Archive for September, 2004

Random Thought…

Thursday, September 30th, 2004

I can now pull my hair back into a pony tail. One month ago I had determined that if my hair were an inch longer I would be able to pull it back. This means that my hair grows at a rate of one inch per month.

SO, in doing a little math, theoretically speaking, in 5 years my hair will have reached the ground. And when my hair has reached the ground, I can ride naked on my horse in the streets because my hair will be long enough to cover my body.

That is interesting…

I feel like a machine. A machine addicted to Icee’s.

Thursday, September 23rd, 2004

You know what is pathetic? When you visit YOUR OWN website every so often to see if it has changed. Which it never does, because YOU are the one who is suppose to be updating it. I stare at the words I have written, comment on how ugly it looks, even though I can’t even seem to find a color scheme I like enough to apply it, and then I move onto someone else’s page to see if they have updated. They usually haven’t, and if they have it’s not even intersting. No offense, my website it never interesting either, it’s just like a place to vent out your anger, and something to do to fill the void in all of our lives…

Well enough of that. I have asked myself the question of why i have been avoiding this website as of lately. It’s more like i am waiting to “weed out” all the people who came to my site while i was in Japan. Not that I don’t like all of you, it is just that i am sorry to say that most of you will be disappointed. Okay all of you. My life in Japan compared to my life here is just plain boring. Well not boring to me, because it is my life, but COMPARED to the stories I shared with you from Japan, the stories I share with you now will not be nearly as interesting or entertaining. You get the “real” Stephanie, or at least as real as i choose to be online.

So now that THAT is out of the way, I will be getting back to my usual posts of insanity and crazyiness that is my life. For all 5 or you die hard fans, I post for you.

My big accomplishment on my website is located in the upper right hand corner of the page. It says “Links” and I have added some of my friends to that very corner. I am very proud of this, as I found it by myself. (Chris, I have yet to add you.) If there is anyone else out there who has a website and would like to be added, just let me know. If not, then most likely you will never see any NEW names added to that list.

I will be starting “The Comfortable Girl” very shortly. I guess I could add that to my links. I will do that after posting this. It will all be explained on that website http:www.thecomfortablegirl.com. Be sure to check that out in the next week or so, I really want to get to work on that little project.

If you haven’t visited Zach Braff’s (Stephanie’s future husband) website, you should go. Really, it’s worth the trip.

I have decided to lose some weight. Not like a TON of weight, but this little stomach I have been collecting over the past month NEEDS to leave. It’s not a problem with my self-esteem, its more a goal I would like to accomplish. (I had to say that or my Nana would run over and feed me a feast and a half to make sure I wasn’t dieting) Seriously though, it was getting to the point of grossness. It’s like you eat a little more at dinner one night, and then the next night you eat MORE than the night before, and then the next morning your stomach has accepted the new challenge and has buldged out accordingly. This is NOT acceptable. This will not go on. I have put myself on a diet. Not a REAL diet, for I could never do that, but a Stephanie diet. This is what I will eat today:

I stoped into Jersey Giant Subs on my way to work this afternoon. I told the lady I would like a half a sub. At this point she went into her speech about how it is MUCH cheaper to just go ahead and buy the whole sub. After the: “And it’s only a dollar and half less in price for the half sub, which isn’t worth the money really…” I caved in. I had assumed that I would eat a half of the half for lunch, and the remaining half of the half for dinner. (If you have not had a sub from Jersey Giant you would not understand this concept) Then after purchasing my whole sub and drink, I left thinking to myself that I will save the other 3 peices for meals some other time. For as every sub fan knows, a sub from Jersey Giant does keep quite well in the fridge. Okay Okay Okay. I also bought a bag of chips. I couldn’t help it. They were my favorite and they were staring up at me right by the register!!!! I wasn’t going to tell you. But there it is, and now my conscience is clear. So I get to my cube and I pull out the sub, as I had originally planned, AND I only ate 1/4th of the sub. I also only ate 4 chips. I then folded up the sub, placing it into the work fridge, and returning to my desk quite satisfied with myself. Now my stomach is raging mad, because he is used to getting a 1/2 of the sub, along with a full bag of chips and a cookie to boot. He is mad! But I told him “NO”. (I’m not crazy or anything, come on… everyone call’s their stomach something… right?)

I have also took to exercising. Once again, this is not REAL exercising, it’s more like Stephanie exercising. Last night I did 50 situps (Okay 20, but i plan on doing 50 today, my cat was crawling on me, and it wasn’t working out that well…) followed by a about an hour of running around the family room getting my adrenaline up so much that i was panting with in 10 minutes. But I ran more and more. I did everything you can do, I jumped back and forth punching the air, I did summer-saults back and forth, I danced like a mad person, then I did jumping jacks followed by a couple of laps up and down the basement stairs. A half hour (and a little crazier) later, I found in my house some of those neato weights that are like 5 pounds each. You can imagine how fun it was to run around the family room with those in my hands. Of course I punched the air with weights in my hands, I did some “weights-in-hands-jumping-jacks”, followed by, oh yes, running up and down the stairs with the weights. So the next time you are sitting at home watching TV late at night, think of me, crazily flopping, flipping, and running around my family room. Maybe I will make a video of it and put it online for you all to laugh at. Yeah Right! I would like to keep the 5 friends I have.

I got a hampster. I named him about 8 different names. First I thought he might be a male, so I thought of the names: Edwin, Jonny, Alex, Dean, and Pancake. Those didn’t quite fit. But then he did something that made me think he was female. The names: Libby, Fran, Waffle, Anna, and Tapanga came into mind. His name was offically Tapanga (And yes i DO like the TV show Boy Meets World) for a couple of minutes, until I realized that he must be a boy, for he was too crazy to be a girl named Tapanga. His name was therefore changed to the only name that was reasonable now, Cory. I will take a picture of Cory and post him online as soon as find the effort to find my camera and go through all steps of placing a picture on this website. He is adorable. I have never had a pet hampster. He likes running wheel marathons, those little pieces of corn in his mixed food bag, and country music.

This will be my last paragraph, I promise. I thought I should comment on the title of this entry. I am seriously addicted to Icee’s. Icee’s from the Burger King on West Road (The ONLY Icee’s worth it these days…). It is getting to the point where I might need a doctor to help with the addiction. Frozen coke is my nicotine. Get me that patch, quick! The machine thing? Oh, well that is self explanitory really. I just have felt a little machiny-like the past couple of weeks. I get up everyday and go one of two places. To work, or to school. I either sit in front of a professor, a computer, or a group of kids. I do the same thing week after week. I need to go to school, and I need to work, I just sometimes wish that maybe one week we could switch up the routine a little, you know? Maybe I could take the week off and go to school and work on the weekend. Or maybe my Calc class could take place in my cubicle. OR BETTER YET! I could get the kids at Sylvan to do MY homework, while sitting in my cubile at work! And I could just go to Australia for a week or so… sigh. Or not.

Well that is all the rambling I will indulge you with for today.

Have a good one!

Life can be funny… Actually, Becky can be funny…

Friday, September 10th, 2004

I decided I would post to my website right after my little sister came up to me for the SECOND time tonight begging me to tie her up with an old shoelace that has been lying around the house forever. The first time I tied her arms together she walked around the house for about an hour trying to undo the knot. She eventually gave up and went to seek help from Austin, who ended up untying her. As I was once again tying her arms to her legs (you would have had to seen it to understand) I looked at the shoelace in wonder. This is the ugliest shoelace you have ever seen, it is like a mixture of all the ugliest colors on the planet, and it is big and thick and nasty. This is the same shoelace that she had been teasing the cat with for the past half hour and the same shoelace that apparently doesn’t belong to ANY SHOE in our house. As far as we are concerned, the shoelace was dropped off by someone. Or perhaps the shoelace was pulled off a visitor by our beastly cat Boots.

Yes, this has been my night. And yes, we did have a conversation trying to decide where the shoelace came from…

As I am writing this, my little sister has done two more things to make me laugh, and I feel I will share these two things with you. As I sat down at the computer she came over to me with a piece of paper, and on the piece of paper she had drawn a line down the middle in pencil. She told me to look at line. I stared for a moment at it, and then passed the piece of paper back to her. She looks me in the eye and annouces that she will make the line disappear. I laugh at the look of glee on her face and she disappears from my view. I turn back to the computer, just in time to hear a familiar sound from behind me at the kitchen table. I do not turn back around, for this will ruin the trick. Then the sound stops. She comes over to me and shows me the piece of paper. The paper, which still contains some eraser bits, doesn’t look that different. The line hasn’t entirely vanished, it is still there, just in a lighter shade of grey. I smile and say, as enthusiastically as i can, “WOW, that’s great Becky!” Her blue eyes of excitement turn into blue eyes of hate as her “Sarcastic” radar goes off, she glares at me, turns around, and storms off.

I still sit at the computer, holding the piece of paper that has just recently had a line erased - I mean DISAPPEARED - from it, when I notice a green box of sorts. I pick up the box, and it literally looks like a two story house inside it. Someone (Becky obviously) had turned it into a little house. I call her over and tell her to let Cory, my new hampster run around in it. She yells something and tells me that: “Poo” lives in the house. I look at her blankly, try to hide my laughter and ask her calmly: “Who lives in the house Becky?” “Poo” she replies. I tell her she is disturbing to me, and she needs to leave right away. She gives me a confused look and tells me she is going to get “Poo”. As she walks away I am starting to think of which therapists are nearby, because OBVIOUSLY she is going to need one soon. I hear her coming down the stairs, at this point I suck in air and prepare to hold my breathe and close my eyes. Her little hand is squeezed shut around something, and I find myself relieved at the fact that whatever “Poo” might be, at least he is solid. I lurch back as she opens her hand. She is holding an eraser. It is in the shape of a little man. I also notice that she has dressed the eraser man, apparently named Poo in a tiny shirt and pants made out of our kitchen napkins. I watch her place Poo into the little green house, she turns to me and says: “Isn’t he cute?” I tell her I have just one question (even though there are tons of questions that one could ask…) : “Why on Earth did you name him Poo?” She laughs and tells me that his name is Poo-T. Poot. Everyone who is reading this, say the name “Poot” outloud, I swear the “t” sound just disapeared when she said it. When I told her what I thought it’s name had been, she gave me the: “Why would you think that?” response. I just looked at her until she again walked away…

Joey is also amusing to me in his own strange way. He is my little brother. At 11:30pm tonight a TV show came on, Joey and Becky were both sitting in the family room watching the TV. From the television you hear things like: “Hey Greg, can you get this for me?” “Sure thing Dharma” “Did you tell Greg that the dishwasher is broke?” “Don’t ask Dharma that hunny, she is busy right now!” The show continues like this for a little while, until finally the theme song kicks on and shows us the name of the show. Joey, ALL OF THE SUDDEN in complete shock yells very loudly: “Oh man! this is Dharma and Greg isn’t it?????” Becky and I turn to each other, then we both look stunned at Joey, who looks at us and says one word: “What?!?”. I allow Becky to take this one. She looks at Joey and says: “Joey, where have you been? Of course the show was Dharma and Greg! Are you deaf?” (Just for the record, this is not what I would have chosen to throw at Joey, I would have chosen the sarcastic response, something along the lines of: “This isn’t Dharma and Greg Joey, it’s just a coinincidence that the main character’s names are Dharma and Greg, and that they look EXACTLY the same as the characters on the other show…”) But all the same, I commend Becky for her efforts, she did well.

That paragraph above was suppose to be the end of this email, except for Joey can’t seem to control his own body, so I feel I must add on one more story. First, some background. Our large TV is broke, it only works when you use the remote, and the remote has to be reprogrammed everytime you switch the batteries. My dad is the only one in the house that can reprogram the TV. Sometimes the batteries fall out of the remote, and if my dad is away, we end up watching channel 4 for about a week until Dad comes home to fix it for us. It is a sad story, but odly humerous at the moment. (The worst was when the batteries were knocked out the back, when it was stuck on the weather channel. We may have been television deprived that week, but we sure as heck knew what the weather was going to be…) Anyway, the TV is working now, and it has been for quite some time. As I write to you now, I can honestly tell you that Joey is in the family room throwing the remote up into the air and catching it in his hands. He has already dropped it TWICE. the first time I told him that he needed to find something else to toss, and he responded with a grunt. The second time it fell he got a mouthfull from Becky and I who were quite furious. I don’t think it is that hard to understand. When the TV is broke, and the remote is WORKING, DO NOT toss the remote into the air and try to catch it before it hits the floor, popping the batteries out. I tell him this. He tells me he will no longer toss the remote. I go back to my typing, Becky has gone up to bed, until I hear a: “SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!” coming from Joey’s direction. I look over to see him “SLAPPING” the remote against his hand!!! Apparently that is a better alternative to throwing it in the air. I let out a huge sigh, deciding to not even ask Joey why smacking the remote was better than tossing it into the air, and turned away from the disturbing image.

This is all I will write for tonight, I feel a cold coming on. Friends beware. This is serious, I have a sore throat, phlegm, and a raging headache, not a good combo. And I just sneezed. Damn.

My Site

Thursday, September 9th, 2004

Looks Ugly.

Something must be done about this. It needs some color. If you read this website still, tell me what color you would like to see. I was thinking three colors all together, something girly, but not TOO girly. Cute is the word. Here are some of my thoughts on colors I am pondering:

pink (light or dark, or perhaps something crazy, like magenta…)
turquiose (I do not feel like spell-checking here…)
some shade of blue, either dark or light…
mint green
light orange
blue green, but not as bright as turquoise
dark grey for the font?

hmmm. what to chose?

Sticky Notes

Tuesday, September 7th, 2004

At work, Focus Business Solutions, when typing in entires, we commonly use Excel. Excel has one flaw, and a flaw I trip over about once a month. “What is that flaw?” you ask, well… Excel, unlike Access doesn’t save what you are working automatically, AND unlike Word, it doesn’t go out of it’s way to ask you if you want to save it if you accidentally closed it. You can see where I am going with this right??? Well this happens around once a month, no matter how hard I try to prevent it. I work for hours upon hours, and then, when I am just about done, something happens and I accidentally hit the little “x” in the upper right hand corner as opposed to the minimize box. In one split second, I am at the beginning again, all my work, GONE, everything from that day, GONE, hours of my life that I am going to have to redo, GONE. It is terrible.

The last HUGE mistake I encountered with the Excel spreadsheet took place last week. I went nuts. I cried, I stomped around the office, and then I sat back down at my desk and stared at my screen for no less than one hour, bathing in the horror that lay in front me. So, to make myself NEVER mess up again, I decided to write myself tons and tons of sticky-note messages and paste them all over the desk. Seriously, for a couple of days the screen of my computer was surrounded by a massive attack of the sticky notes that all read: “HIT SAVE!!” “HIT SAVE ALL THE TIME” “HIT SAVE OR DIE” “ARE YOU GOING TO THE BATHROOM? THEN HIT SAVE!” “HIT SAVE OR AN EVIL CURSE WILL COME OVER YOU” “STEPHANIE, HITTING SAVE MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD!” so on and so forth…

SOOO…. Austin (I am residing at, and currently in the process of taking over completely, HIS DESK) tolerated the sticky note attack for about a week or so, until it got too much for him. Austin, of course, the man of no mistakes, decided to limit my usage of sticky notes surrounding our desk. There are now only 4 left. One is taped to the top of the monitor, one is on the GIANT GROUND SLOTH’s cave, one is on our candy jar, and the last one is placed on our picture collouge (spelling?) that I put up last year. What is funny, and the point of this WHOLE story is that the remaining “HIT SAVE!!!” sticky note that is on the pictures now has a balloon around it. A balloon like you would see in the comic books, when someone is saying something. So when I came in the first day, I saw that the “HIT SAVE” balloon sticky-note was positioned right above the picture of my cat, Boots. If you can use your imagination, you would notice that it would look like my cat was telling me to “HIT SAVE”. I found this very amusing, and therefore during my time at work, I moved the sticky note over to a picture of our dog Max, who was now ready to tell Austin to “HIT SAVE” for the next day. This morning, the sticky note was moved again, this time my bunny Phoebe was delivering the message.

This may not be funny to anyone at all, but if you think of either Austin or I, back in our little cubicle, coming in to work during the week, and moving a tiny blue sticky note around a collouge of pictures for amusement, the story becomes a little funny.

(I must elaborate here, that what I have listed above is an extreme case of stupidity. This rarely happens. Usually if I accidentally “x-out” of the spreadsheet I only lose what I haven’t saved up to that point, which isn’t that much, considering how often I now save. Knowing the truth makes the story sound a little less funny, so I chose to write it in as a huge “catastorphy”, for your, and of course my own, amusement. It just had to be said, for after all I do not want to get fired for being THAT clumsy…)