Still homeless

My little sister found out a few days ago that I was going to Seattle for the summer and promptly announced that she had never met anyone so willing to relocate in her life. :) Well, I am willing, but so far I still have no place to live in Seattle yet. And furthermore, I have no place to live yet once I go back to Boston in the fall. No big deal, right? Yeah...

At the library yesterday, browsing through the travel section, a maybe 8-year-old boy wandered into the same row as me and asked me if he could have 65 cents. As if a close friend of mine had just asked to borrow a quarter to buy a soda, I rummaged through my wallet and gave him some change. Immediately afterward my brain returned and wondered why I had just done that. I've given my dinner leftovers to homeless people in the Boston subway a few times, but hardly ever do I give money to panhandlers on city streets, even though it makes me incredibly uncomfortable to walk past them and pretend that I didn't hear them or don't have any money on me. And I could almost guarantee you that this little boy in the library didn't need any money, but I apparently couldn't say no when he asked. I'm not sure whether this makes me a good person, a bad person, or just a huge sucker.

By the way, in case you're wondering if it's a good idea to drink hot beverages at your desk at work, it's not. I managed to get away with just a small spill this morning, but it reminded me of a time a few summers ago when I knocked over a styrafoam cup full of hot chocolate on my desk one morning as I swung around in my chair to talk to my officemate. The hot chocolate shot out of the cup and drenched my keyboard, dripped into a large puddle on the fabric seat of my chair, and even managed to soak some papers in one of the drawers as the hot chocolate cascaded down the side of the desk. Not surprisingly, my keyboard was completely useless after being soaked in something so sticky, so I had to call the IT people and ask them to replace it. Unfortunately, the only extra one they had looked like it had been saved from an Apple IIe manufactured in 1981.

Going to the chapel and we're... gonna get maaaaaaried

It's taken me five years, but I've finally found out what the point of sorority rush parties is: (drum roll please...) it's to prepare you for the eventual bridal showers that you'll attend once you leave college. For the most part, I had a great time in Sigma Kappa at MIT, but the one thing that I hated every year was rush. Everyone's in a random room in our student center that's decorated with crepe paper and balloons, trying not to spill punch they're drinking out of clear plastic cups on their cute spring dresses while they're mingling. I guess I thought I left that behind when I graduated, but it turns out that it rears its ugly head again once you start going to bridal showers. The only difference is that the conversation has changed from majors, dorms, and frat parties to weddings, babies, and flatware.

I really did have a good time, and it was fun to see Laurie again... I just didn't like revisiting the "Omigod, your dress is so cute!" era.

What did you do on Friday night?

I left work at 3:30 on Friday because I had already worked 48 hours that week, and because I needed to get a couple gifts for this weekend - something for my dad's birthday on Monday, and something for Laurie's bridal shower that I went to this afternoon. Anyway, I managed to convince Josh that he "wanted" to go to the Galleria with me, so we drove down there around 5, wandered around for a few hours, and ended up decorating a chocolate foot. Yes, a chocolate foot. Laurie's thing was an alphabet shower, so everyone had to bring a gift related to a certain letter, and I was assigned the letter F. Granted, it's not nearly as difficult as Q or Z, but I still couldn't find anything gift-worthy that involved F - until we walked into a store called Dylan's Candy Bar. Aside for being the biggest candy store I've been in, they had solid slabs of chocolate that were molded into different shapes - cats, fighter planes, feet, etc. that you could frost and decorate with other candy in their store. So, we decorated a giant chocolate foot with pink frosting - gave it a flip-flop, ankle bracelet, painted toenails, a toe ring, and a sock. I was amazed that it actually turned out halfway decent. :)

Anyway, after decorating the foot, we had dinner, stayed at the restaurant until midnight, and then wandered around the mall until 2am. (Yes, the Galleria closes before 2am... don't ask.) After that we decided to call it a night, so we walked back to the Dilliard's parking lot, and Josh's car was most definitely no longer there. Only then did I notice the giant signs warning customers that their cars would be towed if they were parked there after hours. *sigh* So we walked up to one of the tow trucks that was still in the lot and they gave us a number to call to find out where our car was. After some confusion about whether or not the car had actually made it to the lot, we walked to a nearby gas station to find an ATM. Just to go along with the theme of the evening, a huge fight broke out at the gas station while we were trying to withdraw oodles of money to get Josh's car back.

So we went back to the Galleria parking lot and caught a cab (which contained a driver who was in desparate need of a stronger presription for his glasses) to take us to the impound lot. The lot reminded me of a dog pound - there was barbed wire everywhere, the office was about a foot and a half above our heads so that we couldn't really see what was going on in there, and the guy behind the glass didn't speak through just a regular microphone - he used a loudspeaker. So by 3:30am, we were safely back in Josh's car and on our way back to Clear Lake. To summarize...

1 gift for my dad: $32.54
1 chocolate foot: $16.28
1 dinner for 2: $26.50
1 cab ride to Ronda Lane Auto Storage: $18.00
1 red Honda Civic reclaimed: $171.89

Sitting outside of Uptown Realty on the 6th floor of the Galleria at 1am, solving all the world's problems and discovering an amazing friend: priceless.

I love you so much that I... fell asleep

Tuesday night was the Yuri's Night party in Houston. Specifically, it at the Outpost, which is this totally sketchy-looking bar right down the street from work - one of those places that has regulars who have stop in every day after work for 20 years. Like many sketchy bars though, it wasn't really as sketchy as it seemed from outside. Anyway, I went to the party because several of my friends organized the whole thing, and I walked over from my apartment because I knew I didn't want to have to worry about driving home afterward. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and I had a few drinks throughout the night, but I was feeling fine by the time I got home later, just a little tired. Carlos and I usually talk before I go to sleep at night, so I gave him a call after I finished getting ready for bed. I woke up later that night and rolled over my phone and earpiece in bed, wondering why I didn't put them away before going to sleep, but not really thinking any more about it. Anyway, the next morning I got an email from Carlos asking if I was okay... was I mad at him? It took me a few seconds to put everything together, but apparently I fell asleep while talking to my boyfriend on the phone. Aaagh! I am officially the worst girlfriend ever.

"... so that was my day. How was yours?"
"Zzzzzz....."

I hate my job

Absolutely, positively, hate it. I hate it so much that I can't even describe to you how much I hate it. I've been here since June 28, 2004 and the number of days that I've actually looked forward to going to work in the last 10 months would altogether add up to less than four weeks. I hate my job because I'm always someone else's bitch. I don't get to make any decisions about what I work on or what sort of analysis I do; I just have to smile and nod when anyone comes to me asking for data. I hate my job because I can't produce any useful work on my own - everything I do requires files, data, information, documents, or permission from someone else. Even if I didn't have to ask someone else for some sort of input, I don't really know how to use the analysis tools because there are so many quirks, fudge factors, and input files that have to be formatted just so, so I always have to go around bugging people about how to use programs. I hate my job because I work with people who have been here for longer than I've been alive and don't seem to understand that I haven't already learned everything there is to know here in the 10 months that I've worked here. I hate my job because I volunteer to take on new things under the assumption that someone else will take over one of my current projects to make time for the new stuff, but apparently that's a stupid assumption, because now I'm just working 10 hours a day instead. And honestly, I have no problem coming into work at 8am and leaving at 6pm, assuming that I were interested and excited about the stuff that I'm working on. I hate my job because I don't get to choose what I work on - it's just dumped in my lap and I've got all these responsibilities and then it's too late to say no. No one ever asks if it's something that I would be interested in working on or learning more about. And if you're going to tell me that I'm still "getting used to everything" and that I need to "keep the good times and bad times in perspective," save your breath. I don't care if all that's true - all I know is that when I wake up in the morning I wish to God that I were going anywhere else but to my stupid desk at work to count the hours until I can go home again. I'm wasting my life here. I haven't cried this much on a regular basis since I was still in diapers. Without a single doubt in my mind, I can say that this has been the worst year of my life.

So then, you ask, why haven't I left yet? Trust me, I'm working on it. I'm going back to school in September to start my master's degree, and until then I have another job lined up for the summer, but that's not supposed to start until the second week of June. Because of that, I don't really feel like I can leave much earlier than the middle of May, and yes, it's only a month, and yes, I've survived this long so I'll make it until then, but I still wish that I could just crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and have my mom call me in sick, like she used to do when I was in middle school. But for an entire month. And not because I'm actually sick. And I'd still like to get paid between now and then...

So then, you ask, if you're that unhappy, why don't you just give your two weeks notice and leave? Well, here's the thing - if I have to stay for another two weeks, I may as well stay for two more weeks after that. It's not like that'll save me from having to go to work tomorrow.

Musings

First of all, I would just like to point out that whistling is rude. Just like most people wouldn't normally sing songs out loud in public, people shouldn't whistle in public. We can't hear the actual tune that's playing in your head! And the rendition of the song that's coming out of your mouth definitely doesn't do the song justice, and is mainly just annoying.

All right, now that that's out of my system, let's move on. This week has been crazy - interview, possible new plans for the summer, last minute trip to Boston (leaving in less than 5 hours), and lots of new stuff to do at work. And, I went to the Astros opening day game against the Cardinals on Tuesday! But, they lost. Oh well. I think I'll miss going to baseball games in Houston. I never made it to a Red Sox game in Boston, and the only other professional baseball game I went to was during middle school or high school. It was a triple-A team - the Toledo Mud Hens. No joke. Anyway, the point is that baseball games are cool, and anyone who's still mad about the strike several years back should get over it.

Josh asked me the other day what things I'll miss about Houston once I leave, and I could only come up with two things - the people I've met here and the weather (minus the summer). Since then, I've come up with one other thing, and that's my general proximity to the space program. Yes, I don't like my specific job, but still, there are times when it hits me that there are very few people that get to see what I see on a regular basis, and the space progam, in my opinion, is still really, really cool. The random meetings with astronauts and Gene Krantz sightings haven't been bad either. :)

Just one more story...

See, Becca? I'm an updating fiend. This was my conversation with some random guy next to me at the gas station while we filled up our cars yesterday afternoon:

Random Guy: Does that have the Vtech in it?
Me: Uh, no, it's just regular gas...
RG: No, I mean your car.
Me (feeling like an enormous dork): Oh yeah. It has a Vtech engine.
RG: Whoa... dude... Have you ever thought about racing it?
Are you out of your mind? It's a Honda Civic, for crying out loud. This thing's got over 70,000 miles on it.
Me: (giggle) Um, no, I haven't.
RG: Dude, you should so totally think about racing it.
Me: Okay... sure... I'll think about it.

Not that it wouldn't be cool to drive around in a car with a supercharged engine, speed chip, low-profile tires, and nicer suspension than what I currently own, but I think I would still feel like one of those people who screws a 2x4 onto the trunk of their sedan and calls it a spoiler. Sorry dude, it's still a Civic.

Freakish bug incident

Once again, I snoozed until 8:00 this morning, but after dragging myself out of bed, showering, and getting dressed, I was ready to leave my apartment at 8:30. I opened my front door and started to turn around, when all of a sudden one of those giant daddy-longleg mosquito things flies down my shirt. AGGHHHHH!!!! I start wildly flapping around and yanking at my shirt, trying to remove the bug that's now stuck between my shirt and my chest because it has such freakishly long legs. It falls down a bit so I jerk my shirt up and slap at my torso to get the bug to come out the bottom, but then it decides to go back up. By this point, I'm completely sure that I flashed any neighbors that happened to be watching me flail around, so after much wild scraping at my chest and shirt, the bug finally disintigrated into a chunk on my finger and miscellaneous legs scattered around the inside front of my shirt. Thoroughly exhausted and freaked out, I go back inside and peel off my clothes as I run up the stairs. After dumping my tainted clothes in a pile on my bathroom floor and scrubbing my finger clean of the bug guts, I spent another 15 minutes putting on nearly everything left in my closet, which doesn't take long because I haven't done laundry in a while, and quickly decide that everything is unsuitable. I finally picked out another shirt and walk out the front door, all while covering my chest with both hands to prevent another freakish bug incident.