OK, now I'm mad
I got a new computer at work this week. Usually, this would be a joyous occasion, but there was nothing wrong with the old one, other than it was old. It worked fine, never wonked out, all the programs worked, and most importantly, I had everything just the way I like it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm glad I now have the Photoshop CS2 and all that jazz, but now there's this admin b.s. on my computer and I can't download Itunes. Ergo, I can't listen to all of the stuff I've previously downloaded (thank God I saved the folder where all the music was, otherwise, that would have been ghandi). Not only that, but I can't change any settings without the blessing of a techie. Forget about updating flash, quicktime, etc., because it's not happening. Which means, I also can't watch my favorite new vlogger, Ze.

Thankfully I still can surf the net without any repurcussions, otherwise I don't know if I could handle it. A friend of mine had his net surfing kibboshed at work when they erected (*beavis laugh*) a firewall that blocks out all entertainment-related sites. God help me if that happens here. Or rather, God help the techies.

Making a Stand

A little snippet of Doodle learning how to stand up, from about a month ago

And so it begins
The summer television lineup. I'll miss the start of the HT season today because I'll be miserable at the Indians game tonight. Miserable because a) they suck; b) it's supposed to rain. I tivo'ed it though, so by tomorrow, I should be caught up.

Other shows in the Tivo queue: Treasure Hunters (confusing so far from what I've watched), Hell's Kitchen from Monday, the 24 finale (yeah, I'm THAT behind), and of course, my favorite new show, SuperGroup. If you haven't seen this show already, I highly recommend it for two reasons: 1. Ted Nugent. The Nuge! Although in this show he doesn't fire a gun at anything resembling game, at least not yet. 2. Former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach. You gotta love him. He is a parody of himself and doesn't even know it. It's great. It makes me happy.

Doodle update: Keep off the grass
The just-turned-11 month old Doodle is full of curiosity. There's nothing on this earth he isn't afraid to put in his mouth. No nook or cranny he isn't afraid to explore.

Except the grass.

I have been taking him outside and sitting out on a beach towel with him in our backyard. I bring all sorts of toys and snacks for him and me both to enjoy. After he gets acclimated to the backyard surroundings, he starts to climb on me and pull himself up to a standing position.

But for all the money in the world he will not set one little tootsie on the grass. That beach towel may as well be the end of the earth as far as he's concerned. He even skeeves when his hand veers off the towel and into the Great Unknown.

This could be a good thing, however. Instant babysitter, know what I'm sayin'? I set him down on the beach towel, go do a load of laundry, go grocery shopping, catch up on whatever crap I've tivoed for the week... and then go check up on him. He'd still be on that damn towel! Especially if there was a bag of Pepperidge Farm goldfish on that towel with him!

Pondering
It's June 17th, 2006, and you know what that means...

IT'S TIME FOR MY SEMI-ANNUAL "WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE" CRISIS! *spotlights pan the applauding crowd*

This installment of the "what am I doing with my life" crisis includes: to GMAT or not to GMAT. I'm tossing around the idea of going back to school and getting an MBA. I don't think I can get much further in my career without doing something like that. However, this means taking out loans, and we are already living so far beyond our means that our means have a different zip code.

The other thing is, school plus job plus infant = insanity. I barely have free time as it is, so throwing one night or more a week of classes into the mix might just kill me.

Between you, me, and the lamppost, I don't think I am going to be at my job much longer. Things are getting ... weird there.

I'll mull this one over for a little while longer. I'm not going to do anything drastic. Fortunately my husband also goes through this crisis, and in his last go-r0und, he purchased a practice GMAT book. It wouldn't hurt for me to take a look-see at it.

Until next time, this is crisis central, signing off.

Well, THAT'S embarrassing
Twice, now, in the past TWO days, I've walked around the office with my barn door open. Once yesterday at the end of the day I forgot to zip my pants (what is WRONG with me!) after a trip to the restroom, and today I came to work wearing a khaki skirt that zips and buttons in the front and I did the button, just happened to neglect the zipper. I am wearing a top that pretty much covers the zipper, so I hope no one noticed. At least I didn't have toilet paper on my shoe or anything like that. Or a sign on my back that says "Kick Me" ... I probably should have one of those, though, for being such a jackass.

The World Cup: Something for Everyone
Although soccer isn't as wildly popular in the U.S. as it is, basically, everywhere else, I think there are several reasons I will enjoy watching the World Cup during these next sixteen weeks. Or three weeks. Whatever it is.

First of all, as someone who is semi-interested in sports, I admire the intense athleticism it takes to run for 45 minutes straight with no commercial breaks. By the way, insomniacs? I've found your cure.

It is also amusing to see the crowds who are so into the games. My husband and I took up the cheer "go Sveeden!" (In our best -- or worst -- Swedish accent, of course) Which was a throwback joke to when we were watching the Swedes in the curling event during the Olympics. Did you SEE the women's curling team from Sweden? Yikes!

And lastly, I made the discovery (what took me so long?) that soccer players = EYE CANDY. Iran v. Mexico, I'm looking at you.

Same as it ever was
The Talking Heads' song "Once in a Lifetime" came on the radio this morning as I was driving to work, causing me to swerve in traffic. That's because, whenever I hear this song, I instinctually, reflexively, mimic the David Byrne hand motion that he does in the video for this song, which is to take your hand and make chopping motions over your other arm as if you are cutting it into slices. Thus needing to take both hands off the wheel.

I may have to kick a baby's ass
Doodle was bitten by another baby in day care this week. On the finger. It left a tiny bite mark but didn't break the skin or anything like that. My husband had to fill out an "incident report" when he picked Doodle up that day.

The day care lady said she had never seen Doodle cry so hard.They are not allowed to divulge which baby was the perpetrator, which is probably a good thing. If I knew which baby bit my little angel, I'd probably hold a serious grudge.

Bad carrot
My next question is... what is the statute of limitations on a bag of baby carrots?

I am eating some from a bag that's been in my fridge for a good three weeks, if not a month. They're not moldy, and they're not slimy, and they seem to taste fine, but I get skeeved just thinking about expired produce. If there's so much as one rotten spinach leaf in a bag of fresh spinach, the whole thing makes me want to hurl.

I guess my answer is, if I don't die this afternoon, the carrots are ok.

Bad mom
Is it wrong to watch, in its entirety, "Chris Rock: Bigger and Blacker" while your 10-month old son is in the room?

If yes, then ... *scoff* Who would DO that? What a bad parent!

If no, then ... I totally did, Saturday morning (what was it doing on Saturday morning anyway!). I still think it's funny, even though I know all the jokes even before he says them.

First word
I don't know if "uh-oh" qualifies as a word, but it's Doodle's first. He said it multiple times yesterday and would say it repeating after me. I don't know if he understands the concept of "uh-oh," but he may have picked it up somewhere. We try not to play the uh-oh game at home, which is where a baby drops something and an adult overexaggeratedly squeals "UH OH!!!!" to the baby. However, it happens at grandma's house a LOT. And I know the kids at day care know what it means. So there you have it. Not "mama", not "dada," but "uh-oh." I hope this doesn't have some deep-seeded meaning.

The rules of Cleveland sports
In my 30 years of living in or near Cleveland, I've come to learn that there are a few things you can count on while rooting for the city's sports teams.

1. Just when you think they're going to be good... they suck.
Case in point: the Indians were supposed to have a good year this year. And they're totally not. We either have good pitching and no hitting, or good hitting and no pitching. We can't get that pitching/hitting combo that would make us the team to beat in the AL Central. Instead, we're chasing Detroit and Chicago. No offense to you, GT, but Detroit is that one team that we're always able to say, "Well, at least we're better than Detroit!" and we can't even do that this year.

2. Just when you've given up hope, they start doing good.
Case in point: Sunday's Indians game. When we saw the pitching matchup (Detroit's Kenny Rogers, who the Indians never have done well against, vs. our Jason Johnson, who, let's be honest here, my grandma could hit), I said to my husband, "That's a guaranteed loss." So what happened? We won, 9-0.

3. They'll only be good enough to build up your hopes only to have them dashed in heartbreaking fashion.
Case in point: the Cavaliers in the playoffs. No one thought we'd even win one game against the Pistons (again with Detroit!) and we took it to game seven. Sure, we got killed in game seven, but who thought we'd even be there!

4. Cleveland is the new Detroit.

Idiot alert #748
This morning I e-mailed one of the VP's in our company a PDF proof of a flyer that I downloaded from one of our partner companies' sites, and basically it was a template that I just needed to add our logo and contact info to. No biggie, right? I slap the company logo on there and e-mail it for approval. I get an e-mail back from her which says, "I don't see the [vendor] logo on there."

Now call me stupid, but when someone says "I don't see the logo", I'm thinking, oh crap, something is wrong with my Acrobat Distiller, that it has taken this logo and banished it to the far reaches of the earth. And that happened to me yesterday, where I created a PDF and a huge graphic disappeared, for no apparent reason at all. So I was thinking that this happened again, even though when I opened the PDF, I could see the logo in question, plain as day.

So I wrack my brain and decide to open the PDF in Photoshop, convert it to a TIF, bring the TIF into InDesign, and then convert it once again to a PDF. That way there would be No Logo Left Behind. I e-mail it to her again and say, "Can you see the logo this time?"

She writes back, "I still don't see it on there."

OK, so by now, I'm one nanosecond away from calling the techies in to examine my computer. But I decide to call the VP instead.

"So you can't see the logo?" I ask. "This is really weird, because I can see it on my screen."

Well, it turns out that there are two versions of the vendor's logo, and she wanted the other one on there. But instead of saying, "Can you put Logo B on there instead of Logo A?" she wasted two hours of my day by making me think that a logo was turning invisible.

Say it with me. Mor-RON!

Soul patr-pfffft!
I'm sorry, was that DAVID HASSELHOFF in the audience... CRYING???
Right up until then, my favorite moment was Covais doing Tom Jones.

American Idol finale checklist drinking game

• Strategically-placed b-list celebs in audience
• Idol rejects in audience looking happy to be sitting where they're sitting
• Gratuitous use of gospel choir
• Horribly-written, cheese factor singles with predictable key changes
• Footage of parents, auditions
• Special surprise guest

Feel free to add any I've forgotten.

I think I just peed myself
If you haven't seen the video of the Evolution of Dance, do yourself a favor and go here. This is one of the single most funny things I think I have ever seen.

From the IBL files
It's been a while since I have posted about Incompetent but Likeable. Believe me, there's been plenty of blog fodder. Yesterday, for instance, he came over on at least three separate occasions to ask me how to use the office's digital camera. Prior to handing it over to him the first time, which I did begrudgingly, I set it up so that all he had to do was remember how to turn it on and remember which button to press to take a picture.

However, being who he is, he turned dials and flipped switches and had it all discombobulated. So I reset it and gave it back to him with the express instruction not to touch anything.

He managed to snap this lovely photo of me in my cube while I was giving him the camera tutorial. The reason why it looks like I'm a squirrel storing nuts for the winter is because I'm eating a jawbreaker. You can see my cube as well and I think I've managed to blur out any company logos that may have appeared...



Immediately after, while walking away, he managed to snap this beauty.

And this is why I don't smoke anymore
I just ate an entire pack of candy cigarettes in like, under two minutes.
Why?
Because I have a meeting coming in any time now. That's why. God forbid I should leave that task undone before my meeting starts.

The tribe has spoken
OK, so my least favorite Survivor season to date is over, and Aras won. The finale was disappointing, in the respect that no one really hated anyone's guts at the end of the show, which always makes for better television than the "sea of forgiveness" that was shown last night. However, Shane, hands down, has the best facial expressions, EVER. Maybe because he's crayzay.

One thing I've always wondered... at the last Tribal Council, after Jeff Probst absconds with the votes and is helicoptered out of Dodge (cue montage of Jeff doing mi:iii type maneuvers to get to Madison Square Garden -- I'm always disappointed when they don't have him doing this), then what happens? Are they just like, ok, go home? After what I am sure is a very stressful night for the two finalists, for it to end so abruptly, just seems strange. I don't know.

In other news: June 21.