Billy Joel & Elton John

Last night Rob and I went to the Billy Joel & Elton John concert at Philips Arena downtown. It was my anniversary gift that I was given back in December. What a great gift!

We took the sneaky Northside Drive route to the parking deck and didn't have to deal with highway traffic although we did get to follow a very lost Chevy SUV. We found out seats without too much trouble. We weren't in the best of seats, but I was pretty happy with them. We were basically side stage and a little to the back. But it offered a great view and we even got to watch the fancy screens that the show takes with them instead of the arena's jumbo-tron.

The stage set up was great. At first it appeared that the whole stage was blank. You start to wonder, are they going to move out piano's any time soon? Nope. They were hidden below the stage and were raised and lowered just like the bands equipment along the back. It was really cool. Billy and Elton's piano's were facing each other (Tour Name - Face 2 Face).

They played the first few of their songs together. Then Billy left the stage for a while and Elton played a bunch of songs. Songs like Crocodile Rock, Tiny Dancer, and Rocket Man. At one point Elton took a break to honor some of his fans. I was totally shocked when he gave a shout out to Mike P. He is still raving about your party! Mental note - get on that list!

Once he was done, Billy traded out with Elton and played some of his stuff. I have to say, Billy knows how to work a crowd. :) He was funny and personable. At one point his band asked him what song they were going to play next. He said, "Don't Ask" to the band members, and then to the crowd he said, "I'm sorry I have to fill the band in on what we are playing, they seem to have got lost. At least you know this isn't recorded. Yup, you have the prime opportunity for a real live rock band fuck up." Hahaha... Take that Brittney! And the best part, his piano rotated every now and again so everyone got to see all angles. He played all of his best, Only The Good Die Young, Allentown, We Didn't Start the Fire and many others. Fabulous show!

They all reunited on stage for the final set. Elton had changed outfits, and Billy toweled off his bald head. They played a few more of their songs together and then ended with Elton John's Candle in the Wind and the final song was Piano Man. OH. MY. GOD. So freaken awesome! I would gladly see this show again, but I would get Billy Joel tickets again in a heart beat. It's not that I don't like Elton John, but I enjoy Billy more.

Best anniversary gift ever.

Raptor Fu Fu

Work has been interesting the last couple of weeks. Since my purse hit my desk, it has been the non-stop talk of the trailer. The women think it's absolutely adorable and were just fussing over it for the first few days I had it with me. The men in the trailer were like, omg, make it stop. In a fit of frustration over the constant gabbing about it, my lead said "THIS IS THE FLIGHT LINE FOR GOSH SAKE!" I swear he has purse envy.

Upon my lead's encouraging, I brought my purse with me to a small meeting with the VP and him. I half think now he wanted someone to share his pain. The VP looked at it, then to me and said, "There is no fu fu on my flight line." Of course I replied, "Yeah, but isn't it cute?" We brought in his secretary to look at it and she said, "Oh it's adorable!!" Of course, she also referred to the F-16 as a hummingbird moving around the F-22. I thought it was a nice analogy. Apparently, this almost sent the VP into cardiac arrest.

So yesterday I may or may not have worn open toed shoes on the flightline. I really didn't think much of it because no one had said anything to me all morning. Apparently this is a huge no no. I got a sticky note on my desk with "no fu fu on F/L" from our VP. Nice. This was after the lecture about my footwear and teasing from various trailer-mates.

This morning I showed off my nice closed toed shoes to the VP. If I am aware of the rules, I can follow them. He explained the whole deal to me which I 100% agree with, but again, didn't really think about it yesterday. After our morning meeting he referred to my fu fu-ness again. He decided that's what my call sign was going to be. Raptor Fu Fu. Of course, the managers and the like are Raptor 1, Raptor 2, etc. I get Raptor Fu Fu. Whatever. I think it's nice. :)

Of course anyone that knows me knows that I am not really a fu fu kind of girl. It's just that I am more fu fu than say any of the guys that have been on the flight line before me. Granted I care about a lot more womenly things now than I did two years ago, but the point remains, I am not your average fu fu girl. It makes it all that much funnier.

Getting Organized

The act of getting organized doesn't seem all that hard. Basically it takes a little grunt work up front, but then you have a system that only needs upkeep, not an overhaul. Right?

Lately, I have been trying to get my act together and get to this organizing business. I am here to say it's not as easy as they make it look on TV. No wonder people get paid to come in and dictate what to keep on how to keep it. We are all tied to frivolous things. Well, I know that I am. Good, bad, or indifferent, that's how it is.

The first part of any organization is the sorting of what to keep, what to toss, and what to donate. This should be simple, and yet sometimes I get hung up on the toss decision. Sometimes it's not good enough to donate, but I know where it came from and why it was important so I don't feel it deserves the trash can, so I end up keeping it.

As I go through my stuff now, every drawer I open, every shelf I scan, I ask myself, why do I have this? For example the collection of matchless socks. Was I hoping that one day, 5 apartments later, their mate would just appear? Of course not! But why then are they still in my drawer?

I think I grew up with the "waste not, want not" mantra being drilled into my head. Now in adult life, it makes it harder to get rid of things that bog you down. You tell yourself, "Someday that could be useful!" or "If I just bought this piece it would work!" But you know deep down that's never going to happen. The opportunity cost of keeping something is what you really need to weigh out.

My next challenge comes with boxes of random things that I at one point cleverly thought, this is organized, put the lid on the box and called it a day. Except, I can't tell you what's in that box, much less why I have it. I did pretty well with the filing cabinet, so onward to the depths of mysterious boxes!

March 5th

Today is a good day. Did you know that it has multiple unofficial holidays? Seriously! For one, today is my Half Birthday. For those of you who don't know what a Half Birthday is, it's 6 months from your normal birthday. Secondly, this is my logical Friday which is always a holiday to me. Hooray 4 day work weeks. And finally, this was discovered no doubt by the king of nerds. Well, I will let the notice I found speak for itself.

I just wanted to make the announcement, if anyone happened to be unaware. The reason for the holiday, if you haven't guessed already, is because sqrt(1225) = 35. Translating those numbers into calendar dates gives us the square root of Christmas 12/25 falling on 3/5. It just so happens that there is another big nerd holiday in March, Pi Day (3/14). Why not connect these two dates with a week(ish) long nerd celebration? I hereby declare that:

• March 5th shall be known as the Square Root of Christmas and
• The 10-day interval between the Square Root of Christmas and Pi Day shall be known as Nerdigras

So needless to say, it's a time of celebration.

Netflix & XBox

Normally I don't enjoy writing about technical stuff. I get enough of that at work. However, I am going to make an exception because I am really impressed.

My normal take on the latest and greatest in technology is, what exactly does it do to make it worth that much? Or I seem to have gotten along fine without it so far. Or how complicated is this to learn/set up and do I want to be bothered with it? Most of the time I say forget it. I wouldn't call label myself as resistant to change, more like lazy to change. :P

Rob received an XBox 360 for his birthday last year which he was no doubt totally excited and pleased to get. Thanks to all of you that pitched in for it. I mostly smile and nod when he tells me about the cool things he has to ability to do with this machine. I think I tried to use the headset a few weeks ago, I didn't know what I was doing and accidentally invited Bruce to a party of nothing, all he heard was me swearing, and then I exited as if I hadn't done anything. That about sums up the way I approach new fangled things.

We have been subscribed to Netflix for over a year now. I am a fan of using this service. I get to watch a lot of cool stuff and they are super quick. We have the projector and sound system so I really prefer to watch most movies at home. I can get a beer, it's quiet, and if I fall asleep, I can rewind. Of course when Rob forgets to change what movie is coming if it's one of "his" movies and he then isn't able to watch it for a week, it doesn't thrill me but I just do other things instead. :P So when Netflix and Xbox combined I was a little leary of this mix, but kind of interested all at the same time.

Because we have the unlimited one out at a time, we have access to movies and TV shows through XBox. The selection is not huge, but I am pleased with it. For instance, CSI is available to watch 1-2 days after it's been aired which is nice when my school group wants to have a meeting when it's on TV. *enter grumbles here* I know I can watch it over the weekend and it's almost better because there are no commercials. Not all shows are available, but CSI is and that counts for a lot in my book.

The other neat feature with the instant downloads is you can add workout videos to your queue. So you can change up your workouts and not have to pay for the DVDs (or gym memberships) which is really nice. Of course, I have yet to actually do a workout from there, but they are in the queue. That's the first step.

So if I can figure out how to turn on the XBox and sign into Xbox live, I 'll be good to go!

Busy Sunday

I have been awake now for 12 hours today and I feel like it's been a very busy 12 hours. Maybe productive is a better word here, I am not sure.

I woke up to rain and hopped out of bed. It's possible that "hopped" is an exaggeration, but I did get up and moving in a relatively non-slow motion. I came downstairs and enjoyed a fresh donut and cup of coffee that Rob had gotten for me.

I got to the shower to find that I had hit the jackpot on having hot water. Some back story needed here: Apparently one of the two hot water boilers for the building is broken, aka, not making hot water. So for the past week and then some, it's been a crap shoot as to whether we have hot water or not. During the week I imagine I am the first one in our building up so I never worry about it then, but the weekends is another story. Yesterday I was not so lucky. I hope they fix that crap soon.

I hopped online and found that my team had made some sort of progress with our project for school and I went about doing other things. After spending the full day yesterday working on a section I wasn't assigned, I wasn't really in the mood to do more.

It started snowing down here just like it would have at home. That was pretty amazing. My cats were highly entertaining with their inability to catch snowflakes from the wrong side of the door. We may have had an inch or so stick, but it quickly melted. It's supposed to be really cold and wet tomorrow morning. I am glad I drive in when very few other people are out.

I finally managed to get all of my cookbooks into the binders I cleaned out last weekend. I went through old recipes and chucked out a lot of stuff. Some of it was duplication of things I already had written down twice or typed up and never got rid of the originals. I am just trying to get organized.

I went through my book collection to find books I was willing to part with. Surprisingly, there were a lot. I really don't want to ever re-read "The Devil Wears Prada" or "Goodnight Nobody" again, nor do I find the book "10,000 Dreams Interpureted" very useful. With my cleared out bookshelf space I was finally able to put these magazine holders I have had for over a year in a proper place.

I grabbed and enormous pile of magazines that have been collecting dust (literally) for over a year and started to go through those as I watched Beauty Shop. It was an ok movie, but I felt like I was multi-tasking so kudos for me. I got about half way through the stack. I also did the laundry and other household chores that I feel the need to do on Sunday to put the house right for the week.

At 5pm I went back to check on group work and found they were stuck again and sat down for an hour to plow through some stuff. This is frustrating to me because I had spelled out where to get all this information and how to do it. I feel like they aren't even trying.

I made dinner, well, technically, Rob made half the dinner. We needed sauce to go with raviolis. Delicious! I called my parents, made my coffee for tomorrow and now I am going to read my book and head to bed. It really has been a full day.

Spring Cleaning

For someone who moves as much as I do, I sure have a lot of junk. I have stuff too, but I have a lot of junk. Stuff I can classify as clothes, dishes, furniture, you know, the useful things we normally keep. Junk I can classify as boxes of unknown and barely used items that I cart from place to place because I think they are going to be important some day.

For example, I finally, FINALLY, got around to cleaning out my college notes box. Yes, it's been 5 years since I graduated and no, I have no idea why I still had them. I originally kept them because well, after 5 years of hard work, you want to believe you will use them again. Never once have I gone to look up formulas for calculus. I am now sitting next to a paper box full of old notes that are heading to the recycling center next week and I am feeling pretty good about it. It also freed up a bunch of binders that I need to use for organizing other things like my cookbooks that come pre-hole punched.

Along those same lines, I also cleaned out my filing cabinet. With most things being electronic (and my option for paperless bills) I find it silly to keep paper copies for most of this stuff. I have cleaned out about another 10 pounds of paper there that will go through my shredder. That thing is going to get a work out.

This is just the beginning. Rob and I really need to clean out this place before we can realistically move. Granted other people will hopefully come and box this stuff (and some junk) up, but it's not going to fit in a smaller place comfortably. We have figured where we are at right now is probably the largest place we could rent anywhere. We love the room, but we filled it right up with all of our belongings.

After merging our two households together, we now have to figure out which to keep of what. We have done a decent job so far in that we have things mostly settled now (aside from a pile of stuff we want to sell). I went through the hall closet and cleaned out blankets, towels, and sheets that we can get rid of. I figure start with the small places and just try and work them one at a time.

We will probably end up donating a fair amount of things such as old clothes, and things we aren't able to sell. However, I have a feeling that Craigslist is going to be seeing a lot of action in April once Rob finishes his classes. I know there's at least one kind of dopey filing cabinet that will be making it's way there. :)