Lots and lots of kids

I've lately started watching Jon and Kate Plus 8 all the time on TV, so I was looking at the history of Jon and Kate online on the TLC website. Incase you haven't seen the show before, it is about two parents named Jon and Kate who have a set of twin girls who are 8 years old and sextuplets who are 3 1/2 years old (3 boys and 3 girls) who are absolutely adorable (and half Asian I think)! It's actually kind of sad their background story though - I guess Jon and Kate ended up both losing their jobs during Kate's pregnancy and still having to take care of the twins. So the show is sort of a way to make money.

Anyway, I find it really interesting to see how the parents keep everything under control while still getting to know each of their kids really well individually and having a bond with each of them individually.

My neighbor has this weird habit

He consistently turns his music on super loud at 11pm most weeknights. But this doesn't worry me because he usually turns it off at about 12am every time. Is it weird that I've caught on to this? I think sometime when I finally bump into him leaving the house and finally meet him or get to know him, I'll crack a joke about this, hahaha

My fortune cookie from dinner says

Verify after every hardship there is a relief

Funny English words and phrases I've learned

Dogging - old fashion term for when people take their dogs for walks in the park and see couples snogging or necking in their cars

Chav - used in equivalence to "redneck" in America

Bonnet and Boot - equivalent to "hood and trunk" (of a car) in America

Uni - short for university (the first time someone asked how long I've been in the Uni, I had no idea what he was asking me)

A few strange things I'm obsessed with

Spending an hour clipping coupons and planning what I think I'm going to purchase

Buying my dog different kinds of dog treats to try using all the coupons I clip

Daydreaming about being the best dancer on the floor, usually when I'm on the road and I hear a song on the radio I like

Smelling the floor cleaner in the stairway after the cleaning guys mop the floors at work

Getting a second piece of paper towel in public bathrooms just to dry off the areas between my fingers

Sleeping with my arms stretched straight up above my head like I'm a hot dog

Is the good life better than the life I live?

Claude's dinner party (part I - hahaha) was this past weekend. I had an absolute blast and finally got to meet his wife and 2/4 of his kids! And Claude has a gorgeous house! "Part I" included Catherine and Gary, Claude and Amy, and then me and BGS :) After an incredible dinner (Claude is also an amazing cook) we played pool, Wii, air hockey, LRC, foosball, watched SNL... I love him to bits and pieces :) And he has the sweetest wife!

Today, I found out my shoe has a hole in it. Now my toes are cold and wet and it is making me grumpy.

Finals went as well as they can go for me, which is not very well. I am terrible at studying and a master at procrastinating. I even got more satisfaction out of finishing this than finishing today's final exam.

More to come... lots on my mind.

Tell them what they wanna hear

Ladies, let me ask you this.

You are driving and pull up to a red light. You hear someone honking next to you, and you look over. It's this guy (in a delivery truck) waving and mouthing something like "hey baby" over to you. How good looking or how young he is is irrelevant (don't argue with me on this one, he's in a delivery truck). How do you react?

I just looked back forward and ignore him, preparing to either jump the gun at a green or read his reaction to keep up with me and slow down to avoid making it seem like I'm trying to play with him.

It makes me wonder though, what the hell do guys think they're getting out of it? Are they just looking for a smile or some recognition? Or do they expect us to be like "heyyyy yeh-yaaah!" and grab the nearest piece of paper and pen to make a sign to hold up our phone numbers. Seriously.

Language, speaking, writing, typing

In one of my history classes, there is a group of 5 elderly senior citizens that attend the lectures. They eat lunch together outside the lecture hall before hand, and slowly make their way into class for the lectures.

They're kind of funny in that they are kind of stereotypical elders. They're kind of dainty and walk down the steps of the lecture hall slowly, holding on to the guardrail. They say make comments so politely and seriously about the cold temperature of the room. All the other students in the room usually quiet down to kind of observe them and crack smiles at the good-natured comments they make about the class.

One of the women leaned over to me today pointing at my laptop and asked if I use "that thing" to take notes during the lecture. I said yes because I type faster than I write, so it is easier to take notes when the professor has a lot to say. She asked me how my hand writing is, and I didn't know what she meant for a second. She said she thought that my hand writing could be sloppy or messy if I always type instead of write. I think she actually said "suffers". Like, "your hand writing probably suffers if you are always typing instead".

I wasn't offended. Luckily, I think if I'm not in a rush to scribble something out, my handwriting is usually pretty neat. But it is an interesting thought... my hand writing may not be suffering now. But in the future, will technology take over to the point where kids learn to type earlier than they can write? After all, middle schools and elementary schools are already using computer classes to teach kids how to type properly, navigate the Internet, and utilize Microsoft programs.

I locked my keys in my car at work today

Completely by accident. I'm usually pretty good certain safety things... I mean I'm really good about locking my doors habitually as I open the door to get out, which is probably why I locked my keys in my car.

When I groaned to Lori about it, she immediately called the police station to find out if this was something they could help with. They said yes, and within 15 minutes, a cop arrived. As he started trying to flip the lock with the long metal device thing, he says to me, "Oh just so you know, it doesn't happen often, but I'm supposed to warn you that your lock on this door may never work again after this." Thanks guy.

10 minutes of trying to unlock my car and he stops and says, "If this were a Ford, I'd have already unlocked this by now".

I guess in a way, that's a good thing (I say this now that my car is already unlocked).

I'm kind of mean sometimes

So, if there's something about me you should know, it is that I am a pick-up-and-go person who sees what she wants and is a go-getter! And if you don't like that, you can pick yourself up and go.

Don't tell me I didn't warn you!

Free at last and before 5pm!

So our receptionist decided to leave extra early today to go up north and party (she's older but she's young at heart) which leaves me to cover the front desk.

Woohoo! This leaves me unattended and available to indulge in my online guilty pleasures that I have been neglecting: FB, Woot, making random wishlists on amazon and then deleting them, blogging, reading random recipes...

This weekend should be fun filled :) Including fooding, partyin', shopping, going to Catherine's wedding reception, and the F1 race on Sunday. Get ready!

We had fire in our eyes

Work was good today, as usual. I still have my little daily peeves with certain people *ahem* but I did a little coffee run with Courtney this morning because 7am to 7pm McDonald's has free coffee :) It's the smaller things that seem to make me especially happy right now.

I was thinking about my Chinese speaking abilities during class today (or rather, my lack of). I've developed some bad habits that stop me from learning Chinese progressively. Like when my mom and I talk to each other, I'll say a word in English if I can't think of it in Chinese. Or when I'm trying to get a thought out fast (we all know I have too much to say), I can't arrange the words in the same order as it is in English so I get frustrated and just say it in English. And most of all, I don't talk to anyone but my mom in Chinese unless I'm in Taiwan. I dunno.

Anyway, Chinese class wasn't even awkward with D until afterwards when we got in an argument about my broken bumper which ended in him calling me a bitch (I know he didn't mean it). I stormed off and came ridiculously close to getting in an accident with cars on both my right and left sides, one driving towards me, and I think that's when I started crying again.

I went for a power run with my baby doggie when I got home. I don't know why. I deeply hate running too, but I guess I was already so sweaty and my adrenaline was going it didn't even matter because I felt like I'd been running already. I must be super out of shape too, because I had a little trouble keeping up with my tiny 8 lb. dog. Gotta work on that, hahaha.

On another "good small things" note, my Tyrone Wells CD came in the mail today and it is just as good as I'd hoped!

Say no to laptop violence

Yesterday, this guy at work came up to IT with is laptop and his tail tucked between his legs to admit he damaged his laptop.

I guess he was working on an Excel spreadsheet for a presentation due soon and became so frustrated and angry that he actually punched his laptop. The keys on this perfectly new D620 were smushed and could not be pressed anymore. The power button did not turn on the laptop, and you could really see the dent he had made to the laptop.

While I was preparing a crappy Thinkpad for him to work on, he sat there waiting for me and we basically had a therapy session about what sparked his behavior. He excused himself for beating his laptop by saying that "well it's a Dell" and "I've had a really bad week... actually I've just had a bad month". And I'm thinking "so what?" We all have bad days and there is no excuse for damaging company property, even if it is under warranty!

Then he goes on to say that Dell's equipment is bad quality because they hire lots of interns to work for them over the summer. I asked him if he had a problem with interns and he said "no..." and I made his day by telling him "did you know I'm an intern?" and he was all "oh, I didn't mean it like that". Dumbass.

D made this for me to cheer me up and sent it to me:

Punctuation at its best

An English professor wrote the words:
"A woman without her man is nothing"
on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote:
"A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All of the females in the class wrote:
"A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Punctuation is powerful!

Which way do I go?

I dunno if it's the beat or lyrics or what but these songs put me in kind of a foxy mood :P

Fall Out Boy - "This Ain't A Scene"
Clipse - "Ain't Cha"
Usher - "Take Your Hand"
Usher - "Bad Girl"
Gwen Stefani feat. Akon - "Sweet Escape"
Jamie Scott - "Made"

$1 reward for the answer

Must be at least 8 characters, but no more than 20 characters.
Must contain mixed case letters (upper and lower case).
Must contain a digit which cannot be in the first or last position.
Must contain a special character such as #$!&*@() which cannot be in the first or last position. Do not use the 'less than' or 'greater than' symbols (< >).
Must not contain a dictionary word greater than 3 letters.
Must not contain your name, initials, or email address.

You'd think this is a game, but no, it's the requirement for a password for an account for an internship I'm applying for! Ahhh! I spent a good 15 minutes trying to come up with a password (I gave up trying to come up with something similar to the rest of my passwords). The best part is, the password confirm-y thing doesn't tell you which of their rules you violate.

Amy was making a joke in Econ that maybe this is the test to see if a student is qualified enough or intelligent enough to even apply.

The handshake-or-hug dilemma

I find it funny when I meet someone new and pause when I have to decide between a handshake or hug. Old friends? Family of close friends? Close friends of your best friends? Acquaintances you've known for awhile? Family friends you see once a year?

I went to a Red Wings game Saturday night with Jason, Dusan, and Stephanie (not Gabe's Stephanie, a different one). Turns out, this Stephanie and I went to high school together and have seen each other dozens of times but never formally met. When I went to give her a handshake and a "nice to meet you", she ignored my handshake and gave me a hug, and I laughed.

Oh and, I realized I hit up almost everything sports-wise this year: Red Wings, Michigan football, Pistons games, and a Tigers game. Cool huh?

Our philosophy class was discussing morality and Immanuel Kant's Ethics of Duty, and how a moral action takes place in the human heart (according to the Ethics of Duty). My professor said something interesting the other day that really hit me. This is kind of how he explained it to us:

"A white priest was taken by the KKK years ago. They tied him to a pole and beat him up and told him to bow to them and admit he was wrong in what he believed. They tortured him for hours and eventually broke his jaw too. Finally, he submitted and bowed his head and they let him go. Fast forwarding, when I was still a student years ago, this man was my professor. He told our class the story of what happened. I asked him why he submitted, and he looked at me and said, 'Sometimes, you have to sacrifice your beliefs.' You see, humans are not strong. That is why Jesus Christ is above human. He did something we can not: he sacrificed himself for his beliefs."

It may be the same thing everyone from church has been telling me for years, but for some reason, it just made more sense when he said it this way. Maybe because we established the "how" and "why" of striving for morality before he even brought this up.

Oh yeah and a follow up on my last entry...
I felt bad for being impulsively mad at the one girl who had a problem with the paper I wrote, so I edited more to-be verbs and emailed it back as an "olive branch" gesture to show her it was reasonable for her to have these concerns (I knew my paper wasn't perfect). But then the other two group members called me to rant about the to-be verb/cliche frustration the other girl had emailed us about and I was back to being irritated with the whole situation.

She actually emailed the professor about to-be verbs, cliches, and not having enough transitions (she said she felt uncomfortable turning in a paper that didn't have enough transitions between paragraphs). Keep in mind this is a Management Information Systems class. I'm pretty sure the professor won't be more worried about to-be verbs than what we've actually written. At any rate, here's what he wrote back:

"These are good questions. The verb "to be" is a perfectly good verb, usable when action verbs do not suggest themselves. This verb often signals the use of the passive voice -- a voice to be used sparingly. Transitions should be used to the extent the reader needs them -- frequently, but not mechanically. Cliches should be used sparingly, since this writing is formal writing."

The whole ordeal was kind of unnecessary but I tried to be polite about it. At least it's all done and over with!

I am is were was are be being been

I was really quite annoyed when I sent out a 5 page paper that I'd worked hard on to the rest of my MIS group members to edit, and this one girl sent back an email exclaiming how terrible it was (she said there were too many cliches and to-be verbs).

My thing is, in high school, to-be verbs matter because it's not good to get used to writing with them. They eliminate the possibility of a more detailed sentence and just sound bad. I mean I would know - I'm not bragging but I was in the WC and I've seen the abuse a monstrosity of to-be verbs does to a paper, but do you ever read a book that has zero to-be verbs?

I couldn't write the paper in first person because it is about a company and the company's use of Excel and Access... and well, we're not the company.

I dunno I guess I just wanted to get the ideas right on paper first and then go back and edit grammer and to-be verbs with the group, and it made me uncomfortable that she was so unhappy with it. I've never been able to spit out sentences that are both "to-be-less" and make sense.

As for the cliches, that might have been a mistake on my part because I didn't realize I was writing those.

On a seperate note...

I've been filling in at the reception desk at work because Aurora up and married James... yes, if you know who I'm talking about, you know why I laugh (James is about half her age and half her size) Anyway, Claude volunteered me, which works out because I have an excuse to drop everything and study while I'm up here. Or write in my blog when I need a break - haha.

Funny thing that happened today, this guest came in for an employee here. I paged him and called the employee to come get his client, but I couldn't get ahold of him. So this poor client is like "well give me his cell number and I'll leave him a message to let him know I was here." So here's the client standing on the right side of me on the phone, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the employee step outside of a conference room on my far left. It took me a minute before I realized it and had to rudely interrupt and tell them they were talking to the person on the opposite side of the room. It was funny because I would hear one guy talking and the other guy replying so I started laughing too. Ha, maybe you had to be there.

This is kind of cool - a picture of a memorial for former Michigan Football coach Bo Schembechler made it to Yahoo's Week-In-Photos.

My guh sent me this - hahaha

Words words words

Yes, I am definitely in love with this free trial of Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus! But I only get so many free trial words so I must pick and choose carefully...

So useful and helpful! Or should I say accomodative, assistive, adjuvant, practical, or utilitarian :)