HFCS: effika’s blog

3-5 days every workweek I spend about $4 on lunch. This is a lot less than many of my coworkers, but it still adds up. I can’t get home for lunch every day and I’ve got to eat something. I am pretty happy with this arrangement, but I would appreciate that extra [...]

I attended a course for work recently. All of the instructors had laugh lines, and it made me smile. It was heartening to see that 20 years from now the people who do my job weren’t just a mess of worry-induced wrinkles.

Laughing at an establishment’s handy-work is never good, especially when I’m trying to get them to fix stuff correctly (in a permanent, easily-cleanable fashion).
Today I was in a place that had mouse droppings. The owners assured me they’d found the entry point for the mice, and had plugged it. They pointed to the [...]

So as absolutely none of you know, I’ve started lifting weights. I really enjoy running (and will probably start that up in earnest soon once Jay has a regular schedule at work), but I also would like to not look like a bag of skin and bones. One summer in high school I [...]

I’ve locked my keys in my car enough times that I keep my house keys and car key separate. I keep a spare car key in the apartment, which I should be able to get to since my house and car keys are separate. This system worked very well when I was in [...]

Finally got myself the spiffy new Wordpress (and 22 days late! Shame on me.). The dashboard is a nice update. Very modern. I’m hoping I’ll pick up design again and give the blog a new look. I’ve been all sorts of creative with the fiber arts lately, so maybe my [...]

I need to get back in the habit of posting. It just seems a lot harder to pour everything out into a weblog when I’m no longer an angsty teen hating my professors. :-)
My taxes are done, and for the first time I owed the government money. It will be more than balanced [...]

Valentine’s Day was pretty good, if spread out over a week due to work schedules. I made us dinner (chicken with a pineapple, ginger, and garlic sauce) and we watched Casino Royale. Later, Jay paid for the development of some of our favorite photos and the frames to place them in.
So, as you [...]

Well, if Billy has posted more often than I this month something is amiss.
I’ve also been yelled at by Canadians to get this thing updated, so I suppose the international fervor is starting to peak.
I don’t write much because most of my days are filled with work, which is mostly stuff I can’t talk about [...]

Well, barring anything keeping me from leaving the house in the next few minutes, this is the last post of 2007. My e-resolution (or is it iResolution?) this year is to blog more than once a month.
For Christmas the first two presents I opened were a toothbrush and toothpaste.
It’s OK, though, because the toothbrush [...]

Photos of the damage and the beautiful parts of an ice storm. These were all taken either from the stairwell or back door. Larger sizes available upon request— just leave a comment here! Click on the tree to see ‘em.

Jay needed a bunch of stuff from Hobby Lobby for his play for Medieval Drama. We came away with a mini Christmas tree, tree skirt, and a couple packages of ornaments and tiny presents. We have disappeared the broken scanner from on top the desk, and have installed the Chinese-exploiting-petroleum-guzzling plastic tree in [...]

Thanksgiving was pretty good this year, although Jay was sick so that put a really big damper on things. How big of a damper? Well, my parents sprung for a hotel room for Jay and I since I no longer had a bedroom at my parent’s house, and my mom felt bad about [...]

Kaylee was sick last year, in June. She got sick this year, with almost the same symptoms (lethargy, loss of appetite) but added significantly increased thirst and diarrhea. The lethargy and loss of appetite only lasted a day this, time, though.
Miss Kaylee got to see her normal (super awesome) vet instead of some [...]

Aiee! I have been tagged by Jason Clark!
Four jobs I have had (current job excluded):

Microbiology Lab Assistant. I started out washing dishes and by the end of college had leveraged that into a sequencing gig for my thesis.

Pharmacy Assistant. Lots of pretty pills with nifty names. I had this one the [...]

Tonight I have opened the windows for the first time since May. It is now cool enough while I’m awake to air out the house, and so I will air out my observances of wonderful things I have seen, done, and heard. I present them to you simply, without commentary.
A baby eating straight [...]

Do you guys remember Folding@Home?
I used to fold non-stop (literally) for the Motherboards.org forum team. Then I moved, lost Internet, had to reformat, and forgot about it.
I just started again 3 years later. Now I’m folding for a different team on a forum I’m reading with regularity. (No offense to mobo.org people, [...]

The bedroom we’re currently using as a master bedroom is about 14 feet by 14 feet.
Those of you with full beds sleeping two people, do you enjoy it? Do you wish you had a queen-sized bed? Are you amazed we sleep pretty comfortably on a very old twin?
The difference in price between the [...]

Does anybody still use the term “macking” for flirting? As in, Quit macking on that young lady, for she is my sister or I am going to get my mack on with that fine honey from o-chem after class.
I realized I hadn’t heard that term since about 2003-2004 or so. Perhaps I just [...]

Margarita’d for most of the night, then waiting in line at the ghetto Wal-Mart for Harry Potter. Jay and I had the books paid for and left the building by 12:09am.
All you fools waiting in line at Barnes & Nobles? :-P

I really want to see Sunshine but no theaters nearby are playing it. :-/
I hope it comes nearby when it opens in the US in September.

Here’s the precipitation map like before, but with departure from normal.
Because an inquiring mind wanted to know and was to lazy to follow links on AIM:

I was born in the summer. When I was very little, I would wake my parents up with horribly cheery (for 6am) quips such as “It’s a bright sunshiney day!” I need sunlight, even though I never slept nights until I was 3 and when left alone my internal clock has me going [...]

Describe the image you get when you hear somebody subscribes to National Geographic. Comment! Now!
Why? I just subscribed!

Hello from the new host! Thanks for getting me all set up! :-) Thanks to my old host for giving me nearly 3 years of awesome service.
Hello also from the new version of Wordpress that I have just now upgraded to.
Maybe I’ll write a post before my fiscal year ends. Maybe not! [...]

No true SimCity 5– EA/Maxis handed it off to Caesar IV’s developers. They’re going to try calling it something different (SimCity Societies) as it doesn’t follow theme of the previous games.
I don’t know what to think, but I have a feeling it isn’t good.

It’s still Spring, but it’s close enough to be Summer.
I smell of sunscreen and chlorine. I wish I could say I was lounging poolside with a margarita, but instead I spent all day inspecting pools. It’s uncomfortable work, but it’s fun (and I get paid for it, unlike margarita-lounging). I got to [...]

Having a “normal” job is annoying. I feel like I never have enough time to write here, or subjects. The subjects I have interesting news about are REALLY INTERESTING but the sort of thing I’d get fired for posting.
Hmmm, let’s see.
My new computer was built without a hitch, except for the cheapo (but [...]

It is strawberry season and I could not be happier! Well, I probably could be. I miss picking strawberries out of the remains of the garden of the first house I remember. That same house had blackberry and raspberry canes, and a super-awesome-big yard. I looked at it again when I was [...]

My grandmother died this weekend. I didn’t know that much about her life before I was born, and apparently it held some interesting stories. Not many people remember them too well (her surviving brother is not entirely lucid anymore). I got to hear a few tidbits at the funeral, so I thought [...]