Fall is here!

It was finally cold enough for me to wear my new fall coat this morning (pictured above). It was a mere 55 degrees at 8:20am today! Tomorrow's low is 44 degrees. I may have to bust out a sweater! :)

buggy buggy buggy buggy buggy

So Janice and I are playing this game where we talk about buggy all of the time. It's awesome. I love talking about crazy things that happened on past Racedays... about crashes, scary drivers, magic barricades, and the joy of the lead truck.

Only 210 days until Raceday 2006!

All sorts of things

I have a whole bunch of things to write about, so here is a list so that I don't forget:

1. shrinking feet?
2. traffic
3. buggy!
4. I may or may not come up with a fourth thing by the end of this. We'll see what happens.

Okay, shrinking feet. In high school and college I wore a size 8.5 or 9 sneaker and an 8 or 8.5 dress shoe. I've recently purchased a couple of pairs of work (dress) shoes, and I think that my feet are shrinking. I've bought size 7, 7.5 and 8 shoes. WTF? Does anyone out there have an explanation?

Traffic... So, I worked late Tuesday and Wednesday (until about 6:30). On Tuesday I got home in about 20 minutes. Yesterday I sat in bumper to bumper traffic for an hour! 60 minutes! For 10 miles! Lame.

Buggy! Congrats to Arnold and McCue for being elected Sweepstakes Chair and Safety Chair. Arnold, I think you are a bit crazy for being on the committee for two years, but I respect you like crazy for it. Adam, enjoy looking at all of the buggies and all of the hate/threats/nonesense that comes with it. To both of you, lots of luck dealing with the barricades. :)

Fourth thing! Actually, this is why I wanted to write this post but I forgot about it until a few second ago... Question, should I buy myself a regular DVD player or one that can also record DVDs? I don't really want to be that tied to my TV... and the ones that record DVDs are at least $100 more. Cast your votes now!

Love,
Sara

What's inside the hatch?!?!?!?!?!

Oh man! Season 2 of Lost premieres tonight. I am so excited! What's inside the hatch?!?!?!?!?!

In other news, it's autumn! Hooray. The best season ever. The trees are already changing colors... Now if only the temps would start to drop.

Buggy alums are cool.

JaniceSGWork: don't you think that the two of us together could be long distance cosweepstakes chairs?

Obv.

But I never want to build another barricade for the rest of life.

Tau Lambda Mu Sigma Sigma Rho...

ZETA PSI SIGMA!!!

I just wanted to send out some electronic love and support to my sisters. Don't let the disappointments of this weekend get you down. It is perfectly understandable to be disappointed about certain girls who did not choose Zeta, but do not that their choice affect how you feel about yourselves as individuals and as a sisterhood. You are strong, capable, wonderful women and you will have sucess in IMR.

The history of Zeta is all about overcomming challenges. It is about making something extraordinary out of a difficult situation. It is about evolving as women and as a house. Our founders did it. You have the strength and abilities to do it too.

As an alum, I was so proud of the courage and strenth you showed by walking into Rangos cheering and smiling. I know that I am not the only alum to feel that way.

Be proud of yourselves. Have a wonderful IMR. I can't wait to meet the Alpha Alpha class. :)

Love in ZYE,
Sara
a148

Chance has made us sisters...

... Our hearts have made us friends.

All of my love and support to my sisters during FMR this weekend. Rush hard, ladies!

Zeta love,
splay

crazy!

Adam McCue and I are living practically parallel lives! Okay, not quite parallel, but there are some pretty crazy coincidences. Maybe I should hire existential detectives or something. (*Note* The last sentence is only funny if you've seen I <3 Huckabees) In related news, people that drive Camry XLE's are pretty awesome.

Hurricane Katrina spam

*rant* So at work I am part of the US South business unit. The BU has offices in New Orleans, and so there have been numerous BU-wide e-mails about donating to the victims, company donations, and information about how to rebuild your life following a natural disaster. I've started to refer to this e-mail as Hurricane Katrina spam... It's really bad. We get 5 or 6 Hurricane-related e-mails every day. Sometimes it's the same e-mail from 2 different people. Of course my heart goes out to all of the victims, but I'm just sick of getting all of these e-mails that just don't apply to me (ie. rebuilding your life after a natural disaster). *end rant*

In related news, Mike "What's a hurricane?" Brown resigned (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091200935.html) Not a big surprise. Now if only we could get the rest of the administration out of office... sigh... Only 1,226 more days.

lots of different things

*Disclaimer* This post is basically a stream of consciousness. Do not attempt to find clarity or organization.

Having furniture is cool. Having a partially assembled TV bench in the middle of your living room and being surrounded by empty boxes and packaging material is slightly less cool. I tried putting my TV bench together last night only to discover (when the bench was 60% done) that the screws meant to attach some hardware were too big for the holes on the hardware. Lame. I guess I'll have to call Ikea and figure out what happened. I know that I'm using the right screws... why can't they just fit? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Happy (belated) Birthday Steph! I don't know if you read this, but I did send you a really cool birthday card. :) Miss you!

Virginia drivers are seriously crappy. On my way to work Tuesday morning (a 10 mile trip) I saw so many examples of truly awful (and dangerous) driving. Slowing down and driving close to the right lane is not a good way to merge (especially when the traffic you are trying to merge with is stopped while the traffic in your lane is moving). I was stuck behind that person while they figured out how to merge. Not pretty.... I saw similar stupidity a 3 miles later when a driver in a right turn only lane tried to merge left into traffic that was not moving. This caused a major backup in the traffic behind this idiot (where I was). Again, I was *unimpressed*. There was more, but forget specific examples… My various observations of bad driving have started to blend together.

Speaking of driving, as I was driving home on Tuesday I noticed a grasshopper sitting on my side view mirror. He stay securely there even as the car got up to 45mph! It was pretty funny to see his antennae blown straight back in the breeze. After about a mile or so, he hopped off the car.

I’m going to CPK with Karthik tonight. Perhaps some mayhem will follow.

Until then, I leave you with this thought:

Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know that so it goes on flying anyway.

I almost forgot!

I almost forgot about my Bush rant!

1) The response to Hurricane Katrina has been truly embarrassing. How can we send troops halfway around the world (where we shouldn't be anyway) and not be able to provide relief to our own citizens at home? FEMA, Homeland Security, the President, etc. knew that New Orleans would be in trouble from a storm like this. Why did it take so long to get those people help? A lot of the TV reporters have been asking Secretary Chertoff and Director Brown to explain why it took so long and why we were so unprepared. They have responded by defending the actions they have taken and by stating that their current focus is on providing help rather than pointing fingers. While I agree that now is the time for focusing on helping the victims, I really hope that the media doesn't let these guys off the hook a few weeks from now. The country deserves an explanation. The people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast deserve an explanation. Meanwhile, shame on you Mr. Bush. Shame on you Secretary Chertoff. Shame on you Director Brown.

2) Chief Justice William Rehnquist died on Saturday. Now John Roberts (at only 50 years old) has been nominated for Chief Justice, a position he could hold for 30+ years. Very scary. Plus, Bush now needs to fill Sandra Day O'Conner's spot. 2 Supreme Court Justices. I really hope the Congressional Dems can give him a fight for the Associate Justice spot. I think I might throw up (or more) if there are 6 conservatives on the court. At least Roberts has said that he will uphold Roe v. Wade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Roberts%2C_Jr.#Roe_v._Wade), and he supported the Supreme Court's decision to overturn a Colorado state constitution amendment that would have prohibited legislative, executive and judicial action designed to protect gays from discrimination.

Bush's approval rating is the lowest of his presidency (45% approval, 53% disapp, according to ABC News and the Washington Post). If only the country had been this smart 10 months ago. *sigh*

Three day weekends are cool and stuff

So, my last semester at CMU I had 4 day weekends... And that was pretty awesome (read: REALLY REALLY awesome). Two day weekends, on the other hand, are total poo. But now I've come to appreciate three day weekends. You can get so much more done (or so much less done, which is also really nice) with just one extra day.

So here's what I did with my three day weekend:

Friday: Anna came over and saw my apartment for the first time. She was pretty impressed and very jealous of all the closet space. We ordered pizza, watched TV (TNT played Forrest Gump ~ a bazillion times this weekend), gossiped and just chilled out. We both had had a *long* week at work and really needed to just relax with a friend. I <3 the Schardt. Mal also called while Anna was there and gave me a play-by-play of DSW. She's starting to rival me with her shoe obsession. I'm so proud.

Saturday: Ate breakfast and became hypnotized by my TV for most of the morning. Then I went down to Ikea to get some freakin' furniture! (Btw, I had a really good away message for Saturday afternoon that I need to repeat here: Ikea, Youkea, WeAllkea! Isn't that funny? Well, I thought it was funny. :P) Traffic was wonderfully minimal and since I actually checked the exit number I didn't repeat the trouble Trey and I had back in July. (Let us never speak of that again). I spent a long while wandering around and trying to figure out what I wanted. I finally settled on the Klippan sofa in black, the Poang chair and ottoman in birch/black, and the Bonde TV bench in birch. All that stuff was heavy so I paid to have it all delivered on Monday (can you believe that they were delivering stuff on Labor day? I was really surprised). Then I went home and recovered from the crowd at Ikea with SVU and popsicle therapy. Very helpful.

Sunday: Went grocery shopping (my refrigerator was starting to look really sad). Then I went to the pool for some sun and fresh air. I was pleasantly surprised to find the pool almost empty. In the 2.5 hours I was there, there was about 10 other people at the pool. And no kids making noise and splashing. So relaxing! Plus it wasn't too hot. I got a good bit of reading done and had a nice nap. Sunday night consisted of more TV (Clear and Present Danger on AMC) and ice cream therapy (I really recommend it). I also got a call from Ikea saying that my furniture would be delivered between 2 and 6pm on Monday. That was pretty crappy b/c it meant that I couldn't really go anyway on Monday. :(

Monday: I made the best of being stuck at home by throwing out 6 (six!) empty furniture boxes, general apartment cleaning and some cooking (jambalaya and mac'n'cheese). The furniture arrived at 5pm and was fully assembled (minus the TV bench) by 6pm. My living room looks so different now. It's like an actual room (minus lighting and plus more boxes and packaging crap). I also passed the day by switching between the SVU marathon and the CSI marathon until 4pm when I switched to the West Wing Marathon. :) (Yes, Zetas, I have returned to my old habits)

All in all, it was a wonderful, productive (with minimal effort), relaxing weekend. I really needed it.

So, what did *you* do with your long weekend?

And Sara said "Let there be a new post!" And there was. And it was good.

Okay. Tons'o'work last week, but I took off on Friday b/c Mom and Shelley were visiting. We did lots of fabulous touristy things like visiting the National Museum of American History (Ruby Slippers!) and the National Zoo (Pandas!). Ooo! We also went to Stapples and bought a fabulous desk chair for me. So now I'm actually at a comfortable hight when sitting at my computer. This is very good.

I drove them to the airport Monday morning (read: we sat in traffic FOREVER on 395), and got to work bright and early at 8:15am. I stayed at work until 7pm and then drove home and turned into a zombie in front of my TV until crawling into bed around 10:30. Tuesday was another long day, with a bit more excitement. We had to evacuate the building around 3pm due to a small fire on my floor. The evacuation process was a bit crazy, but luckily it wasn't too sunny or hot outside.

I also got gas for my car on Tuesday morning. $2.65/gal at the "cheap" Citgo. Then Katrina demolished the Gulf Coast and made gas prices go to shit even more. When I drove past that Citgo this morning, regular was going for $2.95/gal... one of only 2 gas stations (out of about 10) that I passed this morning that were selling regular for under $3. You hear that America? Give up your stupid SUVs... walk or ride your bike more... we can't keep living like this!

I don't have any Labor Day plans yet... Hopefully that will change by tomorrow. I miss my friends!

Final thought: Whoa! It's September! How the heck did that happen? It is very strange not having a "First Day of School" for the first time in 17 years. I feel old.