so far, so good

No really. Although anticipation of a beach vacation next week is making it kind of hard not to buy anything. I mean, we can use our regular old bath towels as beach towels, and I can cart my crap down to the sand in a plastic grocery bag. Those things work just as well, even if they are atypical. The sunblock we've got should be able to last... Tupperware might make decent sand castles...

I've had to stop and think a few times already. Be resourceful for a change. In that sense the experiment has been a total success so far.

totally cheating

Note to self, andrea: You can NOT just have someone else buy the stuff either.

I admit, I just had the following conversation with myself :

"Man I need a new pack of dill seeds since mine didn't grow this year....
....but oh that's right, I can't buy anything...
..well maybe zach would buy them..Oh my God you didn't, you pathetic, pathetic human..."

Oniomania

Yesterday with a 20% off coupon for Bloodbath & Beyond I bought one of those wacky head massagers that looks like a spider, and a flexible mini muffin pan. Are those things neat? Oh yeah. You bet. Do I need either? No.

I've been trying for years to pare down the amount of stuff I have, but I continue to do things like this. I wear one fifth of my wardrobe. I'm embarrassed by the number of shoes I have, most of which are ouchy. I refuse to sell old cds (yes I still have my copies of School of Fish and MC 900 Ft Jesus – you never ever know). Yet I spend an hour on ebay looking for Snoopy crap. Because, you know, I need more Snoopy crap.

I'm a sucker for the instant gratification of purchasing things, whether it be $1 or $100. I mean, I'm sure we all are to some extent, but ugh. Ick. I feel ashamed and ungrateful. It's so much more practical to find enjoyment in things you already own.

Let's try an experiment:

Starting today, I'm going to try not to buy anything other than food (for me and for my car) for one week. Oh and possibly a demolition derby ticket. Because that was already planned. And a giant beer at the demolition derby. Because that's a given. You think I can do it? I don't. I'm an American. But I can try.

Tick tock.

dig wayy wayy into your cache memory....

This just in: Jewel Osco sells VERNORS!

Do you know what that means?

ants555ants: guess what I'm making tonight
ants555ants: boston coolers!
ants555ants: remember those?
ants555ants: vernors & ice cream all blended up
ablon kralovec: mmmmmmmmmm
ants555ants: like from Dairy Queen?
ants555ants: Jewel sells Vernors!
ants555ants: i bought a case
ablon kralovec: woah
ablon kralovec: nice!
ants555ants: but i'm supremely bummed to find out that boston cooler is a slang for a dirty thing
ants555ants: one of my coworkers came up and was like "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?!"
ants555ants: on wikipedia
ants555ants: and I had to explain boston cooler
ants555ants: and he was like "you know that's something ELSE right?"
ants555ants: so sad
ablon kralovec: its somethign dirty?
ablon kralovec: i'll look....
ants555ants: urban dictionary told me what the dirty thing is
ablon kralovec: wtf?!?!?
ablon kralovec: my childhood is tarnished
ants555ants: i know
ants555ants: mine too

Anyhow, once you get over that, who wants to come over to our house this weekend to make proper boston coolers and watch cable? We even got a blender to make them more authentic.

Um, is that "pwchh" verbatim?

Wtf?

Zoooo!

Man, for some reason this entry just got snagged by spiders and spammers and ugh. So here I am, a couple years later, and I'm stripping it of whatever might be attracting these dang things. Anyway,



Hey all. This Sunday we're going to the Brookfield Zoo to try and see the BABY POLAR BEAR! (There was a link to the zoo here)

(There was a picture of bears here)

Weather permitting, we'll probably leave around noon or 1:00. Not sure yet. Want to go?

And for those of you who are into a different kind of cute, Brookfield also has naked mole rats. Yay!

Manditory

I got a new phone! It was one of the cheapest models they had, yet is tres skinny like a razr, & is some of the cleanest design I've seen on a cell phone as of yet.

Of course a camera phone requires that you have a photo of your dog as your screen saver, and so here is mine:

play you pay

itch itch itch...

We went camping this weekend. Sitting at my desk now, scratching at the squito bites. We had great fun though. Rode bikes, stood in a lake, played on swings, caught lightning bugs, made veggie burgers over a fire, ate pizza, saw some bunnies, gophers, deer, worked on our farmer's tans, took long naps before being woken up by a carbon monoxide detector in the camper...

...itch itch itch.

Mmwuuuhahaha

Despite having cable, I've had this song in my head for 30+ hours now:



Again! Again!

We'd like to make a good first impression

Barry and I are messy.

We were told to tidy up our workspace tonight before we leave because a tour's coming through in the morning. ...But that they'd like it to look like we're working. A clean desk doesn't say to me "This person is in the thick of it!" I mean, does it? Excuse me, we're working here.

Why I do this

Man, the people I work with are so considerate. They tell me when they think I've done a good job. They thank me for taking the lead on things. They make jokes (not saying they're good jokes, but)...

There are jobs on monster.com which are an hour closer to my home and that offer 10K more, but what price can you put on having a team of coworkers who aren't total assheads?

I owe you some thoughts on cable television. I'll get to it sooner or later.

that much more grown up

We got a new thing to put our teevee on.





Tidy, eh? Thank you oh Target for your Thomas O'Brien "Vintage Modern" "collection". Though we took the legs off this piece to make it sit lower than it's intended to. I like the design of it more than any of the tables I saw at fancy pants places like Room & Board so yeah, score! And for what it cost, it's really not a bad piece. Though now that I'm looking at the photo I realize it doesn't do it any favors. In fact, it sort of looks like crap here. Oh well. Trust me.

I'm real real happy about it. As much as I'm glad to have gadgets & devices, I don't like looking at them. So this new thing with the doors on it pleases me. Clutter is just... a weight. Now I could sit here for hours, staring at my blank television screen, admiring our new purchase. But only for say, 48 hours because WE'RE GETTING CABLE ON TUESDAY!

Let me get over my excitement before I can fairly describe my mixed emotions on that subject...

About Pirates

We watched Dead Man's Chest for the first time last night. Not as good as the first one in my opinion. The slapstick was over the top (see: Johnny Dep shish-kebab) and the fishey people vs. skeletons made it more Star Wars (which isn't scary) than Carnevil. Just my preference. BUT. Did you notice they play a form of Kuriki on the Flying Dutchmen?! I feel a funny kind of privy!

what'll it be?

The weekend is here! And it's mine! And we have multiple pirate movies at home! Hooray! Hooray!

integrity is the pit in my stomach

They say your physical environment is a direct representation of your mental state.
My desk looks like a bomb went off.

Someone I work for just returned from a two week vacation.
Before she left for that vacation she loaded me up with to-dos
which I subsequently filed & forgot about.
Which she subsequently called me out on via email.
And as a direct response
I'm cowering like my dog when she craps on our couch.
Reaching for the phone and retreating because my ways of phrasing
"I have no excuses."
"I've become disorganized."
or
"Your wheels don't squeak when you're away on vacation."
don't seem good enough.

Some appreciation for our comic relief

Today is Barry's birthday. He thinks we've all but forgotten about him, but we're taking him out at 4:00 for beers.



Come to think of it, I'm really asking for it considering my next birthday is a milestone. It's a good thing we're all contractors and could be kicked out on our rears at a moment's notice. Maybe I'll escape the humiliation of a milestone birthday.



ps - Right now he's telling me a story about how back in the mountains one of his cousins found a neighbor who'd hung himself from a tree, and his cousin proceeded to revive the man with a car battery. Now he's telling me about the snowy egret's mating rituals. I bet I could make a blog of just Barry stories.

(For anyone just tuning in, Barry is my next door neighbor in the cubicles)

ppss - he drove all over town with that sign on his car and didn't notice it until after he'd gotten to work this morning. That, friends, is success!

no chicken vs. egg please

Omg Whitey is having her foster babies! look!

Happy Half Birfdang ZB!

Today for Z's half birthday (30.5) I took him out for surprise mashed potato pizza @ Piece and then a trip to the Chicago History Museum. Inside the museum we saw Lincoln's deathbed, some ancient bloody bandages and a tuft of his hair. On the same floor was an exhibit of a modern low rider. Upstairs there were diaramas of the fire and real tools used in the stock yards.





Outside the museum we saw bunnies and a garden.





Then we walked most of the way home, stopping for Italian sodas (Vanilla Italian sodas are the way to go this summer. Sort of like Boston Coolers but not as good. And a sort of exotic alternative to iced coffee for those of us who've recently become paranoid about developing addictions to anything) before it started to rain on us.





Now we're doing laundry and that doesn't really offer much worth taking photos of. Videos, perhaps, but still photos, no.