Thursday, April 30, 2009

7-11 Mutant Berry Slurpee

Sweet.

Or maybe I should say tart. It was a bit on the sour side. Pretty tasty if you like berry. Thought I'd share a pic of the cup and the straw / toy.







Florence needs a 7-11.

Monday, April 27, 2009

India Palace

Got some takeout from a place called the Indian Palace in St. Louis tonight. I was looking for someplace on Yelp (it's an iPhone app that points out places you're looking for then pops them into Google Maps and gives you directions from your current location; isn't technology awesome?). It had some good reviews, and I was craving some Indian food. It took me forever to get to it since it was off of a highway and Google doesn't tell you how to take the side streets.

(Switching tenses here - be forewarned.)

I pull into the parking lot of the Best Western and see this.



A drive-in??

I pull in and find myself in a dark, scary parking garage. I see a sign that says India Palace is on the 11th floor.



Don't let the sunlight fool you. This garage was dark. And scary. So I walk in the back door to a tiny, creepy elevator.



Yes - that tiny and that creepy. I almost didn't get in, but my love for Indian food goes a long way.

I head to the 11th floor.



Walk through a back hallway, open a door, and

I've got two stupid blurry pictures of the amazing lobby.

But here's the bar.



And a couple shots of the inside of the restaurant.





And the chicken vindaloo (plus the garlic nan) was fantastic. (This was takeout.)



What staging!!

(Note: if you want to see better pics of this place, take a look at the website - linked from the top of the page.)

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Nothing's too good

Nothing but the best will do when I travel.

Walked toward my rental car and got really excited. Guess which of these two cars was mine.




If you guessed the red Ford Mustang, you'd be wrong. If you guessed the silver Ford Fusion, you'd be right.

Same goes for my room. Was this the view I got?




(the view of the courtyard is better than the pic; excuse my poor iPhone picture-taking skills)

Or did I get this one




of the parking lot?

If you guessed the courtyard, you're wrong again.

Sorry - no prize for you today.

Spring Park in Tuscumbia



Had a nice day in Sping Park yesterday. Wasn't too crazy, even with the kids running around. Though by the end of the day, both kids drew blood - both by sliding off a picnic table bench (and not even those crazy concrete tables). Max busted his lip and Julianna scraped her knee. But they both ended up ok with the help of a couple of magic ice cream sandwiches.













Saturday, April 25, 2009

Almost done

Needs a little caulk and paint, but the finished product isn't too bad. (I did the floor, too.)


Finishing touches

High tech baseboard holder. Hope this Liquid Nails works.





More improvements

Baseboard. Measure twice, cut once, right?





Thursday, April 23, 2009

Lessons learned for today (4/23/09)

Well besides what I learned this morning.

1. Always check to make sure the lid is on before you try to shake something up. The other day it was the OJ; today it was my coffee creamer. (Who's leaving the caps partway off?!?)
2. It's easy to not snap that coffee creamer lid all the way closed. (But that's no excuse for not screwing the OJ lid on all the way!)
3. Always look in the mirror before you go out. You may have chocolate coffee creamer all over your best shirt, and not realize it until you get to work.
4. The Tide stain stick doesn't do as great a job getting International Delight Chocolate Caramel Coffee Creamer as it does some other things.

Always something more to learn




Ah, morning. Time of new beginnings, revelations, and self-examination.

I just became friends on Facebook with a friend from high school. The first thing she said to me (somewhat jokingly) was "I thought you knew everything." (She was commenting on a status.) I probably haven't talked to her (except at the 10-year reunion) in about 20 years.

As much as I may have changed over the years, it's good to know that some things remain constant.

I was a know-it-all then and I'm a know-it-all now.

At least I know. And knowing is half the battle (I sure hope they use that line in the G.I. Joe movie).

Monday, April 20, 2009

Monday. Definitely Monday.

It started with being late for my first meeting of the week. I sit down out of breath and frazzled only to hear the guy across the table incessantly clicking on his pen. After about 20 minutes of that I know what I would have done with that thumb if I'd had a pair of garden snips (sorry - it's been a long day).

Of course, then, preparing for my 11:00 meeting, I realize I didn't bring my lunch. Who starts a 2-3 hour meeting at 11 anyway? The thing is we have this big meeting with all the managers on Tuesday and right after the 11:00 Monday meeting, I've got to turn in charts for tomorrow's meeting based on what happened in today's meeting. So, since I was dumb enough to forget my lunch, my choices are: (1) get lunch at 10:30 in the morning or (2) possibly wait until 2 or 3 after I get my charts done.

At least I can be working on my charts during the meeting. Oh, wait, no I can't. Due to some technical difficulties, since the guy who normally runs the PowerPoint is out, I get to run the meeting from my computer. By the time the whole fiasco is over and I turn my charts in for tomorrow, I'm an hour late. Welcome to my workweek.

And then this is what greets me in Madison on my way home.



I guess I should be thankful my day is only full of minor irritations and that I have a job to complain about.

Still...

Sunday, April 19, 2009

More Home Improvement Woes

This is what happens when I try to install a sink.



Maybe the water will just flow straight from the drain to p-trap via gravity.

Speech-to-Text for iPhone?

So - anyone know of any good speech-to-text or voice-to-text iphone apps coming out? I'm looking for something that I can record thoughts and e-mail them to myself, rather than just recording them and having to transcribe them myself (which usually means they pile up and I never transcribe them).

I've been doing all kinds of looking, but can't find anything I like.

reQall is the first one I came across that looks promising.  The app is free, and so is the service.  The service?  Basically, you have a service that you send  audio recordings to and it's transcribed there.  But they have complete access to your recordings and can use them as they wish.   Since I'm planning on using this for writing ideas, any service that can take your text isn't a good fit for me.

Jott seemed like another possibility. It's a free app, but requires a monthly subscription for the service.  Once again, I'd rather not utilize a service - especially if they're charging for it.

Then I came across vLingo. It's free and doesn't use a service, but the only thing it will transcribe right now are updates to Facebook and Twitter. It's primary purpose is to be able to use dial and do other functions via voice (which is nice functionality - just not what I'm looking for).

On the surface, the most promising thing right now seems to be Voice Text Pro.  It will send texts by voice, and I guess I could just send multiple short texts to my e-mail - but it costs $5 and has horrible reviews.

So, I guess I'll be waiting for something a little better to come out soon.  Let me know if you hear anything.  I'll update if I see anything better.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Things I've Learned This Week

It's been a long week, and I've learned a lot.

  1. How to install a toilet.
  2. How to replace a keyboard in a mini laptop.
  3. That toddler riding toys make great dollies to move heavy toilets.
  4. That if you can't figure out what to eat for lunch and you work close to a Super Target, an asiago cheese bagel, a quarter pound of seasoned Angus roast beef, and some wasabi makes a good sandwich.
  5. That two packets of wasabi is probably too much for a sandwich like that (though the flames shooting out your nose are pretty cool).
  6. Target has some delicious looking sushi (I was afraid to try it).
  7. I shouldn't go into home improvement - some things are better left to professionals. 
  8. I'm old #1: My forearms and hands are sore as can be from cutting tile (see #7). 
  9. I'm old #2: Ralphie (you know, from A Christmas Story) turned 38 today.  I turn 38 this year. 
  10. I think I like Nickelback. (I love the song Rockstar.)
  11. Seether did a cool remake of Wham's Careless Whisper.
  12. What "waiting with bated breath" means ('bated' is similar to 'abate' - so it's like trying to abate your excitement or hold your breath). 
  13. It's not "baited breath".
  14. You've got to have a good strategy if you're going to beat a 6-year-old at Mario Kart.
  15. Finally, I've learned I'm still not very patient. I'd like to slap the next person who answers a multiple-choice question with "yes" (when they're not joking - just not paying attention).  When you ask someone if they prefer A or B, and they're only half listening and instead of choosing A or B, they say "yes".  It drives me nuts! 

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Comic / Pillow

Quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen. A Spider-Man comic book and pillow all in one. Saw it at Sam's. I really wanted to get it for myse- er, uh, for Max.
But I didn't think it warrented spending $20.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Quote of the Week

"I've got some Trix up my sleeve."
-Liz Lemon

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Clouds After the Rain

All kinds of interesting sights after the storm...

Rainbow Over Florence

Into the Darkness

Heading home a little early, hoping I won't have to drive all the way home through damaging winds and hail. Got more work to do, but guess I'll be finishing at home.

April Fool

Got hit by a good April Fools joke yesterday. I'd been having trouble with my Outlook mailbox filling up quickly and I figured out I had 50 MB worth of stuff in my calendar and in this "synch folder" where apparently Outlook keeps a record of email when it has trouble synching with the mail server.

So I deleted the stuff in the synch folder and archived all my old calendar stuff, which freed up a lot of space.

My mistake was sharing my new-found info with the people I work with, thinking it might help them to (this is what I get for being a good Samaritan).

I emailed them all and told them what I was able to do. Suddenly I was inundated with emails telling me people were getting weird errors, pop-up messages that certain parts of Outlook were admin-accessible only, and even references to the Conficker worm (which was warned about on our company's homepage).

Of course, dupe that I am, I fell for it all. I didn't get suspicious until one guy said it removed half of his future calendar notices - that's when I remembered it was April Fools day, and thought maybe I had been taken for a ride.

See...no good deed goes unpunished.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Thinking

Urrrrgh!

Too many thoughts floating around in my head. 

Think I'll need to get them out soon...