Rofo in the news

My hometown is going to be the setting of some filming for the "Lovely Bones" movie. Check it out!

Virgo

My cousin sent me this a while back - I'm always amazed at how accurate these things are in describing my personality. I don't usually read my horoscope or put much stock in this, but I know that I am a Virgo to a T.

VIRGO - The Perfectionist. Dominant in relationships. Conservative. Always wants the last word. Argumentative. Worries. Very smart. Dislikes noise and chaos. Eager. Hardworking. Loyal. Beautiful. Easy to talk to. Hard to please. Harsh. Practical and very fussy. Often shy. Pessimistic.

SCORPIO - The Intense One. Very energetic. Intelligent. Can be jealous and/or possessive. Hardworking. Great kisser. Can become obsessive or secretive. Holds grudges. Attractive. Determined. Loves being in long relationships. Talkative. Romantic. Can be self-centered at times. Passionate and Emotional.

LIBRA - The Harmonizer. Nice to everyone they meet. Can't make up their mind. Have own unique appeal. Creative, energetic, and very social. Hates to be alone. Peaceful, generous. Very loving and beautiful. Flirtatious. Give in too easily. Procrastinators. Very gullible.

ARIES - The Daredevil. Energetic. Adventurous and spontaneous. Confident and enthusiastic. Fun. Loves a challenge. EXTREMELY impatient. Sometimes selfish. Short fuse. (easily angered) Lively, passionate, and sharp wit. Outgoing. Lose interest quickly - easily bored. Egotistical. Courageous and assertive. Tends to be physical and athletic.

AQUARIUS - The Sweetheart. Optimistic and honest. Sweet personality. Very independent. Inventive and intelligent. Friendly and loyal. Can seem unemotional. Can be a bit rebellious. Very stubborn, but original and unique. Attractive on the inside and out. Eccentric personality.

GEMINI - The Chatterbox. Smart and witty. Outgoing, very chatty. Lively, energetic. Adaptable but needs to express themselves. Argumentative and outspoken. Likes change. Versatile. Busy, sometimes nervous and tense. Gossips. May seem superficial or incons istent, But is only changeable. Beautiful physically and mentally.

LEO - The Boss. Very organized. Need order in their lives - like being in control. Like boundaries. Tend to take over everything. Bossy. Like to help others. Social and outgoing. Extroverted. Generous, warm-hearted. Sensitive. Creative energy. Full of themselves. Loving. Doing the right thing is important to Leos. Attractive.

CANCER - The Protector. Moody, emotional. May be shy. Very loving and caring. Pretty/handsome. Excellent partners for life. Protective. Inventive and imaginative. Cautious Touchy-feely kind of person. Needs love from others. Easily hurt, but sympathetic.

PISCES - The Dreamer. Generous, kind, and thoughtful. Very creative and imaginative. May become secretive and vague. Sensitive. Don't like details. Dreamy and unrealistic. Sympathetic and loving. Kind. Unselfish. Good kisser. Beautiful.

CAPRICORN - The Go-Getter. Patient and wise. Practical and rigid. Ambitious. Tends to be good-looking. Humorous and funny. Can be a bit shy and reserved. Often pessimists. Capricorns tend to act before they think and can be unfriendly at times. Hold grudges. Like competition. Get what they want.

TAURUS - The Enduring One. Charming but aggressive. Can come off as boring, but they are not. Hard workers. Warm-hearted. Strong, has endurance. Solid beings who are stable and secure in their ways. Not looking for shortcuts. Take pride in their beauty. Patient and reliable. Make great friends and give good advice. Loving and kind. Loves hard - passionate. Express themselves emotionally. Prone to ferocious temper-tantrums. Determined. Indulge themselves often. Very generous.

SAGITTARIUS - The Happy-Go-Lucky. One Good-natured optimist. Doesn't want to grow up (Peter Pan Syndrome). Indulges self. Boastful. Likes luxuries and gambling. Social and outgoing. Doesn't like responsibilities Often fantasizes. Impatient. Fun to be around. Having lots of friends. F lirtatious. D oesn't like rules. Sometimes hypocritical. Dislikes being confined - tight spaces or even tight clothes. Doesn't like being doubted. Beautiful inside and out.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOG!

Yesterday marked this blog's one year birthday. In the grand tradition of such anniversaries the world over, I will give my list of best of blog blogs.

I got mam'ed
What's in a courtesy title?
Goodbye to Gram
The aftermath
Forward snob
Food envy
Immune from a good laugh
Sucking your vacation away
Macaroni magic
Bon bini
The last macaw
Tiger Woods I am not
I scream, you scream
Cousints
Mickey has left the building
Cheers and Jeers
I'm Hatin It

Enjoy rereading your favorite entries and thanks for visiting the Soapbox!!

I'm here to PUMP...clap...you up!

I am not a vigilant gym-goer. I only started working out in college when prompted by my boyfriend. I probably went just to impress him. By junior year, when the impressing stage of our relationship was over, I kind of let it slide. After I married said boyfriend, things began to slide the other way. I belong to a gym that is associated with work and is not far from our building. If I go, I try to do so after work. I usually get there 2x a week, if I'm lucky.

Recently, I've wrangled two other co-workers in joining as well (since it's a good deal and we get a reimbursement from our company if we belong to a gym). For these referrals, the girl (I say that but I think she's older than me) that runs the gym told me I'd get a free workout. Cool. I have never known what I really should be doing with all those weights, I just kind of wing it.

I scheduled my workout. The next time I was at the gym, the girl, Jessica, said, "I hope you're ready for our workout next week."

That's when I started to get nervous.

A friend had done it and said it wasn't that bad. Said friend is in much better shape them me. I mentally gulped.

Our workout started with Jessica grabbing two 10 lb weights and marching out to the parking lot. She asked, "When you do lunges, how much weight do you hold?"

Um, none weight. I can barely lunge my body weight. If anything, 5-8 lb.

So I did lunge/bicep curls across the parking lot, leg shaking, face purple and heavy breathing. All the while she chatted about the gym, my workplace, etc. I did a lot of "uh-huh"ing between lunges. The rest of the workout went pretty much the same, with her pressing a few extra reps out of me on every workout. If I'm honest, I have to say that though it was probably the hardest workout I'd ever done, it was way overdue and I wasn't TOO sore in the morning. I did take a hot bath and drink about a gallon of water.

Now at the gym, filed under J, is a little workout sheet for me to use to track my progress. Now I have to do it, since Jessica can pull it out and check anytime, and give me disapproving stares whenever I come in if I'm not fulfilling my potential.

GUILT!

All by myself

Since last Wednesday, I have been on my own. Kevin has been in Puerto Rico with the men's bball team as the radio engineer. If you know me, you know that I enjoy my time to myself, so I was looking forward to a few days alone. I went Christmas shopping with a friend and her daughter, assisted with a Mary Kay event, and did a few errands.

In general though, I was amazingly unproductive.

Whenever Kevin has a day to himself, I always come home and he's done something around the house, no matter how small. He likes to make a list and check things off. Maybe this was my problem; I had no list. There were many things I thought to do, randomly, as I walked by a pile of items, a wall with peeling paint, a cluttered room, but I just couldn't seem to get my act together. I felt I needed to stock up on loafing, as I have not done much of it lately and don't foresee much of it in the future, given the impending holiday season.

And, also typical of me, given Kevin's return today, I ran around and did a few things yesterday at the last minute so it wouldn't look like I was a complete slacker. Made some homemade soup, did some laundry, organized some MK stuff...nothing earth-shattering.

I think it all comes back to the fact that my main fuel is guilt, and with no one around to judge me, I had no motivation. I am a sad, sad person.

Birfday wishes

So, we went out to dinner tonight for my brother's birthday - what a fiasco THAT was!!!

Nah, just kidding. I'm not really going to tell a story about that, but we did go out to dinner for Frank's birthday, and it had fiasco tendencies. He was giving me a hard time for my Acme roast below, and saying, "I bet this dinner's going to make the blog." So just to spite him in his old age, it will not. :-)

I do want to say happy birthday to Frank. He's 25. He gives good hugs. He makes me laugh. He has eclectic taste in music. He can sleep anywhere. He's got the Dougherty stubborness. He's handy. He's single, ladies!! We have different personalities in many ways, but most of the fundamental attributes are the same. I love my bruver!!

Look at those guns! And Frank's aren't bad either!

From incompetence to perfection

So tonight I made another excursion to the grocery store. You all know I have high grocery store expectations; I've written about it before. After working at one for many of my formative working years, there are things about this experience, when they go wrong, that just irk me deeper than other things in life. There are a number of grocery stores around us; unfortunately, due to budget, I am limited in my options. I mostly attend our local Acme because it is close by, reasonably priced and I know my way around the store and the personnel by now.

Tonight, I had the pleasure of being served by a bevy of enthusiastic and helpful personnel. Insert sarcasm here. My experience started, as it is wont to do, with the deli counter. I detest the deli counter, so I like to take care of it up front. Even though there are three girls behind the counter, only one of them was working, as one was cleaning a slicer (a legitimate excuse) and the other was on her cell phone behind the prepared foods, hiding.

So, fine; I wait my turn while the man in front of me buys a pound of beef bologna (hello heart attack) and about 18 bags of kaiser rolls. The deli girl who is working was nice to him. She then turns to me and already has attitude. I ask her for a 1/3 of a pound of Danish Ham, as it is clearly labeled in the case. She makes a face like my request carries a malodorous scent, and has to get help finding the appropriate ham. It's on sale for cripes sakes - don't tell me no one else requested it today.

She then proceeds to slice 3/4 of a pound, not 1/3 as requested. I could see that the pile was growing larger than I customarily purchase, but did not want to interrupt her in case my perception was off. She prints out the snazzy label and sure enough, it's .75 of a pound. That's fine, because it's on sale, but a bit wasteful because we won't eat that before it goes bad.

"Anything else?" she asks, looking past me.

"Yeah, I asked for 1/3 of a pound of the ham, but that's no big deal. Can I have 1/3 of a pound of the turkey breast? Not 3/4 of a pound, 1/3," I say. Now that probably comes off looking bad in print, but I had a legitimate concern that this girl just did not understand her decimals nor the conventions of general English associated with them.

"I'll take the ham back," she says, dripping with 'tude.

"No, it's no big deal. But I only need 1/3 lb of the turkey."

"Okay," she says, looking at me like I am a crazy, high-strung deli meat nazi.

Is it wrong to want what you ask for?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I then had a very pleasant experience with one of my regular personnel in seafood (that's right, we eat SOME fish in this household), so things were looking up, even though I had run into the creepy bagger guy who always has to talk to me.

At the check out, I am greeted by a new cashier who looks startlingly like Chunk of Goonies fame. I wanted to grill him about the time he pushed his sister down the stairs in third grade. Anyway, this kid starts off on the wrong foot by calling me "m'am", which we've been over before.

"M'am, didn't you see the sign at the end of the aisle?"

Now, the creepy bagger guy often gives me this line, so I've heard it before.

"Don't tell me you're rocking that line now," I said (I really did say that!)

Chunk looked around for creepy bagger guy, who was not in sight. He then proceeded to tell me that this was the smile aisle, and I had to smile. Yeah, yeah...ring up my asparagus, will ya? There's nothing I hate more than being told I should smile, cheer up, etc. Before I walked out, he also demonstrated an inability to juggle plastic tubes and exchanged snitty comments with another cashier, reinforcing my belief that he was about 12 years old.

This entire experience is oddly juxtaposed in my life with a training seminar today on managing multiple projects and deadlines. In it, we learned that delegation is a key tool in getting things done - delegation also happens to be something I suck at. The root of the problem, for me, is that I want not only control, but everything to be perfect, and I believe that only I can deliver that perfection. I was judging all these poor souls at Acme with the same yardstick - I would never have misjudged measurements, given attitude, creeped people out or spouted inane commentary.

In the seminar, we were taught to reject perfectionism. It is impossible to be perfect. We are to think progress, not perfection. Because even if something is 80% right, it's still moving forward toward a goal. Who cares if every step of the way is not perfect, as long as the outcome is what you want?

I got my Danish Ham, didn't I?




PS - this whole time I've been trying to think of what the title of this post reminds me of - it finally hit me. The blockbuster movie, From Justin to Kelly