I survived my conference last week (yayyyyy) and now I’m on vacation in Clearwater, FL I’m visiting a friend from college but she had to work today, so I’m hanging around her apartment today enjoying doing nothing.  We’ll go to the beach and go kayaking this weekend

Check out the previous post for a glimpse of something I did last week.  It is password protected — the password is “lovesasha” and if you get prompted with a password dialog after you enter, it’s username “guest” password “lovesasha”.  I tend not to do password protected entries, but remember it in case of future use (i’ll probably delete this note eventually, but I didn’t want to exclude anyone or make you register).

Work was crazy for me with the conference last week and trying to catch up this week and then trying to get everything together before I left for vacation (boo).  I’m reaching the point where I am going to be getting a new position at work soon and I have to decide what I want to do with my life.  It’s not easy - I have no clue, and I would be happy doing lots of different things, so I’m probably going to make a very important decision somewhat arbitrarily

This growing up stuff kind of blows.

And then a friend I sort of work with confessed his undying love for me last weekend (he may have been under the influence of a large quantity of alcohol), and now everything is all awkward.

ANYWAYS I forgot my camera so no exciting pictures.  Happy 4th of July!

haircut! :)

I’m in Washington, DC at a conference for work for this week.  It’s so frustrating, I have been with people ALL DAY, from 7AM to 9 PM.  I need my “ME” time   Unfortunately, it’s going to be like this all week.

6AM D:< I missed my shoes in this picture, they are dark red pumps.

I could not sleep last night, so I stayed up reading Escape, by Carolyn Jessop.  It’s a memoir of a woman who was born into the Fundamentalist Church Latter Day Saints, an extremist Mormon cult with polygamous marriages.  At age 18, she was married to a prominent 55 year old man as his fourth wife and has 8 children in 15 years before she escaped.  It’s so bizarre and fascinating

 I also watched Jarhead as I was ironing all my clothes and packing on Sunday.  mmm, I love that movie

Hmm, so I disappeared for awhile….. but yes, I’m still around Just dealing with a bunch of crap and I couldn’t think of anything to post after being away so long. The less than earth shattering recap: it was really hot out, I worked a lot, had some interviews for a new position but I have no fucking clue what I want to do with my future, ate some food, bought some shit, read some ebooks, collected some eggs from my chickens, blah blah blah.

I’ve been biking a lot lately! I went mountain biking today with my dad for father’s day. My dad convinced me to take a shortcut across the grass from one point of the trail to another so that we didn’t have to ride down a big hill and back up again.

Later, we realized that our shortcut had probably prevented us from seeing the giant “Road Closed” signs that marked the trail as closed - it was under reconstruction and all the pavement was dug up, so it was dirt and rocks. Very bumpy!

Biking long distances used to seem so hard to me, but now 20 miles seems like almost nothing.

I also borrowed my brother’s ice cream maker this week. I’ve already made frozen yogurt, but I’m going to try some kind of exotic flavor of ice cream this weekend. My little bro wants cinnamon bun…. hmmmmm…

eating right now: belgian waffles :D

bracelet stand! mostly I got this b/c it was on clearance at UO. Note the strategically placed copy of Gladiator in the background...

MIA @ Nordstrom Rack. I probably do not have a future in foot modeling.

CD for Size Comparison

So I’ve had my Kindle for a few weeks and I can safely say I love it. There are tons of reviews out there so I won’t go into epic detail, but here are my thoughts:

What I Like:

• It reads ebooks!
• I don’t want to buy more bookshelves
• Project Gutenberg
• Easy to carry around & read fanfic
• E-Ink display (not backlit, microscopic pixels look like printed words, long battery life since power is only consumed for changing the display). Easy to read in direct sunlight.
• Dictionary/Highlight/Notation/Bookmark features
• Shop Kindle Bookstore & instantly buy and receive ebooks wirelessly
• Takes a SD memory card for additional storage (1slot)
• Amazon will convert files to the right format for your kindle via email - email them a file and they will either send it wirelessly to your Kindle ($.10) or back to your email (free)
• Web Access over EV-DO (Sprint). Handy if I’m on a train or something and want to look something up on Wikipedia or look up traffic reports or directions (has fake GPS - can triangulate your position using phone towers)
• 30-day price guarentee
• Dedicated Kindle Support (it took them less than a minute to give me a refund after they changed the Kindle price)

What I Don’t Like:

• Ergonomics - I don’t love how the paging buttons are placed, I sometimes accidentally press them. The scroll wheel would be nicer if it was a little larger
• I bet they will charge for wireless access in the future, since it’s in “Experimental” status.
• It would have been nice if they built in a booklight for reading in the dark (though it would probably drain the battery)
• The cover is hard to figure out - it kept falling out of the cover at first until I realized that there is a little tab I needed to bend up more to keep it in place
• No support for .html/.rtf files (supports .azw (Kindle), .txt, .mobi, .prc (Mobipocket), .mp3, .aa, .pdf (experimental)). Need to convert files before using (I use Amber LIT Converter for .lit and Mobipocket Converter for everything else. Both are free.) Not supporting proprietary formats like .lit I understand, but .html/.rtf wouldn’t cost Amazon anything in licensing.

But overall, I really dig it. It’s cheaper than iLiad, more features than Sony Reader. And if I go somewhere, I don’t have a bunch of books weighing down my suitcase.

If you like to trade eBooks, let me know

also: homemade pizza! And it is actually not bad.  The is the first time I made a crust that wasn’t full of failure.

#1: Tomato, Asparagus & Fresh Mozzarella; #2: red onion, green pepper, kalamata olive & mozzarella blend

My fellow bloggers, I have but one question to ask you: would you want the man who wrote the following poem to be the leader of the “free world”?

UNDERGROUND (source)

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

I know everyone goes through a bad poetry writing phase, but LOLLLLLL oh Obama. A vote for Obama is a vote for fig-eating apes?

Fruit tart with strawberries, white peach and apricot

I’m home! I couldn’t post anything this week because my hosting company was making everyone reset their password, and I couldn’t reset the password because I wasn’t home and I didn’t want to break things all over my site…eeeee.

But whatever, I’m eating tart. Made with fresh eggs You can’t really tell in this picture, but the pastry cream is actually yellow because the yolks of my eggs are so yellow.

My weekend is low-key and I like it that way. I went out with friends on Friday night and got reminded again of why I never go out with these people… I always feel like I’m hanging out with 12 year old boys. And who gets wasted after drinking 2 or 3 beers???? I wish my college friends lived around here :/

It is nice to have time off and be able to relax… I had to go shopping for a stupid suit jacket and I finally ended up buying one with too-short sleeves because all suit jacket sleeves are too short for me and it is the wrong season to order tall size ones from The Gap. I have a conference to go to next month where I have to wear a suit because the CEO is going to be there, which is really annoying. Is the CEO going to die if he sees a bunch of people in their early 20’s wearing khakis? I wear jeans to work normally.

Target has a new private label collection coming out - I really like it, but as usual, I would have nowhere to wear clothes like this since I couldn’t wear it to work (all the skirts are too short).   (img via nitrolicious)

PS - 20% off at H&M this weekend