Hello, My Name is ______ and I'm a junkie.

My favorite way to watch tv is on dvd. You don't have to wait for a week or 2 for a new episode, there are no commercials, no stupid pop ups for what's coming on next...ALL bonuses.
I've been addicted to watching Rescue Me from season 1. I'd not seen an episode before and RRB (recently retired blogger) Willie had let me borrow his season 1 on dvd months ago to watch and I tried it at that time and but had a hard time paying attention to it - shiny things were distracting me. Brought it home and lost track of it. Then one day a couple of weeks ago, I was impatiently awaiting my netflixed 6ft Under Season 3 disc 3 to arrive and went scrounging for something else to fill the void and Willie's copy of Rescue Me jumped out at me. I went through those dvds like they're the free sample, leaving me a complete fiend. So, I tell my fireman friend, John, that I've been watching it and he says, "Oh, here, you can borrow season 2." John is an enabler. Since I've been tellin' Matt that he needs to watch it too, he goes and downloads season 3 and 4 and I went through those over the course of the past three days. Matt walks in tonight, while I'm watching the last episode and says, "Would you love me more if I were like Tommy Gavin?" My reply:
Yes. Yes, I would.

Fay is Gay

Anyone not in Florida thinks we're going through some Katrina type situation during this piddly ass storm. Sure, we have tornadoes to be concerned about - but that's the most of it. The power going out sometime in the middle of the night will certainly make things uncomfy. We, personally, might have porch flooding. Matt went to the gym and picked up Tijuana Flats for dinner. Just like we would any other non-tropical depression/storm night.
So, why does it feel like a "snow day"??
Oh, because they closed our office building and schools.
Its always good to be prepared - ABSOLUTELY!!, but if you watch the cable news shows - you'd think we were about to die. Everything's in red and bold face and it all looks so urgent. Even on the local news, is no other news - just storm coverage.
I'm sure we'll be receiving food rations and jugs of water pretty soon.
For Floridians, the level of seriousness we apply to a potential hurricane and being prepared for it (based on category level) can be measured by what we do with our community pool furniture.
If the pool deck furniture is merely stacked in short towers.....the storm isn't going to be that bad and we can take things casually.
If the pool deck furniture has been thrown and sunk in the deep end of the pool....get your goggles & fins on, jump in, and pretend you're in a reef. When the wind starts to kick up and the clouds roll in, get your Jacques Custeau lovin' ass inside, get your flashlights and radios and time killin' essentials together and get comfy for the ride. Try really hard to ignore the wind thrashing your roof top and the creaking of the buiding studs and the rain slashing all windows from all directions. Wear the least amount of clothes possible when you finally have to open up the house because its gotten so stuffy inside without the a/c since the power's been out for the past 6hrs and the air is so humid, your book pages curl up. Make sure you have enough beer and rum. Maybe just rum. Rum and munchies are important. Toilet paper is too.
I went to Lowe's this afternoon and there was hardly anyone in there - but a TON of water, batteries, flashlights, generators, radios, plywood, charcoal, etc. Mountains of it.
If this was a real storm - there would be no place to find that stuff.
So I bought my new bathroom paint color and tile sealant and went home to "hunker down" for the night.
The paint color has really turned out nice.

Have you ever had that dream....??

During one of my recent trips and after having a few drinks with dinner and a couple with the fellas afterwards, I crashed in bed around 12:30am.  I wasn't completely hammered - just had a good happy buzz and crashed out instantly.

Suddenly, I woke up and was walking down the hallway outside of my room.  I remember the slight & blurry feeling that there was a reason why I was going down the hall and I was ok with it.  Then I woke up even more and realized I was two things:  1. Locked out, and 2. Completely naked (since I don't wear pjs).  If anyone had been out in the hall with me, I'm sure they would've seen the panic wash over my face right at that moment.  I scurried back to my room door and tried to jimmy the lock with the "no service/later please" door tag like I've been able to do in the past to other, less secure doors.  No dice this time - room doors in chain hotels are like vaults.  So - I duck my head out in the hall to see if the coast was clear and started to make my way - quickly - toward the front desk (on the same floor, luckily for me no elevator ride).  On my way in that direction, there was a conference room door slightly ajar with the lights off.  I slid inside, thankful for the dark room.  There happened to be a phone right inside so I called the front desk.  They picked up instantly and I asked if I could be let back in to room 205.  

Him:  "You have to come to the front desk, ma'am." 

Me: "Please don't make me...."

Him:  "I'm sorry, ma'am, but you need to come to the front desk to get another key."

Me:  "But I'm naked and locked out...."

He made a noise like he laughed in his mouth and said, "How the...I'm sorry - I didn't know that.  I'm on my way."

I peaked my head out the door and saw him walk past on his way to my room.  When he turned the corner I checked the hallway again, looking both ways to make sure it was just me and him in the hall.  He was a door away from my room when I snuck up behind him, holding my boobs with my right arm, grabbed my new room key with my left hand, quickly unlocked my vault, and slipped inside the door thanking him very much.  Completely mortified and finally able to breathe again, I went back to bed, checking the clock that read 2:30am.  Which meant that I'd been asleep for a good 1.5-2 hours before waking up in the hallway - upright.  I went back to sleep and woke up in the morning so hoping that it really had been a dream.  Then I saw the extra key sitting on the desk next to the bent up "no service/later please" tag.

I've never sleep walked before in my life - to my knowledge.  First time for everything, right??

Office Bound

Its Thursday, right? This week's been a blur and I'm not typing this from my pretty red macbook.....which doesn't make me happy. This week has made me happy - but the lack of time I've had to spend with my new mac is making me cranky. I was only able to take it out of the box, turn it on, and listen to it say hello to me with its pretty starry night desktop. We were amazed that it had a charge right out of the box. Usually new toys need to sit plugged in and you have a 24 hr waiting period before playtime can commence. So it found our wireless - I got it signed on, yada yada - and then turned it off and plugged it in because I had a guest to pay attention to. Thought it would be kinda rude to nose dive into apple world while a friend was sitting on the couch wanting to be entertained.
I think I need a name for my new laptop....
I also need to find the camera cord so I can post one of the greatest stories to have happened to me recently. Luckily this temporary setback will help to build anticipation for both of my readers. One of which already knows the story. HYPE HYPE HYPE!!

NEW TOY DAY!!!

My apologies for not having any recent posts. When I got home from my trip last week, my laptop decided to give me the finger and not connect to the interwebs. I haven't been able to fix it yet - even though its probably something very simple - I just ran out of patience and slammed it shut and really haven't picked it up since. Actually I did pick it up last night to go through some pictures, and then shut it down and put it on the floor.....where I kicked it this a.m. That'll learn it for giving me the finger.

So I bought a macbook. YAY!!
And it just came in today - like 20 or 30 minutes ago. YAY!!!

I can't wait to go home and play with it.....AND THEN I WILL POST - POST LIKE THE WIND!!!

Philly Wandering

Here's the map of the city my field rep gave me for wandering around while the men were in an executive mtg:

Movin' on up

So yesterday I was invited to tag along with one of my field reps to visit one of our accounts and we're high up in the Comcast Center building in Philly. The building is like the FUTURE - brand new. Huge video screen walls in the lobby that people are just stopping in to watch. Visitor's passes include pictures, with a barcode that gets you through the gate, and the elevator. It was like Minority Report....minus the stolen eyeballs for the retina scan. The Comcast bldg is the tallest in the city and there's a fantastic view from where we were on the 51st floor so I snapped a few pictures all sneaky like before we get escorted up to the conference room. We all sit down and start our meeting and are talking about contracts and new ways to utilize the monotized product set for prioritized projects that have been bucketized for each business unit. (seriously...this is how they talk and half the time I have no idea what's being said - I just smile and nod and chime in when I can.) Behind me, I hear my phone's rec'd a txt msg but of course I politely wait until after the meeting's adjourned to check and see what bit of goodness has come through. I flip open my phone and see its a picture message. I patiently wait while it loads and I see this:

And the message with it says: "pimple between my eyes - YAY I'm a unicorn!!"

Awesome.

These are not my fish.

Mine always die before they have a chance to get that big.

Maybe I'll ask what the ancient chinese secret is of how to keep them alive that long.

I wish Florida had yummy grass

feels good on my feets.

Airport People

On my way to Philadelphia (again) for work stuff and I missed my 5:00pm flight and ended up getting another that left at 7:00pm. So I head over to the terminal and belly up to the new fancy black quartz bar and miss the line up of beer they had sitting over the wine taps. Yes, I said wine taps. No draft beer. I settle for Miller Lite in the bottle and stick my nose in "Cabal". I'm aware there's a woman eating Wendy's to my right and another fella has sat down on my left. I glance up and he's wearing a white hanes t-shirt, a black blazer, a very long string of hippie beads and a big fat pair of diddy shades. He has one of those snooty "very important people" accents and asks for a Belvedere on the rocks, straight. Then changes his mind and says, "Actually, lets make that a Stoli, if you can believe it...rocks with a splash of soda." Oh, buddy, I can certainly believe it. And what's wrong with Stoli?? We learn that the company that brews Stella Artios bought out Budweiser. He makes a joke about the economy. Then he tells the bartender that he owns an "ultra lounge" in LA. What the hell is an ultra lounge? He says he only sells Cristal for about $600-800 a bottle but buys it for about $150. His ultra lounge is called "Seven" (apparently a very common club name). His "girls" make about $1500 per table per night. He said his "thing" was that he'd rather buy a club than spend $3000/night to go to one. I gave him a cool point for admitting that "everything in/out of LA is bullshit". He keeps brag- I mean talking and then he says he's in town doing some consulting work for a client and lives above a cigar bar in Lk Mary and actually says "being in the action" when he's describing it. Lk Mary is hardly action and I seriously doubt anyone that does the amount of business this dude is braggin' about is going to say something like that about Lake Mary. He tells us about his $25,000 platinum phone that he bought used for $7500 that he says he keeps at home cuz he's afraid of losing it. His Blackberry gives him a look from the countertop in front of him and doesn't ring once the whole time he's sitting at the bar. As I pay my tab and gather my crap, he shakes my hand and tells me to "have a good trip, enter pet name here". I reply, "Maybe I'll see you in Lk Mary." He says, "I don't really blend in that well there."
He was right - EVERYTHING out of LA is bullshit.
Bet he didn't even get to fly first class like I did. :) Upgrading rules. So does free rum.

Red Dawn

We were watching the last 20-30 mins of Red Dawn last night after we had a FANTASTIC dinner at Antonio's (best MoonFish - EVER!!). I was telling Matthew about how Dirty Dancing was my favorite movie in 5th grade and how Patrick Swayze was my movie crush #3. I even came to the realization that Dirty Dancing is the reason behind why I think a man in black pants - and ONLY black pants - is the sexiest thing ever.
And then this scene where Patrick Swayze is cryin' in the snow takes place: