Ok – so I’m getting on the road now to drive 15+ hours to Sarah’s house for the 4th. Why? Well I’m not really sure. The need to get away and loving to drive top the list. Besides there is that whole getting to see the Sara(h)s and getting the hell out of Florida for a bit. This state sucks my soul.

So anyone wishing to catch up on Sabine gossip is welcome to call anytime in the next 15+ hours and keep Sabine awake and busy. If not I have a wide array of DVD’s, Books, Music (both the Dell and the iPod are fully charged), and then there is always the internet.

I could deny it, but what would the point – I think its pretty safe to say that someone will be doing a “drunk guest” post at some point this evening…

Special points to the one who takes that 2 – 4 a.m. shift.

Ugh – yesterday was not the day for me.

Monday was supposed to be my last day working in the office. Tuesday was to begin the first day of all the “working from home” goodness. I went into the office on Tuesday.

Wednesday, not only did I have to go to into the office… I had to be there for an 8 a.m. meeting. Blah. I should have stayed in bed. Why, you ask? Let me give you bullets:

• I was leaving just a smidge late, but I still had time to swing by Starbuck’s I thought.
• Car was out of gas. Spend Starbuck’s time at 7-Eleven.
• Get coffee there instead.
• Get in car. Get on highway. Car smells strangely like Blueberry muffins. Realize that they put Blueberry Muffin coffee in the Exclusive Blend coffee pot.
• Was so disgusted I had to pour out the coffee while driving down the highway.
• Meeting was SHIT!
• Stuck in office most of the day.
• Get home to find my power was out.
• 2 hours of bitching at power company. Am told that power will be on “sometime today”
• Pull the “Medical Necessity” card and have electricity back on in 10 minutes.
• Debate feeling guilty knowing that neighbors are still without power.
• Realize that there is 1 power company. Yet another reason to hate this place.
• Turn TV on to watch my favorite summer show. When the power went … it blew my TV. Blew as in ruined.
• Decided Sarah was an evil vindictive bitch that was out to get me.

See? I should have stayed in bed. Now its 8 a.m. and I refuse to go into the office today. I also would really like to get on the road early today… so I have been working since shortly after 5 a.m. My coffeemaker can’t make it fast enough today.

You should pay close attention; there are discussion questions at the end.

A few months back I discovered this website, OKCupid. Never having been big in the whole online matchmaking thing… I pretty much blew it off as just for fun. I mean here’s this site with all sorts of quizzes and it will ask me random questions for as long as I am willing to answer them. What could be better, right?

My curiosity got to me though, and I started searching the whole “perfect match” end of things. I ran the little query and got a few results back not as many as I would have liked, but I’m picky and the query reflected that so I didn’t bitch. Besides the few that came back would be peach, right? These guys are my perfect match.

The first one… well the first one had a pic. He was painted gold…with horns. * And the profile was even worse if you can believe that. I started to remember all the reasons why I never gave in to these sites before, but I persevered and moved on to number 2. Number 2, also had a photo. He was a gem. Tall, pale, facial hair…yeah pretty much perfect. I opened his profile and was astonished. Geek? Check. Coffee? Check Check. Books, Music, Movies? Good. Weird Foods? Perfect. The list of requirements was steadily being checked off. He even called himself a bastard. I needed a second opinion.

Enter Sarah. Sarah loved him. Sarah started planning our wedding and naming the 85.6 kids that she was envisioning us with. I decided to sit back and wait – see if he found me. Amazingly enough I still do have one or two old fashioned traits…

A few weeks go by and this guy stumbles** onto my site. He comments and links his site. I take a look. On this site is the same pic from that match profile that I was fairly smitten over. I commented on his site. A pattern formed. More comments. A few emails. The more I read, the more I liked this guy.

Meanwhile, my dearest friend cajoled (bribed, really) me into signing up for Match.com. I really did not want to do this, but it was either sign myself up or have Chris do it for me. I figured I could stall if I did it, Chris really wouldn’t be out there looking for my profile, would he? So I opened my account and hesitated on posting my profile. Have I mentioned the amount of hate I have for being required to talk about myself? (Maybe I should have let Chris fill out the profile for me…) In an effort to stall a bit longer with the whole “let’s talk about me” section, I skipped ahead and setup my query. Upon running it, I received many options… but amazingly enough I recognized the photo of the first return. I knew his name, I had read his blog, and in fact I had just commented on a test he had posted. I laughed it off, funny coincidence.

Little did I know that I had one more funny coincidence in store; a few days passed and I was referred to a website by a friend. Stumble Upon was not a matchmaking site (thank god), instead it was a time waster, a community builder. You have a friends section, your friends of friends, then your network and audience, and… matches? Hell – why not? I clicked wondering what would come up this time – no familiar face. I was actually kind of disappointed, but I had stumbling to keep my mind occupied. Stumbling turned out to be fun and I was lucky since he basically disappeared for a week. At the end of the week 2 things occurred. First, while stumbling I checked that “matches” page again… and … my suspicions were confirmed – he was stalking me. There he was Number 1 and a 100% match. Second, I realized that it had in fact been awhile since he had shown his face somewhere. I sent an email to see if he was in fact dead. He laughed and thought I was adorable. He also quickly complied with the request to update his blog, which made me happy.

*You thought I was kidding about the whole horns thing, didn’t you?
**This is my story I can fumble the truth to protect friends who should be shot for their actions.

And that brings you to today. It’s now been 2 months. 2 months. I’ve had relationships that were shorter than this one sided infatuation. So what’s next you ask? Well I really don’t know. I do know that I am dwelling a fair bit, and that I smile when I see his name in my inbox. Other than that, I don’t know. Honestly, I’m having a hard time reading him. I don’t know if there is even a smidge of interest there so I’m a bit stalled at the moment.

Moira says “You should shelve that last old-fashioned trait and just ask the bastard to dinner.”

Sarah says “You just need to tell him to pack a bag and bring him to Louisiana with you for the 4th.

Chris’s suggestion involved me crawling into his bedroom window and taking advantage of him. While that plan has certain … merits, I informed Chris that just because that may have worked for him 6 years ago, we all aren’t as a psycho as that…

Evil Sara thinks he may just be gay…

Ah yes, discussion questions:

What do you think Sabine should do?
Should she just move on?
How is he able to resist the charm of someone like Sabine?

well that probably isn’t true, but you do have a new feature to be annoyed with enjoy.

See it’s just like talking to me except you can turn me off whenever the hell you want to… heh - you can even adjust my volume!

MIT has a weblog survey, and the larger the response pool, the better the data. Go participate.

Sarah had a brilliant idea for the Monday meme (bitch) it was hard… and its Monday… and its really hard not to be snarky on Mondays. But since I really have nothing else better to offer its what you get.

Really though… I would just go listen to Simple Man , and comment.

(Read on …)

Back in our last talk about song covers, Moira mentioned this one. I thought I would put it up for discussion…

Sacrilege or Brilliance?

Is anyone else getting the idea I can’t even stick to my own rules?

So a few weeks back Sarah and I were discussing songs… of a certain vein. She brought up one example from my past that I had completely forgotten about. Once downloaded however it snuck its way into my weekly playlist, and now I can’t get the song out of my head. It’s just so catchy and full of psycho-y goodness.

So here you go – the song you would catch me humming if you snuck up on me this week.

Sabine’s Pick of the Week

So, um, when is your birthday?

• getting to have a girls‘s “vent and eat… and drink” with a friend. It’s been far too long since I had a girl friend to go to dinner with and talk for hours on end. Safiye is in town this week and we got to have dinner. Which meant hours of bitching about life, love, and career. (not that she would ever bitch about being married to Gavin… Gavin’s perfect.). She caught me up on all the “goings on” and the boy’s big future plans.
• silly girly movies. Janeane Garofalo has a new movie that she did for Oxygen. It’s called Nadine in Dateland, and Janeane plays a dating coach who has to learn to listen to her own advice. It’s great knowing that there are people more unfortunate than you in the whole “relationship” hemisphere. It’s a really cute movie (in that really painful “Oh, I feel for you!” kinda way), if you didn’t see it I would make a point to TiVo it. Knowing Oxygen they will replay it a 100 times in the coming weeks.
• reading children’s books. I was finally able to sit down and re-read the Harry Potter books. Total Brain Candy. I love them, ok well maybe not all of them. I am currently working on the 5th one and while it is probably Rowling’s best writing… Harry is just a snot nosed bratty teenager who I am having a real time trying to love him in this book.
• and bath bombs…. life can never have too many fizzy bath bombs.

And that pretty much sums up my past few days… if you take out all the laundry and having to rebuild my baby.

Mother just left and I have my home back to myself. Mine all MINE! I get touchy over my personal space and Mother doesn’t always agree with me on how things should be. At least this place has a fairly set room layout. With the open floor plan of the last place I would come home to find whole rooms switched with others. Here about the worst she can do is reorganize my cabinets. (All my dishes are now on the left side of the stove instead of the right side of the stove…. I don’t know)

We did get to bond over new towel racks. No bookshelves, though. And coffee… we discovered Bay Beans Coffeehouse not too far from my place (next to a very unfortunate Thai restaurant)… not too bad.

But for now I am sitting here somewhat patiently waiting for Mr. UPS man to deliver me my new toy. Their website says he’s on his way… so I wait. Listening to my new CD that I got today, but won’t mention the name of… Genna would be so disappointed.

Libra

Things at home are not what they should be at the moment, whether it’s as minor as your toaster refusing to pop up or something more serious like a rift with a neighbor. Fix the situation and end the frustration.

Funny how that shows up after the first night of my Mother’s visit.

Funny how that shows up on the morning that my Mother broke my coffee maker.

One of us may not make it to Thursday…

I finally found a sushi place worth my time. More importantly I found a sushi chef that will make food decisions for me –

Chris (the sushi chef): What can I get you?
Sabine: What’s good?
Chris: What will you eat?
Sabine: No cream cheese.
Chris: No cream cheese?
Sabine: No mayo.
Chris: No mayo.
Sabine: *nods*
Chris: Everything else?
Sabine: *nods*
Chris: Spicy?
Sabine: Yes, Please.

So I had eel and spicy tuna and a Mexican roll… it was yum. I left very happy. Too bad the damn place is on the other side of the city.

In totally different news, I learned something today. I have a very long list of blogs I read… and there has been a bit of a revolution going on lately. Mainly – babies. Everyone just got one – is in the process of incubating one – is trying to have one – or at least is craving one. I have been surrounded by people in total baby frenzy. It’s been odd, but educational. Like this morning I learned that you can actually have the wrong type of nipples for breast feeding. And mine qualify for that category. I apparently have nipples that aren’t conducive to that whole “sucking for nourishment” thing. Yep, that’s me … for recreational use only.

Humph. Yet another way fate is making it plainly obvious that I should never have responsibility for a small child.

See aren’t you happy you came to my blog today to learn that little tidbit?

I promised a meme on Monday… its only an hour late. (Read on …)

• I bought a house (but I may have mentioned that once before) – this house required a contractor… as of Saturday I have a contractor. He starts on Thursday. Replacing the sunroom is the first project.
• I’m getting slate counters… and that is about all the decisions I have made on the house.
• On Friday, Mr. UPS Man showed up while I wasn’t here. He left a note on my door informing me that my management company had my package. This would have been useful info to have… but since I never use my front door it was late Saturday when I happened to spy it on my front door luckily I had about 10 minutes before the office closed.
• The package surprised me greatly. It wasn’t something I requested. It was a job. A job I haven’t done in about 4 years. And they wanted it finished by Thursday. I thought “what the hell” and now am beta testing a pc game. This action promptly devoured my entire Saturday… and Sunday… and my living room.
• Since the office is still devoid of everything except a whole lot of boxes… my machines (that have previously been stored in my pantry… what else am I going to put in there?) are now in the living room. My poor coffee table.
• I had forgotten how hard it is to finish a game on a deadline.
• My Mother is finally flying in tomorrow, we have been trying to line up schedules for over a month… She has a ticket and will be here till Thursday… whether or not I get a chance to vacuum or not.
• Ah – my horoscope on Sunday…

Libra

The drive to acquire new stuff is strong, but will it really fill the void? The stars say you may need to look a little deeper to discover what you truly need. Material possessions are just a distraction.

Hey Kids? Next time I’m out to fill a void, let’s try and steer me clear of real estate, ok? Like a purse… or as Dirk suggested, a dog? … and no – we don’t need to discuss what “I truly need”…

• (Aaron – you may want to skip this one) I’ve given up Dr. Pepper. It’s been almost 3 weeks. They just taste different here. And since I was switching, I switched to a diet soda… Diet Pepsi *shudder*
• Did anyone see the MTV Movie Awards? I TiVo’d it for the Foo Fighters… who rocked. But there were 2 other acts that I have to admit did pretty damn good. While not a huge fan of Eminem… He puts on a damn good show. But the one who surprised me was Mariah Carey. I think she is a joke… maybe not once but for the past 6 years or so, yeah a joke. She may however be on her way to redeeming herself, though… maybe.
• I found a new way to waste time at work (everyone needs more time wasters at work) … www.stumbleupon.com It installs a toolbar that pulls up random sites it thinks I would be interested in. me loves stumbleupon.
• And there was supposed to be more bullets… but something just showed up on my screen and well… now I am at a loss for words… I think I need to bitch at Sarah for a bit.

This is becoming really hard, you know? I told myself I would only share one a week� and I�m not sure but I don�t think I have stuck to that since I started. In fact you guys already got one song out of me this week. Of course it was only dedicated to one of you� but that�s neither here nor there.

Since Tuesday I just KNEW what song just HAD to fill this spot. Then it changed on Wednesday� and twice on Thursday� and today I just wanted to open up the whole database and tell you go find your own damn song. I�m too busy trying to shut out the world (it�s kinda scary out there�)

*deep breaths*

But I�m not going to do that. I am going to make the decision here and give you your one song� two tops, I promise.

Ok first. This is the week of The Foo Fighters. I seriously doubt that the numbers will reflect that cause Coldplay�s sales are just unbelievable� but I digress. Despite a lot of people not liking this latest effort � I love it. I would have liked it better if the music was mixed together instead of having 2 disc � one rock, one mellow. But I have shuffle� so I persevere.

It�s hard to choose just one out of the 20 but I did it. In fact it�s become a bit of a mantra in the past 36 hours�

DOA by The Foo Fighters

Then yesterday we got a bit of news. Jump, Little Children is going to take a break� a long one. That really is sucking, since I only discovered them about a year ago, and have only had such a short time to lust after Evan�

Again hard to choose one, but it�s was their first song I ever heard� and it made me fall in love with them. Since then it has stayed on my favorite�s playlist�

Education by Jump, Little Children

Alanis can wait till next week… as can Antigone.

Better today. Small panic attack at about 2:30 am that all of you got to witness. Caused by lack of sleep and huge decision made yesterday. Since there would be no sleeping I decided to head over to the house. I had to meet a contractor at 10 a.m. anyway. I was a few hours early, but I can do that… I *gulp* own the house.

I actually got to meet with 2 contractors today and the second one will be my choice if the one tomorrow morning doesn’t do something amazing. So yeah I’m not going to Daytona tomorrow as planned. Shopping can wait till after I sell the alcazar. Current plan is to meet with him and then spend the afternoon hiding at Blackhawk… and denying all knowledge of home ownership.

Now I am going to look at granite samples and debate whether or not I’m going to tell my parents about this stunt. Cause I’m thinking no. I don’t have any problem telling my Mother, but I really don’t want to have to deal with my Stepfather’s opinions on this matter… and when stressed what little tact I rent from Sarah gets checked at the door. It’s probably best that I not have that conversation with him right now.

Songs of the week to follow shortly… No really, I promise.

Oh shit. I bought a house. I think I’m going to be sick.

Tuesday I woke up not wanting a house. On Tuesday, I was thinking about maybe one day buying a condo. Today I own a home. A big one. That needs thousands of dollars of work. On acreage.

After all the shit I gave Sarah for buying a house with acreage…what do I now have?

This was a bad idea. This was a very very bad idea.

I’m never going to sleep again.

Remember all the shit I was getting about working for a mortgage company and not having a loan on the books? They can shut their fucking mouths now. As of this morning I am a proud owner of an investment property. Yep, I own a house that I will never live in.

Monday, a foreclosure came across my desk. A 4200 sqft monster of a home. It sits on 3 acres in the middle of the city. The only problem is that it hasn’t been updated since it was built… in 1968. Luckily though at the time of seizure the lady that owned it was in the process of renovating it and had completed all the major items except one. So it has a new roof, exterior paint, chimney, and A/C (destroyed in Hurricane #2 last year). All the wiring and plumbing has been replaced where it needed to be. And a new septic system went in at the first of the year. Which leaves me with all the cosmetic interior stuff. The house is a Tudor and the interior reflects that. Very rustic, and while not suitable to me I am sure that someone will love it.

Pics and descriptions on the inside… (Read on …)

A supposed friend of mine found me a new graphic.

I’m fairly amused…

There was this movement that started about 2 years ago that I have been against from the start. This movement was Starbuck’s selling music. I know, I know – combining 2 of my greatest loves should’ve been a wonderful thing. Yeah, not so much. I felt that Starbuck’s did one thing and and did it well. That was selling overpriced addictive coffee and they should just stick to that. I love them for the simplicity of that business plan.

Originally they started with original compilations of music. These sucked. Starbuck’s realized the major suckage factor and began to sell the same CDs you could find anywhere… just at a normally higher “convenience” price. This didn’t work for me either.

But now, now Starbuck’s has found the right balance. They have CDs I want and the only place I can get them is at the counter I stand at twice a day.

In celebration of the CDs 10th anniversary, Alanis has released an all acoustic version which shows just how much she has changed in these past 10 years. This CD marks the kick off of her acoustic tour that I am anxiously looking forward to. The release date for this CD is July 26th, but Starbucks obtained the exclusive right to sell it 6 weeks ahead of release. The only place you can get it right now is Starbuck’s… I fell for it. I bought my first Starbuck’s CD. The aspects of my life are blending into one. Life as we know it will never be the same.