Go Pens.

I normally don't write about sports here. But today is a different day. The Penguins will be going into Game 7 tonight of the Stanley Cup Finals. I got a penguin hat from a friend earlier in the SCF playoff series. Throughout the Playoffs, Mario has stayed in my cube or another Pittsburgh fan's cube, rooting for the Pens along with our posters (that apparently offend some DC fans, but whatever). But for game 6, I felt like we needed a little boost. We needed more motivation. Mario came with me where ever I went. I took pictures of him. Here is the picture diary of Mario, up until now:

He usually would hang out up here:


There's a Red Wings fan at work. Mario doesn't like that.


He does, however, love my desktop background:


And, he loves the Steelers:


We had a Pictionary tourney to take care of at lunch. He helped me solve "Gazebo."


He totally liked this room color:


We took Metro home that day. He we are, going home to get ready for game 6:


When we finally made it home, we got locked out of the house. We waited for a bit in the lobby:


That night, I bought some Rogue Dead Guy Ale. Never drank it during the playoffs. We won. We're drinking it for the rest of the week... I'm not buying it at our convenience store - $15 for a six pack! WTF? I'll get it at the grocery store. Only a few more days until I can't do that anymore.

Rather than leave Mario at home... I brought him back to work with me on Wednesday and Thursday. I missed pics on Wednesday... But got back into the swing of things on Thursday:


I apologize for being unsafe and not buckling him up. Things changed on the way home:


We woke up rather late this morning... had to catch up on our DVR playlist:


I introduced Mario to Al today. They appear to be getting along swimmingly.


That's all I've got for now. Mario will stay with me throughout the day. He calms the nerves.

So everyone, make it through the day. I promise... I will update you about my trip home from Denver. But today - I will only think about the Pens.

LET'S GO PENS!!!!

Do it.
Read more...

My Travel Trip from Hell - The Trip Out

Let me preface this by saying - I've made it home safe, and I am beyond thankful for that. Seeing the things that have occurred to other fliers, I am grateful for making it home in one piece. But now, my whining and complaints will commence. Because although I am home, the journey itself sucked ass.

I will cut this up into two pieces. Today, I'll focus on the trip out to Denver:

Our contract for flights from DCA to Denver International is through Frontier. They are a smaller, budget-type airline that is based out of Colorado. Their employees are friendly. They only have one gate in all of DCA.

I arrived an hour before my flight was scheduled to leave. I had checked in online, so checking my bag at the counter was relatively easy. I go to meet my friend/co-worker at the gate. It is 8:00am, we are scheduled to board at 9:00am. At 9am, the woman at the desk gets on the loudspeaker and tells us this:

"We are sorry to inform you, but we have to delay our flight for quite some time. It is technically not cancelled, but we do not expect you to leave for Denver until 2:30pm today. Please meet me back up at our ticket counter to issue your new tickets..."

As soon as she instructed us back up to the ticket counter, I hauled my ass up there. To beat the 150 other passengers. Thankfully, there were only 7 people ahead of us in line. I wish I had taken a shot of the madness that was the Frontier Airlines ticket counter area. The line zigged and zagged... and practically covered up the US Airways ticket counter. There were two women working the ticket counter.

We find out while we're up there, that there was a mechanical problem with the plane, and that they had to fly in a mechanic from Denver on their next flight in to fix the issue. That flight arrived at 12:40pm. As we're standing up with this woman, she issues us our new boarding passes. Then she leaves us to help the ticket counter person next to us. Another ticket counter person leaves to answer the phone. She comes back, and to try to make things better, she issues us $7 meal vouchers. We didn't need the meal vouchers. We wanted other people to get helped. An impatient passenger comes up and interrupts our transaction trying to tell the lady how to do her job... It flustered her a bit.

After the interruption, she decides to also give us $25 off our next flight on Frontier. Again, nice gesture, but you have 100+ passengers trying to catch connecting flights - or just trying to go to Denver. We're fine without the $25. Seriously.

In defense of Frontier - they did their best. They are a small airline, with limited resources in DC. I'm not sure they were prepared for a potential scheduling disaster like this.

So after about 15 minutes up at the ticket counter I am told to go pick up my bag at the baggage claim and bring it back up to the ticket counter to give to TSA so they can re-check my bag. Another horrible sight: A pile of luggage from our flight hanging out in an emtpy baggage claim area with no one there to prevent theft. My bag was still there.

We finally left the airport at around 9:45 to hang out at Pentagon Row for a couple of hours, and arrived back at the airport around 11:45.

Out of curiosity I went back upstairs to check out the people waiting for tickets from our morning flight. There were probably 200 people there. I recognized people that were waiting in line before we had left. Needless to say, people were angry.

I checked our flight online, it now said we were leaving at 3:30. Ok... another hour.

After getting through security, it's about 12:30. We walk up and down the gate area to get some exercise. Then I decided it's time for a beer. While sitting at the airport bar, we made friends with fellow stranded passengers, random other passengers, and the bartender. Thank goodness we made friends with the bartender - I was given remote privileges. We watched a cheerleading competition on ESPN2. Forgive me, it was Sunday.

I was ragged on for being a Pittsburgh fan, but defended myself well.

I checked our flight status again at 3pm. Now we weren't leaving until 4. And we almost did that. Our flight, which was supposed to leave at 9:00am did not leave until 4:30pm. The flight itself went really well. No complaints there.

Let's just say, this was the lesser stressful traveling experience from the trip.

So what happened on the way home? You ask. That, my friends, is for another day.
Read more...

Denver and Associated Thoughts on Said City.

I'm in Denver. Our experience can be something taken out of a depressing comedy - a comic tragedy, if you will. I'll fully update when I get home, but here are some observations thus far:

• The air is super thin. But we all knew that.


• They have a jamba juice, and I miss those.


• I have now come to understand why DC is determined to be the second ugliest city in the country. There are some super attractive people here in Denver. It's nice.


• There are a lot of homeless people in downtown Denver.


• For the Nuggets just losing the WCF, I've seen quite a few Kobe jerseys still walking around.


• 7.5 hour flight delays aren't really that much fun. Seeing the Pens lose after finally arriving in my hotel room added insult to injury.


• I like working out.

So that's it. The thin air combined with a workout has been quite taxing on the brain.

There's quite the dilemma tomorrow - we have our closing banquet tomorrow night. It's over at 9. That's when the hockey game ends. I need to watch this game. I'll figure it out... I have faith. Just like I have faith in the Pens.

LETS GO PENS!!!

Read more...

I Need to Move.

I've disliked my apartment complex for quite sometime. While it is not a slum, and I do have a roof over my head, it is by far the worst place (and most expensive) that I've ever lived in. The apartment itself is spacious - and have only had one major problem that was fixed very quick, but some of our neighbors in the complex are questionable at best.

I feel like I have already mentioned the 13+ burglaries in the complex. So there's that. In addition to the apartment burglaries, there have been numerous attempts on people's vehicles - both simple vandilization and burglary. So that's old hat. Let's now discuss the weekend.

I decided to catch up on laundry. I'm a lazy housewife, and tend to do a number of loads of laundry at a time. We have a laundry room facility. There are a lot of washing machines and dryers. I took two machines in the corner - near no one else and do my laundry. I left my detergent and liquid fabric softener there since I was going to be doing more laundry. Much to my surprise, when I came downstairs to move my clothes to the dryers - my special pet detergent (gets out pet odor and whatnot) and liquid fabric softener were gone! Oh... but they were nice enough to leave my regular detergent... that was basically empty. That's sweet. I go upstairs to make sure that I didn't forget that I had brought it upstairs - nope. It's been stolen. What do I do? I post this up:
I don't know if I used "whomever" correctly, but you get the point. Nobody brought my detergent back. I'm pretty miffed about this - simply because I have to order that Nature's Miracle online, as they do not sell it at the PetSmart/Petcos in the area anymore. Who the hell steals detergent? I guess it's just a sign of the economic times. Oh yeah... somebody tore down my sign the following day. I will put another one up today. Right next to the "The Management is not responsible for items lost or stolen in the laundry facility" sign.

In the past, we've had incidences of obnoxious drunkards in the complex. Including a woman screaming racially fueled obscenities at the people down in the parking lot, skinny dippers in the pool... and just loud people. Loud drunks I have no problem with. I'm one myself - especially during a football game. Other background to the story - we have a beautiful magnolia tree right next to our patio. Here's a nice shot of last year when it was in bloom:
It's a beautiful tree, especially around this time of the year. The flowers start blooming - they're huge flowers and are nice to look at. Except now - this is in the tree now:
Those are boxers. Hanging in the beautiful magnolia tree. They've been there since Friday, at least. Nobody will get them down. I wonder if I call maintenance, they'll get it.

These were the humorous experiences, that I can look back and laugh at. Hell, I can still stare at the boxers and laugh at them while on my patio - which I cleaned this weekend, yes! The following story bothers me, so it'll be quick.

We have a pigeon problem. There are a lot of them. We're not supposed to feed them - clearly. But they're still around. Walking out to our car, we saw an injured pigeon hanging out by the front of our building. Amid the process of calling animal control, and the wildlife rescue league - we hear *THUD* and see another pigeon fall from the sky. The thud made it sound like a bird hitting a really clean window - but this is impossible for 2 reasons:

1. Nobody's windows are THAT clean in our building.
2. If they were to fly into a sliding glass door, they would have landed on the patio - not fall down to the ground.

So basically, somebody was throwing shit at the pigeons and injuring them, and then just leaving them there to suffer.

Long story short, we rescued the pigeons and left them with a wildlife rehabilitator. I'm going to call her tomorrow to make sure they are ok. I'm glad I made an attempt to rescue them. We called maintenance and management. Both said that it wasn't their responsibility to take care of injured birds. I don't like seeing any animal suffer - even if it is a pigeon. So we saved it.

Needless to say, we need to move. The place we found is beautiful. Our lease application is in - and it has now been forwarded to the owner/landlord. Keep your fingers crossed. I should find out in the next few days. Read more...

My Encounters With Trenchcoat Man

I guess I had been leaving later than I thought, as I haven't seen Trenchcoat Man in quite sometime. Until yesterday. Trenchcoat Man was back in all his glory - well, sans trench coat. But I could recognize that Carmen San Diego Hat and beard anywhere!

So what's been going on in the life of Trenchcoat Man? Well, what a killer beige/brown three piece suit he wore yesterday! I don't often see a man wearing a three-piece suit throughout my day - apparently, us Gen X-ers don't really believe in dressing up for work either... you know, khakis, polo... Business Casual - if you would. Trenchcoat Man? All Business. Suitcoat, vest - the whole shebang. He was mighty fancy.

Just as I assume my usual seat on the train - Trenchcoat Man gets on two stops before our stop, and takes his normal place standing in front of the door, Express in hand. The shame in my excitement? I was so psyched to see him again - writing furiously in my notebook for notes, I missed the point where he would have folded his paper and slapped it into his hand. I'm sorry, I just was so excited!

As we approach our stop, Trenchcoat Man was ready as ever to leave the train. As usual, the doors open and he rushes out the train before anyone else. Up the esalator and out of my life he went. Again.

On the second leg of my ride home... I encountered this:



This has gotta be some study. Can I be an observer? Read more...

Deep Thoughts from Another Class

Last week I had a class. My mind tends to wander while I'm in said classes. The kicker? This was only a 3 hour class. So, I will ready my thoughts for you all to stew over.

• A guy at my table has a Steelers watch. He's immediately cool in my book.
• I should have had more coffee.
• Our instructor is totally rocking the shoulder pads.
• My knees are sunburned... they itch.
• This dude is seriously fanning himself and I'm in here, freezing my ass off.
• I got a subscription to Women's Health magazine. Aside from constantly staring at thin women to motivate my work outs, I'm actually learning things!
• I giggle at the word "abreast". Yet I hate when people use it.

So those were my thoughts. Feel free to leave your thoughts on my thoughts in the comments. Yeah, this is weak. But I had to get this out there.

I have a two day class this week. Get excited! More thoughts. Read more...

Making a Plug, Because I Want to See One Sold

This is a gnome. His likeness has been put on a skateboard, thanks to Doug. I would like to see at least one sold, because I think this skateboard is just that awesome.

So, it would be really nice if you all could go here take a look at his board, and buy it! Or check out his shirts.

End plug. And enjoy your weekend! Read more...