Turnaround Pictorial

Hi all. We've been having some fun at turnaround taking funnie pictures (in addition to our inspection photos...booooring). I'm realizing right now that although we as a turnaround group find them hilarious, probably no one else will. a) I think you sort of have to be there to get it and b) we are all delirious, as we never have days off. I made the comment today as I filled out my timecard that I "only" worked 84 hours last week. Wha?

Okay, the first pic is of me in a column. Rob insisted that I check out this "really cool" pipe, but really he was just holding the camera underneath and snapped my photo. I'm so freaking gullible. On the left you can see Rob, my food/tv soulmate. He is real cool, and likes hippie music and is a liberal. Also we make fun of everything together (which is somewhat necessary at t/a). In this picture he is actually standing inside a huge heat exchanger before it is installed. Pretty sweet, really.

The next is an awesomely unflattering picture of our fearless leader, Ben. In this one he is actually climbing through a column, which for a while was a rarity as he was always "in meetings." Ben went to A&M with me n' Maria n' Amee. I actually really love him and his charming cynicism. Coincidentally, I worked with his brother Lucas at the PO/SM turnaround last year.


The next one makes me laugh and laugh, because it's of Seth being a hole watch. This was taken by the person inside the drum, and Seth was sitting outside with a radio and air horn, making sure the people inside were safe. What's great is how male model-ish he is in the pic. We are thinking of selling the photo to one of those catalog companies.


Lastly, we have a cute lil co-op named Kristen. She is adorable and so very tiny (she too is a halfie, but I guess she got more of the cute lil Asian characteristics than I did). In this picture she is modelling inside a pipe. Note that she can stand up in it. Heh.

Anywho, that's most of our crew. They are a fun bunch (in that goofy engineer way). My last pic is completely unrelated, but I'm just so proud (a la Amanda and her tomatoes) that I have to share. Aneil was named October Employee of the Month at his work, and he got extra vacation and a plaque and everything. I'm so happy and proud and all those things so here's a picture of him with his award. Heh it's especially exciting because I'm so not the Employee of the Month. In fact I think my boss hates me. So at least one of us has charmed our superiors.

Okay, back to studying. I love you all.

i wanna sink to the bottom with you

It's been a while since my last proper update so since I'm ignoring school and housework and bills and whatnot for one blessed night, here we go...

Turnaround schedule is sort of killing me. Mostly because I don't have any days off. Which is pretty ridiculous, I think, but no one has asked me for my opinion yet. Other than that, it's fine. My boss is still dumb and I hate her a lil for the way she treats my friends/peers. So really any day that I don't have to talk to her too much is a good one. And turnaround has been keeping me real busy. And it's sometimes fun just playing outside and climbing all over the place (however scary and life-threatening at times). I really love working with Ben (fellow A&M chemE) and new friend Rob (who I do everything with because we are food soulmates). Anywho they are both funnie and all 3 of us are jaded and cynical and make fun of pretty much everything so it's not too bad. Plus, during turnaround I get to eat anything I want and basically eat m&ms and goldfish all day. Also ice cream. Woohoo. I will post pics soon.

Also everyone at work is being real supportive and happy for me about my new job (which I will be starting after thanksgiving). It turns out new job is a really big deal and has been described as "a make or break" opportunity for my "career" or whatever. I was sort of excited about it but everyone seems to think it's a huge leap for me, so yay about that I guess. Hope I don't f*** it up. I also am getting nostalgic and will miss all the operators bc it's like having dozens of dad-types. And I won't get doted on or get to wander around the plant anymore. I dunno, it's just sad a little. Although I'm so ready to get a new boss. Heh.

Umm, really I don't do anything other than work. Things with Aneil are still going well. He visited me last week although I was only off one day thus was not able to see him a lot and was a terrible hostess. But he's real patient and sweet and made me meals and held my hand and took me out and didn't get mad that I had to go to bed by 10. He's real great. I admit that I adore him a little.

Okay enough of that. I have random musings:

1) I don't watch any tv anymore. I could care less about Alias (sans the hot guy) and am started to get bored of Gilmore Girls. What's with that?

2) I looooove INXS' "Need you Tonight"

3) Does anyone else remember the Hair Bear Bunch? Man, I loooooved them when I was little. One of them had an afro...

4) Today I was in a meeting with a bunch of plant managers and they were arguing over a compressor issue or something and one of them says (straight faced and without smiling) "well this committee doesn't need to be Don Quixote about it or anything." He referenced DQ! No one else seemed as delighted as me so I didn't say anything but I was very impressed with his reference. Plus it made sense in the situation...yay.

5) Apparently my vocabulary is "strange" so I'm working on being more "banal".

6) I have a test next Wed and I don't really know what's on it. Ugh.

Okay, time for bed. Smoooch.

not as dumb as i look

I got the fancy downtown job! So I will be starting that sometime next month. I will really miss my coworkers and all the assorted hanging out and sarcastic comedy galore. But I am looking forward to being fancy for a couple of years. Heh. Hope it's not too stressful.

In other news, work was frustrating today. School was boring and I was so tired I had to leave halfway through. Oh well.

Now I have to clean my apt and do laundry. But just realized "Stayin' Alive" is on AMC. And it's one of those unbelievable lame movies that I ALWAYS watch when it's on. I love the lame-o Dante-inspired 80's broadway dance sequences. Oh man, it's great.

crimson & clover

Greetings all. Today was busy. I went to my company's downtown headquarters to interview for a job in corporate manufacturing support. Probably not as fun as my current job but I would meet a lot of important folk and it would be a lot different. For example, no being on call and no turnarounds. Which right now seems like a sweet deal. Oh to the left you can see me inside my favorite product tank. I am actually not too dirty in this picture so that's a change.

Oh I find out about the job tomorrow. I'll let you know.

I also got both my exams back today (accounting and finance) and I got A's on both! Hooray!

I'm gonna have to be concise because it is past my bedtime, but today I was listening to this lovely Sufjan Stevens song and it made me cry. I will copy paste this one verse below. You may not know but my dad (Keith) actually went by his middle name and his first name was Carlton. And I would always tease him and call him Carl or specifically "my Carl". And although I realize Sufjan was referring to Carl Sandburg, these lines really affected me today:

I cried myself to sleep last night
And the ghost of Carl, he approached my window
I was hypnotized, I was asked to improvise
On the attitude, the regret Of a thousand centuries of death...

a real whopper

Okay so much has occurred since last post, but I've been super busy thus no posts. Sorry, but I will do my best to summarize.

About 4 minutes after previous post was published (thank you to everyone who had kind comments and concerns I love you all), boy just sort of showed up at my door (one day early) to surprise me. And he had flowers and teddy grahams and an Ernie balloon too! It was pretty delightful, I must say. Next day I had to work, but weekend was real busy. We had to spend Fri afternoon buying supplies for mom's house and then Sat morning was Dan's daughter's birfday party at Chuck E Cheese. It was my first experience there. It was...chaotic. But we played games and I used my tickets to win a ChuckE stamp that says SUPER so it was worth it. Plus there were kids and babies. And Dona's daughter Nicole (she is 3 and is adorable) had a crush on Aneil and he gave her piggyback rides. I actually took a great picture of them but left my camera at mom's. Doh. Sat night we (plus a very generous Val and her "friend" Todd) pulled up all the carpet at mom's. Quite a task. But mom cooked us a great meal so it was all worth it.

Umm ok, also mom is doing a lil better lately (and so am I) so we are holding up okay, considering. She is having an easy time with the insurance and FEMA people but it is real hard to find contractors to do repairs in LC right now. Ah, stress.

Oh also boy and I decided to "go steady" or whatever you crazy kids call it these days. Guess I'm off the market. Although I don't really remember being "on the market" or anything. So I guess nothing has really changed.

Okay so all that's happened since then is constant working (turnaround woo!!!) and school. Had my first finance test last week so hope that went okay. Also I have a scary job interview tomorrow with 2 real important engineering manager people. It is for a job opening at our corporate headquarters downtown. Think I'm in way over my head but oh well. I'm just glad I get to leave my current job (regardless of whether I get the corporate job I am in the engineer rotation) because my boss is officially nutty. She doesn't like my bff Dan, and is basically forcing him out of our group. It's good for him in the long run bc she hates him and his new assignment is probably better, but the way she has handled it is real shady. I am just glad I am getting out of her group.

Okay, so that sums it up. Back to preparing for interview now. Promise to try to sneak in some turnaround pictures soon.

believe in who you are, you are a shining star

The stress level has hit epic proportions such that I've now hit this amazing wall. I have been completely rendered useless/stupid and can't seem to get anything accomplished. As you may or may not know, my life completely sucks this year. And I know people probably say that a million times a day and probably 92% of blogs pathetically declare that exact sentiment, but no really my life sucks a lot of the time.

Anywho, I'm basically sad a lot and I get easily stressed and I pretty much can't get anything done. I think all that's keeping me sane (or insane?) is that I've managed to maintain my ability to find joy/humor in really stupid things. I guess you could say that I'm easily amused, but to be honest I've been really thankful for this idiotic trait lately. For example today I got really excited over the super sweet rings I got out of a vending machine. And I spritzed myself with Tropical Mist bug spray and kept trying to charm everyone in the office with my strawberry-bubblegum-esque aroma. Ha. I'm sure they'll miss me when I'm gone.

Today my mom was exasperating me over carpeting. Yes, carpeting. Lucky for me my friend Valerie stepped in and is going with me to Lake Charles to help with mom's house this weekend. Also Aneil and Valerie's boyfriend (?) are coming to help so I hope things go okay. It's so hard for me to get along with mom these days.

And words can't express how much I miss Daddy. All the time.

Oh also I have a midterm next Tues. It's fiiiiine.

Okay so there's work stress (yes, turnaround schedule starts on Mon) and there's the exam then there's the general mom stress, also there was a hurricane. I'm sort of drowning here. So, I had this evening free so one might assume that I would be working diligently to learn about supply/demand or figuring out how to remove carpeting or patch roofs. But no. I watched Alias then played with my hair then got really ridiculous and decided to start taking funny pictures of yes, myself. Boy keeps complaining that I don't have any pictures of myself to give him so yes, today seemed like a good day to start. These are some of my amazing self portraits. Also, I noticed that in a few of them I look shockingly filipino. Heh.

In the meantime, I'm trying to maintain some sense of normalcy. I keep worrying that I'll pull a Bell Jar and will just start being crazy without realizing it. That prospect really scares the crap out of me. I also keep trying to evaluate how I feel about boy. I want to make sure that I really truly like him for him, and not just because he is nice and I need someone to be nice to me right now. I feel like I really do like him and I know I was already really liking him prior to my dad's passing, so I feel pretty confident that my heart is in the right place and that I genuinely like him. But sometimes I just worry because I don't trust my judgment at all.

Oh also I'm pretty sure that listening to Lionel Richie on a regular basis is some sort of warning sign that my mind is starting to go.

Okay this entry was ridiculous but I'll go ahead and post it before I change my mind.

Oh and that last picture is my "muppet face". You know how when the muppets want to smile real big or get excited they open their mouths real big and look straight at the camera? Ernie does this a lot too. Okay that's what I was going for there. I make that face a lot, and apparently felt it needed explanation. See? Crazy.

oh! my ovaries!

My friend Kim (seen making a weird face in the photo) came by the office to let us see Zoey today. I even got to hold her. Looooove her. She gets cuter and less pink and more charming every time I see her. I can tell she's going to be a chatty one because she constantly opens her mouth and makes lil noises like she wants to tell you something. And her eyes are huge and blue. Le sigh.

say you, say me

Okay so I've really started making progress with this photo album project. I've been attempting to chronicle my life from the age of 18-23. Sort of ends there, since photos post 2004 all appear to be digital. So now I've started obsessively trying to gather photos from various events from people's online albums. For example, here's a great picture from New Orleans bachelorette party. I like how we are all smoking menthol cigarettes and are already drunk although it was dinnertime and it was maybe 9:30. Oh man, what a fun trip!



I also found other albums online that contained pictures from last year's best friend reunion at my apartment (there will be a 2nd annual reunion this year too, so get ready for that. Anywho, there are also pictures of this past New Year's and I actually love this one of me and Erik.

So yeah, the nostalgia is a little overwhelming, but it's still fun. I love having these ambitious projects. Hope I actually follow through with this one. Heh. I am useless sometimes.

Is anyone else a fan of The Office (bbc)? Right now I'm halfway watching the one in which David Brent gets fired and/or the motivational speaker people tell him they don't want him anymore. It's seriously heartbreaking.

"If you want the rainbow, you've gotta put up with the rain - do you know which philosopher said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she's just a big pair of tits." Man, I love that show.

Oh also, I found one picture that contained the boy I like in it (I think from January mansion party in Austin). Allegedly this is the day I met him, although I don't really remember. Oops. I edited Casey out of the pic because he was making a really weird face. Heh. Plus I get jealous because Maria AND Aneil both have bigger crushes on Casey than on me, so I am a lil bitter. Heh. Anywho, for anyone who's curious about what the boy I like looks like, here you go.

Now it's time for a warm shower + some Hemingway + bedtime. Love you.

winter's love

This weekend was much improved and way less dramatic than last weekend. Amanda (my heart) came over Friday night and we ate copious amounts of Filipino food and drank beers. Then Saturday we indulged (again) at Freebird's and went cd shopping. We also went to hang out with my work bff at my old boss' house and had a family fun night, basically. Dan's 9 year old son kicked my ass at chess. It's fine.

After party we were too full of fritos and lemon bars and burgers and brats and beers to do anything so we stayed home and made mix cds and sorted my ridiculous collection of photographs from college. We convinced Maria she could study while we were hanging out...sucker!

It was all very boring/relaxing. I love that girl. Today we went to Baba Yega and drank carrot juice (how healthy!) and chased it with potato salad, which Amanda loved. I think it's because it was loaded with mayonaise but I could be wrong. We also went to get bubble tea with Maria and played an epic game of Scrabble. Wow, we are really exciting fun-loving chicks! Heh.

I hate saying goodbye to her, but oh well hopefully I will see her soon.

In other news, my mom and brother were able to get back to Lake Charles to survey damage to our lil house. They were able to clean up a bit and are planning on patching the roof today. My aunt was also able to go home and although 2 (yes 2!) trees fell on her house, she says it's not as bad as she feared. Apparently one tree took out the carport and my uncle's crappy car. And the other got the roof over her living room so some water got in, but she doesn't think it is a total loss, so that's a relief. I may have to go back next week to help in Hurrican Rita cleanup 2005. I'm giving it a grand name so it sounds like more of an event than the pain in the ass that it is. Poor Lake Charles.

Umm, also I took my first business school test. It was really long. Ugh. I actually think I have another test coming up next week so yay.

I love Teddy Grahams again.

I've decided that "Say You Say Me" by Lionel Richie is going to be me & boy's "song". It's so freaking awesome.

I'm also working on creating photo albums and I'm organizing my cd collection. If you know me you know these are really ambitious projects, as I have no organizational skills, but I'm doing well so far.

Okay, I believe that is all. See you soon.