Man

I just realized that since I'm going to have that account for a long period of time, I might as well do some long-term investments. Cool. They have some good ones at that bank, more choices than Wells Fargo. I have made my decision.

Something I did not know

Apparently I have to keep my UW Credit Union account open (the savings part) until I have paid (payed?) all of my student loans (they are through that bank). Sooooo...I'll be having that account for the next ten years. Interesting.

I may as well put some money in there to gain interest, huh? Right now there is only $5. I'll have to see what the ol' interest rate is compared to the Wells Fargo one, if it's any different.

I was thinking of opening an IRA one of these days as well. I am such a geek or something, especially since I already have a 401(k). I bet you all $1 million that I save up like crazy and then die at 35 years old. I just bet you all.

Mixed Feelings

Today my coworker Seth quit, because he got a new job. He didn't even give two weeks' notice. I have kind of mixed feelings about this for a few reasons.

I'm really jealous of him because he got a good job doing .net programming. They say the job market is really good right now for web developers. I really, really wish I had a job where I could use my skills more. Today this new guy Pete was watching me do some work and he goes, "you know, I really love watching you work." He comes in a lot to ask questions and he and others always say I should not be working there. I tend to work pretty fast, and there are certain things I know well, like CSS. But I don't get to use them at all. I feel like I have brain atrophy because of it. I can't do anything outside of work because if I did, I'd die of computer overload. But all this stuff makes me agree with them. It's not that I think I'm better than them. I just feel like I am limiting myself, and I'm really going to be unhappy in my job in the long run (as if I'm not already), so I have to look for a new one. In that regard, I am unhappy.

Another thing that sort of pisses me off is that my "nemesis" who started at the same time as me is rising in the ranks in some ways that I am not...I get the feeling it is because she is older. I am the youngest person there, which in my job tends to count against me more than it helps. Our manager sees her as more of a legitimate employee, I think. I don't think she believes I can really do things.

Another slightly less impactive thing is that the type of work we do is really sort of meaningless in the long run. I'd like to work on something that seems to make some kind of difference, like Google or something. Our sites are so messed up...but that's a different story altogether.

On the other hand, I have a job that pays well, and I get good benefits. I am getting a raise next week because I'll have been there a year. I do well there because I catch on quickly, and hopefully I don't sound conceited when I say that I'm considered one of the best people. It's nice to be considered one of the best and smartest in a group, especially because I am young. (However, it does get old when the ONLY thing you are is smart). I enjoy the people that work there. Sometimes they can be annoying, but on the whole I like them, I guess (with the exception of the idiot who is the Account Executive of Countrywide).

And the pervading thought is that I hate job hunting and starting new jobs. It is very daunting. But at some point in the near future the hatred of the work I do is going to overwhelm.

So, that's what's been going on lately in Elizabeth's world.

Didn't turn out too bad!

This is probably the best picture I have ever taken

And it was mainly by chance that I got it...it looks better in huge format, but I can't post huge pictures on here, so this'll have to do.

Meet me in St. Louie

I'm home. Now I get to start the daunting task of going through at least 400 pictures. Yesterday my battery died on the camera and today both of my memory sticks got full. So, I would have taken even more photos, but I didn't. This is such a departure from my usual character of never taking photos. It is actually kind of bad, because as I was telling B and E, it ends up making you see the world in photo format instead of just enjoying what's around you.

Anyway, B let me use her camera at the Sufjan concert since my battery had died, and it took better pictures than mine would have. The pictures from that are pretty impressive. It was such a good show, and he is so unbearably cute.

Well, ta-ta for now. I'm tuckered out.

Hi

I don't know what to write about lately. Emily and I are going to St. Louis tomorrow. I hope we have fun.

The talk of the office today was the show "Jericho." Everyone loved it. I watched it and thought it was excellent. It will be interesting to see how that show does. It has Skeet Ulrich in it. Brighton, I expect to have a long discussion about this show tomorrow; I hope you saw it!

An energy drink with 350% more caffeine than Red Bull? People get addicted to Red Bull...people even get addicted to Mountain Dew. Christ, I can't even imagine. Aaah! There's a really loud cicada nearby!

Work has been really boring.

I might be taking care of ipod guy's cat soon.

My back hurts. I don't like packing.

Photoshop

Here is a thing I did yesterday which I am semi-proud of. There was a contest on a site I go to to photoshop this image in any way you want:



So for some reason I decided to make it into a charm bracelet. It's not really the best thing in the world, but I'm impressed I was able to finish it at all.

Uuuupdate

We went to see Meredith and she is ok. Apparently she doesn't have hepatitis, but she does have strep throat. She is really out of whack. She now can't have surgery until later because of the strep. She also might have to have this "surgery" where they stick a tube in your mouth and make it go all the way town to your intestines. PLEASANT!

Well, don't have much time, so see y'all later.

The Fam

My sister is in the hospital (the younger one, Meredith). She apparently had "hepatitis" last week (I say that in quotes because I guess it turned out not to be). She has been having stomach issues for the past month or so (since she started depression medication). The peeps thought it was the medication harming her stomach. Well, it turned out to be her gall bladder (sound familiar?) It was extremely inflamed and had stones in it. It was pressing on her liver. So, she's in the hospital sort of recuperating since she's been out of whack for a while. Then she is going to have surgery this week. I can't believe it. Thanks mom, for giving me and Meredith the piece of shit genes. Both my mom and grandmother have had gall bladder disease and have had to get it removed. Meredith and I have really bad digestive systems. Not to mention the mental issues.

I bought her a bunch of books today and Suzanne and I are going to drive down tonight. The plus side: I can do laundry, and see TOBY!!!

Sarah and Emily's visit to the Cities

For those of you who aren't privileged enough to be from the great state of 10,000 lakes, "the cities" refers to the Twin Cities. Sarah and Emily came up last weekend and spent two days here. We had a picnic at Como Park which was extremely cold, and there was a bee trying to eat my chicken. Then, we went to the zoo and conservatory, pictures of which will follow.

Later, we went to a show of one of Emily's fav. bands called Storyhill, aka Chris and Johnny (or is it Jonny?) They were good. I was thinking, it's not often you see a band with two male singers. Or maybe it is often. I don't know. Then, Sarah gave a "homeless" guy 15 cents.

The next day we went to the Renaissance Festival. It was enjoyable for the most part. For me fairs are difficult things. We did see the most boring joust ever to be staged. The Dewdrop jugglers were pretty good. I liked some of the stores. Sarah really liked the basket store right inside the entrance. :)

Here are some pictures from the zoo and conservatory, which is apparently the only place I took my camera out all weekend. I'm really happy with how these turned out.





There is a child orangutan inside the pool thing!!! HAHA!



We were all fascinated with this guy.

















This guy was strutting around like he was in a fashion show. He was wagging his head around and everything. It was so hysterical. Emily and I really got a kick out of this one.

Chicago Pt. VII: Beau Bridges and Don S. Davis; Pt. VIII: Madison

Part VII: Beau Bridges and Don S. Davis

I had to get up really early to go to this breakfast thing. They had a ton of food there, which was nice. The funniest part about the breakfast was the people I sat with. It was different people than the dessert party. I sat with two dads and their daughters (they each had one) and this one other guy and another separate girl. Oh, and a mom and daughter. I really enjoyed one of the daughters because she was like 11 and extremely into the show. She was funny. And when the people were about to come over, they set up this area where they wanted him to sit. They put some stuff there that they wanted them to sign, and they propped their camera up so as to take "hidden" video. They propped it up on some keys so it would have a better view and tried to make it look like it wasn't filming. "Oh, we'll just put this water glass here. He'll have no idea!" It was HYSTERICAL. I don't know why I found it so funny. That was one of the best moments of the entire weekend for me. Here are some pictures.





This is from Don S. Davis' talk. He did an extremely good talk. It made me cry about every 5 minutes. I think it made everyone cry.



After his thing I was really tired so I just left. It was really weird trying to leave, but I got out of Illinois safely. Here is a picture of the crooked lamp in my hotel room.



Here is a picture I took while on the road near Rockford (there was a slight storm in the distance)

Part VIII: Madison

I stopped in Mad. to pick up Laura. She was with Danielle at the time so I got to see Danielle too. We went to Noodles (or, as I like to call it, Nood-lays). Then we went to some stores. I don't think I got anything. My main deal was that my shoes were cutting up every possible part of my feet. That sentence doesn't look right, but I don't want to spend the time trying to fix it. Here is the State Street Brat outside the Overture Center. Tom, is it not sort of reminiscent of the Brewers thing you enjoy so immensely?

After this we just drove home. Not too eventful. Christ, I'm glad that's done. I now have to do the friggin' stuff from last weekend...

JESUS CHRIST

I AM IN A HORRIBLE MOOD!

I am so angry

I am so angry at work, I want to cry.

 

This complete idiot of a person I work with is slowly eroding my spirit.

 

Here is his most recent escapade. He had to find a login to use for one of our sites, and out of the millions of logins we have, he randomly chose mine. It's called "elizjv." It's obviously mine, because all of the others are random numbers, like 12523404. Then he started changing the password every day. So every day I tried to log in and couldn't. Then finally I got fed up and changed the login name. Then, he emailed all these higher up people asking what happened to the login, because it didn't work anymore. MY LOGIN WHICH HE STOLE. And then I get this email from the higher up people asking what was going on with this login.

 

He's just...he is like a leech. Of human common sense, and of decency, and of normalcy. Working with him is gradually sucking away all of my life blood.

 

Wonderful. Just got an email saying I have to forfeit my ID. What a fucking asshole. I mean, ok, it's a login ID. Not that important in the grand scheme. But it's the principle. You don't go around stealing people's stuff and crying to your manager when the rightful owner takes it back (and then getting it in the long run). He's like the spoiled neighbor kid that everyone secretly hates, but nobody will stand up to.

Come on!

Someone has to have read that! That was perhaps the most laborious writing I've ever done!!!

Chicago Pt. V: Downtown; Pt. VI: Jason Momoa and MICHAEL SHANKS

Part V: Downtown

On Saturday I woke up semi-early (like 7:30, maybe) and took the bus and train downtown, and arrived at like 10:30. That is a damn long trip. I read most of the way. Here is what I did.

I walked a long way from the train station to Virgin Megastore. That was a long but nice walk. And well worth it, as I was able to buy 2 England shirts and 4 CDs.

I cannot find images of the shirts and I don't want to take pictures. However, one says "Visit England...FOR THE BIRDS" and has a whacked out picture of a lion with wings. I love it. Because...there are tons of birds there! The other one says "A New Drama...LONDON LIFE" and has this 20s-looking picture of a man and woman posing in a melodramatic way.

The albums I bought are:

Ed Harcourt: The Beautiful Lie

This wasn't released here, so I found it in the import section. It was $25, but well spent. It was just released a couple of months ago. I love Ed. If you get a chance, try to listen to "Whirlwind in D Minor." Very good.

Coldplay - Talk

I saw it and it was like $3, so I figured, why not. I "need" to get Shiver still. That's kind of bothering me. It's getting expensive.

The Long Winters - Ultimatum EP

The Long Winters - Putting The Days To Bed

I forgot to mention when I wrote about these guys before that these two albums are not their only ones. In case anyone cared. Anyway, I already talked about these, so there you go.

After that massive purchase I walked to Navy Pier. I was afraid I was getting lost, but it's not easy to get lost there. You know that if you walk East, you'll hit the lake no matter what. It was the type of thing where I was in the middle of tons of weird buildings and then WHOA, Navy Pier is right there. Here are some pictures.

This is the Ohio Street Beach. As you can tell, it was very gray out, but hey, it was still extremely humid. Nice, huh?



Here is another view of Ohio Street Beach.



Another view of O.S.B. with the John Hancock building in the background.



This is a view from the other side of the Navy Pier. You may recognize that sort of art-deco-ish building. That might be the Sears Tower there, but I don't know. It's the right direction, but I don't REALLY know what it looks like. I've even been there. Geez, it was hazy that day. It really was gross outside.



A similar view of that side of Navy Pier. Those kids running toward me were cute.



Here is a shot of the Chicago River from Michigan Ave.



Then, I realized I HAD to get a shot of the buildings from "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" by Wilco.



So here they are!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D I am so proud of myself. Every friggin' time I go there my brain is locked in on those buildings. That photo was taken from Michigan Ave. on the opposite side of the river that I was just on.



All right. So then, I walked back to the train station (I walked almost 4 miles that morning, I think). Got back to the hotel at about 2, probably. Then, I had to get ready for that afternoon's events.

Part VI: Jason Momoa and MICHAEL SHANKS

Jason Momoa took the stage at 3:30, I believe. He was really good. Jason is on Stargate: Atlantis. He was previously on Baywatch and that's pretty much all he's been on. He is very profound and intelligent and I liked his "show" a lot.

Then they showed this video of Daniel stuff and it was kind of uncomfortable. It went way into "suggestions-of-sex-symbol-ness" which I think was weird for him. Also, it showed this huge massive kiss between him and his former girlfriend who he has a child with. That has to be weird.

Well, then he came out! I nearly cried for some reason. I was telling Emily that I think I was just way emotional from nerves and stress and stuff.

When looking at these pictures, keep in mind they chose the most horribly lit place possible. I tried using my flash and it turned the pictures completely black (except for the head of hair directly in front of me). So I had to try to hold my hand steady and not use the flash (well, apparently I have the shakiest hand on earth) and hope someone else closer would use their flash at the same time. That worked once or twice and resulted in pretty good shots. God, it was so frustrating. But I got a couple of ok ones.





HE IS SMILING AT ME!!!!!!!!!





Blessing the crowd...?



Ahhhh. (P.S. Here is where he is holding the illustrated piece of fan fiction).



Some stuff he talked about: how he doesn't like receiving illustrated fan fiction if it involves gay relationships, how he always has to make up back stories for Daniel because someone made a decision way back when and didn't think about the consequences...um...let's see. He makes a lot of noises when he talks which I loved. He seemed really tired. He made me nearly cry at least 5 times just by sitting there. I don't really know what to mention. I can't really remember specific things he talked about that well. We gave him a standing ovation and that made me cry again.

After his 1.5 hour Q&A thing it was time for autographs (and freak-out mode for me). I had been thinking about what to say for a few weeks and I decided to make a joke and hope that it went over well. I was SO nervous. And I got thrown off because they had this weird thing where a "helper" person took your stuff and gave it to Michael before you even got there. So you never even really had time to talk to him. I managed to rush over and I noticed that he drew a smiley face with glasses and laughed really hard and said "Thanks." Then I was like "SHIT! MY JOKE!" So I said, "Hey, signing your name on a picture of yourself...that must be a really new idea!" And he laughed and said, "Yeah, right!" AHAHA! I was so happy. I felt really happy because he seemed so tired and sick of signing his name and at least I gave him a split second of comic relief. Yay!

Then I went to Jason and I had planned to tell him how much I enjoyed his little Q&A thing. For some reason I chose to use the word "set." This is how it went: "I really liked your set." "What?" "Your set. I really liked it." "What?" "Your set? Your SHOW?" "Oh, that thing up on the stage?" "Yeah, it was good." "Thanks!" God, that was weird. For so many reasons. Why did I use the word set? Blah.

A cut off photo of my Jason autograph



Michael's (this is a picture from "2010" - one of my favorite episodes).



I guess I might as well put this here too: my lanyard/ticket thing.



So then I ran upstairs to my room all giddy and called all sorts of people yelling about how I made Michael Shanks laugh. I could not stop smiling. Then I had to get ready for the dessert thing, which was an hour earlier than I had planned, for some reason.

I got ready, etc, and went down, and it was a "find your own seat" thing. I sat with a couple from Florida with a seeing eye dog they were training, a dad and daughter (15) from Chicago, and three girls slightly younger than me who were from various areas, I think. Man, this is getting really, really tedious to write. The dad character at my table was pretty cool. He wants me to email some of my pictures to him. I told him they are not going to be very good, but whatever. The couple had purchased a prop from the show at one of the auctions for $800. It was a book that was written all in Ancient. Michael signed it to them. That was pretty cool, but christ, $800?

So, we had dessert and whatever and then they had the people come in and pose for pictures for like 30 seconds. For some reason I got really good ones of Jason and Don S. Davis (who had come to replace Joe Flanigan, who cancelled, to everyone's annoyance) but this idiot lady was standing in front of me the entire time Michael was up there so I got basically no pictures of him.

Isn't this a weird looking picture? He looks like he's a zombie, and it's lit up weird, and various other things.











First to my table was Jason, who was petting the dog, and so I said, "Hey, I have a cat over here!" because he wasn't even talking to us. He liked that joke. He didn't stay very long and I honestly don't remember much about what he talked about. But after he left I told everyone at the table, "Just to let you know, I'm using that cat joke for the other two. He seemed to like it!" They laughed.

I was watching the bodyguards to see when Michael was coming and I thought I spotted his, but it was apparently not his because suddenly he came up and sat next to me! Ahhhhh! So I made the cat joke because he was petting the dog as well. He didn't find it QUITE as amusing, but he did like it. Then he asked us how we liked the 200th episode and if we had seen the one that had aired the day before and we discussed that a little. I was pretty glued to his face. I did make some comment about hotel closed-circuit television. Then the couple with the dog discussed how much the lady loved Michael. Then, the dad said, "My daughter will hate me for this, but she's in love with you!" And one of the other girls said, "Yeah, Michael, don't do that to your kids!" And I said, "Yeah, don't tell yourself that your kids are in love with you." He laughed heartily and said, "Yeah, well, They damn well better be!" Then he had to go so I said, "Thank you for coming!!!" And he said, "My pleasure." Be still my beating heart!

One of the people at my table said that she had noticed how different Michael is from Daniel Jackson. At the time I was like, "No. He can't be." But after thinking about it, I realized it's true. Michael is married and has 3 kids. And he's just very different. It was kind of hard for me to swallow that. I think it made me pretty upset, actually, for some reason. But in the end it was probably good. It helped me detach from the situation a lot better. We all know how totally emotional I get over events like concerts and things. And the fact that I actually met him could have really put me over the edge. But seeing that he is so very normal and family-oriented and sleepy like all of us was, in the end, good.

But still, it was so weird. Because as I've mentioned before, presence in the world has assisted me in getting through the past year, simply because it's what I ended up concentrating my mind on. So seeing him was extremely powerful. I was really grateful that he came.

I feel like I need to mention more about that because I thought about it a lot. However, I don't really know how to voice it. So I hope it makes a little sense. I literally cannot do any more because I've been working on this for going on 3 hours. So, to conclude I will give you some pictures of the action figure, which I painstakingly removed from the package this evening. I put the accessories next to my phone so you could have a size reference. :D I also did a dollar coin and a paper clip, and NONE of those are any help. And I was too lazy to get up to find, let's say, a penny. I love how I had a dollar coin lying around my desk and not a penny.



I cannot believe this is blurry. If I see one more blurry picture I'm going to shoot my camera.



That 4th thing is his glasses (which apparently look like coke bottles when on - see above)



The next installment will be Don S. Davis, Beau Bridges, and Madison.