new chairs!

My new chairs! I pick them up next Saturday!

my new chairs?????

I was just checking out Design Within Reach. I love that furniture store. Half my furniture is from there. And I found these chairs. Of course, they're back ordered 14 - 16 weeks...

But I really like them. I would get two of each color. They're modern looking, I think the color will accent the table nicely, and they're cool.

Here's some new pics of my table. I think the chairs will go nicely with the carpet too.

Too bad the chairs I really want cost $1,200 each. Ech.

new year is almost here...

Since I did such a crap job last year keeping my new year's resolutions (better work/life balance, making climbing a priority, spending more time socializing with friends) I've decided to get a jump start on the new year.

The first thing I did was collect all the information I need for taxes and I made myself a new budget for this year. My goal is to pay my house off in less than 10 years so I can have the choice of the type of job I want rather than being chained to a corporate desk to make mortgage payments. With my budget I'll pay my house off in less than 9 years. I've also upped my savings so I can retire sooner rather than later (I put 10% of my take home pay in a money market and 10% in mutual funds as well as having a credit union account with a good interest rate where I dump the left over money at the end of every month and I max out my Roth IRA on top of my 401k - the greatest joy of not dating anyone is being able to save a lot of money).

Last year I did a great job with my goal of only filling my tank up once a month. Easier for me than most since I normally just drive my car to the airport and back. But that goal made me think twice about taking trips and it forced me to consolidate errands (also, having to carry what ever you bought will greatly reduce the amount of money you spend).

I applied for a bunch of jobs local to Denver yesterday and already was contacted by a recruiter. Fingers crossed. I'm frankly sick of busting my ass. Really, how many people out there could handle my travel schedule AND be skilled enough to do my job? 8 in the US or at least that's how many of us are left at my company. When I get a local job I'm going back to pilates and long bike rides and climbing. I'm tired of spending my evenings in a Holiday Inn located off some noisy highway working.

I also decided this year that I'm NOT going to contribute money to any charities that didn't send me a receipt for the contributions I made this year. Okay, if I donated $20 I can understand a non-profit being lax about sending me a receipt (further, I would hate for them to spend the money to do that). But if I contribute over $200 I expect at least an email acknowledging that you took my money. I contribute 7% of my after tax salary to charities and the ones that can't keep their paperwork straight will get nothing because I wasted 4 hours today trying to find canceled checks for the jokers that didn't email me a receipt.

Since I quit smoking I'm back in the groove with my versa climber which is the perfect antidote to cold weather. I'm easing myself back into my routine (last time I did two days of workouts that were 30 minutes and the next day I decided to do 60 minutes and my knee swelled up like a pregnant cat). Though in theory I'm not allowed to use my versa climber any more because of my knee I think if I don't go totally insane the first month or so I'll be fine. And I'm going back to my old routine of hitting the gym the second I get back to my hotel room. I've gotten into a bad habit of answering emails before the gym and that meant by the time I worked out I was already tired.  Why should I sacrifice my workout because some idiot isn't intelligent enough to check my schedule to see if I'm available for an engagement  and thus requires me to respond back to him by email?

Finally, I've been working on my cooking skills and socializing skills. I spent an hour today over at my neighbor Pat's house and conned her into helping me with my yard next year (which, if all goes as planned, will be easy to take care of because I'll actually be home). Then I saw my neighbor Carol who just got back from Costa Rica. And then I went for a walk with my friend Cam when she got off work. We found a new little shop that sells stuff that came from other people's houses, what ever those are called, not thrift store...what ever they're called. They had a ton of books that are only ten cents each. Though I love Tattered Cover I can't keep spending $100 a month on books (for the record, I read all my books - I used to use the library but with my travel schedule it's too hard to either find the time to go or return my books on time).

And I measured chairs for my new table at world market today. Didn't find the perfect chair yet. I'm really stressed about buying the wrong chairs and my friend Cam was making fun of me. I have been toying with the idea of checking out some antique stores to see what kind of chairs they have. But that would mean shopping.

I may do that. But, I really, really hate shopping. And I only have a half tank of gas to get me through to the new year and I want to do some snow shoeing in the mountains this weekend...

It's nice to have a week off to get my life back in order after so much time on the road. And to have the time to organize things so when I start traveling again I'm not stressing out. With any luck my travel days are numbered and a new cool job with a not full of crack heads company awaits.

I laugh to think how the translation engines handle me

I was just checking my page views for the week. I'm always surprised by the countries that show up. Malta? Estonia?

Very cool to be read there. And if any of my readers want me to visit their home country let me know. I've wanted to go to Malta for years. And I just did some research on Estonia. Very progressive country. And temperate. I think I would like the food there (minus the pork). The pictures on wikipedia were nice. I'll have to visit sometime.

hopefully they don't give the TSA real guns

This in from my brother Bob...

A guy brought a loaded gun through airport security. As he was attempting to show the TSA officer how to clear the gun the agent fired it.


TSA employment exam:

Q: how do you secure a weapon?
 A: fire it until it's empty

Bob also found this:

A woman was forced to remove her nipple ring, with pliers, before she was allowed to board her aircraft. This even though she had passed through the metal detector without setting it off (she was "chosen" for additional security screening). The male TSA officers were laughing as she stood behind a curtain trying to remove the nipple ring. They did not seem concerned about her belly button ring, which she was allowed to leave in.

Bob wrote: "Next they'll be asking people to remove tattoos, because all the terrorists are into body modifications".

Are they fucking serious? We need a protest movement against TSA...

really, I don't want to die

Ech. I just received this summary back from a publisher I submitted my manuscript to. I wonder if she even read past the first ten pages. This is the reason I didn't want to put that shit in about being so overwhelmed by pain that I wanted to die. Everyone reads it as if I'm some kind of psychotic suicidal idiot.

Would I let these people publish my book? Um, no.

“My Other Nine Lives” recounts Ms. Flowers’ battle to recover from a major knee-surgery that
nearly made her commit suicide.


A runner since she was eight years old, Ms. Flowers has won several long-distance races in the
span of fifteen years. Other than running, she also loves diving, white water rafting, and hiking
up the rockiest and most steep altitude she could find. She is a self-professed adventurist; even as
an engineering consultant, she would go to dangerous places others would not dare to visit.
Although a risk-taker, she never once thought that her extreme adventures could kill her, but
when it almost did, she reached the point where she wished to die—and nearly did.


It was in November of 2000 when Ms. Flowers underwent a seven-hour knee surgery. Her knee
and femur had to be restored using parts from a donor. The injury was originally caused by the
motorcycle accident she had eight years earlier that was aggravated by her extreme activities
until her knees and femur gave out.


The long, grueling, and painful months of recovery were the hardest part of Ms. Flowers’
journey. It was during this part of her life when she contemplated suicide just to end the pain she
was in after the surgery. But it was also during this time when she learned the value of things and
activities she formerly ignored. She knows that her injury will never curve her resolve to seek
and experience more adventures, but the lessons she learned from getting it will make her even
more cautious of her activities and careful of her body.


“My Other Nine Lives” might appeal to a reader interested in stories of extreme-sports
enthusiasts who recover from a serious injury."

cupcakes - national security threat or more idiocy from the gov?

Of course it's idiocy from the government:

TSA confiscated a woman's cupcake.

For those that don't travel that much, yawn, ho hum.

For those of us that do, this is one more example of the stupidity of TSA. The officer confiscated the cupcake, which had been through a security check in Logan, in Las Vegas because he said the icing was like a gel.

This is what fucking pisses me off. Be consistent. Every week that I fly it's a new challenge to see what the moron TSA officers are going to bitch about. Really, my neti pot? Or a bag of salt and baking soda? How many times are you going to over examine my wine bottle opener when there's a BIG GAPING obvious hole where the knife used to be (and a tiny knife at that - seriously, if I could kill someone with that knife I could kill them with my bare hands).

I'm pretty much over terrorists. They are only kept alive and in funding because fuck wit politicians in the US (Newt Gingrich comes to mind) keep telling us they are a threat. We have the moron shoe bomber who requires us to now take off our shoes, even flip flops. We have the terrorists of 911 who spent 10 years and millions of dollars planning the attack (of course, see above, thanks Gingrich for helping terrorists raise money by giving them legitimacy in the western press), and the bojinka plot (which failed, by the way, not because of men being alert to a bad situation, but because their boss, a woman, didn't believe the male cops who initially investigated the explosion) which was launched in 1995, yes, 1995, where a terrorist made a bomb out of liquids (of course, they didn't ban liquids on airplanes until 2006 (I remember the ban well, I was flying home from China and they threw out even my liquid Benedryl capsules). Do the math. Nine years. No bombs. Sudden panic.

If I were in charge of airline security here's what I would do:
-make sure the fuck wits in the State department weren't giving travel visas to terrorists (as they did pre-911)
-use funds to monitor known terrorists rather than treating regular US citizens as victims of a police state
-let people keep their shoes on - if your metal detectors, x-ray whirrly gig machines, and other "technology" can't pick up a bomb we're fucked anyway
-let frequent travelers (like myself) go through minimal security screening (I have a security clearance and yet I'm treated like a potential terrorist - don't even talk to me about flyclear - you have a shorter wait time in security lines - it is a total rip off
-forget the ban on liquids, it's stupid - if they were going to blow us up, they would have before the 2006 ban - think about it - even some pathetic piece of crap would have to think more than twice about blowing his or herself up mid-air in a plane

And that ends today's rant.