Archive for January, 2008

the devil incarnate

I tried my first Girl Scout Cookie today, a Caramel Delight. They were sitting in the break room by my office, staring at me, as I was trying to decide between a cup of coffee or green tea. I decided on a hazelnut coffee and as the Flavia* machine was spurting out my coffee I decided to try one of the cookies to see if they were really as good as people always said. The first bite delivered the tastes to my tongue. I felt the sugar enter my blood stream as my pupils dilated Requiem-for-a-Dream style. I had to tackle myself, internally, to keep from grabbing the rest of the box, running into my office, hiding under my desk, and shoving the rest of the cookies into my mouth while rubbing the sticky sugar residue all over my face in the process. Caveman-like grunts would ensue. I grabbed my cup of coffee with shaking hands and whimpered back to my office. I probably need to check myself into rehab now, but at least I have found out that I can never order Girl Scout Cookies from anyone, ever.

* Flavia is a giant robot coffee maker that lets you pick from about 4 billion different flavors of coffee or tea or hot chocolate and then makes single servings of your choice. When I first started my job I spent about 3 months fearing this machine and not stepping anywhere near it. I didn’t want to look stupid trying to figure out how to make a cup of coffee. Finally one day I saw someone using it and watched them intently without seeming too creepy. Then when no one was around, I experimented pushing all of the different choices and now I can have whatever I feel like that day.

So to recap, having five different flavors of coffee and tea each day = good; Girl Scout Cookies = bad.

birthday week ramble

I’ll admit it, I’m a little scared of driving in the rain, and a little scared of driving at night, and a lot scared of driving in the rain at night. But I braved it last Friday night and went out to the movies with David and his coworkers. It would be the start of a very long and wonderful weekend. Saturday morning I woke up early, went in for a trim, and the stylist put some cute 50′s style waves in my hair. Off to brunch with David, we sat outside under heaters (hey, 60 degrees is cold for Texas), ate slowly, talked. We then went to this small art gallery to see a piece by one of my favorite illustrator-turned-fine-artist, James Jean. The piece wasn’t that impressive to me, but it felt wonderful being around real artwork. I had missed it. In high school and college we were surrounded by all kinds of work every single day, we’d go to galleries often and soak it all in. Get inspired. I can’t believe we’d let it slip by and not noticed what we had been missing.

We walked around the giant Whole Foods downtown before going home, where I passed up ALL of the free tasty samples being shoved in my face. I felt so energized that I worked on my website redesign for a few hours without needing to rest. I’m really excited about the shiny new tinapoe.com, keep your eyes peeled, I’ll let you know when it goes up. We went out to dinner with my dad + family, then. We ate tasty bbq, had drinks, and birthday cake, and presents. Mmm nice and sleepy after drinks, and food, and cake, but we still went out to a bar that night with David’s coworkers. Came home smelling like smoke, ew, and ended Saturday.

Sunday we got up early and super cleaned house because my mom and grandparents were coming over for lunch. We went to this restaurant that had a super long wait, damn, and the bitchiest waitress that ever walked the earth, double damn. Bitcho tried to ruin our lunch but my mom set her straight, yay for moms. After my mom and grandparents took off, David and I walked around the bookstore. My favorite part of the store is the young adult/independent readers section, where I like to walk around and examine the book covers and day dream about a time when I will see some of my illustrations on these same shelves. David bought me a moleskin sketchbook and another young adult box set series, since I love collecting the ones with great covers and great stories. It was nice not being home much for the whole weekend, we didn’t want it to end.

Monday came and I started to feel sick, maybe allergies I thought, but no I had chills and pain and fever by the time I got home. I caught a cold virus, great, sick on my actual birthday too, which is never fun. The doctor couldn’t give me anything since it was a virus of course, just gotta wait it out. I’m starting to feel a bit better now, good enough to write a huge post about nothing for you guys, and to get back to reading and commenting on your blogs. Have a great weekend!

hi, my name is

Can one haircut really make that much difference? Since I have cut off my long locks three people, THAT I KNOW, have introduced themselves to me at work. I know that I don’t get to mingle with all of the 200 employees since I am usually busy in my department and don’t have the luxury of walking around all the time chatting up random people. But, we have a face directory, and I have been here for a year and a half, doing work, work that involves other people.

The first incident was in the elevator, and I was able to explain to that person that I had been working here for a while and that I had gotten a haircut. Person number two’s incident happened at a company lunch. #2 introduced them self to a newer employee and then without missing a beat, introduced them self to me, AND was nice enough to go around the tables and introduced everyone else sitting there to me. One of the other people #2 introduced to me came to the rescue and started talking about how nice my new haircut looked, a hint that obviously they knew who I was and that I had been there long enough for this person to notice a hairstyle change. #3 happened while I was talking to one of my coworkers in my department. #3 interrupted our conversation and then introduced them self. Nice.