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#5339 – you think you're a champ

overslept by 2 hours like a champ. whoops! didn’t even hear my alarm go off, and next thing i know i woke up and it’s 8:45 when i should have been waking up at 6:45 and in the office around 8. taking today off of work since it’s not like there was anything for me to do there this week anyway.

i really like my boss though. as soon as i woke up and saw the alarm clock and crapped my pants i called our scheduling team to take 8 hours of “UIA” (unexcused illness/absence) time, then texted my boss “wow, i really didn’t hear my alarm go off. sorry! 🙁 just called scheduling to take the day off”.

we use UIA time for both sick days and times when you’re running late, and as such we take it in hour increments. you only get 40 hours of UIA time before you start getting written up, though. i’d been tracking my time off and since i had exactly 8 hours of UIA time left and since it wouldn’t carry over to next year, i told scheduling i’d be taking 8 hours of UIA time.

most bosses would have probably flipped out. after i texted my boss to say how i was taking the day off, she asked me if i was taking vacation or UIA time since she wasn’t sure if i had enough UIA time, and when i said i was tracking it she double-checked with me and said “yep, you do, i just checked. it’s all good. enjoy your day”

now to figure out what to do today!

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#5338 – irish art and beatboxing

today i rubbed shoulders with the irish ambassador to the united states and met a roisin (“ray-SHEEN”) fitzpatrick.

there’s a tech group in dc called hacDC; you can pay something like $50 a month to be a member and get access to their workspace whenever you wish, or if you’re a non-member you can show up whenever the workspace is free. i haven’t been there, but it’s something i want to check out one of these days.

anyway, i lurk on one or two of their email lists, and today i found out that one of the members lives in germany now, but he said how an art exhibit of his was going to be on display at this gallery show in rockville. i didn’t think much about it until he mentioned how usually at art gallery show openings there’s free snacks, and i’m all about free snacks. so, i checked it out online and decided to go. why not? it was free, supposed to be snacks and wine, and it could be neat and i didn’t have any other plans.

the show was about the effects of light as art. there were 3 main exhibits: the guy from hacDC had a blue laser reflected through mirrors that caused it to create patterns on the wall. i’m not sure if the wall was painted with a kind of glow-in-the-dark paint or if it was just eye-trickery, but when they turned down the lights in the room you could see a green afterimage of the patterns remain on the wall for a split-second. another exhibit was photos of refracted light spectrums, and the primary exhibit was artwork by roisin fitzpatrick where she had hand-sewn these jewel-type objects to canvas in different patterns. not my specific cup of tea, but still pretty neat to look at. there was one piece called “meteor” that she had that i really liked, though, except it was something like $5000 to purchase. 😛

the show wasn’t going to start until 7 and i had arrived around 5:30, so i walked around for a bit and grabbed dinner at a noodles & company around the corner and waited. just before 7 i went up to the show – there was a band there setting up and a few people milling about, so i checked out the artwork and wandered around. there was also an art studio space across the hall that was also having some sort of open-house with wine and cheese and other finger-foods, and different little shops open and selling different crafts. i ended up having some wine and snacks and i also found a christmas present for my grandparents there, and now i’m almost all done with my christmas shopping. the show description also said how there’d be a “friendly robot” greeting people – turned out it was a hacked roomba, but it wasn’t so friendly as apparently they were having trouble getting it going and i guess they gave up on it.

the band eventually started playing, and they were (mostly) good. two girls, one guy. they pretty much played “gypsy jazz” type music with one girl on the guitar (good), the guy beatboxing and playing the spoons (very good), and one girl doing backing vocals (good)… and also playing a moog synthesizer (WTF). honestly, i say that they were “(mostly) good” because if they just got rid of the moog synthesizer it would have been excellent, but it REALLY did not fit in. the guy was very talented and would also play the guitar and accompany himself by beatboxing, and gave a beatbox demonstration where he beatboxed funk, jazz, go-go, and bossa nova music, and did his own song and story about growing up and learning how to beatbox and how his mom introduced him to the music of doug e fresh.

when i introduced myself to roisin to ask her a few questions about her artwork she said “nice surname!”, haha. didn’t get a chance to meet the ambassador, though. oh well. when i googled her when i got home i found another roisin fitzpatrick who is pretty damn cute. wonder if she’s still interning in dc? 😛 speaking of cute girls, there were a few there (says glenn the art critic).

anyway, that’s one country i really need to visit. festive asked me recently if i could travel anywhere, where would i want to go, and i said how i’ve pretty much been everywhere i really wanted to go. but, duh, silly me to forget about ireland what with me being irish and all. 😛

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#5337 – inspiration and perspiration

one funny thing about me: i collect quotes. i have a folder in my dropbox with 32 favorite quotes so far starting a few months ago, mostly from people on twitter, that i thought were clever or inspirational. i used to save these to my evernote account, but text files in my dropbox work just as well if not better.

whenever i need a pick-me-up i go in this folder and i browse through, and it almost never fails to make me feel better about myself. even when i don’t need a pick-me-up it’s a damn good pep talk and a kick in the pants when i need it. i favorite these on twitter, but i favorite so many things, and it’s nice to have my own “chicken soup for the soul”-esque collection of quotes handy.

they’re not even all from people you’d think would be quoted in a collection of inspirational quotes. take this one, for example:

“Hey, if ya want it, go get it! If you get shut down, kick the fucking haters in the teeth. Nobody is gonna hand your dreams to you! #work” – Dave Coleman (September 27, 2011, 11:46 PM)

know who dave coleman is? he’s a bartender in dc, and also president of a local brewery. i’ve never met him, though i saw him once when i was hanging out at meridian pint (which is probably the closest thing to my local watering hole since i’ve been there 3 or 4 times so far. nice place, good selection. was helped twice by a smart barmaid, and she was very cute, too. i need to go back again sometime. anyway.) dave doesn’t bartend at meridian pint, he just happened to come in for their event that night, and it’s hard not to recognize someone who describes themselves in their twitter profile as dr teeth’s doppelganger. (his beard has its own twitter account.)

in any case, how many bartenders would you find in a “chicken soup for the soul” type book? probably not many, though sometimes bartenders have great advice.

sorry, i’m rambling.

i was moping earlier tonight: i’d swear that every job application i submit just goes into a black hole somewhere. i’ve submitted job applications for i don’t know how many companies over this year, and at this point if the job application asks about the last time i ever applied for a job at xyz company it’s going to involve a lot of head-scratching on my end to remember if and when i ever did apply for a job there before. i was moping about some other personal relationship-stuff too, but i’m feeling better now (and looking forward to seeing gaiadea on monday while she’s in town!). anyway, here’s the key things i took away from looking at my quotes…

“#NASATweetup preview: @Astro_Ferg wasn’t selected to be an astronaut until the 3rd time he applied. Persistence pays off!” – Stephanie Schierholz (October 13, 2011, 9:00 AM)

“Even the guy who invented Toaster Strudel had problems. You would assume his life was perfect but you would be mistaken.” – Anthony Clark (October 6, 2011, 3:56 PM)

“Never take for granted the comfort of your own bed.” – Diva Zappa (October 7, 2011, 1:49 AM)

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#5336 – sometimes i think i'm alright too

i’ve been watching all of the current doctor who series in order lately. i fell off the wagon after several episodes and for some reason or another i just never got back into it. in the last few months i’ve been watching it in sequence (even the episodes i’ve already seen) just to get all caught up. if only i had a TARDIS of my own, considering how much i’d love traveling and exploring! it probably sounds stupid, but after watching several episodes in a row yesterday and today, i can relate to the 10th doctor the most, i think. especially after this exchange from an episode i watched today:

“what about you? you alright?”

“i’m always alright.”

“is ‘alright’ special… time lord code for ‘really not alright at all’?”

funny, “alright” is usually my bullshit explanation for how i usually describe how i’m feeling, even when i’m not alright. and i usually have that same sort of expression that david tennant has on his face when he said “i’m always alright.”

it feels weird being single for the first holiday season in years, and yet, i don’t know how i feel. i’m not mad or upset any more like i was a few months ago… at least, i don’t think i am. “disappointed” is probably the closest to it. especially since i found something i would have liked to give to her and that i think she’d probably enjoy, but i don’t know how i’d go about giving anything without it being awkward. and now that it’s cold, just about every day i end up wearing one of the sweaters she gave me and i notice them slowly shrinking, and though they’re just material clothes, to me they’re a reminder that someone once wanted me to be warm and comfortable and thought i’d look attractive wearing them. i try not to think about when they eventually become too small or threadbare for me to wear anymore.

“i’m alright” might have to do.

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#5335 – club crasher

so tonight i accidentally crashed a meeting of the dc chapter of the sierra club, haha…

see, through the NASA juno tweetup and the tweetup i attended a few months ago at NASA HQ here in dc, i’ve become acquainted with some of the local geeky types, and we have fun attending different sciencey events and museums and so on. well, one of the people i met at the NASA HQ post-tweetup dinner is the audience engagement specialist at the smithsonian museum of natural history, and i think she helped organize the tweetup event today where selected people got a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum after hours and learned about mummies in ancient egypt. some people i knew attended, and though i wasn’t invited (i didn’t find out about it until just a week ago or so), i was invited to the post-tweetup dinner where thirst dc was going to be presenting.

they expected to finish around 8, so a little after 7 i biked down to the museum thinking i’d catch them as they left. once i arrived at the museum i got a message from one of my friends on the tour with details about the restaurant where they’d be meeting afterwards, so i headed to the restaurant figuring that i’d wait for them to arrive. once i finally locked my bike up and headed in, i tried looking to see if they had arrived already, and i saw a group of people sitting around one table and one of the people waved me over, so i came over since i thought i recognized one of them. as i was about to sit down i saw they had papers with the agenda for their sierra club meeting and was about to excuse myself, but they invited me to stay, hahaha. i was there for about 30 minutes or so before my group finally arrived. they probably saw me walk in with my bicycle helmet and thought “ONE OF US! ONE OF US!”, hahaha…

side note: i hate locking my bike up and leaving it. even when i’m doing it correctly – locking the back wheel through the frame with a u-lock, and running a cable through the front wheel – i feel like i’m not locking it properly, and keep thinking someone’s going to steal my bike. sigh. i suppose it’s just something to get used to. i also need to get a proper bolt for my seat instead of the quick-release bolt it currently has; i ended up removing the seat and taking it in the restaurant with me, and since there was grease all over the downtube i brought some tinfoil to wrap the tube in so it wouldn’t muck up my bag. anyway…

one of the people from thirst dc gave a presentation on how many calories santa claus would take in (a lifetime of calories in about 3.5 minutes), how much liquor he might drink if each house left him a shot of whiskey (he’d be dead within a second), how fast he’d have to go, how much weight he’d have to pull in his sleigh, and so on. afterwards we just talked amongst ourselves, so i was talking with a few new people (an anthropology professor and her husband) and several other people i already knew. my table finished off two bottles of wine, and then we wrapped things up and i biked back home. altogether i biked 11 miles round-trip, learned some new stuff, and got my drink on with some attractive and intelligent ladies… who i don’t think are single. still, that’s what i call a good night!