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Star Trek: The Experience is closing.

So much going on I’m not 100% sure where to start detailing it all.

For Mother’s Day I took a trip to Gardnerville to spend the weekend with my sister Jen. It wasn’t an entirely relaxing trip. As a mother’s day gift we spent the bulk of the time at my parent’s home to attempt clearing out…well…years worth of accumulated stuff. My brother-in-law Brian also took on the task of repainting the walls. Pulled down everything, dusted, and tried to finish up some of the infamous never-finished home improvement projects. It’s never easy for any of us to do this. Often it seems the entire task is insurmountable, but broken into pieces it is less daunting. I’ll be going back again for round two sometime later this year. I think my biggest fear is that I will become like that. Hoarding every last scrap of memory until I can’t move in my own home.

For Memorial Day weekend, I took what I’ve come to term as the Big Fricking Things trip. Went to see the Metor Crater out in Arizona. Next to this natural wonder they set up a museum and filled it with dinosaur extinction information, astronomical displays, and piped in voice advertising from a man with a deep voice encouraging you to “experience the impact”. After you waded through all of that you could go outside and stand on the rim of the crater. It’s incredibly cool. The photos don’t do justice to the feeling of being dwarfed by it.

The next stop was a trip to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. For the cheap price of $6.00 you could get a tour of the grounds and see the telescope that discovered Pluto and helped plan the moon missions. It’s a pretty massive hodgepodge of telescopes, bike chains, and a frying pan modified to cap one of the lenses. There’s some pretty neat stuff there. The most daunting item I saw was a “blink comparator”. Basically it’s a machine that has two transparent images of the sky (from photographs), two lamps, and a single viewing port. Somebody sits there and stares through the view port until they detect a difference in the photographs as the lamps alternate. It makes my head hurt thinking about it. Not to say staring at a page of code trying to find a misspelled variable is much better.

The last stop on the way home was the Grand Canyon. It is indeed grand. I never really understood how big it was. Amazing what nature can do given time and non-interference.

I’m dieting again. Yes, again. Aside from the weight I put back on after last year’s marathon (expected) I’ve done an incredible job of eating horribly for the last few months. So I thought now was the time to put a stop to it all and get myself straightened out. I’ve also timed it to coincide with the first month of this year’s half marathon training, because starting next month I won’t be able to afford such a huge calorie dip in my diet.

Yep, signed up again to do the half marathon. Training started two weeks ago. My debate whether to do the half or full was very short-lived. Last year I just spared enough time to cram in the requisite training schedule. As I expect to be much busier here on out at work, I know I can’t set aside two or three hours a day to run. But I’m okay with it. Last year’s half was a lot of fun. My goal this year is to beat last year’s time by at least 10 minutes. Booyah.

Speaking of, the job change at work resulted in me moving to a new group in the company. I am again working with Will, infamous for the Willisms series on this blog a year ago. I’ve began collecting those gems again, and in a separate post I will share a few.

And last but not least, Things I learned this week!

Amount of responsibility is directly proportional to the time you spend at your desk uninterrupted.

Cats do not like change in food.

If you look up a price for a flight on an airline’s site and don’t buy it, they will punish you by adding minimum 10% the next day when you go to buy it. Even if you are browsing anonymously. THEY KNOW.

I hate it when there’s a ton going on that I don’t want to talk about. Which is why there hasn’t been a post. I know, I suck.

Took a trip to Tahoe with the crew a couple of weeks ago. Spent a day at Heavenly (yuck) and Kirkwood (sweet). Heavenly kind of sucked the day we went. Too much wind. The best part was parking at the peak on the Nevada side and seeing most of Johnson Lane and Carson City. The worst was the giant patch of ice I hit bombing downhill. The ice was so slick and the angle so steep when I fell I couldn’t stop sliding. Finally dragged myself to a halt by digging in the plastic hooks on my wrist guards. Lay sprawled there on the mountain for a bit like a dork. Eventually got myself up (very carefully) and slid (not boarded) the rest of the way down.

Day 2 at Kirkwood was 100% better. The weather was perfect, the hills were much wider, and there was no ice where I was. My only regret was not trying out the black run, but there’s always next year.

Day three was devoted to my family. Hitched a ride to Gardnerville and spend the day with my sister, her zoo, and the parental units. Watched my baby niece crawl everywhere. My oldest nephew is now taller than I am. My sister’s house is way more pimp than mine will ever be. Had a great time.

I’ve been to see a number of concerts. Saw Linkin Park, Bad Religion, and My Chemical Romance. I may be off to see another one Friday. Yes, I’ve gotten around to seeing all those concerts I meant to. Only took me until my 30s to get around to it.

And in what will be a classic entry exemplifying my weirdness, I gave Spot a bath last weekend. My cat has some very long hair, and it seems no matter how much I brush him it eventually becomes a tangled mass no brush can contend with. After a couple of knots appeared in his fur that I had to cut out, I gave in and tossed the poor guy into the bathtub. Luckily for me he’s been undergoing this torture since he was a kitten, so there’s no undue clawing or struggling. He just sits there and looks miserable. After I dried him off and brushed him forever, he returned to his former fluffy glory. With far less shedding.

Life lessons are few, but here’s a couple Things I Learned This Month:

The week you promise to get online and play games with your friends is the week you wind up working tons of overtime.

Your shower handle will break off at the most inconvenient time possible.

Vise-grip shower controls are ghetto fabulous.

There is absolutely no point in making cat shampoo with soy milk and honey. Really. Stop it.

It would seem my car has taken up the spotlight this week in my life. Let’s begin on Thursday morning, when your mild-mannered running-on-four-hours-sleep heroine is driving to work. As I’m nearing the spaghetti bowl from the west side of town, traffic starts to slow down. The culprit? Tons of carpet and padding all over the damn freeway. Fabulous. I carefully navigate the terrain in my Shiny Fast Car, and proceed onto the ramp to I-15. All clear, bright sunny skies ahead. I’m cruising along with the flow of traffic, not a slow down in sight, then all of the sudden: Oh Shit! Carpet! Big huge piece of carpet right there in the middle of the road. I can’t swerve out of the way! So I grit my teeth and aim for the lowest part of it. Thump. Wait…where was the other thump? Crap! So I pull over and investigate. Sure enough, it got tangled up in my wheel well. I try a few hard yanks (landing on my butt in the process), but to no avail. That damn carpet is stuck. I contemplate tears, then decide action is called for instead of waterworks. I call Don first, tell him I’m stuck on the freeway. He hasn’t left his house yet, so he promises to cruise by and check on me on his way in. After a call to roadside assistance and answering 20 questions on their automated system, I get a tow truck sent out. Wait time: 1 hour minimum. Beautiful.

I continue to wait. Eventually Don pulls up. Laughing his ass off, of course. He tries a couple of yanks on the carpet and pronounces it stuck. He then busts out the camera and takes a picture. So I tell him I’ll probably not be in until much later, either they are going to have to do the release without me or delay it. Don asks me what needs to be done, and I start rattling things off. His eyes kind of glaze over, and he says “I’ve got to get that carpet out.” Then in Superman-adrenaline-saving-babies mode, he gives the carpet a mighty tug and miracle of miracles, it budges. A few more tugs and the carpet is free. Don is truly awesome, and I’m on my way to work. (Hooray?)

Yeah, I had a good laugh about the whole thing. Frickin’ carpet tried to eat my car. That’s just wrong!

Then yesterday I decided to give the car a bath. I took my car to one of those do-it-yourself car washes. As I’m loading quarters into the washer control, the caretaker guy comes cruising over. He just starts talking to me. “You need help? That sprayer has a lot of water pressure, want me to do that for you? Here, let me get the dirt off of the sides of your car. I have some tire stuff to make the rims shiny. Here, have a shammy! This is a nice car. So, what do you do for a living?” He did not seem to hear my protestations that I was fine and could handle washing my car. Before I knew it, he pretty much washed my car for me. Unbelievable. I wasn’t the only person there, the entire place was busy. But for some reason, he needed to wash my car. I gave him a couple of bucks and some advice about his computer problems (he wanted to hire me to fix it for him. Said no. Scratch off “computers” as a vague answer regarding my occupation). I got back in my car after all that, looked in the mirror, saw the usual hell I am greeted with in the reflection, and figured he was nearsighted or really, really bored.

Yep, the car wins this week. I have no life lessons for you. Snow trip canceled due to ridiculous weather. I’m very sad. On a last note, I am finally (more or less) used to the contacts, but have decided against wearing them to work. My eyes get too dry. Better off wallowing in nerdness M-F. Contacts will be for the weekend and for those wonderful activities I like to do that are prone to destruction of my eye wear. Lake Mead, I’m looking at you.

I have had, for years, an Amazon wish list. I don’t keep it so people can buy me stuff. On the contrary, it’s a nice way to bookmark my impulsive “wants” without actually buying them until I’ve had a chance to think over. For the most part I wind up picking up the stuff somewhere else, but periodically purchase through Amazon for those “Must Haves”. After discovering my CD collection had been brutalized by stealing bastards, I started hitting it pretty hard, adding items and picking them up as they went on sale. Every couple of days a shiny new package arrives with CD replacements and whatever else I managed to reason myself into buying with excuses. But now I’ve hit the sad point: the list is nearly empty and Christmas every couple of days is over. I don’t usually spend so much money on music and CDs, so it was a nice change to actually spend money on frivolous things. Now I’ll probably take a step back into Miser Land and quit buying stuff. It was fun while it lasted.

Today I did come home to a small box package. OMG YES. Contact lenses are here! They are in my eyes as I type! Can’t focus that well yet. Everything looks funny. BUT. I can wear goggles when I board! I can wear regular sunglasses! I can go to concerts without worrying my glasses will get knocked off and trampled! There is a sad part to this story. I put them in and waited. And waited. And waited. And no guys came and randomly dry-humped me. Ah well, such is life. Screw you and your eyepatch idea, Wiseman. I have two eyes now!

The the Thing I learned This Week but will never be able to change:

Everything goes horribly, horribly wrong when you are left holding the reins. Sheesh.