Caterwauling

I can actually get out of here on time tonight. I know, I’ve never really defined “on time” but hey, I’ll take it! Probably in a half-hour, by my estimation. The funny thing is that a colleague just offered to pick up dinner for me and I’m like, nope, I’m leaving soon. Which made us laugh and he asked again because, well, we all know how THAT goes. 😉

Still, I am hopeful to enjoy some of the daylight that’s left. And yes, I’m aware the days are getting longer. Mother Nature’s days aren’t the only ones that drag on, but today? Mine will hopefully NOT be one of them!

GAWD, what will I do with all this free time? 😉

Just wanted to give a shout-out to Erica and Mel with a big ol’ “Happy Birthday” wish to my girls!!!

It’s also my friend’s dad’s birthday, and yesterday was my boss’ birthday although we celebrated today. I don’t know — all the April 30 babies I know are very special folks, so we’ll consider this a very blessed day in the universe, and I’m happy to know all of you! *mwah!*

But only if it’s to remind me that I am walking out of the house without makeup. *sigh*

Got in the car this morning, looked in the mirror, marveled that my skin is near-flawless today, and realized that holy crap, I forgot to put on makeup. I usually do the eye makeup at work, but I don’t leave the house without foundation.

So I walked in, washed my face, slathered it with my Neutrogena soft-bisque shade and, hell, since I was already late, cut an inch off my hair while I was at it. And we wonder why I never get to work on time!

Urgent shit just hit the inbox. Glad I actually made it in time to see it!

UPDATE

Perhaps the cats could have told me that my MAKEUP BAG was sitting next to my bed and not in my tote bag?

Who’s ready for retirement? *raises hand*

All right, I’m either buying furniture or a computer. And there’s a chance that I might get a Windows (*ack* *barf* *shudder*) laptop from work, so I’m erring on the side of buying furniture as the smarter endeavor. For now. 😉 On Saturday, I’ve got a hot date with the couch/loveseat I think I want, and I’ve got the new coffee/end tables in mind, too. (I swear, I have a growing collection of the latter).

I usually ring in my birthdays depressed about how far I haven’t come in life, but with the one coming up, I’m looking very much forward to celebrating everything that has gone right so far. I joke that I’m going to stop adding years and stay firmly at 32 for the next decade or so, but you know what? I’ve earned every gray hair and laugh line. And while I will probably start working on fighting those, I can’t fight time. I can only ask for it to continue to be kind and to let me win the battle more often than not. 🙂

I’ve been trying for a year now to find a particular furniture store. The address is simple enough — it’s a five-digit number on a major interstate that I travel from time to time. But the problem is that the numbers on the buildings I do know in the area only go up to four digits. So I hit the end of the road — and my rope — on numerous occasions, and the store remained hidden.

Today I had occasion to be in the area anyway, and I finally tried AAAmaps.com. Which surprisingly told me the place was on the same block as a restaurant I have been to. Which, let’s say the store is at 12000 — the restaurant is at 1800. In whatever parallel universe I drove into today, I found the fucking store was right across the street in another plaza.

I was ecstatic — finally! I was going to buy furniture! Today! *squee*

Ahem.

Actually, I assure you, it wasn’t even worth the damn drive. The most interesting thing in the showroom was the three-legged chair for $199. That was fun. Although I was sitting on all the couches, I decided to pass on trying out that chair. 😉 I did find an OK sofa/loveseat deal in red microfiber — comfy as hell, but the color didn’t work. Maybe it was because they were trying to pass off a red armchair as part of the deal that was clearly made for another collection, not to mention the color was off from the original set. Argh.

I did see another set that wasn’t so comfortable but was much cuter. It had a pleather back and pleather arms. And I hate pleather — I’d rather have leather, so my one cat won’t annhilate it with her claws. But the couch I do want at another store that’s a good 30-odd miles from here is the same thing — black leather (maybe it is pleather, we’ll see) with gray microfiber. Since my place is pretty much done in black-and-silver anyway, it just seems like a good fit.

But I’m so afraid it won’t work when I do lay eyes on it, so I wanted to have a backup plan. But yeesh, nothing else is speaking to me other than to say, “You should have stayed home!”

Funny how I can’t stop blogging when I’m out-of-sorts, but when things are going pretty well and are fairly busy, I never preserve these eras for posterity.

I was thinking lately how I never really get excited about anything anymore — at least, not on the surface, and maybe even deep-down I find myself squelching it where it begins. Someone said to me the other day that there’s got to be something that gets my blood pumping. And I thought about it and said, “Well, the Dow DID hit 13,000 on Wednesday!” LOL.

Yes, I know I need to get out more, and I’m remedying that. But still, it always seems so much easier to just stay cool and detached because if the good things go away, well, you weren’t really planning on having them around for longer than a minute, anyway. On the other hand, how much better could they be if you were actually actively lobbying for them?

I had a three-hour window in which I could potetially have slept, but I was clock-watching instead so as not to snooze straight through the alarm and blow some deadlines.

I was all hyped up from The Killers concert last night. And some of you are scratching your head, wondering how or why I would even think to go to their show when I was too cheap to spend the same amount of money on Melissa Etheridge tickets not too long ago. 🙂 Let me put it this way, the company with whom you spend these events is more important than where you actually end up. And it all resulted in a confluence of awesomeness that made for a kickass show, so it was a good decision. I might even have to download their CDs now!

But, worth the ticket price alone, was the middle act The Silver Beats. As the four of us stood around discussing last night, the best word to describe that experience was “d00d.” Seriously. I already knew I was one of the oldest people at George Mason’s Patriot Center last night, but when these adorable Japanese boys in snazzy suits started playing Beatles covers better than, well, the Beatles did, I found myself singing along oh-so-happily and wondering if half of the kids had ever heard of the Fab Four.

There was an opening act, which I see nobody has blogged about in my circle, so I’ll take a stab at it. Red Romance was what my friend dubbed a one-trick pony. They came out promising enough — I actually liked them. But then the rest of the set was sort of like an extended dance remix. Were there five songs, six or two? Couldn’t tell.

As one of the gang said, it’s like when a Web site tells you that, based on your purchase of a Killers CD, you might also like this name. What goes without saying is that you might NOT. 😉 LOL, don’t mean to be too harsh on Red Romance — I’ll probably grab a single somewhere down the road, and it won’t matter which one as it will probably reflect the sound of the whole EP!

Gawd, I’m exhausted. I don’t want to talk about how many times I zoned out, driving back to D.C. from the show. Lord, if you love me at all, even just a little bit, please make this day go well. Better yet, let it go quickly so I can make acquaintance with my bed and not be curled up in a ball under my desk with my massive shoe collection. ‘Cause, you know, ouch. 🙂

Making me wait till 10 a.m. to get coffee is like asking a group of inebriated Polish grandmas at a fire-hall wedding reception to refrain from polka-ing at the first strains of an accordion playing.

Of course my blood pressure was an issue. Because I gave up cooking for Lent circa 1998, so fast food it is. Actually, my BP goes from sky-high to abysmal-low, so they had to test me three times because, per usual, I went from high to “is she still alive” to “oh, yeah you’ll live *whew*.”

I always try to do creative imaging to control my BP — I was trying to think of moments when I was deliriously happy (it came out high), then I did the calm-blue-waters route (too low) and finally I just checked the hell out and it turned out perfect.

This perhaps suggests that I need to make myself devoid of thought a little more often, although judging by this blog content? I’m as healthy as can be!

*off for a refill of Swiss Chocolate Almond java*

So we’re having our annual health assessments at work tomorrow morning, a voluntary thing where they swear they don’t screen us for drugs. (I suspect that they’d let us go if we WEREN’T pissing foam from all the beer we drink to recuperate!)

Anyway, I left work about 20 minutes before my fasting had to begin, so I had a joyous dinner at Wendy’s in the car on the ride home. *barf*

I was bitching because that means I have to do my morning-shift work without the benefit of coffee, but my friend said I could probably have caffeine; it probably depends, though, what I add to it. I thought about it and said, “Well, it’s not like I’m putting a hamburger in it!” So, it must be OK, right?

Goddess sans coffee plus work that requires alertness equals a very scary start to tomorrow looming. At least I already know it’s going to get better from there!