C - A - P - S : CAPS CAPS CAPS!!

It's a lucky day for my readers. I was feeling like I needed to post another blog entry, but really nothing has happened to me in the last several days that was very interesting. I was *this* close (finger and thumb almost touching) to dedicating a blog post all about my addiction to spreadsheets and thus revealing what a true nerd I am. Thank GOODNESS my brother-in-law's sister-in-law, Regina, had an extra ticket to the Washington Capitals game last night!! (I'll let you work out the above relationship in your head)

I am officially a Hockey fan! This was the best game I have ever been to. (It was my 2nd). The Capitals played Minnesota Wild, and whooped them, 4-1. It was a GREAT game! I yelled, clapped, and screamed a lot. I found out a bit about myself as well. It turns out that when it looks as if a fight is about to break out on the ice, I get REALLY excited and start screaming to egg them on. Why do I want to see them fight? I honestly don't know. For some reason it gets my adrenaline pumping. I find myself wishing for this same thing every time I attend a baseball game. Fight on the pitcher's mound! C'MON!!!

I digress......

Well, I didn't have to wait for long before my wish came true. Not even 10 minutes in to the 1st period, the gloves and masks came off and a couple of guys went AT IT!! YES!!!! Lots of screaming from me, a lot of "That's right! Take him down! Let him have it!" out of my mouth, and me scrambling for my phone so I could take a photo. The result is this:

I was very surprised at how well that came out on my phone! It was really exciting. Pretty sure it was Don Brashear (AKA Brash) going at it down there. Yeah BRASH! Besides the fact that the Caps already scored 2 goals! Then the 2nd period came. What could top what I had already seen? I'll tell you what! 2 more goals and another fight!! I'm telling you, I was jumping out of my seat and screaming and laughing. I hadn't had that much fun in a while. The second fight had Matt Bradley (Brads) taking Mr. Wild down to the ice! Finished him off. I think I need to start going to all the games.

Kudos to Brooks Laich (Leech) for scoring 2 of the 4 goals, with his first goal made before the clock hit 3 minutes from a sweet assist from Tom Fleischmann (Flash), and Olaf Kolzig (Olie) for an awesome game, blocking 34 of 35 shots on the goal. Olie the Goalie! Also, the other 2 goals were firsts of the season for Fehr & Morrison (Morrie). Yay for them!

Some more highlights:

• Mites on Ice - these little kids are so cute! I love the little dudes all decked out with the pads and helmets. I can clearly picture my nephew, Joseph, in that garb.
• The Zambonis
• The Geriatric hockey players. I was cheering almost as loud for these old geezers as I was during the real game! So funny. Yellow #9 fell down and it took him a good 2 minutes to try to get back up! Then he had to leave the ice. Ha! I love these old guys for getting out on the ice and playing the game that they love!
• The "soundtrack" to the game. Pretty sure they played at least 4 songs that are on Guitar Hero 3. You can bet that I whipped out my air guitar and played along!
• The little video clip where I learned a lot of nicknames:

1. Matt Bradley: Brads
2. Donald Brashear: Brash
3. Sergei Fedorov: Ser
4. Tomas Fleischmann: Flash
5. Boyd Gordon: Gordie
6. Mike Green: Greenie
7. Olaf Kolzig: Olie
8. Brooks Laich: Leech
9. Shaone Morrisonn: Morrie

Good times! I'd like to be a regular attendee. I'm thinking this year will be my year for hockey and soccer!

Oh! The good old hockey game,
Is the best game you can name;
And the best game you can name,
Is the good old Hockey game!

Stop looking at me, Swan!

Have you ever had those days where you feel like everyone is staring at you? Today is one of those days. It started as soon as I stepped outside of my house. I went around the long way instead of down the grassy hill to catch the bus, as the grass was covered in snow and I didn't want to slip. Well, naturally, I ran in to one of our neighbors in the parking lot, and her 2 boys. It seemed as if she were staring unnaturally at me, so I offered her a cheerful "Good Morning!" to snap her out of it. It seemed to work, although her boys still stared at me.

As I came down the steps to the road below, I realized that I had just missed one of the busses. There are 2 stops very near where I live where I can catch the bus, but it's always a toss up as to which bus will come first. A solution that I often take, when I find that I have just missed one of the busses, is to walk the long-ish block down to the next bus stop where both of the afore-mentioned busses will stop. I explain this because this is the solution I took this morning, and while walking that long-ish block to the next bus stop, I felt like a lot of the people in the cars were looking at me, as I walked briskly by them (a long line of them were stopped for a light). Ok, whatever. I shrug it off.

I keep walking. As I approach the bus stop, all the people that are already waiting there seem to be looking at me while I get closer and closer. Granted, the bus that would come, would be coming from the same direction that I was walking from. So again, I was able to shrug it off. The bus arrives. Hooray! I can sit and bury myself in a book. I get on the bus, and I feel like the ENTIRE bus full of people are looking at me! It's natural, I know, to glance up to look at the new people getting on the bus, but it seemed as if everybody's gaze lingered just a bit longer than necessary. I imagine it like a movie: you have this wide-angle shot of the bus from the front looking back at all the people, and all heads are stiffly looking forward, all eyes on the camera (me). Then the camera switches to their point of view, and it zooms in closer and closer, until the entire camera shot is that of my face and worried brow. .... Shake it off! (I did).

Next stop, Pentagon. This is where I hop off the bus and on the Metro to get to my destination in Chinatown DC. It didn't seem so bad in the crazy shuffle of people down below, as they got on and off the trains, hurrying to their place of arrival. Most people keep to themselves. So that was good. Then I get on the train. I'm standing, as all the seats are taken by the time the train gets to the Pentagon. It's always a little awkward being sandwiched in the train with strangers all around you. You try to hold the pole without touching even the tiniest bit of skin from the other person's hand. You can't look anywhere but down, really, because then you would be looking deeply in to the eyes of the stranger next to you -- it's inevitable with that close of contact. Talking to anybody is out of the question. So I look down. Except when the train breaks to cross the Potomac River. We are above-ground, and I like to look outside the window. So I glance up, and immediatly, I see 4-5 pairs of eyes on me!! This is starting to get creepy. Now I'm feeling overly self-conscious. Is there a dried boogey (shout-out to HP language!) straying out of my nostril? Do I have a newly-formed pimple that has come to a head in between the time that I last looked in the mirror and ventured outside? Did I only put mascara on one set of eyelashes? Is my hair sticking up all crazy?

After discreetly running my index finger under my nose, feeling my face for bumps, blinking my eyelashes against one of my fingers and smoothing down my hair, I couldn't feel anything wrong with me. So what was up? I was super anxious to get to the office and away from all these prying eyes. I kept my head down and speed-walked to my office. As soon as I walked in the door, I looked at myself in the little mirror. Nothing seems out of place! Odd. I wonder if maybe I'm just paranoid sometimes. But it sure doesn't start my morning off very well, placing self-doubts in my brain so early in the day.

I take comfort in the fact that at least I'll never look like this. --->

Talk about freaky! (At least she can't look at me)

Crazy things happening in Space

Attention Humans!

I don't think this could have come at a better time!! Guess what everyone. In honor of the Twilight book series, the universe has decided to give us a total lunar eclipse! How exciting.

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEmono/TLE2008Feb21/TLE2008Feb21.html

Now my only dilemma: Do I listen to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album, or my Twilight playlists while looking up at the sky tonight? Decisions..........

In other space news: The space shuttle Atlantis returned safely to Earth this morning at 9:07 A.M. ET. This was the only thing that the United States Navy was waiting for before shooting an attack missle in to space to blow up an out-of-control satellite that will be hitting earth in about 2 weeks.... Um.

WTF?!?!??

I feel like I'm in the middle of another bad Tom Cruise "apocolpyse" movie. The world is going to end because some giant robot things have come to earth and are killing everyone! The world is going to end because a bad storm came through and froze the entire planet, but I'm hiding out in a library. The world is going to end because a volcano erupted and the hot magma is scorching Earth! The world is going to end because Dr. Evil isn't getting his 1 Million Dollars! The world is going to end because a huge asteroid is going to crash in to earth and we have to send a team of oil drillers in to space to blow it up!

Now that last one doesn't sound so crazy... only it's a satellite that's going to crash in to Earth and the US Navy is sending a missle to blow it up! Unreal.

Could be tonight during the lunar eclipse -- weather permitting.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-02-19-satellite_N.htm?csp=34

And now, back to your regularly scheduled lives here on Earth.

Comment link now available!

It was brought to my attention that there wasn't a comment link on my blog posts, and there were people who wanted to comment. After spending many hours trying to figure out why the links were missing, and doing some trouble-shooting, I finally figured out the problem. Since this blog was originally private, all comment features were turned off. When I enabled them all and went through all the HTML trouble-shooting, my frustration continued because there still wasn't a comment link at the bottom of my posts!


But never fear. I finally found out why. Turns out that any posts that have been published BEFORE the comment feature was enabled, will continue to have the absence of a comment link. Only new posts will give the ability for those to comment. So, comment away, my friends!



You're Welcome. :)

Twilight takes over my life

The phenomena of what is Twilight has hit me. I will admit, it was the push from Merrilee that got me to read the books. She was constantly gushing over Edward, and I just had to find out what it was all about. As she shares my fanaticism for Harry Potter, I decided to trust her judgment. I had a gift card leftover from Christmas to Barnes & Noble, so I decided to use it to buy all 3 books online. I received the books on a Friday and started late that night on the first one. The next day, I was off to my sister's house, and it took all my self-control not to be constantly reading while I was there. If anything could keep me from my book, it would be my nieces and nephews. I love them and I can't help but choose them over anything else!! But by that night I had finished my book (actually, it was 2AM Sunday morning..). I was hooked! I couldn't wait to start on the 2nd book, New Moon. I even read it through the Super Bowl! By the time the next Friday rolled around, I had finished all 3 books; Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse -- a total of 1690 pages. I hated that I had to work or eat. I put off running my errands and going to the gym. These mandatory activities kept me from reading! On the nights that I couldn't just come home immediately after work and read until I got sleepy, I was super anxious and could hardly stand waiting until I could open up my book again.








Usually I am not a sappy romantic type of girl. I wasn't that girl growing up who dreamed about her wedding or being a mother... I didn't constantly have a boyfriend. So all that cheesy sappy stuff was not really in my genre. I am more of a sarcastic, jokey-jokey type of person. But for some reason, I just ate all that sappy romanticism up! I am in love with Edward Cullen. Yes, I am aware that these books are geared toward young adults. But I am with the majority of those 13-year-old girls that just can't get enough! It is a bit of an escape from the real-world, and it is very welcome. The character that is Edward Cullen is really the perfect guy. Let me tell you why:

• He loves Bella despite all her faults. In fact, he even loves her faults because that is who she is.




• He is interested in who she is as a person. What she likes/dislikes, her passions, etc. He actually takes the time to ask her questions and is sincerely interested in her answers




• He protects her against harm, both physically and emotionally




• He is always open to talk, and listens to Bella's side of things




• Even if he disagrees with Bella, he sees her side and he discusses things rationally




• He looks out for HER best interests, before his own.




• The way he treats her constantly shines of love and respect.
• He never shies away from complimenting her




• My favorite -- they have the best sense of humor! I love the sarcasm and the little "jabs" at eachother. Always playful, never to hurt or insult.

So, in short, I am in love with a fictional character. And he happens to be a vampire. Forget real life. I am super happy in my fantasy land of gorgeous perfect vampires. I'm thinking of becoming a vampire myself. ;)

(And I will be visiting Forks, WA on my next trip home)

(Also, please scroll down to the bottom of the page to see a sweet picture of my future family! Kudos to Chan!)

SAD: Single Awareness Day AKA Valentine's Day

So, I've never been a fan of Valentine's Day. Even those years when I did have a boyfriend on V-Day, I've always thought it was a stupid day. Each year probably since I was in 7th grade or so, I have worn all black. Not because I'm depressed or because I want to be depressing, but because I feel like there is so much red and pink floofiness all around, that I feel the need to balance it out somehow. Roses, balloons, heart boxes with chocolates, stuffed animals -- it's like a fake love tornado. I think it's ridiculous for all the pressure on the guys and all the expectation of the girls. We have all been programmed to think that Valentine's Day is something huge. So all the men get nervous about what they're going to do, and if it will be up to par, etc. And the women have these outrageous expecations, and end up getting disappointed no matter what their guy does for them.

Just seems like a whole lot of wasted energy. And what single person needs a national reminder that they are indeed single? Nobody I know. Although there is one good thing about Valentine's Day: it's a great excuse to get all your girl friends together, go out to dinner and a fun teeny-bopper movie! So despite the word that the acronymn for Single Awareness Day creates, there's no reason to feel depressed just because you're single on Valentine's Day. I say celebrate your freedom! :D

The switch to become public

So I know several people who have blogs, and most of those people know that I have a private blog; an online journal, if you will (and if you won't, then you can just leave now). A few people have asked if they could read some of it -- I assume just because they were curious of what I was REALLY thinking. So after several months, I've decided to scrub my "journal" (take out any really embarrassing posts) and make it public.

So now you have it! You are looking at the bare bones of my online journal. There aren't a lot of posts; as it turns out, there were some exceptionally embarrassing posts that I had to delete. Hopefully I can be better about updating this bare bones on a regular basis so that it has more "meat and potatoes" in the near future. I'm a firm believer in junk in the trunk, the more curves - the more to hold, skinny girls suck, etc. ;)

Now I just have to catch up on some important topics -- Trip to Italy, my sudden job-loss, and of course my obsession with Twilight! Stay tuned.....