Office Morale

Is a tad low lately. Times are hard. But Julia sent me a cool link that, if I had 10 extra hours, I could totally do to lift everyone's spirits, at least for 30 seconds. Here is the how-to.

Lauren rules

Perspective is great. I feel much better now.

It's still McDonalds

I only eat at Chipotle often enough to forget that it makes me sick EVERY TIME. Not an hour later but the stomach is burbling and the magical organic spices they use are tearing up the old digestive track like a bunch of drunk NASCAR drivers. It doesn't even taste that good and when I ask for 2 steak and one veggie taco they always end up putting rice and beans on all the tacos. Why do I bother? It's a question I've been asking myself a lot lately and finally I am not bothering anymore. No more lame-ass charmers who actively ignored my birthday, no more mass-produced organic mexican food, no more stopping at red lights, no more waiting around for stuff to happen.

I can feel myself slipping into the downward spiral of the aggressively-single lifestyle, where I just hate everything and everyone, and end up alone on saturday nights trying to convince myself that Meercat Manor is as cool a show as Planet Earth, which at least I can talk excitedly about with friends who then think I'm learn-ed and into animal sociology.

I'm neither stupid nor ugly and yet today at Fort McHenry, catching up on New Yorkers and sunshine, I saw plenty of people who are both happily yammering away at significant others, with whom they would later go home and cook dinner and watch Meercat Manor or any of a number of super-lame tv shows. How do they find each other? Did I seriously miss out on key formative years of boyfriends by jaunting off into the jungle for four years? What the hell was I doing in college pining after boys with hometown honeys?

A friend of mine is probably getting married to the guy she started dating right around the time I started dating the A-hole. That was fun to learn the other night. Shit. What a waste of time, dating a guy who doesn't give a shit.

Stop the hating. Go to the party even if your friends ditch you. Ride your bike, talk to people, get out of the house. Nothing happens at home. Go to those stupid art gallery deals and have a free glass of wine. Start going to game night - no, definitely, definitely, do NOT go to game night. Hit the other climbing gyms and go back to the bike coop. Good job me for going to the alleycat and talking to three people. They're all crazy poor bike messengers, but still.

Hm. Maybe those RPCV gatherings aren't such a bad idea. At least there I won't find a lot of guys who are put off by girls who kill snakes with machetes and can fix their own bikes. Yeah, I'll have to sift through the crazies as always, but at least they'll have more than zero interest in Africa.

TMobile Fraud

Just found $200 bucks of fake charges on my Tmobile bill for May. Some number in California, Santa Barbara - googling reveals that these may be 'charges' for calls forwarded to voice mail, which is actually a service included in my plan. Not to mention no one calls me every minute between 7:21 and 7:26am. Except telemarketers maybe. This is really disturbing and confusing and adds to my totally awful day! Lovely.

T-mobile customers, check your statements - in the US the fake charges are at 99 cents.

Date Destination Time Number Minutes Total

Kenya (Safaricom)
5/15/07 California 9:45 PM 805-637-7249 4 19.96
5/15/07 California 10:00 PM 805-637-7249 2 9.98
5/15/07 California 10:01 PM 805-637-7249 2 9.98
5/15/07 California 10:04 PM 805-637-7249 2 9.98
5/16/07 California 7:21 AM 805-637-7249 1 4.99
5/16/07 California 7:22 AM 805-637-7249 2 9.98
5/16/07 California 7:23 AM 805-637-7249 1 4.99
5/16/07 California 7:24 AM 805-637-7249 1 4.99
5/16/07 California 7:25 AM 805-637-7249 1 4.99
5/16/07 California 7:26 AM 805-637-7249 1 4.99
5/16/07 California 8:24 AM 805-637-7249 2 9.98
5/16/07 California 8:25 AM 805-637-7249 3 14.97
Sub Total 43 214.57
TOTAL 56 227.44

Dentists suck

My dentist found cavities with a laser (not his eyes) and drilled on my teeth, and now he says one is fractured and probably needs either a root canal, or extraction.

Extraction. Like they will take out my tooth.

And have to put in a new tooth.

And how much is this going to cost? No one can tell me.

So much for a new laptop.

Greens

I ordered a salad last night. Good for me. This morning, because I have a haircut after work, I drove. Immediately I was struck down with a lightning bolt in the form of road closures downtown and spent 30 minutes stuck at the end of the freeway. Serves me right for not riding my bike.

And now I can Trackstand. So there's that.

I took the morning off for mental health and went up and down 30th street, where there are few cars, teaching myself to trackstand. This served a triple purpose of 1) making me look like a badass 2) taking my mind off some crap and 3) improving valuable fixed gear biking skills.

I love multitasking. Also, I am way cuter than this guy, even if I can't yet trackstand with just one foot.

Check out these lugs

Lots of good shit on the old ebay today.

Coolest color scheme ever?

Today is a slow work day

Mostly because yesterday was really productive. But check this out: December 1949, Von Bueren's cycle desintegrates as he wins the Swiss Championship in Zurich. Siegenthaler finishes second, but intact.

Victoria! Put that away!

In the DR:

And in PR:


Also - in the DR:

And in PR!:

Stupid Mac

I'm trying to upload some great pics from past trips, but a) my current laptop is a dinosaur b) Safari's picture uploading doesn't work so I have to use Firefox which takes FOREVER, literally, which is why I'm not posting. This forces me to blog from work tomorrow and inches me closer towards caving and buying a new laptop before OS Leopard comes out in October.

But I won't because practicality wins out so seldom and this is a big enough purchase that I actually will listen to that voice of reason that says 'don't spend an extra 500 bucks on a computer you don't need before the $130 OS upgrade even comes out'.

Anyway - look forward to the posting tomorrow, especially you Victoria.

weekend update

I've spent 6 of the last 7 days in DC and boy it is nice to be back in Charm City. Last week I had a meeting with three presentations for a lot of really smart M&E folks and I did ok - met a couple awesome climbers at the meeting which is definitely a plus! Our database project is moving along and there was much less politicking about it than before, so now we just have to get our butts in gear and build this thing over the summer.

We had a very nice BBQ at Jason's temporary pad (an extremely beautiful house - functional, spacious, fantastic kitchen, yet laid back in a way only 2 million dollar homes can have) and bored the non-Gabon RPCV guests with more of our stories. Oh, la nostalgie. Sunday we went for brunch at an Irish place that had too many spoiled children and slow service, but excellent food. JCo dissed the bloody marys and nearly sent a 4 year old flying over the veranda, but the conversation was lively and we even managed to escape the rain...

I've ordered a new stem and bars for my fixie to make it a little more comfortable - the reach is a bit short but maybe that's just because I've been riding the Nishiki lately. Sean seems to think the teal color scheme is uncool but he's wrong. It is the pinnacle of cool.

I almost, almost, finished this really hard climb I've been working on for a long time last night. Which is not bad for having two weeks off. Coming up - trips to W. Va and more biking.

Spontaneous Combustion

Here's the tree that burst into flames on our recent climbing trip.