more paychecks to come

A week ago I officially got hired on at my job! I'm proud to say I endured a semi-awkward negotiation round that ended with me getting a little more than I was offered, which is always the ultimate goal, right? I’ve been really loving the work, and I’m so grateful I’ve landed a gig with a company that really values its employees (although they’re not afraid to work us hard). I’ve yet to get a massage and people are still warming up to me, but when these things happen, you’ll be the first to know!

Now, onto the important stuff. This also means I’ll get to officially decorate my office, which is unofficially one of the things I’ve been looking forward to the most! I’ve always felt very affected by my environment, which is why I tend to keep a healthy assortment of paint and pictures on the walls. A warm house = a warm heart! My über-white walls at the office are currently defeating my soul, so I’ve spent the last seven weeks fantasizing about brighter days to come.

This leads to a very important question: is it appropriate to go all Martha Stewart on your office décor? Brian says no. Because he’s a boy. (When I described an intricate setup involving a wall sticker, wheatgrass, and a reed diffuser, I might as well have said I was opening a petting zoo in my office). Although I still think my idea would be the perfect way to cheer up my white² walls, I guess there is something to be said for the fact that I’m new, and misdecorating my office could misdecorate my reputation. (Isn't it good to see my professional focus is in the right place?)

I’m going to execute a Phase I upgrade tomorrow by bringing in some bamboo and hanging the oversized Paper Source calendar that Amy got me for my birthday, which I am unreasonably excited about! But seriously, look how vintage-bright-cute it is.

There's plenty of white space left to jazz up, but I’m going to hold off on anything else until I get a little feedback. What’s on your walls at work, and what do you guys think is acceptable décor protocol? Framed pictures? Framed art? Candles? Reed diffusers (say yes)? Nothing at all? Let’s hear it, or it's going to be me versus an Ikea catalog and that's something scary.

it's like china...

...but smaller.

Last weekend we were supposed to go skiing in Colorado with some of our Tejas friends, but we had to cancel because it was going to cost way more than is appropriate for a long weekend. We should've been proud at being responsible adults for five minutes, but instead, mostly just me because I'm a baby we were sort of mopey. Believe it or not, getting home from work on Friday at almost 9 did not help shake the thought that I should be in a hot tub in CO after a long day on the mountain. WAH WAH.

We thought about substituting in a day trip to Michigan or Wisconsin just for fun, and then realized that was dumb too because oh yeah it's freezing there and the only thing to do when it's freezing is go skiing and now we're back at square one. So instead, we opted to stay put and explore our own backyard by going to Chinatown!

In general, I haven't been able to do as much exploring in the city as I'd like, because when we had time we didn't have money and now that we have money we don't have time and/or it's gross weather, so I feel like my explorations are really just beginning. Brian's suggestion for walking around C-town was perfect because despite the below-freezing temps, there were BLUE SKIES for five seconds so hail-mary-mother-of-God I was determined to be outside.

Nǐ hǎo, sunshine!

I've never been to a Chinatown before, and I was surprised to actually feel transported to another country for a few hours! Although it was pretty dirty and the smells may or may not have conveyed rotting fish intestines, it was fun to walk through the shops and pick up some much-needed chopsticks and bamboo (how American am I?).

We learned from some statues/plaques in the square that the boar (me) should avoid the monkey (Brian) at all costs, and that I also should not be put in charge of money. Although my good financial decisions were why we were there in the first place, so take that Chinese zodiac! The candy shops left a lot to be desired, mostly because I'm not interested in bean paste or dried baby fish. Does that make me a bad person?

That's the baby fish. Right there in the sample dish. Riiiight there.

Fortunately I thought our lunch was delish, although again we didn't score too many points on the adventurous scale with our sesame chicken and pot stickers. The restaurant had some killer TV shows playing, so I can officially check "Watch shows with poor singing, awkward costumes, bad sets, and terrible scripts" off my list for the year.


After a few hours in Chicago's China, I wouldn't say I'm jonesing to fly across the world to see the real mccoy, but it was definitely a fun way to spend the afternoon before the clouds rolled back in. Later, China!

the art of the ugg

I've been thinking about Uggs for a while now. And by "for a while" I mean, since college.

I don't actually remember seeing people in Uggs during college, but I remember learning distinctly that Uggs were a college thing. Because I'm always at least two years behind shoe trends, I completely missed the acceptable time in my life where I could wear them. This was okay with me because I think they're f-Uggly. No shape, no style, no sass, no thank you.

I then experienced an Ugg hiatus for my three years in Austin. Those things were nowhere to be found. My friends might have had them, but I don't think they wore them (probably because they stopped wearing them in college...). I naturally assumed Uggs were out.

So imagine my surprise when I move to Chicago and BOOM, Uggs are back! They never left! And they're more in style than ever!

You don't even have to follow the Sweatpant Code: where you look like the only effort you could put into your hot mess of an outfit was to shove your sweatpants into your Uggs. Nope, here, you can be a female over the age of 24 and wear these in public, at work, and other socially acceptable places.

Now my question is...were Uggs ever out? Or have they legitimately been on a 10-year hot streak among women of all ages? The only thing that really concerns me about this, beyond the fact that AMERICA HAS NO STYLE, is that I may actually be 10 years behind the shoe scene now.

I need to know people.

Uggs: in or out?

a long winter

On weeks when the sun is off doing its own thing, the little things make a big difference!

snowpacalypse

By now everyone knows what just went down in Chicago, America, etc. over the past few days. Situations around here ranged from "heavily inconvenienced" to "I'm going to kill someone." A ton of people got stuck on one of the city's largest thoroughfares, and one of our friends got stuck in a cab for two hours that only went nine blocks. Craziness.

Around here, however, I dare say I enjoyed my first official blizzard! Since my office was closed, I got to work from home, which meant I scored a little extra sleep in the morning and got to spend 99% of the day in pajamas. I stood by the window for approximately half of the time I was home, watching the terrain of our street change from slippery to insurpassable to f-ed up (these are technical terms, you see).

You didn't think I wouldn't take pictures during all this, did you? Whose blog did you think you were reading, anyway?!

Heavy winds, 20" of snow, and one cozy house

Ironically, the paved part is a makeshift

sidewalk and the unpaved part is actually the street

Indeed

Park!

Brian found something to jump off of, weird

My snow angel is for real

Just, you know, jumping out of a tree

There's a car in there somewhere.

Oh, and this all had to be shoveled. By not me.

Camping out in my new snow fort

Enjoying a brewski in the outdoor La-Z-Boy

Now what I want to know is...where is all this snow going to go??? After asking Brian a series of flood-related questions, it sounds like it's just sort of going to go away. I don't know about all that, but since the temps aren't supposed to break freezing anytime soon, I guess I'll have to wait and see.

Tomorrow it's back to work...and then the weekend! Snowpacalypses are the best!

drool-worthy app

I recently came over to the dark side, also known to 92.8 million AT&T subscribers as Dropped Call City. Jackie gave me a brief tour on Day 1, noting Zero Coverage Bars in Major Areas to the right and Missed Calls That Don’t Even Ring and Go Straight to VM on the left. So far my favorite spot is One Bar While Standing Next to a Cell Booster…pretty exclusive guest list there.

My surface motivation for the change was to be on a family plan with Brian to save money. My actual motivation was, clearly, to get an iPhone. I’ve been happy with my Droid, but I love Apple so much…and it syncs to my Mac…and 3GS phones are down to $50…and thatfamilyplanorsomething.

Naturally I started getting into the apps first thing. I immediately got Words With Friends, 3 photography apps, a few health-related apps, and…drumroll…Sleep Cycle.

Since I downloaded it last week, I have become a Sleep Cycle ambassador whose singular goal is to track the sleeping cycle of mankind. BECAUSE THIS APP IS AWESOME.

Basically you open the app, set it upside down next to your pillow, and it uses an accelerometer (pretty sure that’s a made-up word) to track your movement throughout the night. I guess it functions under the principle that the less you move, the deeper your sleep is. You give it a 30-minute window for when you need to wake up, and the alarm will go off in the lightest part of your cycle within that window so that you wake up feeling as refreshed as possible. Every morning you wake up to something awesome like this:

True to the graph, I woke up at 1:30 a.m. because the TV was still on.

Why do I love this so much? Let me count the ways:

1. Um, it’s awesome to see your sleep cycle.

2. Sometimes I wonder if I slept well, or if I woke up, or how well I actually slept even if I slept a lot more than normal. Questions: answered.

3. To get it to snooze, all you have to do is pick the phone up and set it back down. No eye-opening necessary.

4. It tracks on average how much sleep you get, which is helping me understand that I really need to go to bed earlier.

5. The alarm-sound options are drastically more pleasant than the iPhone’s basic options. For example, instead of waking up to “DING DONG GET THE F*@& UP!” now it’s more like “Psst. Good morning, beautiful. Your breath does not smell like a dragon fart, in fact, I find it quite attractive. No please don’t get up just yet, I’ll be back in a minute. Kisses.”

I’m really interested to see how well I sleep at night after a big night 'o alcohol. I took a drunk reading this weekend and saw that I’d basically flatlined in the night. However, recent research (by me) has shown that perhaps the phone just didn’t get a reading since I was on a different bed. So, I plan to test it again this coming weekend...and that is my excuse.

$4.50/day keeps the driving away

Commuting to work via public transportation is something I've definitely never experienced before. Ft. Worth, Memphis, and Austin are driving cities. (We can argue about biking in Austin, but most people drive mostly everywhere). Here, driving to work is not an option, because parking downtown is a fortune. By fortune I mean, $200-300/month and $30/day minimum. At $4.50/day for the bus or train, public transportation it is! I live right next to both the train and bus, so I actually get to work one way and get home another.

Onward: The bus stop I need is about two blocks from our house. Because my stop is literally the first one on the route, there's always a bus sitting there and sometimes another in tow, so I never have to worry about waiting in the cold or getting a seat facing forward (thank you motion sickness) or not getting a seat at all.

Good morning!

By the time we get downtown, it looks more like this.

Homeward: Ugh okay so here's the problem with getting home. I take one train, then transfer to a different one, and then arrive a block from home. Same price, a little more walking, and 15 minutes faster than the bus. But having someone else's workbag shoved up your special spot is not my idea of a good time. Now would also be an appropriate place to mention my pet peeve of smelling strangers...e.g., I don't like walking by someone in the grocery store and then smelling a waft of their perfume, personal odor, whatever. It just a little more intimacy than I'm interested in. Well, compared to the grocery store, the train is a whorehouse. I've smelled armpit, drunk stench, and old lady, and someone literally yawned on me last week.

To my left

To my right

Clientele: Everyone's just trying to get home from work, man! I'm willing to bet that taking pictures made me, by far, the creepiest person on the train that day. Although if you get on some other train lines at different times of the day, I've heard your chances of encountering human excrement drastically increase. Here's to keeping 2011 poop-free, for me!

Passing the time: It's a 35-40 minute trek either way, which is a great amount of time to a) check email, b) play Words With Friends, c) read a chapter in a book, or d) listen to an audiobook. I cranked out The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo last week alone!

All in all, I'm really happy with my to-and-fro each day. This is a drastic revision from my initial statement that "commuting is gross." While the whole endeavor takes twice as long as driving, which is too bad, I've managed to cut down my transit time since my first day, and financially speaking it's the best option I've got. Oh and reducing pollution in the meantime never hurt anyone, right?