Jesus Land

While I was sitting in my room in SLC, I was watching this game show called "Amnesia," where people have to answer questions about their past. Friends and family come on and tell little anecdotes about the contestant while they sway to music being pumped into one of those glass boxes so that they can't hear the story being told. Then, they are asked trivia questions about details from that story. I've come to the conclusion that I would be very good at this game. My brain is filled with people's names, stupid details, and things that no one else ever remembers happening. Who wants to be on this show with me? This also made me hope that I never get to the point where I don't remember these things. I like having useless knowledge of my past.

Saturday, I actually got out of the hotel and convention center and although I didn't see any of the "historical" crap in SLC, I did make it to the cupcake place.

It was everything I hoped it would be. Cute, adorbz, and tasty. The people were nice and the cupcakes were so delicious that I bought a box of six to bring home with me. They took a big beating when they had to go through security, but even if they weren't as pretty when they got home, they still tasted great!

Here are two photos from the Mini's Web site of two of the varieties I sampled:


The PB Fix: Chocolate and Peanut Butter. mmmm.


The Snowball: Vanilla with meringue and coconut.

I also tried the mocha latte, the black and white cupcake, the Breakfast at Tiffany's (it had blue frosting and silver sprinkles!), the lemon pie (I have a new found love of lemon curd), and the chocoholic. All get two thumbs up.

Some photos from my walking excursion in Salt Lake:

The mountains really are pretty awesome. I wondered if people who live their get used to having that as their background.

Nightlife in Utah. Looks like "Bliss" didn't really work out too well, building is for sale.

This was interesting. These were up and down the sidewalk on the street we walked up. And next to everyone, there was something written in blue marker...most of the others were references to Bible verses. WWJD? Hire a better PR firm?

Inside of Mini's cupcake bakery. My very own religion.

The display case with all the cupcakes.

On the way back to the hotel we had lunch at a cute coffee shop and then went to the airport. I finally got back to Chicago at 10:20, home by midnight. It's nice to be back.

Misery Index

It's 11:30 p.m. in Salt Lake City. I have the loudest neighbors ever. I can't sleep. I have to be back in the booth at 8 a.m. Another 9 hours.

If I am here next year, I will buy someone a plane ticket to where ever this wretched conference is and you can please be my guest to come kick me in the ass.

What. The. Fuck. am I doing here?

In other news, I'm watching the first season of Weeds. This show is amazing.

Can I get an Amen?

Greetings from SLC, Mormon capital of the USA! I've already gotten married and I have 6 new sister wives! All that accomplished in one day! Yeah, I know how to multi-task.

I kid, I kid.

The majority of my day can be summed up as 50% annoyance and 50% motion sickness.

Flight got delayed an hour.

We finally boarded and I realized I'm sitting in front of the ONLY child on the plane. I get nauseous even thinking about what he's going to be doing to my seat for the 3 1/2 hour plane ride ahead of me. But guess what? That little tot passed the eff out before he could wreak any havoc on my equilibrium.

In the end I was actually saved, because the dude sitting in the window seat of my row could have been sitting behind me. Then I would have projectile vomited or probably just huffed and puffed and gotten all shitty about it. This guy was a straight up crazy person. When we were on the ground he was fine, but as soon as we took off, he went pretty nuts. he kept opening and closing the shade, pulling out his newspaper and folding and unfolding it and ripping articles out of it, touching his face violently and shaking his leg rapidly. THEN...and this is when I really felt for the guy in front of him...he pulled out this huge carry on from under the seat so harshly that I was just staring at him with what I could feel was a very twisted look on my face. I don't even know how it fit under there in the first place, but he yanked that sucker out with purpose and shoved all his newspaper clippings in there and then shoved it the hell back under the seat from which it came. I just looked around and no one else was seeing what I was seeing. Of course.

After that I watched some episodes of Always Sunny In Philadelphia to cleanse my hateful mind.

We landed. People fucking take forever to get off the plane. An old ass lady is talking on her cell phone...my friend behind me yells loudly for her to get off the plane. Funny.

We get our luggage and are getting in a cab when some old guy in line behind us (who looked like Martin Landau) asks the person who gets the cabs for people where my friend and I are going. As in this dude is taking it upon himself to share a cab with us? Unsolicited? In the end he wasn't going where we were, but I kind of wish he was. I was in the mood to treat someone, and he was in the perfect position. But alas, I just trash talked him as we made our way to the hotel. Carsickness quotient is high. I see some mountains and it starts raining.

So, all in all the total travel time from door to door = 8 hours. Ugh.

I apologize for my change from present to past tense up there...I do not however feel like correcting it.

Hotel is nice. I have a smoking room, which means I don't have to stand outside to smoke at night which is good because it's freezing here today and oh yeah, it was snowing. Will I ever escape the snow???

The scenery is majestic of course, snow capped mountains and stuff. I'd hoped for a nice view. Such is not the case:

The mountains are probably behind those buildings, I'm guessing.

Tomorrow I have to work 9 hours in an exhibit booth. Same day, different city.

I'm going to try to see some of this Godly place.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is rehearsing tomorrow night...might go heckle them..might not. Not sure yet. Actually I think it would be interesting to check it out.

I do want to go to the Family History Library which is the world's largest collection of genealogical records. It's open until 10 p.m.! Crazy.

So, that's about it for now. I'm happy to be out of the office. I'll leave you with this photo I took of our "new" phone paging system at work:

Good Morning, Charlie...

Amen.

happiness is...

...watching three hours of the Food Network and reading the internets, on the couch with a drowsing meowsers next to me.

...opening the windows and not wearing socks.

...Richard Walker's.

...shopping sprees at forever21. When do I have to stop shopping there? My mom says never, since it's forever and all.

...only having 2 days in the office this week.


I'm going to Salt Lake on Wednesday, for 4 days. I hope to go here while I am there. The weather looks to be pretty shitty the first two days then better on Friday and Saturday. But it doesn't look like I'll be missing anything here. Warm weather, when will you be here to stay?

That's about it for now.

I enjoy being a girl....

In the morning when I drive to work down Schaumburg road, I pass three of those hokey church signs all in a row. I need to find a better route to work.

Speaking of work, I'll be in Salt Lake City next week for another one of those God forsaken math conferences. I effing hate math...like so much...why am I still doing this?

I'll be going to L.A. in May, hopefully that will be fun.

I've been looking on almost a daily basis to see what opportunities live out on the interweb. I've come to the conclusion that there aren't any.

I've been tracking my headaches for the last three months. I'm almost convinced they are "hormonal" How gross. Like...not only do you get to have your "woman time" but for 3 days before hand you get to have a sweet migraine!

I'm working on a little recap of the last four years of my life...via online journal and blog. it's going to be very narcissistic and you will like it, damn it.

That is all for now.

Have you tried....?

"Yes, I have. Thanks!" Or "No, it's not really what I'm looking for, thanks though!"

This is my daily life now. People at work ask me how the wedding planning is going and I tell them, it isn't, really. Then they become concerned and start to ask me if I've looked into such and such venue or reception hall or banquet hall...and I have to politely find a way of either telling them, "yes, I've thought of that already" or "Now, I just told you what I DO want. Why would you even suggest that to me?"

Now, there is a huge difference between the people who know you and your personality giving you advice (even those who work with you) and people who know what you sometimes do or wear or talk about at work, giving you advice. It's painful and sooo time consuming. Someone actually told me I "looked sad" when I was receiving said "advice" today. This is not good. Why is no one picking up on my body language? No one will talk to me about anything else and I don't even try to bring it up.

Annie--I thought you said people were going to be running the other direction? Why isn't this happening? Am I doing something wrong? Maybe I need to be more overjoyed and less melancholy when people ask me about it?

I don't want to be rude, and I know people are trying to be helpful and take an interest. With that said, Make it Stop. I can't imagine what it's like being pregnant or having a child for God's sakes. I'm going to have to wear ear plugs...or learn sign language so I can pretend I went deaf from conceiving the child. Wait--could I pass that off as a side effect of wedding planning??? The deafness, not the conception. I don't need to open that can of advice worms...

Oh, I have a headache too. Shocking.

Cake on 5...

Today I was alerted to this note on the microwave at work. I shit a brick, then took a photo of it...luckily I always have my camera with me now. Although it's completely maddening that someone would go out of their way to write this...it's "so us" when it comes to the people I work with. My friend added in the "There's medication for this."



The first thing that popped into my mind was how funny this would be to post on a Web site that posts passive aggressive notes. I explained the Web site to my friend and when I got home I went to post it on the site. And lo and behold, I found this:

Edit: I took the link off because this blog was linked to their site and I don't need people I work with being all up in my biznaz. If you want to see the post just go to the site that hosts the notes.

It's a copycat job! Someone in my office reads this Web site and copied the job from Baltimore. My mission tomorrow is to find out who posted that post-it and bond over a love of passive aggressive notes.