why my job is odd: case #623

something tells me that the OSHA regulations for approved head protection while building/welding twenty-foot steel structures do not call for three hard hats, one kevlar army helmet with a bullet hole in the front, and a notre dame fighting irish baseball cap.

and to think i used to be a tomboy

i am going to new york city on a business trip tomorrow. i will be in the city a grand total of 31 hours.

i am bringing four pairs of shoes.

on the twelfth day of christmas...

we have presents under the tree!

tales of christmas trees, surgeries, large musical instruments, and other assorted things of that general nature

as i said earlier, we have a christmas tree. and it's beautiful. and i love it. the apartment came to the collective conclusion that we needed one, so the 5'1" roommate (darcy) and the roommate still recovering from surgery (me) hauled a 7.5 foot balsam fir back from home depot. (side note: should it bother me that we got a fairly large proportion of our christmas decorations from home depot? including, but not limited to, the angel on top of the tree, lights, and a victorian st. nicholas. it's like buying all your clothes from sears - the part of me that always feels weird buying my shirts and my power tools at the same place also feels weird buying lumber and christmas decorations at the same place. don't really know why.) thanks to my family's slight obsession with christmas, i, personally, had over 80 ornaments to hang on the tree. then yesterday i bought some fabric and made a christmas tree skirt. the whole thing made me feel very domestic. then i spilled three-quarters of a pitcher of water onto the skirt while watering the tree and everything was right with the world again.

so i had surgery last week on my nose because my Sinus Infection from Hell had gotten so out of control that i was having trouble breathing and talking. and i couldn't sing anymore. so for the first time in three and a half years, i can breathe correctly. it's amazing! things had gotten so bad that i could no longer fathom what it would feel like to be normal again. but now i can breathe, and talk, and sing just fine. the surgery itself wasn't bad, but recovering from the anesthesia took me a good three days. it's been awhile since i've been that tired for such a long period of time.

and now, big news:

i bought a piano!

not a keyboard, not an electric piano, but a real, wooden, stringed, weighs more than everything else in the apartment combined, upright piano. i'm so excited about it. they are delivering it tomorrow. it's not a professional model, but it's definitely nice and will work for me. besides, i can't tell the difference anyway. the same musical part of my brain which is missing and thus keeps me from being able to hear intervals, sing harmony, or tune a french horn also prevents me from being able to tell the difference between a steinway and the piano that's been sitting in your grandma's living room untouched for 35 years. (note that i said the piano at your grandma's. my grandma's piano sounded like saloon piano from a 1920s western, was missing half the ivory, and was permanently marred when my cousin and i decided to label all the keys with a sharpie marker. except instead of writing A - G in a repeating pattern, we wrote A - Z once and just stopped when the alphabet ended. i can definitely tell that the sound was off on that piano.)

anyway, that's about all that's going on in my life. i've met some people through frontline, so i've actually got a social life again. it's really awesome, especially since one of the girls lives in the building next to me. i'm super-busy this whole month. tonight i'm going to a christmas concert and on sunday i'm hearing the Messiah at the kennedy center. i love christmas!

and once again...

Happy Pearl Harbor Day!

another option

so if the whole marriage to jim halpert doesn't work out, i am more than willing to substitute chris evans in his place. just throwing that out there.

my sister is a never-ending source of amusement. as well as being the hershey fairy. apparently.

while reading this, keep in mind that i was never actually talking to mary at any point during the evening. she was just leaving random messages on my computer.

spacegirl: Donde estas?
spacegirl: De que haces?
spacegirl: quiero que hablar contigo
spacegirl: I could write you things in Hebrew, but my keyboard won't make their goofy letters
spacegirl: Of course, I could mostly write things like, "I want soup with lemon", but still, it would be things
spacegirl: never mind about the soup
spacegirl: I can't remember how to say it
spacegirl: I can say, "I live in a big house with lemon"

and then a little while later...

spacegirl: I just made up a song
spacegirl: It's called "My Accounting Song"
spacegirl: It goes like this...
spacegirl: "It's really boring, really boring, really boring. It's really boring..."
spacegirl: I was just singing it
spacegirl: It's a good song

followed soon by the true highlight of this extensive conversation between her and my computer:

spacegirl: I bought a box of 30 candy bars today to use up my extra food money
spacegirl: I have no earthly idea what I'm going to do with 30 candy bars
spacegirl: but I saw them and I was like, well hey, it's better to buy that than to waste food money
spacegirl: so I will most likely be depositing candy bars in various and sundry locations throughout your apartment when I come to visit
spacegirl: I'll be like the Hershey fairy
spacegirl: scattering joy and goodwill and reese's cups
spacegirl: I should get a big hat shaped like a hershey kiss
spacegirl: it would be hot

on the third day of christmas...

i saw chocolate advent calendars at trader joe's. and i bought one. and it's wonderful.

note to self:

must be smarter than christmas lights

on the first day of christmas...

we have a christmas tree!!