imogen heap

she is one of my favorite artists right now. seriously, she is deliciously strange and a musical genius (these have proven to be some of my favorite attributes of a singer/songwriter, manifested through regina spektor). she also has collaborated with guy sigsworth under the name "frou frou". frou frou is the way i was initially introduced to imogen, but i quickly became familiar with her album "speak for yourself" on pandora (the best free internet radio...ok, best radio period). my favorites are "hide and seek" and "goodnight and go". go on. check them out. you'll be glad you did.

summertime

i really do love summertime. i especially love today, the summer solstice. i have many memories from my childhood of getting slightly confused as to what "the longest day of the year" entailed. i thought it meant that it was literally longer than 24 hours, so i would spend weeks (ok, maybe days) preparing for this big event. many times, activities on my agenda would include: coloring, swimming in our backyard pool, watching a movie, wanting to go on a picnic (when i got slightly older i would actually pack a picnic lunch in one of my mom's many baskets and take it to the yard to eat while lounging on the grass), drawing for a good portion of the day, etc. my mom would laugh at me and my plans (not in a devilish way, mind you, but in a loving mother, you're-so-silly-i-don't-know-where-you-came-from sort of way). in fact, just this morning she called me to ask what i had planned for the first day of summer. i said "working". she seemed a bit surprised. she thought i had the day off. not because i take the summer solstice that seriously, but because it's friday and she thought i had fridays off during the summer. i wish. funny, though, that she knew me well enough to call and ask what my celebratory plans include. although we are not doing anything to celebrate summer today, i did tell jake we needed to come up with plans for saturday to "celebrate summer". so she wasn't too far off. the summer solstice is just a bittersweet day for me. i love the warm weather, and i love the sun being up for so many hours(especially now that i live somewhere that uses daylight savings; it was so much better in washington, though); however, it also means that tomorrow is a little closer to winter and short, dark days (much worse in washington). anyway, we have yet to solidify our solstice plans, but it may include one or more of the following: going to seven peaks (duh), an evening stroll, hand-picking strawberries (i've been dying to do this, i just don't know if it'll pan out), baking an inventive cake, sunbathing. hm, not much has changed since my childhood. the specifics mights have changed, but in general, swimming, food, and being creative is the top of my list. i'll be sure to update you on this topic.

"unique" window treatments

ick. why would anyone do that? there is nothing that screams tacky like using flip flops to hang curtains on your wall. *sigh*

pulled pork sandwiches

last night, jake and i had an amazing dinner. it all started two nights ago. i made bbq pulled pork and it was delicious and it was ridiculously easy to make. and it was wonderful to come home from work and have dinner ready. here's the recipe. try it. seriously.

1 center-cut pork loin roast (i think. i forgot to pay attention to what cut the butcher handed me)
1 1/2-3 cups water
1 onion, sliced, chopped, it doesn't matter; it eventually turns into delicious goo
1 bottle of your favorite bbq sauce

i sliced about 1/3 of the onion, very thin, and put it on the bottom of the crockpot. place roast on onions. the original recipe called for only 1 1/2 cups water, but it seemed like such a ridiculous amount, so i doubled the water. next, i chopped the remaining onion and put on top of the pork. cook on low setting overnight. in the morning, i dumped about 2/3 of the bottle of bbq sauce on it. once again, the recipe said to take the roast out, trim the fat, and cube the meat. i didn't have time, and the pork was pretty lean to begin with. so i just sort of poked it with a sharp knife. continue cooking on low all day. about two hours before i got home, i had jake check the status of everything. i told him to add more sauce and take out water, if it looked like it needed it. i'm not sure what he did. so i just tell you to use your better judgment. :) finally, get delicious, fresh rolls and use a fork to pull pork apart and put on your sandwich. that's it! it was sooo good. it's my lunch today and i cannot wait.

ice-t...still

i know. i know. i just blogged about this. however, as i was watching law & order tonight(big surprise there), they had an ad about an online game featuring ice-t. i immediately abandoned the tv and looked it up (ok, so my computer is about six feet from the tv). i haven't checked it out yet. but it's bound to be amazing.

nikon d80

i heart, heart, heart this camera. they sell it at costco.com and it comes with all sorts of goodies. i will own this camera one day. soon(-ish). jake and i have decided that we are saving for this. which means i have become even more of a nazi with our money than before. because after evaluating last month's finances, i realized it's a lot easier to save large amounts of money than previously thought. and, although i sometimes feel guilty using his money as well as mine to eventually buy something as expensive as this, i will get over it once it's in my hands and i'm taking amazing pictures of anything and everything. anyone willing to contribute to this fund, i accept cash, checks, and paypal.

blogging, url

i know my last post was about how i heart blogging, but this one is too. i like blogspot. my url says so. but i really do like it. as previously mentioned, i read a book about a lady who became semi-famous through her blog. here's someone else. i wish i was this lady. she got to be on martha stewart! i want to be on martha stewart. i want to have over 1000 comments on one of my posts. apparently, my wit and charm alone are not enough. so here's my plan: i need help thinking of something to blog about that will capture the attention of the masses. i also need to start giving away prizes on my blog. this is where you, the faithful reader, come in. please submit your ideas to me.

also, tell all your friends about my blog.

blogging, myspace, bad grammar, books about punctuation

this is an homage to an old blog from my myspace page. the above title is split about half and half between things i like and things i don't. i'll let you figure it out.


Thursday, April 05, 2007

My First Blog
Current mood: artistic

So, I've decided to enter into the world of blogging. I'm currently reading a book about a woman in NYC who embarked on a project in which she cooked every single recipe from Julia Child's cookbook, Master the Art of French Cooking. And, to document her progress, she wrote a blog daily about her adventures. In so doing, she became a semi-famous author, and no longer has to work in an office. Being the complete delusionary and optimist that I am, I am fully convinced that if I start a blog, I, too, will be able to quit my horrible job and become a professional blogger. And make millions.

I decided that, in order to spice up my myspace page, I needed to fill out one of those hideously long surveys so I could display my wit and charm through clever answers to pointless questions that no one would actually ever read. Well, I quickly became disheartened when, upon review of just a mere sample of what's out there, I realized that not only are these surveys hideously long, but they are hideous. I know about 99.9% of these surveys were written by high school sophomores, but really, what is this world coming to? The typos were enough to drive even the worst grammarian into insanity. It's painful. Really. There is little in this world that irks me more than 1) poor spelling 2) poor grammar and 3) the misuse of the apostrophe.

Let me make a side note here: if you want to read a truly amusing book that will make you laugh aloud, read "Eats Shoots and Leaves". Who knew a book dedicated to punctuation and the the misuse of these necessary little dots, dashes, and squiggles could be so entertaining. Oh, but it is.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. While I was scanning these surveys to decide which one would really capture the essence of everything "Emily" I would literally flinch and make a small gasping sound everytime I saw one of these heinous typos. Needless to say, I started hyperventilating. It's lucky I escaped without passing out. I just couldn't bring myself to allow a, quote-unquote, word like "tooken" to appear on a page that is associated with me.

Maybe one day I will be able to bear the process of sorting through all the millions of surveys out there to find one that is not too long and asks obnoxious questions such as, "What was your crush wearing last Tuesday(chuckle chuckle snort)?" And maybe, even maybe, I will be able to bring myself to, heaven forbid, allow a typo to appear on my page. I'm sorry. Does anyone have a paper bag handy? I'm feeling slightly dizzy.

hi. me again. in the present. i have added the link to a chart that demonstrates my exact feelings on poor grammar and somatic symptoms to such.

desperation, job hunting, and dating

here's another homage to myspace blogging.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Desperate is such an ugly word.... Current mood: rejected I spent a good, solid year-and-a-half after graduating with my Bachelor's degree looking for a job. I was selective at first as to which jobs I would apply. I had a couple miserable interviews that were really just more embarrassing than anything. Certainly no job offers. My savvy older sister helped me with my resume, helped me buy a three piece suit from Ann Taylor (you should see this suit; it's amazing. I look like I belong in a courtroom, corner office, or the very least, The Apprentice), and gave me more interview how-to packets than you can shake a stick at. It seemed, however, the less picky I became in my applications, the offers for even an interview waned. I mean, I know I'm not that impressive, but I like to prove my incompetence in person. If you can't make yourself look good on paper through slight exaggeration and mild fabrication, what do you really have left in this life? Well, the more, ahem...desperate I became, the more it must have shown in my cover letters, I'm sure(Dear Hiring Manager, I NEED a job! Please help. I'm sure that whatever your company does, I will excel at it and increase your _______(please fill in blank with applicable word: productivity, sales, number of employees, at the very least...) Call me."). This is the only logical conclusion I can come to, seeing that interviews were not even in my immediate future. Now, to get a completely accurate picture of my despondency, let me tell you what my life was like at the time. I had just moved up to Seattle with the so-naive-it's-almost-cute attitude that I would find an affordable place to live in three (yes, three) days, and have a new job within a month. All this, without knowing anyone here besides my then-boyfriend's parents. So, you see, this "three days" somehow turned into four months. Yes, that's right. I was living with my boyfriend's parents for four months. Two of which, it was just the three of us. In a house. Together. Talk about awkward. It got worse when this said boyfriend moved to Seattle as well, two months after I did. I can sum it all up in one word: pure, unadulterated HELL (ok, three words). So, here I was, living with the begrudging parents of my cheating (oh, did I mention he was cheating on me during this? Well, he was.) boyfriend, working "full time" (I put quotes on this only because I worked 40 hours a week, but had absolutely no benefits. They refused to put me in the system as full time to avoid this) at Old Navy, applying to about every job on monster.com in the greater Seattle metropolitan area. See why I was so incredibly desperate? I was floundering to get a job--any job, really--when (cue angelic chorus and clouds parting to let the sunbeams shine down onto the computer) I got a job offer. An actual offer. With the promise of no cold calling and a starting salary of $40,000 (wow! They sure lied on that one!), I took the job. Well, the job didn't turn out so great but we'll save those details for a future blog. But the point is this: floundering never, I repeat never, leads to what we're looking for. Being blinded by desperation only leads one to lower one's standards and taking the first thing that comes along. Which leads me to the second half of this blog (and you thought it was already too long...ha!). I got a message from one of my dear friends from those torturous high school days today. She had a very keen insight. She likened the "job hunt" to dating. And it's awful. I have never heard a more true statement in my life. Here I am, an item in the ever-dwindling cesspool we like to call dating, trying, unsuccessfully, to convince men that I am worth $20 on a Friday night (not in a hooker-ish way, mind you). However, there are no takers. There have been no takers for nearly eight months (groan... I didn't realize it had been that long). I thought this was a ward-wide epidemic, because when I would whine (yes, whine) to my girlfriends about my tragic love life, they all agreed. Not with me in the sense that they thought my love life is tragic, but in the sense that their love lives were tragic as well. But, come to think of it, maybe they were, in fact, just agreeing that I, and only I, had a tragic love life because of what I'm about to say next: come to find out, they all go on dates a lot more frequently than I do. We were complaining about the same, yet different, thing. It's like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Everyone has certain needs that must be met, once those needs are met, you graduate to the next level where there's a whole slew of new problems awaiting for you. Until, of course, you reach self-actualization, and everything is fine and dandy in the world. So, in Emily's Hierarchy of Relationships, there are levels in which one must achieve in life. First, you have a good, solid friendship base with the same gender (check). Second, a slightly more complicated friendship ring with the opposite gender (check). Third, being able to persuade the opposite gender that you are worth some quality one-on-one time on a fairly casual date (this is where I start to falter). Fourth, being able to coax the person in stage three into a more meaningful getting-to-know-you phase where you actually experiment with monogamous dating (I want so much to say "check" here. However, let it be known I've made it to this stage one and a half times). Fifth, is Relationship Actualization, aka marriage (I would appreciate all the Marrieds out there to stop snickering at my Singledom ignorance here. I realize there is a Marriage Hierarchy of Needs. But, obviously, I have no clue as what that entails.). There are plenty of prospects beeping around on my radar. I'm just trying to figure out how to stop being the Stealth Female in the ward and actually make an appearance on a decent man's dating radar. And, whereas, I wouldn't say that I'm lowering my standards, I'm just...keeping my options open, if you will. So, luckily I haven't quite fallen into the Pit of Desperation, but, let me tell you, I'm on shaky ground, my friends. Shaky ground. Currently listening : Still No Future By Under Pressure present-day emily here: i made it to "relationship actualization"! without lowering my standards!! hip-hip! (hooray!)

complaining

there has been a lot of dispute on this one. jake would say i definitely love doing this. but i don't think i do. at one point last night, he and i were listening to some music online and i told him how at work, while listening to pandora, "hide and seek" had come on twice and "geek love" had played once (rare is this occasion). after which i replied, "you might think, given this information, it was a good music day on pandora. but it wasn't a good music day at all." so, my husband being the lovely man he is, said, "you might think i'm not complaining, but i am here to tell you that i am!" i wasn't complaining. i was merely stating that my situation was not as fantastic as others may perceive it to be.

cheating

tonight, jake and i finished an on-going game of scrabble. cheating allowed me to win by 2 points. but before you judge me too much, i gave him an out. actually, he gave me an in. in hopes of getting a lot of points when i had no other options, i made up a word, hoping it might actually be a real word ("tirad"). jake, of course, called my bluff, so i got the dictionary out, looked it up and just above "tirade"...? was "tiptop". but, being the retard i am, i said, "oh, it is a word. 'tirad: similar in nature to tirade, just with much less anger.'" luckily, we were watching "pirates of the carribbean" at the same time, so jake had immediately lost interest in what i had to say as soon as he stopped talking. i started laughing because i was being a retard, and i knew i'd be caught. he said, "what? is it a word?" i laughed as i replied, "yes." now, anyone who knows me, knows i'm a horrible liar and oftentimes laugh while i lie. jake knows this too. however, the aforementioned movie was still playing, and once again he lost interest in what i had to say as soon as he stopped talking and didn't notice my suspicious behavior. so he just said, "oh. well, i guess i lose my turn. go again." i laughed all throughout my next turn. and, yet, at the end of the game, when my victory was threatened, i still got absurdly mad at my innocent husband....

like i said. he gave me an in.