Is it the same?

A few years ago I got myself in to credit card debt. Some of it is
legitimate medical bills. Some of it is buying stuff I couldn't afford
while making NO money at my job in Atlanta and trying to pay for a car
and an apartment. Then once you buy the stuff, you get smacked with
intrest charges and what you thought you owed grows faster than you
ever imagined possible.

So I took charge and looked in to both debt management and bankruptcy.
Because I was making so little I technically was eligible for
bankruptcy, but I decided that debt consolidation was my best option.
I'm paying $x a month for 5 years. I have 22 payments left, but I'll
probably pay it off early.

Technically, I got a bail out. A bail out I'm making good on. The
credit card companies are still getting all their money back, plus
interest. I had bad money management skills and I used other peoples'
money to fix it.

So I feel like I have no right to be upset that Wall Street and the
banks are getting bailed out. They made bad decisions, but so did I. I
shouldn't be so pissed that I'm going to be fiscally punished for
years to come for the repercussions of the US going even further in to
debt to hand greedy bastards $700 billion, but I am. I hate that the
country will be screwed for years and years and years to come because
of this.

I also hate that I don't understand economics enough to know whether
or not we really need to bail them out. Then again, neither do the
people in charge.

Dear Snow Patrol,

I love you, it's your new song I'm not too sure about.

Let's see what the rest of the album holds.

Thanks,

Sarah

Paging Dr. Sweets

I need a therapist.

That's what my Dr. said the last two times I've been in to see her. I'm pretty sure she's not wrong. She said, "you need someone on your side." The nice thing is- all of my friends who I've mentioned this conversation to have said, "but we are on your side. Who isn't on your side?"

It isn't so much that as work. I've been trying to fall asleep for 2 hours tonight, and it just isn't taking. Every time I try, work floods in to my brain and I can't switch off. This needs to be done, that needs to be taken care of. This is going wrong. I need to talk to this person about that."

I like what I do. A lot. I like the people I work with. A lot. Its been harder recently because my three favorite people are gone. Maureen, Layla and Daniel. I still talk to Maureen a lot. And Daniel and I still talk daily, but its not the same as having them in the office all day every day. Layla moved to San Diego to go to school and move on with her life, and I'm very, VERY happy for her. But it doesn't mean that I don't miss her and think the office was better with her in it. Plus, my friend Kristin was back last week for a visit, and it just reminded me of how good work was when she worked there too.

Of course this is what happens when you work someplace for a long (in today's day and age) period of time. Last Friday was my 2 year anniversary of working for my company. Overall it has been a very, (not to be redundant) VERY good experience. But its still sad to see people move on.

This isn't to say that the new people aren't awesome. There are some funny, nice, "kindred spirits" there now. My teammates are amazing. I get along with just about everyone (as far as I know, and really if someone doesn't like me oh well.)

Its just hard when the work itself won't let your brain turn off.

So, the task is to find a therapist. Hope I like the person. And then make time in my schedule for the visits. And then fight with insurance over whether or not they'll cover it. Just more things to stress about.

finally-

my car goes in for service tomorrow. its been making funny noises for quite some time, but there hasn't been a single day in which i haven't had a meeting so that i could take it in. finally yesterday i realized, "i have no meetings."

i hope its not expensive, but whatever. fixing it before i breakdown on the side of the road is A) safer and B) more cost effective in the long run. i want to get another 2 years, hopefully 3, out of this car before i get something new.

i'd say i love my car, but honestly i don't. i WOULD love my car, but i don't like things that have been wrecked and are now fixed. 2 of the accidents are my fault. but the drunk driver killed my love for my car. when she wrecked it, i honestly wanted a new car. not one that my insurance company paid $9,000 to have put back together. nothing has been the same since. my door rattles if i play music too loudly. my dashboard rattles randomly, about 80% of the time. my windows sometimes scrape as i put them up and down. i want something unblemished, where if there are imperfections, they're all my fault. i'm not one for driving fancy cars, especially not in LA where your car is going to get scraped in the parking lot, but i want one that doesn't have 3 new body panels and a new hood.

plus i want one with heated seats and an ipod connection. i'll pay extra for those.

The problem with weekends...

The problem with my weekends is actually my week. I leave my house by
8 AM every morning and get back by 7 PM at the earliest. That doesn't
leave too much time to get stuff done. Hair appointments, oil changes,
laundry, grocery shopping etc.

So I leave it til the weekend. Then on the weekend I want to just
relax, which does not include laundry, oil changes, grocery shopping,
etc. So nothing ever gets done.

On the weekends I want to sleep, go to the movies, go to Barnes and
Noble, catch up on sleep, hang out with friends. Not errands. Which is
why my car is making funny noises. My apartment isn't clean. I haven't
mailed a baby gift for a friend's baby. That baby just celebrated her
first birthday. This is why I am down to just one clean towel and I'm
running out of clothing.

I need better weekday time management or to make myself do stuff on
week nights.

Part 2- I love drug names. New drug for bi-polar disorder- Abilify.
That might be the best drug name ever.

Funniest Thing of the Day-

We all need to appreciate the funny things in life.

This is why I generally pay attention to what makes me laugh each day- and then tell that person, "this is my funniest thing today." Whether its something they did or something they said I let them know its the thing that's made me laugh the hardest.

What I really need to start doing is keeping track. It does me no good to award my "Funniest Thing of the Day" if I'm not going to remember it by the time I get home from work.

Today's I know happened- I was at my co-worker EM's desk. She and I both laughed really hard. But at what? No clue. Today's was bad that my really annoying laugh that I hate when I do happened. (wow, that's a bad sentence.) Anyway- yet another thing that's going to drive me nuts as I fall asleep tonight (see previous blog for actor in Fringe and Cake cutting question.)

Part 2- LinkedIn- Leslie sent me an invitiation to add her to Linkedin today. Which I of course accepted. I have some random contacts in there. An engineer I work with in Omaha, an old co-worker from Smallwood, my uncle, and now Leslie. So I decided to go through and add a bunch of people from my e-mail contact list.

Now- will we really ever help each other's careers? I don't know. Is it just facebook for adults with jobs? I don't know that either. But it can't hurt- right?

Fringe and other stuff.

I liked it.

It's going to draw some X-Files comparisons, as it should, but it is different enough to not be a complete rip-off. Parts of it were laughable, but Dawson's Creek guy's character was a good foil to the ridiculousness. Some parts were very predictable, but it's TV. I'll watch it again for sure.

BUT- then came something that leads people to say, "there are too many channels" and things of that nature. A game show where people have to make their bodies into certain shapes to fit through holes in walls, and if they aren't successful they get pushed into a pool. I watched it for 10 minutes before thinking, "wait, what?" and turning it off. Seriously, people watch that?

Part three of this is my pet peeve (if you can call it that.) There was a guy on Fringe who I recognize from somewhere, just I can't place him. Usually I like to wait until it comes to me, as kind of a brain exercise, but its not coming to me. The full cast isn't up on IMDB yet, so I haven't been able to cheat and figure it out, and its driving me nuts.

Part 4- sometimes I hate being the "smart" friend. I admit- most of the time I like it. I like being the one people go to for answers, except for when I don't have them. Today I get a call from my old roommate Jessica. "Hey Mensa* girl- I have a problem I need you to solve." They were playing Cranium and they couldn't come up with the answer to the problem, and she was asking me if I could figure it out. I can't. I'm stumped. And now I feel stupid. I'm sure an 8 year old could solve it in two seconds.

Cut a cake in 8 slices using 3 cuts. 1 horizontal and 2 vertical that can cross each other. My questions- is the cake round? and do the pieces have to be equal in size? answers to both- card didn't say. I can only come up with 7 pieces. I'm hoping that Jessica gave the question to me wrong- because otherwise I'm dumb. I refuse to cheat and look it up on the internet.

*I maintain for the record- I AM NOT IN MENSA.

long blog

its been awhile since i sat down to a computer to write a blog. i haven't actually been at home in front of my computer for a month, so everything i've been posting is just spur of the moment from my phone.

why haven't i been at home in front of my computer for a month? house sitting. okay- house sitting- extra money is always nice, but this time it was too long of a stretch away from my life, and it took too big of a toll on me. my allergies ended up being out of control, and by the end i was just permanently sick. (and then throw in the food poisoning on top of that and its not a good combination.) of the 31 days of august, i think i counted up that i was away from home for 26 of them. so i was away from my things, and the only clothing i had with me was what i had packed. not to mention the fact that i was going back and forth between two houses at the end.

and, i can't say that i'm the biggest fan of animals. i don't understand owning them. they provide (to me at least) no enjoyment, and cause only trouble. you have to wake up to feed them, keep them from barking (dogs that is) and they're completely disgusting. its too stressful leading your life around having to go home every certain number of hours to let the animals out and feed them, make sure they didn't destroy anything, and then pick up their fecal matter after them when you're walking them. ugh, and don't get me started on cleaning litter boxes. i will never own a pet. gross.

part 2 of this blog- i want to read a really scary book. something that makes me so scared i have to get out of bed to make sure our front door is locked, but so scared that i'm sure i'll be murdered in my living room on the way to check. i love being scared occasionally, and right now is one of those times. its just hard to tell what's going to scare me. i remember reading Jurassic park in high school, and being too scared to go downstairs and put laundry in the dryer. i KNEW that there was going to be a velociraptor waiting for me in the laundry room and i would be ripped to shreds. i've never read a stephen king book, so i don't know if any of those would scare me, but honestly they're too long for me to commit any time to. i need suggestions.

part 3- i made it through the fast food ban, but i'm still limiting my coke intake. even now, i'm still only letting myself have fast food once a week. its been easy since i've had food poisoning, so we'll see how it goes once my stomach works again. new ban- no pizza for the month of september. i eat pizza too often because its easy- and i don't really enjoy it at all anymore. if i stop eating it for awhile, maybe i'll start actually enjoying it again.

oh well, that's all for now. i'm sure i'll come up with more later.