chasing pigeons, hilarious chinese and thai restaurants, taking naps on the grass in front of the eiffel tower... mmm, it makes me smile. :)

i didn't fail miserably at communicating either. in fact, and boy would my french teachers be proud, i did pretty damn well at listening and responding and asking and requesting. all in relatively-non-garbled french. go me! go me! haha, i guess i still remember my 5 years of french.. yay. and i brought both cameras, so good photos.

just yay.




my mom (and apparently, my brother too) reacted with a "WHAAAAAAT?! " when i told her (on the day before i left, hehe) that i'd be spending a week in paris with willie. so now la familia is probably speculating and giggling and assuming and imagining the most interesting scenarios ever. great, i'll get to deal with 20-questions at christmastime...

by the way, heathrow sucks ass. who wants to shop while at an airport? and not only shop but also spend POUNDS. ugh, my luck with delayed/missed/canceled flights is amazing...

ahh.. back to reality. but man, i really liked that pause. pauses are nice, aren't they?

happy friday, peeps.

bzzzz CHOMP

i'm back from paris... yay for paris, boo for being back.

but before i expound about the wonders and loveliness-es of my trip and the city of lights, i have a problem:

there's a blasted, maddening, ginormous mosquito that's been chomping at my legs and arms for the past month. honestly, a whole month. i leave for a week, and when i get back, it's STILL here. don't mosquitoes have short lifespans?!?! apparently not.

it's HUGE. and striped. and it bzzzz's in my ear, taunting me to slap at it. so i finally did and managed to swipe some blood (probably my own) from the damn bug. but i don't actually know if it's dead 'cause i can't find its big scary body on the patterned carpet of the office.

i'm so serious, there's a mutant mosquito haunting my cubicle. shudder...help.

:)

whoopity!

back in a week.. yay. :o)

-al

personal: i think i might've dumped way too much sugar into my coffee this morning. my typing is sorta jittery, and i've been blinking a lot. and it's slightly difficult to focus. caffeine and sugar, i'm on drugs.

political: as i sit amongst 30 unread messages in my work inbox, i'm still kinda amazed at how our government functions. or at least, the governmental departments and agencies. we're so worried about the looming avian flu, supposedly brewing in those dirty asian countries, and in order to find some way to prevent it from killing the world, we've recreated an older version. so now, we have TWO potentially-lethal strains of influenza virus. bioterrorists must be shitting in their pants, they're so excited. not only that, apparently, CDC -- which is THE organization in charge of or containing almost all of our critical bioagent research -- won't reveal certain things due to "intelligence." intel is supposed to be helping us, you doofus heads, not hurting us! last week, DC's Biowatch detectors supposedly picked up some floating aerosolized particles that set off a rapid reaction of testing to determine if a dangerous bacteria was being churned up. today, DHS claims that everything's fine.. "nothing positive enough." better yet, DOD, which also monitors possible bioagents, and DHS don't talk: no communication, no coordination, no sharing. are you kidding me? gas prices, tax problems, iraqi wars, terrorists, hurricane response, emergency preparedness and response, avian flu, normal flu vaccines, supreme court nominees... the checklist is growing, and nothing's being crossed off.

natural: it's super-rainy today. i hope flights are gonna be okay. i hope weather's gonna be alright. i wonder what washington, dc winters are like... i wonder if i'll miss boston's vicious, 7-month, ice/snow-fests. it's possible.

entertainment-al: i have a huuuuuuuge list of movies that i wanna see. including capote, in her shoes (haha), the wallace and gromit one woohoo!, good night and good luck (george clooney directing and a 1950s parallel to today's world?), proof, oliver twist (ahh dickens), walk the line (joaquin! reese! the south!), elizabethtown (once again, the girly-ness strikes), brokeback mountain (oooh, ang lee + jake gyllenhal and heath ledger as gay cowboys), the squid and the whale, domino (keira intrigues me), march of the penguins (penguins!! penguins!!!), rent (loooooove), oh i could go on. i love fall movie season. too bad movies are so expensive.

financial/travel-al: once my bank account gains weight (after so much dieting and some serious bulimia), i think.. i think i wanna visit boston. hopefully, the red sox will provide a good excuse too. :)

comeback time

alrighty dudes and dudettes.

friday is the day. it's decision day 'cause the white sox are up 2-0. and if they win once more over the red sox, it's all over for the beantown in this year's postseason. so gooooo fenway! no bad feelings towards chicago (i love the city!), but my loyalties lie with the other sox. the red ones.

and honestly, with the O.C., reunion, AND prison break all taking the month of october off, fox better show something worthwhile! and worthwhile = red sox in the ALCS.

the world is ridiculous

i've come to the conclusion that society is losing it. really quickly.

examples of complete and utter re-donk-ulous-ness:

1. recreating the 1918 Spanish flu H1N1 strain in order to study and prevent an avian flu pandemic. maybe not so ridiculous except for the fact that it entirely disregards biosecurity precautions. if we all die because some of the H1N1 strain leaks out and infects the world all over again, i'm just gonna say "i told you so."

2. bush. apparently, islamic militants have a "a radical ideology with immeasurable objectives to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world." who knew? great. i'm more concerned with the U.S. attempt to mold the rest of the world to our whims.

3. bet you didn't know that federal money was going towards buying viagra for sex offenders. oh government, how you make so much sense.

sigh.

medical check-up

my right eyeball hurts. seriously, it has this dull-sort of pain. if i push it, or if i blink really hard (yes, i've pressed my eyeball, and yes, i blink hard -- it happens when you try to stay awake), it hurts. why does my right eyeball hurt?

i've been getting a lot of mysterious bugbites, mostly appearing on my limbs. but i have absolutely no idea where i'm getting them from. i haven't been romping around in the woods recently; i don't spend time in mosquito- or bug-infested areas; and i vacuumed my apartment this past weekend. i almost vacuumed the cat too, but it bolted away. where are you, you little buggies?

my right wrist feels funny. if i get carpal tunnel, i think i should get a raise. nick, aspiring doctor, says that symptoms of carpal tunnel are ... "pain". as a bio major, i could've come up with that one on my own.

my feet are permanently orange. i don't self-tan my feet, but the orange-ness may be due to the never-ending amount of dye that seeps from my rock climbing shoes onto my feet. is that bad?

i'm getting old, i think my health is deteriorating. :)

oc.to.ber

mit made me a night owl. i can fall asleep, without any problems, at 3pm in the afternoon, but at 1am in the morning, with only 6 hours of sleep on the horizon, i'm still wide awake. blink blink. yup, still amazingly coherent.

there's something about the night.. it's dark. and peaceful. and because the rest of the world (in your time zone at least) has settled down and crawled into bed, you're finally alone with your thoughts. you, yourself. just the tick of a clock or the hum of the air conditioner or the pop of a lightbulb shining in the darkness. i admit that shadows still scare me sometimes.. but at the same time, i can do a pretty cool shadow puppet of a dog. :)

at night, my thoughts are allowed to drift and wander wherever they want. no forced organization, and no explanations about why i jumped subjects from political analysis to laundry detergent to gummy worms. you're free. you can ramble, you can drool.

fall and spring nights are the best, methinks. it's that weather factor -- cooler air, light breezes, falling leaves or flowering buds. summer nights are still muggy; winter nights are, duh, ass-cold. but the in-between seasons work out pretty nicely. i wonder what happens if i end up living in a non-seasonal area like california or hawaii. i don't remember enough of florida except for the nasty, horrid, blood-sucking, striped and buzzing mosquitoes that always menacingly swooped towards my innocent and unfortunately exposed skin. okay so i don't like mosquitoes.. who does?

it's october in the nation's capital. suddenly. october came suddenly.. wasn't it just august? i swear i missed a few weeks in there... october always signifies something for me... but this year, i can't quite figure out what it means. for the past 4 years, the coming of october designated: "steph, you're in big doo-doo, time to really start learning this stuff".. in high school, i think it meant that i actually began to learn new things in class finally. oh weird, what similarities.

but this october, it's just a continuation of what i started in june. almost 4 months of this "real world" stuff.. and i slowly begin to understand that the "real world" label is so fake. haha, irony once more. the world is always real. isn't it?

les nouvelles de ce lundi

not pretty at all... literally and metaphorically. i wonder how much money she spends on eyeliner... i wonder if lots of black eyeliner makes her a better judge.. or a judge at all.

but yay to fall weather. and the red sox taking the wild card. this week in baseball: a battle of the sox in chicago! angels vs. devils (oops, i mean.. yankees) in los angeles! other alds stuff that i'm not as interested in!

and looking forward to friday for various reasons. :)

crazy, but this is officially week #15 of .. "the real world" hahaha.