Monthly Archives: January 2012

How Many Shows Does It Take To Make A Kardashian Relevant?

Leave a reply

After last weekend’s amazingness, I’ve spent this weekend being productive from the confines of my house.  Leaving to pick up pants from the alterations lady and go to the grocery store took some serious thought and a small pep talk.

 

I cleaned my house.  I made homemade guacamole just because I could.  I mopped the floors.  I don’t know if you all understand how rare that is so I’ll say it again: I mopped the floors.  I ran my errands, finished up some work work (because I’m being audited and that’s lovely), and now I’m rounding the bases by sitting on my futon, having never changed out of last night’s pajamas, watching the Kardashian marathon.

 

Molly greets you all by snoring next to me so loudly that I keep turning up the TV just to hear.

 

A quiet weekend is clearly what we all needed.

 

And then Angel slid down the stairs and possibly sprained his ankle.

Obama-rama

Leave a reply

Okay, so here’s the breakdown of President Obama’s visit to Intel from a republican perspective.  In short: I may not agree with the guy, but I can certainly respect the job.

 

On Monday morning, I got an email that President Obama was going to be visiting my workplace.  I reread it a few times because I hadn’t yet consumed this morning’s coffee (side note: giving up caffeine is NOT going well- clearly).  There was a raffle for employees to win tickets, but I figured that was going to be a cold shot in hell so I instead signed up to be one of the volunteers that was needed thinking that if I can’t get there I was at least going to get as close as I could.

 

Well, I was right.  And as it turns out, all of the volunteers got tickets to the speech!  All volunteering is done for selfish reasons, they just don’t always pay off as well as this one did.

 

So I show up at 9am in the Intel construction parking lot like I was told.  I’m greeted by the head of the White House Events staff and am briefed on how the event is going to go down.  I’m part of the team managing crowd control at the metal detectors to get into the event.  Sounds cool enough.

 

We get bussed over to the event from the parking lot as soon as the secret service has completed their security sweep of the area.  When I get there, I hop through the metal detectors and take a quick camera shot of the area before the estimated 6,000 people started showing up:

He's here to talk about job creation, thus the construction backdrop

 

And then I volunteer for 5 hours (there is no way to write about this and it not sound boring, so I’m going to spare you the details).

 

On the little down time we have, a few of us shoot the shit with the White House Events guy.  When he comes to let us know that the final bus has brought the last of the guests, we are “dismissed” to go into the event.  We go through security (which seems oddly less violating than airports), and then events guy tells us to follow him.  Not entirely sure what else he has us signed up for, I go.  What the hell, right?  I’m not the BIGGEST supporter of the guy, it’s more of just being there because I could.

 

He wanted us to follow him because he dropped us in the designated fenced off path for the Secret Service.  I can deal with this because 6,000 of my closest friends are currently behind me shoved around like a fat lady in spandex.  Turns out there wasn’t any job, he was just helping us out so we got a better view.

 

So then I meet the CEO as his entourage walks him back and forth between his seat and meeting the president back stage.

 

The event gets under way.  Excuse the quality of the photos, I was standing on a fence and trying not to drop another iPhone into broken oblivion…

Intel's CEO welcoming the crowd. Whatever, we get it, we aren't here to see you.

They just put out the Presidential Seal between speakers

President Obama talking about the heat in Arizona (it's only 70, you baby)

He must have just gotten word via ear piece that my auto registration is expired. Crap.

After standing for 6 hours waiting for this, his talk is only 30 minutes long and is a repeat of his State of the Union speech the night before.  Like I said, not his biggest supporter, but I can respect who he is.

…And then I had to walk a mile back to my car and wait in traffic to get home.  The experience was still totally worth it.

Longest Weekend On Record

Leave a reply

Or perhaps the more appropriate title to this post is “Most Expensive Weekend On Record.”

 

No joke.

 

On Friday night my beloved dog, molly (of who I am obsessed with) started throwing up and acting really weird.  Naturally, this always happens right as this night-owl is going to bed at midnight, so… awesome.  She ended up in the animal hospital and the 3am x-ray showed the vet and I that she had a tummy full of rocks.  ROCKS.  Take a minute to think about this: the dog went out the dog door, took a stroll around the yard, and decided that rocks sounded more appetizing than the food inside.  She had to spend the night in the pet hospital, followed by all day Saturday, and then came home Saturday night on puke watch 24/7.  She still has a tummy full of rocks so one puke from her and the only option left is surgery.  Ugh!

Home. Bandaged leg and all

 

Meanwhile, I proved that my iPhone is just no match for a tile floor.  I completely shattered the screen on it when it flew out of my hand as I was trying to hang it up.  So one trip to the Apple store and a new phone later, Angel suggested I get one of these cases for it:

Big and Bulky, and possibly bomb proof

So that’s awesome.

Saturday over.  I assume we’ve crossed the annoying, expensive threshold.  Incorrect assumption.

 

On Sunday morning Angel’s headed to the old house to make a few minor repairs before the renters move in on Thursday and I’m sitting up in the loft scrapbooking (duh) with Molly curled up next to me still on suicide watch….. BAM!  Angel backed into the garage door.  Broken door, broken car, 100% annoying.  So I spent Sunday trying to get garage repair men out to the house to fix our house.

 

Most people enjoy weekends.  I was DYING (thankfully not literally) for this one to end!  The Rivas household should live in a plastic bubble.  That may be safest for everyone.

Holy Scrapbook

2 Replies

I don’t mean to alarm anybody, but the scrapbook apocalypse has arrived and my office is ground zero.

 

I’ve been all about finding creative outlets for myself and since diaper cakes are on a small hiatus until I get past my stabby attitude towards babies, scrap books seemed like the next logical step.  I mean, who really wants a diaper cake full of small, sharp objects and unlocked pill bottles?  Nobody.  But who wants a scrap book of our honeymoon?  Well, Angel will eventually but he’s not allowed near the office so he doesn’t know it yet.

 

I have been hunting Cricut machines like they are elephant tusks for an ivory market, just waiting for one to go on sale because even I have  my limits.  Today I found one for half off and I damn near killed someone trying to get to my computer to order it before they went out of stock.  Do you see what my quest for creativity is doing to me?  It should be here by Tuesday at the latest.  I would love to say that I’ll blog about it immediately, but given my current track record I’m going to call in sick to work so I can spend a full 18 hours using it before I tuck it in bed with me for the night so it may be a few days before you hear about it’s glory.  Besides, this will allow me sufficient time to come up with a proper name.  All amazing gadgets must be named (see: My Kitchen Aid mixer named Hello Kitchy.  Trust me, once you use one of those naming it won’t sound so weird).

 

I’m too excited about my Cricut machine and scrapbook to sleep…. But such is the life of a starving artist (speaking of, I may have been too distracted to stop for dinner…. I can’t remember).

The Snark is Back

Leave a reply

It appears that I have jumped the emotional hurdle after choosing to share my miscarriage journey.  Apparently all I needed was to speak up in order to move on.  So by only sitting there and reading, you did this, people!  Pat yourselves on the back.

I proudly exclaimed to Angel that “the snark is back!”  and then spent 20 minutes explaining what that meant.  I love having an English-as-a-second-language husband.

I decided that I’m going to give up caffeine for my health.  So I threw out the morning’s Starbucks (Sidebar, what the heck is going on with them raising their prices?!  I’m happy to part with my beloved Starbucks…. ignore today’s indiscretion), and went downstairs to the cafe to grab a quick lunch bite between meetings.

The elevators are broken, so I’ve been hiking up and down flights of stairs all day like it’s my job because, well, today it is.  So I decided to reward myself with my go-to lunch choice of salad:

Whatever, potatoes are vegetables too.

I’ve burned at least 1/1000 of these calories just by walking down to get it.  So there.  I win.

And then because I have a girlish figure to maintain, I threw in one of these for good measure:

"Feel free to continue strutting down the hall like it's your own personal fashion runway" That's what the label says in case you can't read that in the photo

Whatever, I’ll start cutting out caffeine tomorrow.  “A” for effort.

And that’s why you should learn to pick your battles.

1 Reply

This isn’t mine, but comes from my favorite blogger: Thebloggess.com.  Chek her out, she’s like Mother Theresa, only BETTER

This morning I had a fight with Victor about towels. I can’t tell you the details because it wasn’t interesting enough to document at the time, but it was basically me telling Victor I needed to buy new bath towels, and Victor insisting that I NOT buy towels because I “just bought new towels“. Then I pointed out that the last towels I’d bought were hot pink beach towels, and he was all “EXACTLY” and then I hit my head against the wall for an hour.

Then Laura came to pick me up so we could go to the discount outlet together, and as Victor gave me a kiss goodbye he lovingly whispered, “You are not allowed to bring any more goddam towels in this house or I will strangle you“.   And that was exactly what I was still echoing through my head an hour later, when Laura and I stopped our shopping carts and stared up in confused, silent awe at a display of enormous metal chickens, made from rusted oil drums.

Laura:  I think you need one of those.

me:  You’re joking, but they’re kind of horrifically awesome.

Laura: I’m not joking. We need to buy you one.

me:  The 5-foot tall one was $300, marked down to $100.  That’s like, $200 worth of chicken for free.

Laura:  You’d be crazy not to buy that.  I mean, look at it. IT’S FULL OF WHIMSY.

me:  Victor’d be pissed.

Laura:  Yup.

me:  But on the plus side?  It’s not towels.

Laura:  Yup.

me:  We will name him Henry.  Or Charlie.  Or O’Shannesy.

Laura:  Or Beyoncé.

me:  Or Beyoncé. Yes.  And when our friends are sad we can leave him at their front door to cheer them up.

Laura:  Exactly. It’ll be like, “You thought *yesterday* was bad?  Well, now you have a enormous metal chicken to deal with.  Perspective.  Now you have it.”

Then we flagged down a salesman, and we were all “What can you tell us about these chickens?”, as if we were in an art gallery, and not in a store that specializes in last years’ bathmats.  He didn’t know anything about them, but he said that they’d only only sold one and it was to a really drunk lady, and then Laura and I were all “SOLD.  All this chicken belongs to us now.”

So he loaded it onto a trolley, but Beyoncé was surprisingly unstable, and the giant 5 foot metal chicken crashed over onto the floor.  And Laura and I were all “CHICKEN DOWN!  CLEAN-UP IN AISLE 3″ but he didn’t laugh.  Then the manager came to see what was causing all the commotion, and that’s when he found the very-conservative salesman unhappily struggling to right an enthusiastically pointy chicken which was almost as tall as he was.  The salesman was having a hard time, and he told everyone to stand back “because this chicken will cut you“, and at first I thought he meant it as a threat, like “That chicken has a shiv”, but turns out he just meant that all the chickens’ ends were sharp and rusty.  It was awesome, and Laura and I agreed that even if we got tetanus, this chicken had already paid for himself even before we got it in her truck.

Then we got to my house and quietly snuck the chicken up to my front door, rang the doorbell, and hid around the corner.

Victor opened the door and looked at the chicken in stunned silence for about 3 seconds.  Then he sighed, closed the door and walked away.

Laura:  What the fuck?  That’s it?  That’s the only reaction we get?

me:  That’s it. He’s a hard man to rattle.

Victor was surprisingly pissed that I’d “wasted money” on an enormous chicken, because apparently he couldn’t appreciate the hysterical value of a 5 foot chicken ringing the doorbell.  Then I said, “Well, at least it’s not towels” and apparently that was the wrong thing to say because that’s when Victor screamed and stormed off, but I knew he was locked in his office because I could hear him punching things in there.  Then I yelled through his door, “It’s an anniversary gift for you, asshole.  Two whole weeks early.  15 YEARS IS BIG METAL CHICKENS.”

Then he yelled that he wanted it gone, but I couldn’t move it myself, so instead I said okay and went to watch tv.  Then when the UPS guy came I hid, but he was all “Dude.  Nice chicken” and Victor yelled, “IT IS NOT A NICE CHICKEN”.  Which was probably very confusing to the UPS guy, who was just trying to be polite, Victor. Victor seemed more disgruntled than usual, so I finally dragged the chicken into the backyard and wedged it into a clump of trees so that it could scare the snakes away.  Then I came in and Victor angrily pulled me into his office so that I could see that I’d stationed Beyoncé directly in front of his only window.  And I was all “Exactly. YOU’RE WELCOME.”  I told him that he could move Beyoncé if he wanted to, but he totally hasn’t.  Probably because of all of the giant rocks I piled on Beyonce’s feet to dissuade burglars.  Or possibly because Beyoncé is growing on him.  Still, I can’t help but think that we wouldn’t even be having this argument if Beyoncé was towels.  Honestly, this whole chicken is really a lesson in picking your battles more carefully.  Plus, he’s awesome and I can’t stop giggling every time I look at him.  Beyoncé, that is.

Best. 15th anniversary. ever.