Corporate Hippy

I’m pretty lucky.  I married my best friend.  We still laugh at each other’s jokes and he’s still the last voice I want to hear before I fall asleep at night.  We enjoy each other’s company and friendship.  I look forward to the next 9 years.  Happy Anniversary, baby.

Every few years or so, I make an attempt to present myself in more stylish, feminine fashion.  By this I mean, nicer clothes to work (ie – not hoodie sweatshirts and cargo pants), and perhaps some makeup.  My last attempt didn’t last too long since I was going for skirts most days and that just got tiring after awhile.  Also – the makeup thing was always too much of a bother.  And a few years ago, I switched jobs to a place that is really pretty relaxed and casual.

Ok.  I admit that it is more than just the timing of “every few years” that has sparked my latest attempt to pull my fashionable female shit together.  I’ve recently been indulging my guilty pleasure that is TLC’s What Not to Wear.  And, while I realize these two host people are utterly ridiculous, they do make people look fabulous.  And .. I’ll say that a) I’ve actually learned some things about clothes, makeup, and myself from watching this show and b) I often look at the wardrobes that they’re “throwing away” thinking “uh .. that could be my wardrobe” .. heh ..

Perhaps there is some girl in me after all.

So, I’ve been dressing a little better at work (not so much of skirts, but I actually bought girl pants that fit an flatter .. who knew?).  And .. I’ve bought all new makeup and have been doing pretty well with it.  Nothing fancy, mostly eye liner/shadow/mascara .. which leads me to the real reason for this post and the source of said kunundrum.

Mascara.

I think I was in my 20s before I ever applied mascara.  I was always scared of it.  I’ve found that I really love the way mascara looks.  But I hate wearing it.  I hate applying it.  And, I really suck at both.  Questions for those few women friends I do have:

1 – I can’t seem to apply it without making a mess.  I blink and its on my cheekbones, I get it on my hands on my eyelids .. and I don’t think I’m using a lot .. any tips for applying? cuz .. I seem to be utterly clueless..

2 – I feel it on my eyelashes all day .. they feel heavy and sticky .. and I really don’t think I’m putting to much on .. I mean, its not all clumpy or anything .. is this normal?  Do I just get used to it?

3 – What about exercise and sweating?  It just seems like so much work to have to clean my face before exercise .. but .. Its kind of gross when I start sweating and wiping my face .. blech ..

see .. I hate the stuff … I want to not wear it, but I really like the way my eyes look when I do .. *sigh* .. its a lot more work to be a girl ..

I drive a 2002 Jeep Liberty Sport.  Its survived 207k+ miles so far and just had its 5th set of tires installed.  Its been paid off for 2 years now, and seems to keep getting me where I need to go.  It has been, however, begging for attention over the past few months.

I’ve got a good support structure in place for this beast though.  I stick to the same Uncle Ed’s Oil Change store where the manager now recognizes me when I come in – I’m probably there twice as often as any other customers because of how quickly I burn through the miles.  I like to call these guys my “triage”.  They change the oil, but also do a great job of finding problems that I can’t hear or see.

Like, in September when they replaced my serpentine belt that was demolished, and found that I had a chunk missing out of one of my engine crank pulleys.  And again in December when they found that my water pump was leaking.

So, I generally go from Uncle Eds to Protech Automotive.  Protech are my all-purpose mechanics who’ve done a great job of keeping me on the road.  This week, they replaced my front and rear pinion seals.  Sooner or later, I’ll let them replace my transfer case.

Protech doesn’t do tires … but, I’ve had a great relationship with Bell Tire and I don’t even bother shopping around for prices anymore – they always seem to be the best deal no matter how much looking I do.

I’d really been pushing the limits on that last set of tires.  I really should have replaced them when I had the shocks & strutts replaced in May, but I’d decided to just have them rotated instead.  I had planned on getting new tires before the winter, but so many other things came up (including Nick needing new tires on his pickup) that I just kept pushing it off.

With the weather being so bad lately, I’d decided that I needed to get new tires soon, but when I had it at Protech the other day, getting the pinion seals replaced and having them look at what I thought was a bad wheel bearing, they sternly recommended new tires.  I took that as my cue.

I knew it was bad, and could feel the sketchiness when driving, but I didn’t realize just how bad it had actually gotten until I drove home from Bell Tire yesterday and I wasn’t scared.  It really felt like I was driving a whole new vehicle.  It was amazing.  At first I thought it was all in my head, but when Nick was driving it later on, he completely agreed.  Its really solid and smooth now.  Heh.

But alas, here I am again, waiting for the Jeep.  I’m still getting some weird dragging noise, and I figured I’d have the alignment checked – but they took it for a drive and don’t hear the dragging noise.  Which means, I’ll probably take it back to Protech again next week to have THEM listen to the dragging noise *sigh* .

Its great to have  a support system, but its tiring to keep having to call on them.

I realize the irony of posting about how I’ll probably be posting more, and then, not posting for a week.  I really do.  But, alas, life is hectic at times, and this week left me burnt out and fried.  Work has been really busy.  I’d gotten really behind on projects and day-to-day maintenance at work as I had some big projects and issues that took a lot of my attention for most of the fall.  And, just before Christmas, one of our team members quit, and his position isn’t going to be filled because we’re in a big time spending freeze.  So, same amount of work, one less person.  The math is easy.

Now, I do kind of like being busy at work.  It makes the time fly and I generally walk away feeling kind of like I’ve accomplished something, rather than the defeat I felt for most of the fall.  But, it really really wears me out.  I almost feel out of breath sometimes, just from thinking so hard.

But, at least my commutes have been nice and slow.

I saw a lot of this, this week.

Actually, most of the week wasn’t to bad.  But, I did have a 2+ hour drive home and a 2+ hour drive in – all in one week.  Ugh.

Als0 very busy outside of work this week.  On Monday we had our Metro North Chapter meeting, and on Tuesday Katie, Kristi and I had a girl-date with coffee and yarn.  Katie wanted to learn to knit and all Kristi and I needed was an excuse (coffee and yarn?  hell yeah, I’m so there).  They even came to the ‘clem!  It was wonderful and super fun.  For some reason though, not a single picture.  I had the stupid camera, but forgot all about it.  Jessica calls it camnesia.  Anywhoo, Katie did a great job and it was really fun.  I think we’re going to try and make it a semi-regular thing.

Wednesday was supposed to be a spin night at Mike’s place, but it was one of my 2 hour commutes, so we didn’t make it over there.  We opted for spinervals at home and pasties for dinner – YUM! (thanks Kristi, we’re still eating our treasures from August, with 2 left still!!!).

Thursday was nice and mello.  I had a pretty decent drive home.  I detoured a bit to stop and pickup a new toy for Nick at MicroCenter, then went to Meijer for some essentials, and bought good steaks for dinner.  Nick had an MMBA state board meeting, so I just watched a little TV and surfed the web some while he was on his call.  It was a really nice, quiet evening.

Last night, we were supposed to spin at Mikes again, but by the time we got there, Mike and Jon were already on the slacker train to veg-ville.  The game was called on a count of lazy and we just watched The Hulk instead of spinning to it.  I must admit, I was looking forward to the spinning, but kind of glad for the downtime.

This morning was slow, we met Nick’s folks in Richmond for breakfast and then hit up Hamilton Bikes to do some chapter/MMBA schmoozing and check the place out.  Its a nice little store, and Dave is a cool dude.

Later on, we met the Scurrs for an early dinner at the original Luigi’s in Harrison Twp.  As is the case when we’re together, it was a nice long dinner – 3 hours of eating and gabbing.  This is what we do best ;)  I’m always amazed that we’re able to accomplish anything as a group – get to a destination on time, get to a destination at all – but we manage, quite well, actually.  And we generally have a great time doing it.  We’re already planning some vacations into 2010 – something about sailboats ..

our friends, the scurrs!

And now I’m just hanging out in my wonderful desk chair (yep, still in love), doing the computer thing.  Tomorrow, we’re going shoeshoing in all this wonderful snow we got today!

I’m addicted to my new chair.  Seriously.  I bet I’ve spent more time in the office, at my computer in the past 5 days than I have in the past year.

Yesterday I went to office max to get some “desk accessories” to help with the insane amount of clutter and piles of papers that had formed over time.  See, since I have a laptop, I don’t need to use my desk unless I want to use the big (22″ flat panel) monitor.  And, since I was always so uncomfortable at my desk, I rarely bothered to plug in and hang out there.  Therefore, it was real easy for my desk to become a drop zone for things that otherwise had no home.

I needed a place to put the papers/files/bills/notepads/etc.. that was a bit more organized without being tedious.  Also, I’ve just got my laptop sitting on my desk, and I have to seriously resist the urge to pile papers on top of it when its there.  Since I’ve been plugged in for a couple of weeks now, it was starting to collect things.

In my mind, I was looking for something that would let me put the laptop on top, and have some kind of storage underneath.  But I couldn’t find anything useful for that in the store.  I did, however, find a neat little rack/shelf/inbox thingy that let me put the laptop on the bottom “shelf” and use the other shelves to put things on.

Turns out, its pretty perfect for what I needed.  I was also able to sort out my monsterous cable situation and I’ve loosly budled and velcro’d the cables to the back of the rack.  This way, they won’t fall behind the desk when they’re not attached to the laptop.  I’m really happy with how it turned out.

I also bought a file storage thingy for the other side of my desk where the big piles were.  While my desk is still more cluttered than I’d like it to be, its way more organized than its been in .. well .. ever..

The end result is, I’m spending much more time at my desk and starting to become a bit more productive.  You may have noticed a bit more action (albeit not overly exciting) on my blog lately, and if you follow my flickr feed, you’ll see a lot going on there as well.