Sabine’s Garden

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot I have a blog! Actually, I’ve been totally over-whelmed by the whole communication thing lately. I go through phases like that from time to time. I think it is all the “social networking” I do. Let’s see, currently I am on Tribe, Myspace, SparkPeople and the 100 Day Co-Creating Challenge. I think I am spread too thin. Also, all the time I spend here at the garden now is deleting spam comments. I’ve been getting hundreds per week. I have a filter but apparently it is not filtering as well as it used to.  Something good has come of it though, because I think Andrew is writing spam inspired poetry. :) Email has also become a bit overwhelming. I just cleaned out my inbox thoroughly like three weeks ago, and now I have two hundred un-read emails. So if I owe you a couple of emails, sorrryyyyy.

Life is good ya’ll, not much to report. As of Sunday I am nicotine free for two months. I’ve gained nine pounds since though and so last couple of weeks I have been eating less and exercising (A LOT) more to try and get it off (hence Sparkpeople, which positively rocks if you want to lose wieght). I think I have lost a pound or two, I’ll know on Saturday. It’s actually made me eat a lot healthier, which I am enjoying more than I thought I would. I’m enjoying the exercising too, especially since having gone beyond the rebounder, yoga and dance into the world of strength training. I have learned that even though I thought I was in pretty good shape, I am a weakling in reality. I started doing pushups on Monday, and I thought I was going to die. That’s girlie pushups ya’ll, with the knees down. Seriously. But in a month I’ll be buff. My obsessive nature did what it normally does when I get into something new, it compelled me to go buy a bunch of stuff. I now have an ottoman full of things I never thought I would own, like resistance bands and hand weights. I’m not going for the whole six-pack look and all that, because that just isn’t my preference. There is a difference between being toned and being “cut”. I don’t want to be cut, I just want to be able to do pushups, and not the girlie kind either. I’ll try not to obsessively blog about my progress (that is what SparkPeople is for).

I better get back to work now. I have all kinds of new projects on my plate. I hope everyone is doing well. I’d love it if you would leave me a comment and let me know how you are doing. I miss ya’ll.

PS - As you can probably tell, I’m having some issues with my stylesheet. I’ll try to fix that this weekend, I don’t have time to screw with CSS and PHP right now.

PSS - Spent a few minutes under the hood and I found the offending tags. It’s fixed, let’s see how long I can go without breaking it again.

via google:

• causing inconvenience; “they arrived at an awkward time”
• lacking grace or skill in manner or movement or performance; “an awkward dancer”; “an awkward gesture”; “too awkward with a needle to make her own clothes”; “his clumsy fingers produced an awkward knot”
• difficult to handle or manage especially because of shape; “an awkward bundle to carry”; “a load of bunglesome paraphernalia”; “clumsy wooden shoes”; “the cello, a rather ungainly instrument for a girl”
• not elegant or graceful in expression; “an awkward prose style”; “a clumsy apology”; “his cumbersome writing style”; “if the rumor is true, can anything be more inept than to repeat it now?”

via experience:

• Being called to the receptionist’s desk because a large flower arrangement has been delivered for you, and finding all the women have congregated to squeel and act like girls because they have magic flower radar.. getting all flushed and excited, opening the card, and finding it is not from your boyfriend… and then dealing with the raised eyebrows. (It was the result of a kind gesture I had forgotten about). AKWARD

I’ve been such a good girl today. I have cleaned my desk, signed and submitted the pile of invoices that was about to fall over, and I cleaned up the links list over there in the sidebar. Those links that remain, the authors are my friends and those are the sites that I actually do read on a regular basis. I recommend them all, they are much smarter and far more interesting than I am. Just make sure you come back and see me even if you do develop blog crushes on them. Because I’d miss you, and you know how much I adore you. Is that a new shirt you are wearing? Spiffy!!!

Now I am going to do some filing. I think I should be given sainthood and a pony. And a cookie, or three. That’s what they should do, is they should put some kind of cookie dispenser machine here by my desk, that somehow monitors me in such a way that every time I do some good work, I get a cookie. It’s not like I’d get fat, because of all the time I spend on tribe.net and editing my sidebar. (I kid, I actually work pretty hard and even more than I am required to most of the time.)

PAUSE: Just got an email from the receptionist that reads,

“Good Morning,

There is a fruit bowl & a surprise in the break room for everyone to enjoy compliments of X w/ Halliburton.” A surprise?!?! Wheeeeeeee, be right back.

Chocolate covered strawberries! If not for ACG I would have kissed him for that.

Oh yeah, Happy Valentines Day! I have mixed feelings about it (evidence), because it is such a perverted, consumerized holiday. I like the idea of a day all about love though. Especially when I am in love. Historically VDay was something I ranted about… But now that I have StardustFairyMagicPinkFluffyCloudUnicornLaLaLa-itis (am in love), I feel all fuzzy and warm about today. I can’t believe I am about to type this on the innernetz, but I actually considered wearing pink today. I am the only person here who has or once had ovaries that isn’t wearing pink or red, by the way.

Dang, the VP of the company just told me that I need to quit blogging and do some work. He was not impressed by my clean desk or amazing invoice signing skills (he reminded me that he has to actually pay them). He didn’t even offer me a cookie. Clearly, am unappreciated.

Off to analyze something geologic in nature. *besos*

• No matter how good the wine is, and how tipsy the boss himself is, it isn’t advisable to get smashed around your coworkers at dinner the first night. (DUH, but it took someone putting cheese in my wine to make me stop.) (Next day to coworker, “yeah, I was drunk but I thought I hid it very well”… Response, “ummm, we knew you were drunk when you got really quiet and eventually laid your head on the table”.)… (Apparently am never quiet? Mom stop laughing please..)
• Setting up the booth at 7 in the morning with a screaming hangover might not be one of the finer moments in your lifetime. For gods sake, would you turn the sound on the air conditioner down please!
• If you do make the mistake of drinking too much the first night, you’ll miss all the parties, which are on the second night (*that* is when you are supposed to get drunk, is what I learned), and everyone will come to your booth the next day and call you a wuss. You will likely learn that your own coworker betrayed by telling everyone that you can’t handle your liquor. You now have an entire year to plot revenge.
• If you are Texan or Texanish, two days at NAPE will significantly amplify your Texas accent, and you’ll find yourself using weird metaphors, such as, “Darrrrlinnn’ (that’s a drawl, in case you have never been to the Planet Texas), I ain’t about to let you look up my skirt for free. You come on into our office and sign a CA and I’ll be happy to show you my pretty maps and logs”. You might like it and not want to stop, and garner unfavorable responses from people and animals who know you don’t normally talk like that.
• If you are a woman, a shiny ring on the left hand will cut out the men who are just there to hit on you and significantly cut down on the “booth babe” jokes. It will also cause raised eyebrows and gasps among those who know you, which makes the whole thing entirely worthwhile all on it’s own.
• Being an exhibitor is cool, you get in earlier, you get the best pastries and the freshest coffee. You also don’t have to walk ten thousand miles every day. I’ll admit that I even found myself enjoying meeting and speaking with all of those people, which I thought I was going to hate.
• I’m spoiled, is what I mostly learned. Not everyone gets flown up there (30 minutes flight vs. four hour drive), taken to the Strip House for dinner, and put at the swanky hotel that connects to the convention center. Was it cold? I don’t know, I only had to walk across the skywalk in the morning… Do I feel guilty? No, but I will share my room next year now that I do know (although I had to promise that I won’t be a wuss next year…).
• The most important lesson of all: leave room in your bag for all the stuff people give away. Because everyone needs a little electric fan that digitally spells out, “Got Gas? Call Atlas” and a plastic fish.

I’m really interested to see if I can create a coherant entry out of the rambly goodness that is buzzing around in my caffinated, yet NotEntirelyAwake brain. Things are fixing to get really busy, so this is my “See You In Awhile” letter. Actually things have already been really busy, but we are reaching the crescendo this week.

Last week I made two seperate trips to Houston in two consecutive days… One driving and one flying, which was quite interesting. I’d be content not to have to visit Houston again for a long while, but I’m actually going back on Wednesday and will be there until Friday. I think I should be given a key to the city now or something. We should be exchanging Christmas cards now, Houston and I. Mine would say, “Merry Christmas Houston! Ps - ya’ll need to learn what Drive Texas Friendly means”. This week is the big NAPE expo in Houston, and this year we have a booth. We aren’t selling specific prospects or anything, I am just taking a map showing how we fall in with geologic trends in Texas and if people are interested in playing with us, they can come to the office, sign a CA and we’ll talk.

This past weekend was a fabulous oasis in the middle of all the craziness.. ACG came down and spent the weekend with me. We went and saw Their Will Be Blood with Sara and her honey Saturday night, and yes, there was blood. And LSD in the system of the person who wrote that movie, is what ACG suspects. It was odd. Not bad, just really odd… and not at all what we were expecting. There are some of those creepy, wierd zoomed in scenes with freaky music where you are not sure if people are going to kill each other or start making out or what. There were many moments where there was an overwhelming sense of “WTF??!!??” filling the entire theatre.

Yesterday we celebrated my 33rd birthday by going to the Aquarium with Tigerlily, LightShines and Lilaqua. I got to pet some stingrays, and in the process almost fell in the water (because I am graceful and always UBER cool like that). We saw some really incredible creaturas, took lots of neat photos (will be on flikr soon), and had a great time in general.

So, I might not be around for a few weeks… I hope that all is well in your world, friends.