I haven’t killed anything yet.

Which reminds me of The Sandlot and my very favorite dessert: “You’re killing me Smalls! These are s’more’s stuff! Ok, pay attention. First you take the graham, you stick the chocolate on the graham. Then you roast the ‘mallow. When the ‘mallows flaming… you stick it on the chocolate. Then cover with the other end. Then you scarf. Kind of messy, but good! Try some!”

It’s garden time!

I wish I could keep this lil’ guy on my kitchen table. Dwarf orange trees are my favorite and I just may end up with an entire collection lining the balcony. I better pace myself and see if this one survives the future re-potting.

During my last California trip I finally remembered to steal blackberry starts from Aunt Yo. I was not confident that they would survive their road trip adventure in ice cream buckets, but they have made a comeback. I’ll probably only be able to make half a jar of jam with this small plant.

This is the grade school level of a science experiment. Hopefully I followed the directions well enough so I save on watering/trips to this kitchen sink this summer.

The smorgasbord shelf of garlic, onions, herbs and sunflowers up top. The best part of the collection are the characters below. I’m positive that these guys are gonna keep watch over my plants and give me nightmares to prompt regular watering’s, so I finally have a successful year of gardening in Arizona.

P.S. I got to see these lil’ girls over the weekend! Which made for the perfect start to Spring Break. Thanks Stac and Camille for indulging in my lazy vacation idea and Jed for chauffeuring us around the city.

uh… it doesn’t really matter. I uh, I don’t like my job, and, uh, I don’t think I’m gonna go anymore.

Office Space makes me giggle.

I admit working at Storage wasn’t nearly as bad as working for Initech. Actually not bad at all. It certainly had its perks which made up for the boring day to day tasks. There were daily adventures to Target, rides in the Mini Cooper with the top down, golfing, blowtorching of desserts, Baby Days and even pinata smashing. And most importantly a tuition waiver. Mostly I’ll miss the characters. Well. The majority of them.

These are just a few. I wish I had submitted an order to the resident artist to make caricatures of the most recent employees. You get the idea though. Fun people who may have been tortured by my mindless ramblings on of silly nonsense.

Since giving my notice I’ve been treated to Chipotle, had an adventure at the nearby Village Inn and even received some treasures from the kids aka student employees.

For now I’m going to focus on enjoying my 3 day weekend before facing the grueling task of meeting new people and learning a new job. So long to the days of rolling out of bed 10 min before my 5 min commute, sitting down to some Hulu or Netflix and mindlessly working away. Now I have to be like the rest of the world who attempts to look nice for the public. I guess it’s time to replenish the makeup and hairspray supply. The more I think about it the worse this sounds. I may be changing my mind about this situation.

I sure had it easy.

Update for Auntie G.

You know it’s been an embarrassing day when I end up laying on a heating pad. That’s what you get for going to the gym. Lesson learned! I choose to stay home and watch tv while eating pizza from now on. Or I guess I could focus more on jogging while on the treadmill instead of the ipad, because then I may have noticed my untied shoelace that became stuck in the treadmill which led to me landing face first.

Meh.

in other news, I start a new job on Monday. Pretty excited to work at a community college and also quite sad to be leaving ASU. Hopefully this will lead to new library adventures.

For now I just need to figure out how to prop up my computer and ipad while I keep the heating pad in place so I can get some homework done. Sheesh.

Update time

Library school has been successfully completed. Maybe it’ll hit me once I receive the diploma, orrrr when I get a big girl job. Since I’m still working somewhere that gives a tuition waiver as part of the benefits, I figure I might as well keep going to school. I started another program, Educational Technology. It already seems to be filling in some of the gaps that I felt the last one glossed over. Part of the requirement for school is to maintain a blog, so I’ll probably be busy with that one for awhile http://penultimatepost.wordpress.com/. Feel free to visit. Warning!!! It’ll be mostly boring library/educational technology topics, per the requirement. So I’ll try to keep the spazzy blonde moments on this site.

 

Blondie + Bicycle + Stairs =

Once upon a time there was a crazy girl that really wanted a bicycle for Christmas. Her lovely boyfriend surprised her with the exact bike she dreamed of. Over the past few months the crazy girl has had quite a few adventures while riding to and from work:

• Being chased by Devil Mini Dachsund’s. There used to only be one, but now the danged thing has a sidekick.
• Had a near crash experience with a pigeon. This IS different from the bird flying in the car incident.
• Almost hit the same cat multiple times because the stupid thing kept running in zigzags in front of the wheel. At least it wasn’t crop dusting.
• And most recently a tumble down the stairs at the apartment complex. Luckily this resulted in minor bruising and slight back pain, which is healing quickly.

Thanks to the handy bicycle repairman at work, a couple painkillers and a heating pad… the crazy girl is back on the road. Small animals beware.

Thanks to the storage artist Ricardo for continuing to capture my adventures in ink.

Baby de Mayo

As I have mentioned before, “Baby Days” are pretty much the one thing we have to look forward to at work. This year we were able to have our 2nd Annual Storage Cinco de Mayo Party combined with a 1st Birthday Party for “Storage Baby” Beckett.

There are a few key ingredients to success for such an elaborate celebration. First on the list, of course, was a trip to Taco Bell. Beckett has already learned to worship the bell. That may be partly due to the fact that Taco Bell was his main food group while in utero. I’m sure it has made him stronger, wiser, ready to digest anything that comes his way.

We also had a yummy variety of mini bundt cakes. Beckett chose to eat his portion nice and neat, unlike most 1st birthday cake experiences. Then he veered down a different path by removing it entirely from his mouth and smearing it all over himself and the nearby golf club. To each their own. Maybe he wants to keep his weight down.

One of our student employees who occasionally graces us with his presence whipped up a Koala pinata to complete the birthday party experience. Of course the one year old wanted nothing to do with it. I mean, come on. There was dirt to play with. Duh.

He did end up with some pretty cool new toys, but nothing would have made him happier than to take the rolly desk chair home for good.

In other news, Spring semester has finally ended. Whew. This was a rough one and I’m sure the co-workers are thrilled that my whining has stopped. For now that is. The final semester of boring, mind mushing, brain deteriorating library school starts in two weeks! Let the complaining commence!

Oh and last week, we flew kites. I guess since we are all students who work here and it’s finals season, we needed a bit of a break. I am grateful for stress relieving breaks and Mini Cooper adventures. Combine those with Baby Days and I manage to keep a bit of my sanity.

Added to the list of why I prefer Target.

The other night, the boyfriend and I decided to make a birthday cake. Nope, not for our glorious days of birth or even anyone we know. We actually had to look up online to find out it was Johnny Knoxville’s birthday in order to rationalize our birthday cake making.

Side note: this is probably why we continue to grow… wider.

Off to Walmart we go to gather the required ingredients. Cake mix. Check. Frosting. Check. Paper towels. Check. (for the dog that continues to poop in inappropriate places).

We were excitedly on our way towards the front to checkout when the boyfriend drops the cake and frosting. As he leans down to grab the box, I reach out my foot to stop the frosting from rolling into an unsuspecting lady. She watched as I stretched my flip flop clad foot towards the frosting. One second later I was airborne, feet flying up in the air, followed by a loud thud that finally caught the boyfriend’s attention. As I lay there DYING… of embarrassment, all he could do was double over in laughter. hmph. I scrambled to my feet, holding tight to the paper towels while trying to ensure my pants were still intact. The stranger danger lady nervously asked if I was ok, struggling to respond through my giggles I finally replied, “oh I’m fine.” I finally made it to my feet and we walked away, nervously pulling up my pants to make sure I wasn’t showing any crack.

Don’t worry, I have warned the boyfriend that situations like this happen frequently and he might as well just get used to it now.

I’m headed back to my lovely heating pad for the rest of the day.

Ten miles to school, barefoot, in the snow, uphill, both ways.

Fine I am lying. I live in perfect 75 degree weather right now, while the rest of you whither away in the frozen tundra of winter. Sure I feel bad for you, but do you see what I have to deal with? That up there? That’s my commute to work. It would probably help if I made more of an effort to ride the bike on a daily basis, then it wouldn’t even feel like a workout. I have really great reasons/excuses for my laziness.

1. There was an entire week where it was cold. Ice on the ground, well in the shady spots. Combine that with my racing speed wind chill factor and there’s no way I wasn’t driving to work with the seat heater on full blast.
2. Sometimes I know that I’ll need to make a Target trip during lunch.
3. Or Rubio’s.
4. Or World Market, or Michael’s or Pier 1.
5. It’s only a 5 min drive, compared to the 30 minute, uphill, grueling, bike riding commute.
6. Most importantly, I don’t always want to be hunted down by the Mini Dachsund, farm dog from hell that chases me for a block. I have had a nightmare where he gets ahold of my achilles and I have to pedal the rest of the way home with what looks like a rotting, large mouth bass attached to my ankle. It’s not a pretty sight and I sure hope I won’t have that deja vu moment in the future.

Actually I have the most peaceful, easy breezy bike ride. There’s just the one major intersection to cross and I’ve only had one close call with a car. The mountain I mentioned above is about a 1% incline and only lasts 2 minutes. The rest of the time I just bebop along with a smile on my face.

Today I think I went through a vortex. I pedaled across the intersection and ended up in a land of mountainous terrain covered in ice. I was afraid that I would end up going so slow climbing that hill that my legs would stop moving and I would just topple over. Like so:

At least I haven’t had any encounters with killer pigeons.

Yet.

Getting caught up.

I don’t feel like I can say school, work and moving has been overwhelming, but for some reason I’ve felt too busy to keep you important people (I’m talking to you Auntie G.) up to date. I really did have a lot of help moving and school is actually going pretty well so far this semester. So here’s an array of pictures to make you roll your eyes at. 

Yup. That’s Storage Baby. I took advantage of a recent baby day event to snap some polaroids. I need to get that heart below finished up and hanging on the wall. I miscalculated and need to order another pack of film. argh.

The Goodwill dresser event was quite embarrassing. I braved the 50% off Saturday morning adventure. I have never seen such a mix of people waiting outside the doors of a store before. It rivaled a black friday at Walmart. There was an old guy in overalls who was practicing his comedy routine. That was pretty good stuff. Back to the embarrassing part. That consisted of convincing two teenage boys to load the dresser into the poor lil’ buggy and then driving it sloooowly down the road back home. I didn’t have rope so the poor boys had to use bright green yarn to secure the hatch. I was just grateful it didn’t bounce out of the car into the middle of an intersection. Now knowing what to do, I probably would have just driven home without it. Actually no. I would have stood in the middle of the street with an “oopsies” look on my face and hand on a hip… contemplating.

Since Frank is still in the process of getting all his shots, I can’t take him to the groomers yet. I sure don’t want to trim all the hair by his private parts, so he gets lots of baths instead. At least he cleans up his own pee messes with his mop of a hair situation, but then the poop starts hiding in that mop and things get messy. We continue learning together.

This was the most exciting white elephant gift I have ever received. I have tried multiple times to purchase an electric pencil sharpener for my desk at work and they either start out broken or end up that way. When I saw someone open this doozy at a Christmas party, I admit that I squealed and was able to finagle the trades needed to take this lil’ guy home. I think I may have frightened the other guests with my enthusiasm. Oh well. They’ll get used to it eventually.

This Robot Man was an awesome clearance find at Target and fits perfectly on one of my favorite Christmas gifts ever.

I finally got a bike and have moved close enough to work that I can ride it there. I love it. Of course I had to accessorize with the Robot Man and obnoxious basket on the back. It’s pretty much perfect. I have only had a few close calls, but haven’t fallen over yet! Those stories are for another day. I have to thank that cute guy Jonathon, down below for surprising me with the bike. Remember him from the impromptu beach trip? Yea, he’s still around taking me to dinner & movies, spoiling me and whatnot. I kinda like it that way. Sadly I ruin all of the pictures with my level of photogenic quality, so this is pretty much the only ‘decent’ one I can use for now.

Gotta say I’ve been a pretty happy girl lately. Now if only I can get it in gear with this internship and applications. gah.

Now I realize why I like this lil’ guy so much.

I almost didn’t recognize him when he wiggled his way into the yarn wrapper. I just thought it was a skein of brown “Fun Fur” I had in my stash.

Frank continues to entertain, further proving his worth.