Own It

Thursday, February 26, 2004

Pre-Weekend Update

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent and the beginning of the holiest season in the Church year. Meredith and I discovered that there was a chapel about five minutes from work that had masses offering ashes at noon and 1pm, so we decided to go to the 1 o'clock mass during our lunch. The chapel was located in a strip mall off of Wolf Road and I was disturbed to see that it had a light up sign outside proclaiming "St. Francis Cathedral". I wasn't sure what we'd find inside... But we got inside and it looked like a normal church. I was relieved. The priest was actually pretty good too. He cracked me up: he kept his notes for his homoly in his hood and whipped 'em out as he walked up to the podium. The place was packed, but the receiving of ashes and communion went pretty quickly, and Meredith and I weren't too late back to work.

So we were back to work with the ashes on our foreheads and I walked into the kitchen and the branch manager was standing in there as I filled my water bottle. He said to me, "So... Feeling very spiritual today?" I couldn't believe he said that. I didn't know how to respond. I just stammered out, "well... um... yeah. I went to church..." as I pointed at my forehead. Then he goes on to ask if I was going to see Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ and said that he wasn't going to because "it looked pretty gory." This guy is such a doofus. I mean, if you're the branch manager of an office you should know what is and what isn't appropriate to talk about at work. What a tool. Ah well. I just sort of let him talk and changed the subject at my first opportunity.

Last evening Alex and I tried a new restaurant for take out. We went to Sushi House on New Scotland Ave near Albany Med. We'd driven by a few times and wanted to get a menu because we knew that they delivered but every time we stopped by they were closed. So last night after my post-gym shower we drove down and ordered sushi to go. An obscene amount of food. We got an appetizer of shrimp gyoza an order of rainbow rolls and two dinner combos that came with miso soup and salad: the maki combo (tuna, salmon & california rolls) and the sashimi imperial combo (21 pieces of raw fish). I totally gorged myself on sushi etc and still didn't need to dip into my flex points at all. Rock! :) And the food from Sushi house was awesome!! The shrimp gyoza were excellent and the california rolls were rolled in sesame seeds which added this whole other sweet dimension to them. I totally can see how this is probably going to become a weekly dinner choice. That's really one of the most awesome things about living in a city: you can have pretty much anything delivered for dinner. Rock. :)

Tonight I went to a tutorial for the NYSP exam right after work at the troop G headquarters. When I got there there was about 25 other people packed into a small lobby area. Most were guys. Actually, there were three other girls, and that's kind of weird because that's exactly how many I predicted would be there. Well, most of these guys were younger and they smelled. The little room smelled so bad. I was so thankful when we were finally let out of that room to the room upstairs where the class was held. Steve was the presenter of the class and he did a good job. The material was pretty dry, but whattya gonna do? He informed us that the test results would be out by the end of May/beginning of June and that the top group would be called back for physical testing starting around the end of the Summer. He said that for every 2000 down in the ranking you fell you could expect about another 6 month wait. The test seems incredibly simple. We took a 35 minute practice test and I was done in about fifteen minutes and didn't miss any questions. So I'm not worried about the test. I am still a bit worried about the physical portion. I mean, there's an off chance that I could be called back as early as the end of the summer. Which does give me at least 6 months to get going on the arm strength and the endurance, so actually, I'm not too worried. I can do this.

Now I'm watching The Look For Less on the style network. I love this show. I totally want to be on it. They pick out designer outfits, right off of the runway and then duplicate it as closely as possible in a limited budget (most of the time between $100 and $200). They just recreated a gorgeous Oscar de la Renta outfit in under $100 (including tax). Awesome. It's a bit sad how excited I was over that episode.

Well, it's 10 and I guess I should go to bed. I've seriously been going to bed pathetically early lately. Alex has been working a lot of nights lately and so instead of sitting around bored at night after I get home from the gym or weight watchers or whatever, I'll have dinner, pack lunch for the next day, pick out my outfit for work and go to bed really early. So... it's off to bed...

Tuesday, February 24, 2004

sorry if the strips are too small... go to comics.com to see the originals...

I've been having attention issues at work today. Dodi sent me a link to a comic on comics.com and then I started browsing through my two favorite comics: Get Fuzzy and Pearls Before Swine. I totally fell in love with a few of the strips and so I've decided to include them here to share the good humor. :)