Blog revamp...but no promises

My mother keeps telling me I need to update my blog. I've said, I don't have much to say, and when I do, I say it in the form of Facebook status updates. I've gotten out of writing habit. Well, here's to trying to get back into it.

A lot has happened. I moved to a new apartment and now live by myself. My sister said, "Once you live by yourself, you'll never want to have roommates again." I agree.

I graduated with an MBA. I have a job doing federal human capital consulting and get to stay in DC, but I don't start for over a month, so I'm enjoying watching the World Cup, doing yoga, reading on my new Kindle (thanks for the grad present, Mom & Dad), drinking, visiting friends and family, and going to the pool. Summer vacation is fun.

My sister got engaged to a pretty cool dude. She's planning the most nontraditional wedding there will ever be. I'm still painfully single and awkward as ever.

I just returned from my 5-year college reunion, and my favorite people are doing well and are still silly and inappropriate.

I was in a film competition that didn't advance, but I still had a lot of fun and was covered in fake blood. Some of the folks who made this film have gotten together to form a sketch comedy group that will be posting silly videos to the web each month. I will be partaking, but also using a stage name, because some of their language would make Trey Parker and Matt Stone cry, so I'm not trying to get fired from the job I haven't started yet. But at least I have something creative to do while I'm waiting for said job to begin. I've written a song about first dates and farting. No one said this would be highbrow comedy.

Welp, here's to trying to keep this thing updated again.

Reasons I know I'm back in school

1. Cohort W coming in 5-10 minutes late

2. "It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN" cell phone ringer going off during lecture

3. People talking too much off topic

4. The "make my friend laugh in class through snarky comment on GChat" game

5. 4 hours of sleep a night

6. Freezing cold classrooms

7. "Yeah, I just wanted to say..." (internal scream: JUST SAY IT, DAMN IT!!)

8. Increased intake of caffeine

9. Awesome teams

10. Dysfunctional teams (stay tuned for future post on this topic).

The Adventures of a DC Commuter Continue

Ahhh it's been a while since I've been able to add another story to the series. It was bound to happen eventually though...

At my internship, because I'm technically a contractor, I'm not allowed to park on site. For the first few weeks of my internship, I bit the bullet and took public transportation, which I had been doing for the past year to get to school. The slight difference, however, was that it took me 45 extra minutes to get to my internship than it took me to get to school, making my grand total commuting time 1 hour and 15 minutes. Rockin.

Not only that, but I'm a 10 minute walk to the metro on my end (up hill on a path through some trees), followed by another 15 minute walk from the metro to work. Throw in the DC summertime humidity and a girl who needs to walk way too quickly because she's not a morning person and always late....and you've got a young professional who shows up to work entirely too winded and sweaty.

Then came the day when I was subbing on a softball team and a random temporary teammate told me that he used to work in the area of my internship. He gave me the sweet sweet tip that you can park on the roof of the CVS (which is right across from the metro) all day for free. This seemed too good to be true. I continued taking the metro for another week or so until one day I woke up entirely too late to make it on time if I were to metro. I decided that that was the day to live life on the edge and test out this sweet sweet tip.

I got to the CVS, and saw that on the lower level, there were signs that said "CVS parking only," "If towed call this number," and "Additional parking on top." I took my chances. I got up there and saw that neither of those first two signs were up there, and instead, there was only "No loitering." Well, I certainly wasn't going to be loitering...I was late! I had to get to work!

It was still risky, so I crossed my fingers the rest of the day (figuratively. Not literally. That would have made typing pretty difficult.) But low and behold, when I returned to my car, I had a car to return to. It had not been towed. This was a beautiful thing, and would make the commute a smidge better. And in DC, a smidge does wonders. I even figured out that if I walked the half mile to work on the other side of the street, I would be walking in the shade, which helped reduce the overheating.

Fast forward to today. The luck ran out. When I was walking down the ramp to begin my half mile walk to work this morning, a police officer passed me on the way up to the CVS rooftop lot. I should have known, but I didn't think twice about it. Sure enough, when I got back to my car this evening, I had a ticket waiting for me. Le sigh. Caught. Plan foiled. Extra half hour of sleep gone. I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

The upside, though, is that the ticket is only $25. And it's a parking violation, which means no license points. Which means, I pretty much just paid for two months of parking for $25, and you can't get that *anywhere* in the city.

But alas, tomorrow I will be back to riding the train. The sweaty, sweaty train.

Revelation

Story of my birth -- I was born in January in Boston during a blizzard. My dad was shoveling the driveway nonstop, waiting for my mom to go into labor.

This is why I hate the cold and have no desire to live in New England or Chicago, and laugh at the thought of anywhere more north than that.

Winning the Candy War

My boss keeps a modest sized dish of candy on her desk. A few weeks ago, a member of another team moved into the empty office in our area. He too, keeps candy on his desk, though not a modest sized dish. It is a fish bowl. A loyal member of my team marched into the newcomer's office to say that she thought he was trying to make our boss look bad, and that we wouldn't put up with it. He said, "Bring it." It didn't help that my boss's candy dish happened to have one piece of candy in it that day. The newcomer walked into my boss's office and had the audacity to give her a bag of Dum Dums and say, "Looks like you could use some help."

It was on.

At our next staff meeting, our top priority was to brainstorm solutions and develop action items. By the end of the week, I had come through on my action item. What follows is the email to my team informing them of the good news.

"I hope this email finds you well.

To follow up on our vital initiative of regaining ground in the area of sweet tooth satisfaction on the 2nd floor, I put aside my less pressing assignments this Friday afternoon to do some research into this matter.

A simple Google search for "airplane M&M dispenser" proved to be quite fruitful. So fruitful, in fact, that I located the exact airplane M&M dispenser that rocketed my former coworker to the leader in attracting candy-seeking visitors.

Do view the link to this opportunity. Perhaps we could perform a cost-benefit analysis of purchasing the dispenser.

I appreciate your time and attention to this important, even crucial, matter.

My boss's response:

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. I have had a team of highly qualified financial analysts conduct a cost-benefit analysis on the purchase of said airplane dispenser. Their study proved that the purchasing the dispenser would yield a positive NPV of approximately $2 Million. Let's proceed with the purchase. At our next 1x1, I will release the funds.

I like my team :-)

A Giggle in CVS

Soon I will be heading off to a birthday party this evening, so I needed to pick up some brewskies before leaving. One of the closest places to buy beer is the CVS down the road, so I figured, since I was headed to a pharmacy, it was a great time to refill my prescription. I dropped it off, went to the refrigerator section, and selected a 6-pack of Leinenkugel Classic Amber. As I waited in line, I noticed the person behind me had a box of tea ready for purchase. This reminded me that I had just finished off the last of my coffee, so I jetted out of line to get a bag of some Dunkin Donuts Original Blend (unfortunately, CVS's selection was not big enough to have the Hazelnut variety).

Back in line, I looked at my purchases of beer and coffee and giggled to myself, thinking about the prescription I had just dropped off -- Prevacid, a medication for acid reflux. A medicine that supports my heavily acidic habits of beer and coffee. Thank you, Prevacid.

Another catastrophe avoided

You've probably heard about this. I feel like I was one of the last to hear about it, and I was actually trying to ride on the Red Line. Funny how you can be annoyed with the delay in the Metro and have no idea what's going on. I was supposed to be meeting up with a friend, and I had to let him know I'd be late because of a delay on the Red Line, which really isn't all that uncommon. Delayed for "technical problems" huh? That's what 6 deaths is?

I decided to get off the line at Farragut North and walk to my Foggy Bottom destination because it was nice enough outside. That's when I got the first text from my dad -- "are you in the red line train wreck?" uhhh.....what? "it was slow moving for sure. I'm meeting someone in foggy bottom so I got off at farragut north and am walking." text back from pops -- "whew!"

Next text from a classmate who I had just spoken with the night before about my ungodly commute on the Orange and Red Lines. "Okay 2 metro trains collided on the red line ... Are you okay?" ohhhh so that's what was causing the delay, yeah that would do it. "Yeah, I didn't realized that's what happened. I was stuck in the delay though. Thanks for asking!" It was at this point I figured I should change my facebook status to let everyone know I wasn't in the crash. I got a few more texts and calls from friends checking up. The love is greatly appreciated. Then I started to think about it....

Flashback to 2007 -- I was in St. Paul to work a youth conference. I had gone over to the conference site, met some people who were also working it, and we all went back to the hotel together to get ready for dinner. While we were there, a few people turned on the TV and learned that the I-35W bridge collapsed, the bridge we had all crossed just a few hours prior to the collapse to get from the Minneapolis airport to our hotel in St. Paul. Immediate calls to the family and coworkers before news traveled back to them to worry.

And then let's throw in the Air France flight that disappeared 2 days after I was on an Air France flight coming back from Turkey.

Add those two incidents with which I feel somewhat connected with today's Red Line crash...I kind of started to freak out on the walk to Foggy Bottom. Still a little shaken up about it.