Old memories

I was talking with Jenni and Wendy the other night and somehow it came up that Jenni doesn't remember when she was four. It made me wonder how far back can people actually remember? Are there statistics on that sort of thing? Am I the only one who wonders about these things?
I know I rembember things from when I was four and there is one specific memory of a camping trip and slipping halfway down a steep hill that my mom says I was like three (Jenni disagrees). Does it seem weird to remember things when you were that young? I guess there is really no point to this blog except to say I am just curious of how far other people's memories go back.

Oh and Ps. this is the last day of NaBloPoMo! YAHOOOOOO! I made it!

Frustrated...

Today I spent the whole day trying to sort out the billing for one stupid job.
Wouldn't you know it I am off by $100 dollars and cannot figure out where it is coming from. I want to scream at the stupidity of it all.
I have wasted my whole day on something that should have only taken me 1/2 an hour but instead people like to make up fancy ways to mess up the billing. What ever happened to communication and letting the accountant, the one that actually bills the client, know about changes to the contract?
Ugh. Nothing Sees Candy can't fix.
Oh and PS apparently I blog about work now since I am out of topics. One more day...

Ma Baba Babo nit noy ka

my dog is a little crazy. That’s what that means in Thai. And she is.

On another note my boss had a nice little chat with Jenni today when she came to pick me up. He asked her all kinds of questions about how she liked Thailand and if she had been anywhere else in Asia.

He was delighted to hear she had been to China, his homeland, and very interested in Burma. And then proceeded to tell her all about how his Dad grew up in Burma and then moved back to China at fourteen and how there used to be a very large population of Chinese in Burma…I have never heard him talk so much like that. He is usually really quick in his conversations with strangers but he was just so interested in Jenni’s travels. Even going so far as to tell her she should take me to Vietnam next time I am over there.

Oh Jaydubsies, what are we gonna do with you tho.

Lunches

At work we often have lunch presentations. Free food equals no grocery shopping. I like that.

What I don’t like is some of the weird food we get. Like today there were sandwiches. Innocent enough sounding right? Wrong.

They were some kind of nasty. I cannot even guess what was on them. One was supposed to be salami and I am here to tell you it was not.

I know beggars can’t be choosers but can’t we just have Pat & Oscars?

Scammer Buddy

Last week we got an invoice from some random company for toner for the copy machine. We didn’t order it but it was a scammer company. Today the guy called me and I gave him the run around (I am good at that…) until he finally told me he was calling about a past due invoice.

Dude, if you are gonna be a scammer and you want to get money from unsuspecting companies you might want to tell them right off the bat that you are inquiring about an unpaid invoices otherwise they might think you are actually trying to scam them, which you are.

Anyway I have always been really suspicious of callers that don’t tell you what they want right away. Isn’t it sad that people are so dishonest in this day in age that you can’t trust them?

Well anyway long story short I looked the company up on Better Business Bureau and found that they have been graded F. Also some other people have complained about the exact situation that is going on with our company.

So in my excitement to be able to rip someone a new one who actually deserves it I called the idiot back. He didn’t answer.

Well Buddy, you have just given me more time to think of something to Zing you with later because if those other companies are right we are gonna have a long and prosperous/ dysfunctional relationship. Talk to you soon.

Laters,

Tams

"Dinner Rolls"

There are several things Katie has taught me over the years. Some of these things are as follows:

1. The difficult skill of making raptor noises.
2. How to make a marvelous bruschetta.
3. Tips on tweaking photos

And today she taught me how to make a "special" kind of dinner roll that her aunt taught her how to make. I had already made dough when Katie came in and excitedly told me her Aunt makes amazing rolls for dinner and she could show me how to set them up.
So I did as she instructed and she rolled them. When we pulled them out of the oven we fell into a fit of giggles.
She swears it doesn't turn out that way usually, but unfortunately this time they ended up looking a bit phallic. I would include a picture here but I will leave that up to Katie.
Next time Katie tells me she is going to teach me something I may ask her to be a bit more specific.

Jenni

This is Jenni hacking into Tam's blog just to tell the world that she is the best sister ever! She has taken such good care of me since I came to America. She has let me sleep in late every day since I don't sleep at night due to the time difference. And today she took me to the movies and then to Taco Bell for dinner. This was very exciting because I have been dreaming about Taco Bell for a year. Weird? I know, but so good! She is so fun and the best sister in the world!

I love you Tam!

This is Tam saying that Jenni is the best sister ever! What a sappy blog post huh?
Oh and PS we watched Dan in Real Life which I already saw once and I love it. I love Steve Carell.

The Office

I discovered last year the office is completely dead on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I literally was the only one there until about ten today and the phone rang one time.

This year however I learned something new, if I plan to leave early I should always come in and leave before my boss gets there. When there are only a few people in the office he gets bored really quickly and thinks of a billion things for you to do.

It's your turn to say Happy Thanksgiving back.

Happy Thanksgiving back!

Not much to say today. Had Thanksgiving with friends and Jenni was here. We ate too much and now I have a food coma and I can't write...
maybe tomorrow I will be more into writing something. Happy Thanksgiving...

The One with the Prom Dress

When I was a senior in High school my house consisted of my parents, Jenni, my oldest sister, her two sons and our two dogs. Life, you could say was a bit crazy.
I remember coming home from school or work to get ready for Senior Prom. The house was empty for once and when I walked into the kitchen I saw the beginning of what would turn out to be a rather surreal chain of events that could only have happened to DJ from Full House.
I noted when I first got home the dogs were rather quiet, so it was no surprise to find that they had got into something. It was a surprise however, to see that they had actually ripped apart the kitchen trash so well that it was strewn all over the kitchen.
I of course was mad and set about trying to round the two dogs up to put them in their crates for time out. Shelby the smaller of the two and the "family dog" (where as Hali Bop was actually my dog) ran for it. I chased her and to my horror she ran straight into my room jumped up onto my bed and squatted right on my prom dress. Yes, you read it right, she peed on my prom dress.
My screams of anger were probably heard by most of my neighbors and most certainly by the pool guy who had chosen that moment to show up to clean the pool. I marched Shelby to her crate and called Mom to see when she would be home to help me with the disaster.
Enter Andrew and Joshy- the two and three year old nephews who's main purpose in life at that point was to be adorable and cause as much trouble as they possibly could.
I had cleaned my dress up and luckly the material it was made of dried pretty quickly after dunking it in water to furiously wash it. Now Mom was working on my hair and my nephews were "playing" in the living room. We were always on the look out for their sound cues that they were getting into trouble and sure enough we hear silence followed by high pitched giggling.
Walking into the living room we see that Andrew and Joshy had pulled down a 5 gallon bucket of white paint my Dad had been painting the house with and rolled in it. It didn't stop there, after rolling in it they decided to run back and forth on the dark green couch leaving footprints and handprints everywhere. Tiffany (their mom) blew a gasket and they were immeadiatly put in the tub while she scrubbed them from head to foot the whole time lecturing them as loud as she could about how that was a no-no.
Enter Russ- the friend and prom date.
Russ was to come straight from work and so we decided that it would be okay for him to take a shower and get dressed at our house. I cannot imagine what he thought when he came into the house to the sound of Tiffany screaming at the boys my mom muttering curses under her breath as she was cleaning up the mess (which on a side note turned out to not only be paint but also they had somehow got a permanent marker and wrote all over the week old pergo flooring. We could have been a commercial for that floor- It all came out!), the dogs barking in their crates and me, in my prom dress, hair half done, and running around trying to figure out how I can help with out causing damage to the outfit.
Oh the chaos of prom night. The rest of the night turned out to be pretty dull compared to how it started.

-okay I realise this didn't get up until the 22 but I totally wrote it on the 21 hense the date and time stamp. In my fury to get the Turkey and whatnot ready I forgot to press post. Sorry...

GASP!

How can I show you all how excited I am at this very moment? I most likely look something like this right now:




Originally uploaded on Flickr by Katester

yesterday I decided to once again look up Jenni and my old choir teacher so we could ask her about that song. Well, I FOUND HER!!! and I sent a really dorky email asking if she knew what song it was. I thought it was really a one in a million shot that she would actually email me back but guess what! SHE DID and she KNEW THE SONG! ( I will try to refrain from shouting at you all- BUT SERIOUSLY! I have tried to figure that song out for years, YEARS!)
So here it is you lucky scoundrels Streets of London (Follow the link to Jenni's Blog for the video)
This one in for you Jenni, Safe Travels! Only one day until the sisters are reunited.

Rather annoying actually.

I have had a couple Netflix for two months now. I finally got the chance to watch one last night.
Love Actually...I got mixed reviews from friends so I thought I would just check it out.
Mmmm I am gonna have to say I wasn't so fond of the ending or maybe the begining and the middle. Only a few of the stories they had going were actually resolved. I did like how they jumped around and showed how everyone was related (neighbors, sisters-brothers, husband, wife) but the end result was poor.
I think the overall idea had potential but the rest was eeehk. Not really worth waiting two months.

On another note I am supposed to go and see This tonight. I am such a nerd and still I am completely excited about it!

Zoo riddles

Went to the zoo yesterday with my friend Carrie. Tina and I got annual passes with a vow to actually use them. Last year I had them too but never made the time to go except once or twice. Anyway Tina had picked up our passes and therefor got our free guest passes to. I forgot to get them from her earlier and asked if before she left town for the weekend, she could drop them at the office for me to pick up.
Being the sneaky one that she is she decides to instead leave me a riddle to find the tickets. Meanwhile poor Carrie is down in the car waiting. After 10 minutes of flipping through books getting confused and running around the conference room looking under chairs I finally found them stuffed in the water well of my coffee pot. I was of course led there by a picture. Gotta love the friends who give you as hard of a time as you give them.
Watch out Tina, I will figure out a way to get you back...LOL (insert creepy laugh not unlike Dr. Evil)

Old man Sweeping the Diner

When we were kids Jenni and I shared a room. Here are some things I remember about that time:

1. Placing masking tape directly in the middle of the room to separate sides.
2. Convincing Jenni that we should stuff all of our mess from our room in the closet and clean it up later so we could go outside and play.
3. Jenni had the habit of sleeping with her arm hanging off the bed with her palm up. I once put about 50 pennies in her hand one by one and then scrambled into my bed and waited for her to wake up.
   
4. And last but not least I insisted that Jenni sing me to sleep every night. My favorite song was about an old man who would sweep up a diner every night. To this day we cannot for the life of us figure out how the song went. YOU WILL BE MY HERO IF YOU KNOW WHAT THAT SONG IS!!!!!
   

Haggis, food for life.

I don't know if you've ever had anyone like this in your life, but I'm dealing with a certain sort of person right now. I like to call him: Mr. Creepy Pants. Take that how you wish. You're probably right.

I'm working on a way to extradite him from my life. I'm hoping France or Mars or wherever he came from will ask for him back. Soon.

There are a few components that give cause for a label like Mr. Creepy pants.

1. Creepiness
2. Creepy conversation hog - "Enough about me, what do you think about me?"
3. A creepy love for haggis
4. Breath that smells creepy (probably from the haggis)
5. Overall creepy nature. (This is totally different from general creepiness BTW.)
6. Creepy finger snapping. I'm sorry, life is not one big poetry reading.

Any ideas on how to rid yourself of a Mr. Creepy pants?

Randomness: 90210 + Work does not = much work done

First a confession:
Kim, my roommate and I have been watching 90210 college years for a few months now. 2 one hour episodes back to back and no commercials thanks to DVR. We enjoy giving each other that all knowing look every time Brandon is given a stupid line (happens a lot more often then I remembered) or when something else tragic happens to Donna or Kelly. Seriously if their characters were real they would be some messed up girls in need of serious counseling.
And tonight:
Tonight I needed to catch up on some work so I set up my computer in the living room thinking I would just listen to the show while I work. Not so my friends.
Despite my ability to listen to music and whatnot during the day while working (at work) apparently I cannot listen to tv.
(side note- nothing to do with this at all but my dog Sam is curled up on my new couch and SO cute. I have the cutest dogs ever. done.)
I had this simple spreadsheet I wanted to set up tonight but I can't seem to make much progress on it. The formula's have told me I am false about a dozen times now and I am thinking seriously about yelling at my computer for not having a number keypad. I have never been able to do the numbers on top. Ugh.
And HOW am I supposed to work when Donna is being stalked by a psycho and David is making stupid decisions that make him unavailable to save the day? (note to self: never scream like Donna does unless I really do want someone to kill me ie. Kim)
Well anyway back to trying to at least finish some of this task. Peace out yo.

Coffee

Last year a guy from my office brought unroasted coffee back from Ethiopia for another girl in my office and myself. The coffee sat there for months until finally I volunteered to figure out how to roast it.
I had my friend Carrie over who is the queen of all things cooking and new. You could see her blog on our first roasting experience however apparently I can't find the actual post. Regardless it would basically just show you we learned the hard way that it is much easier to roast the coffee beans over the stove. After finally getting the hang of it I decided that fresh roasted coffee is loads better than Starbucks that has been stored in the fridge for a week. I tastes richer and is way more bold.
Well I ran out of beans to roast about the same time that I decided to go on a coffee fast for a couple weeks. Now it has been a couple months and though I have started drinking coffee again I had not made the trip to the local Ethiopian Market to get the famous Harar Coffee beans.
Yesterday was the day though. I dragged Tina along and we finally found the Market and the beans.
Tomorrow I plan to enjoy them, freshly roasted and full of flavor. I am going to bed now so that I can wake up and smell the coffee...

Lists

Do you ever create lists for yourself and then set out to do them but get bombarded with things you didn't expect and don't actually end up checking anything off your list? Such was my day today.
I went in early to catch up on some things and didn't get to any of them. I came in to a voice mail from someone who has an office in New York (hence the reason their was a vm already at 7am) asking questions on something I sent like ten emails about, two weeks ago.
Of course now that they have time to work on it it is of the utmost importance and must be dealt with immediately (note sarcasm).
Whenever this happens I always end up feeling as though I accomplished nothing during the day. My to do list is still there and I get overwhelmed by how its grown and then, I zone out.
How does that help me to accomplish my tasks? It doesn't.

Digging for the Truth

I have recently become obsessed with the show Digging for the Truth
I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to TV. I like history shows, the Discovery Health Channel, and the Myth Busters show. I love learning history when it is not coming from a boring teacher who tells you about his obsession with checking out estate sales. AND I especially love learning history from Hunter Ellis

Lisa and the Closet

My friend Lisa and her roommate are down here visiting to see the Dead Sea Scrolls and apparently to go to The Closet. We went to both Closets in OB and Pt. Loma and they came home with 7 bags of clothes. I am worn out just thinking about it.
I am not a super fan of shopping. I don't mind it but I have to be in the mood. It is however fun to scheme and see if you can get your friend to try on the ugliest outfit in the world by assuring it was super stylish... She totally tried it on and it was awesome.
Sorry my posts are really boring right now... Ugh. I am having trouble being creative lately...

The Dead Sea Scrolls and Ethiopian Food

Today we went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Natural History Museum. Pretty interesting but was a lot of standing around waiting to sift through the crowd.
Also went to Ethiopian food at the Harar restaurant on El Cajon and Arizona St. SOooooooo good. Love Injera bread. Definetly a place worth going with friends. Order the Harar special and eat family style...super fun.
That's it for today. I am Dead Sea Scrolled out. I totally got distracted and now I am posting this after the midnight cut off! Yikes. I am dead meat. Okay that is really kind of a gross saying. Sick.

Life Tip- Don't eat your Ipod or earbuds

"The immediate take away from this is don't eat your ipod or earbuds"
CNN Breaking News story, ipods may be toxic.

Something I never thought I would hear together...eating your ipod, sure thing Mr. Newscaster. I will be sure to keep that in mind next time I get hungry for my electronics.

Random

I got a new couch- well new to me- tonight! I am so excited, I pick it up tomorrow.
I have been wanting a different couch forever and I finally found it on Craigslist. My dear friend Craigslist.
Gotta go post my old couch as free now...

Oh Ken.

So much less awkward than Wendy's post. Hilarious!

A String of Bad Advertising: What not to do.

Recently at work we have been receiving a plethora of bad marketing from a variety of vendors. Marketing that makes my skin crawl.
When I was a kid I remember sending a letter to my best friend who had just moved away. In my letter I sent a picture of myself, a feather from my collection and a band-aid. Yes, that is correct a band-aid. I told her in the letter it was for when she fell over from shock of actually receiving a letter from me. Apparently even at my young age I knew I was destined to be a procrastinator.

Yesterday in the mail we received a marketing letter advertising "a better way to build your business" rather than cold calls because they are "just band-aid(s)", insert an actual nasty band-aid stuck to the letter. Sick.

I would again like to point out that is something I did when I was 7 not to advertise my business. Why would someone think "hmm I am going to go buy a bunch of band-aids to put in my marketing letter. Better yet I will stick them to the letter and then I will for sure get business."
It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. Thanks but no thanks Mr. Nastybandaidman.
Exibit A



And then today we received a "try this and tell us what you think" letter. To my HORROR it was two large bags of gum. I wanted to run for my life as my boss set them on my desk asking me "What's this? What do you think they want? Here you can have this." Thanks Jaydubsies, I am going to go puke now. (ugh I can still smell them, watermelon and spearmint GAH!) My worst nightmare.




And Erica's reaction after trying said nightmare:

Wild Women Night

One day out of every month I get to spend an evening with four of the most incredible women I know.
Wild Women Night, except that everyone says we are actually "mild" women. Its true sometimes (and sometimes not- hey, what happens at WWN stays at WWN) but where else can you sit and eat delicious food (French dip-esque sandwiches with a kick, caramelized onions, yummy cheesy homemade mac and cheese, asparagus wrapped in blue cheese and some sort of fancy bacon and Katie's famous chocolate moose.) and sing along to "Gay or European" OMG and feel completely comfortable and at home?

On a side note, tonight I was not "glad" I was packaging left overs and just like in the Gladware Ziplock commercials, all of my food fell right out of the bottom of the bag and onto Wendy's carpet. Ginger, the schnoodle, thought she had struck gold. Oops. Guess I should have used Glad...Sorry about that Wendy!

PD Weekend 2- Top 7

1. Staying up until 3am
2. Photography
3. Watching movies with Susan's Techno music instead instead of the movie's sound on
4. Watching fun movies with actual sound
5. sipping coffee and chatting
6. sipping drinks and chatting
7. proving to Katie that I can indeed kick her *** if she tries to goose me again...

My Favorite so far

Last night while working on Leahpeah's shoulders:
"I can tell you are really good at this."
It was like a weird pick up line you never want a guy to say to you but from Leah, it just sends you into a fit of giggles.
And today:
"But my question is this, Is your family a nudie family?" - Katie

PD #2

Tonight Katie and I will travel to Palm Dessert for our second PalmDessertphototakingdrinkinonehandjumpingthroughexpensiveartpiecesbrunchattheclub weekend with friends. We have no set plan for terrorizing the town yet but I am positive Susan will come up with something.
She has already threatened to take me to JCPenny's and Baker's Square for a grave mistake I made yesterday regarding age and the Snoop Dawg Language. Note to self: Susan is fluent in Snoop, fur shizzle.
Updates this weekend.
In the meantime in honor of Susan, Gizzoglize my page for some laughs.

Don't forget the gas doors

After buying my new car I went for days enjoying everything about it. When I say "everything" I actually mean "everything except the loud honking every time I unlock or lock my car and the extreme sensitivity of the alarm". And then I went to get gas.
Apparently my car is supposed to come with go-go-Gadget arms in order to open the gas door. So there I was looking like an idiot girl who can't even pump her own gas, why do they even let people like me drive? That's when I noticed that no, my gas door should probably not be curved like that and yes, someone did at one point try to pry it off. Back to the dealership.
Of course they had to order the part, so there goes countless hours trying to call them to see if it has come in yet. One month later I now can go to the gas station without a buddy AND I can actually sleep at night without worrying that my oversensitive alarm is going off every time a truck passes it. (confession- I was actually parking my car a couple blocks away so I couldn't hear it. ugh, I am a jerk)
So what have I learned from all of this? Always check that the gas door works when purchasing a car.