Finished (For Real)

Last night was the last night of my math class and so I am now officially done with school. I feel confident that I did well and now I just need to get the credits transferred back over to ASU and maybe throw myself a little party. It feels unbelievably great to have finally crossed that finish line that for long seemed totally out of reach. However, I've already caught myself looking at community college catalogs just to see what might be offered. I think that has more to do with wanting lab access than anything else. I feel stalled right now because I don't have anywhere to work on a final product. I don't think I'm the type that needs assignments but I do need tools and seeing that lack of tools makes me not even want to try. The quick fix always seems to be to take more classes. I just hesitate to do that because I've been taking classes for so long that I just want to give it a rest already. Then I look at work completed in my last semester and realize that I want to keep moving forward with it. I remember thinking this Florida project was worth all the blood, sweat and tears of the last 12 years. That thought alone tells me I'm onto something, and I need to see it through.

Anyway, here are some images from that body of work or what I like to call the pinnacle of my BFA pursuit.

Yummmmm

I've got a personal best to report. Whenever I make something new I always have Keck rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being horrible and 10 being amazing. In reality however, Keck refuses to award a 10, on the basis that it would mean there is no room for improvement and he believes that unless you try to improve it then you'll never know it needed no improvement. So I suppose the scale is actually 1 to 9.9. Well, until I made these my personal best had been a few 9.5s here and there but no more, baby. I got a 9.8 on these beauties...


They're chocolate mint cookies of the soft, chewy variety. I loved them too but the recipe makes tons (nearly 4 dozen to be exact). I took some to work to share and Keck took some to work to eat.

By the way, this is pretty much what I've been dealing with lately on account of the vast number of cookies laying around the house to entice my cookie monster.  It's been under control for the most only because we're out of milk.

As a side note, anyone remember when cookie monster would host masterpiece theatre and get so worked up and gluttonous he would eat his pipe?  Well, that's not something you'll see anymore since Sesame Street doesn't wish to promote gluttony but it's funny to think about and realize how things have changed.

Homecoming is Coming

We leave for Austin on Saturday to check out Angie's new apartment, or as I like to call it, our new hometown crash pad.  She's very excited to leave behind the raccoon family nesting in her a/c vents (don't ask), the thief who stole her/almost our motor scooter and the maze of dog poop lawns.  Her new complex will not shut off water service without prior warning so that she is left with raw chicken juice on her hands nor will it send her nastygrams about a cooler on her balcony while allowing the laundry door on said balcony to rot and eventually blow away in chunks during a storm. No, sir, it will have more square footage, updated appliances and no raccoons in the a/c vents (really, you don't want to ask - it doesn't end well).  She's hired movers this time so we're hoping the manual labor will be minimal.  Mom and Dad are meeting us out there as well and we've made dinner plans with several friends (did you know Austin has an obscene number of amazing restaurants?) so we will be busy catching up and organizing and I just can't wait.  However, there is the little matter of eight shifts, two math tests and a two hour flight to get through before then.  Oh, man, I'll be so ready for this break - let's hope this new place has a hot tub...

For those who don't know, this is Angie/Sissy.  No, we don't look alike.  At least I don't think we do.  Do we?

Monsoon City

I moved here in July 2003 (it was 115 degrees that day - yikes!) and I remember in those first few weeks of watching my new local news station that I would keep hearing about "monsoons." I recall thinking that it was weird that I'd never heard about monsoons in Arizona only in India. It sounded so exotic to live somewhere that had monsoons and not the usual hurricanes and tornadoes. Well, 5 years later (ugh, 5 years?) I now know better than to take the media at face value. They always jazz stuff up, don't they? They give snazzy titles and create catchy phrases for just about anything to make it newsworthy. Monsoons are just thunderstorms with a lot of wind and therefore dust too. When they pop up during the summer monsoon season they are the talk of the news with the live reports and interrupting of So You Think You Can Dance and other equally annoying tidbits that let you know "Hey, it's raining in the desert!" While watching these storms from the comfort of your hand-me-down futon can be lovely and a sweet source of entertainment, working through them is another thing entirely. Poor Keck has to put on a moldy rainsuit (think Gordon's Fisherman) because he can't find the totally awesome rainsuit I got him a few seasons back, and gently toss bags around. I'm spared the physical labor and banana rainsuit but have to deal with weather related diversions and the aftermath they leave in their path. I wonder what it must be like in India where they actually have real monsoons. Anyway, I wish the Bombay wanna-be nights wouldn't align so well with my schedule so I might enjoy the lightning show from my living room window rather than my work station.

In the interest of full disclosure, while wonderful shows like the one above (another google images rip-off, by the way) might make monsoons sound really amazing, they usually actually look like this instead:

Ahhhh, that's more like it - a blinding duststorm as you try to make your way around the overdeveloped concrete jungle sprinkled with manicured golf courses and perfectly landscaped palm trees that is the valley metro area.

Hi, I'm a Sickie

I'm a sick pup. Math class was held in a different room last time on account of the regular room getting an HGTV-worthy makeover. They are ripping up the carpet and while they will not replace it with delicious bamboo flooring or anything, they will be getting newer carpet. ***Side note - in all my time at ASU, I never saw anything get upgraded, much less anything I thought was already looking pretty nice getting upgraded and yet my tuition was so much more, hmmmmmm.*** They'll also give it fresh coat of paint and new tables and chairs. I was so deeply impressed by all this upgrading that I just went over to the temporary classroom without a second thought. Now, I'm sitting there for maybe 15 minutes before I start to feel a chill that I never feel in my usual classroom. Figuring it'll pass I just try to ignore it. However, it starts to get worse and worse and the a/c just refuses to take a break as it pumps the Arctic air through a vent the size of my fridge and blows it directly on me. It gets so that I'm counting down the minutes until our break so I can thaw out outside. Lest you think I was just being a baby, I must tell you that the lady next to me made a comment on our unfortunate situation (sitting at the table in the direct path of the chilly wind tunnel) without my even prompting her. So, where am I going with this? Well I just couldn't wait for class to end so I could go back outside and enjoy a more "normal" temperature. Finally class ends and the lady and I walk outside and we both grin with relief and start to remember what it feel like to have limbs again. We exchange a few jokes and go about our business, each getting into our cars and whatnot. Ahhhhh, the sweet relief I think to myself as I look over to the temperature gauge in my dash and see....

WHAT?!?! It's 107 degrees! I'm basking in the glory of triple digit weather? Man, oh man, I'm a sick pup. I'm so disappointed that I've lived in Phoenix long enough to be fooled into enjoying a triple digit evening as if it were a sweet ending to a trying ordeal. Yet, oddly, my disappointment didn't deter me one bit from coming home and immediately complaining to Keck that the house was too cold as well.

Sadly, I have no photographic evidence of this situation (shocking, I know) but I'll include a little something-something that fits the situation rather nicely.




A self portrait of me sad about something completely unrelated. Good thing I had the foresight to capture this previous disappointment, right?

Fouth of July

July 4th started at work for us, where, for once, we did not get the red, white and blue bomb pops that serve as both a frosty sugar rush and a source of comedy as we all crack jokes about how you can't say "bomb" at the airport.  

Perhaps management was tired of our recyled bomb jokes or maybe they were sticking it to us for voting in the union contract that brought us up to livable wages, either way we were denied our patriotic treat this year. However, we had the night off and the next day off too so we felt like "normal" people able to enjoy a holiday and quickly got over the bomb pop setback. Now grilling is prohibited on the balcony (although our downstairs neighbor doesn't seem to know this for some reason) and we don't have a grill anyway but we have the next best thing - a Forman, and that's what we used for dinner that night.  I made tuna burgers and threw them on the Forman.  They turned out great although they were overshadowed by the crash hot potatoes I made to go with them.  Keck also whipped up a garlic feta dip that was nothing short of divine and went well with the tuna burgers as a condiment.  Another drawback to apartment living is the lack of overhead lighting in our dining/living room, so the pictures are a bit dark but here's an idea of our July 4th spread.

After dinner we watched a terrible movie (that I didn't pick out, by the way) and then watched 2 fireworks shows from the balcony.

I totally ripped this picture off google images because I have yet to get myself a tripod so I can properly take my own fireworks images.  Also, I must admit that this is not quite the view we have from the balcony, as I'm sure you can guess.

The next day we enjoyed our flag cake, since we'd gotten a late start on it the day before and were too tired to see it through that night.  We also went to the movies, where we saw a great film (my choice this time) and just relaxed watching the track qualifying matches on NBC.  Boy, are we ever getting hyped for those olympics.  08-08-08 hurry up already, the olympic nerds await!

Oh, and a special shout out to Keck on this one - he decorated the cake all by himself.

Training and Texting

I'm finally training on the other positions at work. I only started yesterday but so far it's not been the nightmare I was expecting. I still have to get through the rest of this week and do it all again next week but I'm starting to build a little more confidence in what I'm doing with each call and message I handle. I must admit I was a total wreck on Monday with the the start of training looming over the next day. There were a lot of nerves to deal with and I got myself all worked up. Tuesday morning as I was getting dressed for work I couldn't find my cute red flats and I convinced myself that surely this was a sign of troubles ahead at work. I was nearly in tears as I walked through security and got ever closer to work (and equally close to a panic attack). Fortunately, I didn't lose it and start bawling like the pansy I am and instead I just threw myself into learning the new positions, letting go of my fear and anxiety. Actually, I wasn't so much letting go of it, as I was ignoring it. Either way, it worked and now I'm just worried about how I can sneak in some internet surfing time at work over the next few weeks (I'm already having allrecipes.com withdrawals). It just goes to show that I have a most endearing (hardy har har) tendency to freak out about things that I blow way out of proportion but once the dust settles I eventually come back to my senses and resume my life as a reasonable person. Also, I regain the clarity to look for my shoes behind other shoes and find them easily - oops!

On an unrelated note, Keck surprised me and added texting to his phone service. I'd been pestering him for months to get on the bandwagon but he continued to shoot down the idea saying calling was sufficient and texting unnecessary. Keck is not one for following the masses' lead on the newest, hippest things. However, having had the service for a few weeks now he is rather pleased with it. He's texting pretty fast already and even using the emoticons appropriately (i.e. :)). Surely he sees the error of his old 19th century ways now as we can communicate during class and all, not that we do...