gray's (caution... spoiler!)

finally had time to watch the dvr'd gray's anatomy. which has been in my top three favorite shows since episode 1 (prison break and lost round out the picture). and some moron scheduled it at on a new day, which happens to coincide with school. idiots.
i liked how they dealt with izzy breaking down because of denny's death. i think it was the perfect expression of a person dealing with the death of someone close. it's not quite that you shut down, your brain never stops. it's that you don't know what to do, so you don't do anything. and nobody else knows what to do either, so they cook and try to talk to you, which doesn't help. sometimes you just need to be.
the whole der/mer thing can't be resolved, otherwise the biggest plotline of the show will be gone. the show needs the conflict there or we wouldn't watch it with bated breath every week. but derick always gets the best lines. he made tad's whole 'throwing his hat in' speech seem pretty weak. and if i were in tad's position, i'd be so pissed that i'd just be done, none if this 'choose' crap. btw, i think it's ironic how addison and mer's personalities are so different. addison is stronger, more forceful, stands on her own, where mer is needy and whiny. complete opposites.
i was slightly disappointed in addison. she had the opportunity to make a big scene with the underwear, instead she chose to be passive agressive and post them on the bulliten board. and speaking of which, didn't those panties seem awful large for mer's tiny little behind? kinda reminded me of the ones in 'road trip'.
george, oh george. how messed up are you? he can only tell the girl that he knows doesn't love him that he loves her, but can't get into the mess of actually having feelings returned. but callie was right, they're all still 17.

what's your type?

my saturday was devoted to a seminar on the myers-briggs instrument determining personality type. for all who are interested, i am apparently an intj. stereotypically, this means that:
i believe in change for the sake of change, it leads to learning.
i eat, sleep, drink and breathe complexity, competition and love puzzles.
i constantly ask 'why?'.
i perceive the person i view as the most competent as the leader instead of the person with the job title.
i tend to have extreme impatience for people i view as incompetent, and things that i view are a waste of time.
my dirty little secret is that i have a massive internal critic, and i'm always raising the bar.
my challenge is how to cope with never viewing myself as being good enough.

hm.
check it out for yourself - http://www.myersbriggs.org/

...still printing...

who would have thought it would take this long? but i'm almost finished. then i have to put the pictures in a book.
picked up the 2 cameras from costco - the first was from my parent's table, pictures were good but not great, a little dark. the other camera was from the will/jane/dana/marcello/mandi/ed table. those pictures were all great! except for the finger covering the camera lens. in almost every picture. no more disposable-cameras-during-the-open-bar for you guys.

printing... printing... printing

i have decided to get off of my kiester and print/develop our wedding pictures. so here i am, printing, for hours. i dropped off two of the table cameras (i picked them at random, so i can't tell you which ones they were, table #3) at costco for the one-hour while i shopped last sunday. of course, i forgot all about them and still haven't picked them up.
but i did buy grapes.

ecological footprint

i stumbled across this website - http://www.myfootprint.org/ which tells you about how much of the earth's resources you use. i consider myself to be an environmental person: i recycle, don't eat any animal products besides egg, dairy and certain kinds of fish, i take public transportation most of the time, i donate money to environmental charities. and if everyone lived like me, there would need to be 4.8 earths to sustain us all.
looks like i'm not very environmental, after all.

the perfect present.

mmm. the aston martin v8 vantage. breathtakingly beautiful, 380 horses and 0-60 in 4.9 seconds. now that's hot.

the bathroom war - interior decorating

www.fishandflush.com

Alas, the Los says no. But I'm working on it.

if only...

i present the smithsonian castle. if only my office/broom closet had a window, this is what i would see.

my.brain.is.tired.

i knew that grad school classes involved a lot of reading. i swear i did. but 150 pages per class? that's (for my part-time 2 classes) 300 pages a week. plus assignments, papers, and other stuff. not to mention working full time. and having a life.
i think i might have to give up the life.
sniff.

gelman library, where i have a premonition i am going to be spending a lot of time.

rub the hippo's nose for good luck. i'm going to be doing a lot of that.

book signing

on saturday, we went to a book signing by brad meltzer for his new book, the book of fate. he's one of my favorite authors, and also signed my copy of the tenth justice. other great books by brad are the zero game, first council, and dead even. i didn't really care for the millionaires that much, and he also writes graphic novels which are out of my scope of interest.
the signing was at wegman's in sterling, and we only waited in line for about half an hour. he was very nice, and seemed like kind of a dork, which i had already assumed. you can't write books that require this much research if you aren't a dork. sorry, brad.
we had only been to the wegman's in fairfax once, but i have to say this grocery store is huge. we ate lunch there from the deli part, which consists of about thirty different counters offering different kinds of food. we both got sandwiches, french fries, and cookies. the problem with grocery stores that are too big though, you think you need everything. which of course you don't. and then it goes bad in your fridge.

visiting the alpacas

obviously, no trip involving any member of my family (yes, including me) is complete without at least one trip to visit some kind of animal. this trip, we went to an alpaca farm (just like the ones on dirty jobs a couple weeks ago!)
what are alpacas, you ask? alpacas are a domesticated south american (from peru, bolivia and chile) hooved mammal having long, silky fleece, related to the llama and believed to be a variety of the guanaco.

this is the alpaca farm that was kind enough to let a bunch of strangers roam around for a while. visit them on their website, www.epfalpacas.com

vacation?

man, i need a vacation from my vacation. here's a recap:

tuesday - flew from virginia to indianapolis, drove 3 hours to decatur. ate at steak'n'shake for lunch, el rodeo for dinner.

wednesday - drove to mattoon, checked out some things for that pesky job, drove back to decatur. ate at monicals after a brief cry that the mongolian garden has gone the way of the dinosaur.

thursday - hung out with the parental units, drove to mattoon, ate at little mexico, went to a meeting, drove back to decatur (nearly ran a horse and buggy off the road), hung out at albright's bar (block's) with mandi and ed.

friday - ate lunch at steak'n'shake, went to my aunt's in bethany, went to torment my baby sister at her place of employment (texas roadhouse for all those who would also enjoy tormenting said baby sister).

saturday - ate lunch at o'charley's with jamie, ryan and austin. jamie is about to pop, she's due december first. played frisbee with my parents (yes, i know) then went to dinner with a different aunt at the international buffet.

sunday - went to my cousin's in cambridge. ate chili at her house, went to see some alpacas, then drove back to decatur and ate at la fontina or something or other.

monday - went to my uncle's fish farm, ate at ruby tuesday's, drove to indianapolis to catch a plane that never left. went to a hotel in indy.

tuesday - (i'm supposed to be home by now) went back to the airport, caught a plane that did leave, went home.

whew. i'm exhausted. and i think i gained at least ten pounds. i think all that we did was eat. who knew there were so many mexican restaurants in illinois???

holy praying mantis, batman!

woke up the other morning, and this was on my wall. outside, that is.