Quick notes from the past several weeks

Whew! I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post. Nutty days right now. Some highlights:

* My team at work moved from the serene boonies of Redmond (a suburb of Seattle) to the downtown area of a nearby city. Talk about culture shock! Plus I also parted ways with my officemate of nearly five years (to add insult to injury, he's three floors away!). Yes, I have my own office, which is often the dream at Microsoft, but being all alone really makes time crawl!

* Seattle had a lovely 29-day streak without rain. Yowsa! We even had a couple 90-degree days a few weeks back, which was just WAY too hot for most Seattleites (including myself). We live here for the milder weather! We had rain Friday of last week, but we're back to sun now.

* Saw "The Hangover" -- hilarious! Later this week I'm off to "Public Enemies," and then the much anticipated "Bruno" on the 7th.

* Turned 31, which for some reason was harder than turning 30.

* Got back into the swimming pool after about 18 years (I don't count the one season of diving I did in high school). I got a fancy triathlon suit to address my modesty issues (it has shorts attached, kind of like a unitard thing). I'm hoping to go swimming for just over an hour every Tuesday night with some friends; tonight will be my third outing. I'm happy to report that my body knew exactly what to do once I got into the water (I was forced through lessons from about age 4 to 13 and HATED them). I spent this past Tuesday doing laps of breast stroke and freestyle the entire hour, though I had to take a little breather between each lap.

* After cleaning my freezer and discovering at least 8 cartons of ice cream (some little, some medium), I bit the bullet and bought an ice cream maker at Costco. My first batch, which was coconut-pineapple ice cream, was so-so; I tried to be healthy and use low-fat coconut milk, which meant the ice cream didn't freeze properly and became hard as a rock after spending a few hours in the freezer. I made batch two last night -- avocado! -- and it turned out really good, though very rich. There's not even any heavy whipping cream in the recipe; it's just the avocados themselves that make it so creamy and rich.

* I just finished the fifth and final season of "The Wire." So good!! (Though as a heads up, if you watch it, be sure to turn the captions/subtitles on, or else you miss a lot. I finally had a light-bulb moment after rewinding/replaying for the third time during the first episode, trying to figure out what folks were saying.)

* Got an answer to an unasked question I'd had about a boy for a few years. Not good news, but at least now I know!

The problem with sunshine in Seattle

Being the native Seattleite that I am, I, along with my fellow Seattleites, really treasure seeing the sun out and about here in the city. Though we are wrongly accused of being the rainiest city -- Mobile, Alabama, gets this honor, and no Pacific Northwest city shows up until Olympia at No. 24; click here for proof -- it definitely is gray and gloomy for a lot of the year. This means that whenever the sun pops out on a non-summer day, the entire mood of the city lifts, and there's a collective "Ahhhh!" However, the downside is that one then feels a huge amount of pressure to take advantage of the weather, by getting out of the city for a hike, going on a walk, playing tennis, what have you. Sometimes, though, I just want to sit on my living room couch and catch up on "The Wire" or something!

Anyway, this feeling is thankfully alleviated once summer comes around and we have stretches of days of nice weather, but from Sept. to June, after any nice weekend, one can expect questions like "What did you do during the nice weather this weekend" on Mondays..

By the way, on a random aside, I'm watching "The Amazing Race" finale as I type this, and for at least the third time this season, the contestants are in swim suits or something similar (they've also been in leotards and their skivvies). Do they have a waxer on hand for the ladies to use or something?? Certainly, if they ever had a female Indian contestant in the Race, a waxer/threader would get a lot of work..

Black Tuesday

Well, it's tough times here at Microsoft. As was reported in the local news yesterday, Microsoft had another round of layoffs. The last time around (I think January?), our team escaped unscathed. But this time we weren't so lucky, and unfortunately, three of my friends here were let go. Thankfully, all of them have a pragmatic view of the future, and are taking the news very well. I think I'm more bummed than they are!! One of my co-workers even drove to work yesterday instead of busing, just in case he needed to take home his belongings (he didn't -- whew). Anyway, my immediate team and I made it through this round in one piece -- a good thing, since there are only three of us! Hopefully the economy will continue to slowly improve, so we won't have to go through this again. I was a bundle of nerves all day yesterday, as were a lot of people on my hallway. Now that we're on the other side of things, I may need to go get some bubble tea tonight just to help myself recover!!

Online-stalking frustration

Argh, I'm trying to get the scoop on someone on whom I have a mini-crush, but he's nowhere to be found online! I don't get how in 2009, there are still people who are basically invisible to Google -- they don't belong to any social-networking sites, don't have a personal Web site or blog (the former is understandable, though; not many people do) or have never been mentioned in an article or piece that's been put online. I mean, there's an article that mentions me in it that's from my senior year of high school, which was like 13 years ago!!

Anyway, I periodically waste time Googling people I know or used to know to see what they're up to, and usually I can make some sort of headway, but this one person.. nada!

New baby No. 2

Finally got my new laptop, and she's beautiful! When I was researching what to get and settled on Sony, it was quite a nice bonus to discover that I could get the laptop in one of my favorite colors, a dark red -- at no additional cost! It's probably the second "cutest" thing I own next to Buster, seen here checking out his competition:

One of the main reasons I went with this VAIO -- on top of brand loyalty and trust with/in Sony -- was for the keyboard. The keys are spaced apart a bit like on a Mac laptop, which makes typing much more comfortable for me with my man hands.

When the IT guy came in to set everything up for me, I had him go ahead and install the Windows7 Beta on it so I could give 'er a whirl. I've hardly used Vista (due to lack of compatibility testing/support between our tools and Vista, we were told to stick to XP), so I can't really compare it to that, but compared to XP, anyway, I'm really liking 7. It's very slick and sharp, and has a lot of cool new features. Definitely helps that my new machine is rocking 4 gigs of RAM!

One (other) big downside of my old laptop spontaneously dying is that I had to wipe all the music off my iPhone to re-sync it with the iTunes on this new computer. Had I known my old laptop was about to bite it, I would've backed up all the music and then deauthorized that iTunes, but alas, I had no warning. Most of the music was duplicated on my iPod, but I unfortunately had a couple albums I'd bought off Amazon that I'd stored only on my dead laptop and my iPhone. So I'll have to shell out again for those.

Finally, one other cool new thing I've figured out how to do -- transfer TV shows from my TiVo to my laptop to my iPhone. As I ride the bus a lot, it's going to be so great to be able to spend the morning commute watching last night's "Rescue Me," "Real Housewives" or whatever. It took me several hours to figure out the whole process (getting files from my TiVo to the laptop was easy -- but time consuming -- using TiVo Desktop; then I had to use two additional programs to convert those files for viewing on the iPhone), but figure it out I did!

Keeping Jungle Woman at bay

So it's a bit embarrassing to admit, but I've always been a bit vain about my hair. Until a handful of years ago, it was quite frustrating for me to figure out how to get it looking its best, and then how to keep it looking good throughout the day. Once I finally got that process figured out a few years back, I went through a couple years of pretty good hair. But then, about a year ago, my carpool to and from work disbanded, and I began taking the bus to and from work. This involved spending about 15-20 minutes outside, between walking to the bus stop (~2 blocks) and then waiting for the bus, and then walking from the bus stop in Redmond to my office (~3 blocks). Soon as the fall -- and rainy season -- rolled around, I discovered that no matter how lovely my hair looked as I left the house, once I got into my office, the slightly moist air outside (whether it was raining or not) makes my inner Jungle Woman come out -- the top layers of my hair get frizzy, and the ends start flipping inside out. This really bugged me, not only due to the whole vanity thing, but because when my hair frizzes, I can see those frizzed hairs in my peripheral vision and it drives me crazy -- especially since the bulk of my day is spent sitting in front of a computer without much head movement.

My solution was to bring to the office my old cheapo hair straightener (a $35 model that I eventually tossed aside for a $200 model, which was well worth the extra dough) and just leave it there. That way I could re-straighten the problem areas as soon as I got in. I did this for several months, though I always cringed a bit as I used the cheapo straightener, as it doesn't do as good of a job as my expensive T3 one, and isn't as gentle on my hair, but it was my only option. Then, one day, when I was hiking up the hill to my bus stop one morning and there was just a slight drizzle, a light bulb went off -- what if I pulled my hood on over my hair to keep the moist air from hitting it? So I wrangled my hair into sort of a bun thingie (with no ponytail holder or anything, though) and stuffed it up under my hood. Did the same thing on the walk into the office in Redmond, and voila! When I took off the hood my hair looked great!

So that's my fabulous new trick, ladies. When it's raining more than a slight drizzle, I'll have the hood on and will hold an umbrella too, which I'm sure looks weird, but protects my belongings, clothing and face better. I also put on the hood even when it's not raining but is just moist out. Yes, this looks weird too, but whatevs. My excuse if someone mentions that it's not raining is "Yeah, I know, but my head is cold!"

Sleepwear dilemma: Solved!

So nighttime is a bit of a weird time for me.. I'm usually tired by that time of the day (about 11 p.m.-ish on weeknights), so I'm eager to get some shuteye, but I have somewhat chronic insomina, so I also kind of dread bedtime because I probably won't actually fall asleep for several more hours (and getting up will be a drag). Another issue I've had to deal with? What to wear. Yes, an odd topic to blog about, but it was on my mind recently, during one of said chronic-insomniac moments (and also because it's an issue I've finally recently resolved!).

Anyway, after getting a new duvet cover a couple years back, I had a solution to my bed-covers issue. I now sleep under just a flat sheet and the duvet. In the summer, I usually turn on a fan, and I sometimes kick off the duvet (but not always, because 1) I quickly miss the feeling of that heavy cover, even if I'm warm, and 2) Buster, my cat, will often attack me -- no clue why), but otherwise, I'm good with that set up year-round. Clothing-wise, in the colder months, I generally wear a thin pair of baggy flannel pants and a thin T-shirt (that switches to a tank and shorts as it gets warmer). However, because I toss and turn so much before I fall asleep, I've recently been getting very annoyed with having to readjust after each toss/turn -- I have to restraighten the pants so the seam is centered, and/or pull up the waistband, and or pull down my T-shirt, etc. I solved part of this problem by tucking the T into the pants' waistband. But it still wasn't a quite perfect outfit.

Then.. last weekend, I was leafing through the Sunday Target ad, and saw that they had leggings on sale for $5 each. A light went off in my head. I picked some up earlier this week, and I'm happy to say I now have my nearly perfect cool-weather sleeping gear: a thin T-shirt tucked into the leggings. The snugness of the leggings keep anything inside (underwear + tucked-in T) from moving, so I don't have to do any readjusting as I toss and turn my way to oblivion. Of course, there's no way I'd want anyone to see me in the oh-so-attractive getup, but it's so nice to be that comfortable at night!

OK, so I know no one out there really cared about my latest life "drama," but there you go!

P.S.: My true latest life drama has been the death of my laptop (which is the one bought for me by my work, but also doubles as my home computer). Yes, I lead an exciting life, people! The silver lining is that I've got a new, cherry red Sony VAIO laptop en route to me as a replacement. Can't wait.