monkey nonsense

my mom sent me an email

“Be careful the sounder stone and rain, and drive slowly, ok?”

BAH! sounder stone! hahahahha

MSN had a link to an article about the “Quarterlife Crisis.” I remember hearing about this book (by the author of Pledged! ) a few months into working. Never got around to reading it though. But some of the things they say in this article, I really agree with!

Dealing with the Quarterlife Crisis
by Peter Vogt
MonsterTRAK Career Coach

Article provided by MonsterTRAK

When high school pals Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner, now both 25, got together over lunch several years ago to catch up on their lives after college, they were both ready to tell some glowing stories about how well they were doing.

“At first, we both said we were having a great time,” recalls Robbins, an English and American studies double major in college, now working in the Washington, D.C., bureau of the magazine The New Yorker. But before the conversation went much further, the fronts that twentysomethings often put up vanished. Both women admitted they were feeling unhappy, confused, and somewhat adrift.

“Then we started seeing that many of our friends were feeling the same way,” Robbins says. “And there weren’t really any resources to help us deal with what we were going through.”

So Robbins and Wilner decided to create one themselves. The result, based on their own experiences and several hundred interviews with fellow twentysomethings who graduated from college in the past few years, is their book, Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties.

It goes without saying that when you interview more than 200 of your peers, you learn a few things you’d like to pass along to others. For Robbins and Wilner, their book and its accompanying Web site are vehicles for doing just that. They also welcomed the opportunity to offer career and personal advice here–particularly for those in the middle of a confusing, demoralizing quarterlife crisis.

Here are a few of Robbins and Wilner’s recommendations:

Don’t have a career plan? Don’t worry
You don’t need to freak out if you have no idea what you want to do with your life, stresses Wilner, a Web administrator in Washington, D.C., who majored in psychology in college. “I temped and got a taste of various fields and companies out there before I settled into my first permanent job,” she says. “So don’t let those external pressures get to you, don’t think that all those people with plans have everything figured out, and don’t think of it all as some kind of race and that other people are ahead of you. We all backtrack at some point as we make shifts in our plans. That’s just the way it is.”

Separate a job’s meaning from its trappings
“Forget about how much money a job will pay you, forget about societal prestige, and forget about what your parents and friends think about your job,” says Robbins. “You have to figure out what’s meaningful to you in your career, and what will warm your heart and make you want to jump out of bed each morning.”

Robbins knows what she’s talking about. Three weeks after she graduated from Yale University, she took the first job offer she got after being “completely seduced by the trappings. The pay was wonderful, I liked the people, I had my own office with a door, and my commute was only 15 minutes.”

She lasted for eight months but was miserable the whole time. Don’t make the same mistake, she stresses.

Scared, lost, or clueless about your career? You’re normal
Maybe you’re questioning yourself and your place in this world more than ever. Maybe you’re barraging yourself with intense self-interrogation, as Robbins puts it. Maybe you’re filled with anxiety and fear. And maybe you believe you’re the only twentysomething who feels so confused.

You’re not, Wilner emphasizes.

“One thing I honestly wish is that I had done the research for this book even earlier, because that in itself helped me tremendously,” she says. “Listening to everyone’s experiences, anxieties, thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams…so much like my own. Who knew?”

It took Robbins and Wilner hundreds of hours and conversations with their peers to learn that they–and their peers–were normal. You are too.

“If I had known back then what I know now, I wouldn’t have beaten myself to a mental pulp so frequently,” Robbins says. So neither should you.

© Monster Worldwide, Inc. All Rights Reserved. You may not copy, reproduce or distribute this article without the prior written permission of Monster Worldwide.

Woman finds bear eating her oatmeal

Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Posted: 10:02 a.m. EDT (14:02 GMT)

WEST VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — It was a real-life version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears — only in reverse — when a woman came home to find a young bear eating oatmeal in her kitchen.

The bear apparently entered through an open sliding glass door, broke a ceramic food container and started eating, West Vancouver police Sgt. Paul Skelton said.

“It sounds like a nursery rhyme, doesn’t it?” Skelton said. “At least we have a health-conscious bear on our hands.”

Three police officers who went to the home Thursday couldn’t get the bear to budge, so authorities let the animal finish its meal.

“The bear didn’t appear to be aggressive and wasn’t destroying the house, so they just let it do what it was doing and eventually the bear decided to make its way out of the residence and down toward a forested gully,” Skelton said. “It ended the best it could.”

Skelton said bears in the suburbs north of Vancouver have been coming out of hibernation as hungry as ever but later than usual but this spring because of a heavier than normal snowpack from the winter. The report Thursday was one of six complaints police said they received about bears in the area that day.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

from: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/06/20/oatmeal.bear.ap/index.html

so we started actually constructing our pepsi product boat last night. we’re using this crazy strong glue that appears to be flimsy when you apply it, but 3 hours later, after it’s set, even tina can rip it apart!

i got a bit on my hands. actually a lot. my hands were sticky the whole night. whatever i touched would start to stick to me (luckily not get stuck since the glue wouldn’t set that quickly). i tried to wash a cup… and it ended up sticking to my hand even while the water was running! instructions on the back of the glue told us to use nail polish remover to get the glue off. it worked for the globs of glue we inadvertantly got on the tables. but it didn’t seem to do anything other than to temporarily make the glue less sticky.

after pretty much rubbing nail polish remover for 10-15 minutes, my hands started to feel normal. or perhaps the glue just dried.

’cause this morning while i was showering, my hands felt a little weird. then i realized it was because they remained dry! the waterproof glue was still on my hands!

even now, it’s only slowly peeling off…. is it bad if i ate with my hands with the glue dried on my fingers?!

Monopoly: Nintendo Collector’s Edition Coming Soon
Now this is a surprise. Let’s take the classic board game Monopoly and strip out all that Marven Gardens and New York Avenue nonsense. Then we’ll replace it all with Nintendo-themed characters and elements, such as Slippy Toad, Princess Zelda, and King Dedede. That’s right; USAopoly has been granted the license from Hasbro and Nintendo to create a Nintendo-centric Monopoly board game. Get ready to “play” as iconic items such as Mario’s iconic hat, Donkey Kong’s famous barrel, the familiar Koopa Troopa shell, a majestic Hylian shield, Link’s heavy metal boots, and the classic original NES controller all recreated as pewter tokens. I never liked the old iron and automobile anyway.

from: http://www.pressthebuttons.com/2006/06/monopoly_ninten.html. go there for more!

oh dude!! i want to play this game!!!

so yesterday, i left work at around 5:45. it should’ve taken me about 30 minutes to get to west falls church. this 30 minutes already accounts for rush hour traffic typically.

got to the station and there was soooo many people just standing around at the bottom of the escalators! i stood around for 15 minutes, waiting for the crowd to slowly move down but it never did! finally, i walked up to the metro gates to see what was up. they weren’t letting anyone go down to the platform because it was too crowded and unsafe. apparently a train had a problem in the tunnel and because the tunnels in the DC metro are DUMB, no trains could get around it. so more and more trains kept getting backed up. this one train caused a backup for a few miles… basically, the metro was clogged from foggy bottom (the stop right after me… i wonder if they updated that message later on to include my stop because nothing was happening at my stop either) to courthouse… 3 stops AND spanning DC and VA! the station manager announced that trains were coming to pick up riders but it’s not as if the trains could reach the platform! it got that backed up.

i thought about walking to the station after me (foggy bottom), but then i probably would run into the same problem. i thought of walking to the station before me (mcpherson square), but then i’d get stuck in the tunnel! i thought of taking the red line (because i can walk to that station) to transfer to the yellow line, take that down to the pentagon, transfer to the blue line and ride to rosslyn and then transfer back to the orange. but rosslyn was one of the stations right in the middle of the logjam… so it’s not as if that’d detour would work out.

i ended up taking a bus to the ballston metro… but DC area traffic ended up slowing the bus down too! i didn’t get to west falls church until 7:30!

THEN this morning, i went to the reston south parking lot to catch the bus a little before 8. usually i get there with a few minutes to spare and the bus is just sitting there. today was no different. the bus was waiting there as i pulled in. i got a phone call from my roommate telling me i forgot my lunch (d’oh!! AGAIN!). then i hung up with her and get out of my car… literally got 2-3 steps away from the car, when the bus starts to go! i wave at it!! and he just keeps going! so i run back to my car and drive maniacally out of the parking lot. i was stuck behind the bus at the red light leaving the parking lot. after we turned on to reston parkway though, i passed him and sped up to 70. i turned into the park (between the main street i live off of and the parking lot) and parked my car there. i think i hit the turn at about 60 mph… my car actually made a screeching sound and i actually swerved to not run off the road. then i ran across a field, cut through some trees and got to the bus stop (at the corner of the main street i live off of… it’s about a 10-15 minute walk from my house so really the park was the closest place to park) just as the bus was pulling up.

… then the bus proceeded to get stuck in traffic on the dulles toll road (it was SOOO backed up this morning! ALL lanes! including HOV!) and i didn’t get in until 9:15.

i SOOOO agree with this!! it happens in VA too. it used to piss me off aaaaaaaaaaallll the cars riding the left lane coming north on reston parkway. slowing me down when i tried to get home!!

The Loathing of the Left Laners

I almost made it through the comments without getting mad. And then “Me” posted this:

“MD Driver is right. There is no “passing lane” in Maryland. It’s just a lane, and the left-laners can stay there if they so choose.

Sorry.”

This pretty much sums the left laner ‘tude. I can stay there if I want and there’s nothing you can do about it. I reckon that’s so, whether there’s a “passing lane” law or not. But the fact that you can totally misses the point. We can do lots of things in life that we choose not to do because they fall into that vast and undesirable category of “not cool.” The question is WHY do you want to stay in the left lane. You know you shouldn’t be there. You know it causes backups. You know it makes the highway less safe. And yet you persist, simply because you can and to the detriment of the rest of us. It’s the control thing and you really need to get over it.

Other posters wondered whether I meant for this to apply to congested or two-lane highways, to which I say: most especially! A couple people brought up the example of I-81, which is overrun with cars, trucks and mountains, making it hard for people to move easily in and out of the left lane. I can appreciate that and if traffic is rolling along in both lanes at 75 mph. then I say fine.

But it’s my belief that left laners cause many of the backups on the two-lane portion of I-66. What happens in crowded areas on two-lane highways is that inevitably some slow-poke (not slow like 55 mph, but slow like 40 mph) sits in the left lane. There’s no way to get around this person because there are too many cars in the right lane, so traffic starts to back up for long distances. (No less an expert than Tom Cruise opines on this “fascinating” phenomenon in Mission Impossible 3.)

It happens every night on I-66 east. Cars back up for a couple miles and then clear out after the Glebe Road exit. And every time you get past Glebe you find some slow-poke in the left lane. I’m not saying that these people are the cause of all the congestion, but I am saying that if they moved to the right, the congestion would be a lot more manageable.

I’ll close with the wise words of one of our anonymous posters:

“Keep right except to pass. Pass and then move back to the right.

That’s all I have to say.”

from: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/getthere/2006/06/the_loathing_of_the_left_laner.html

this weekend, i went to go see the yankees vs. orioles THREE TIMES.

on friday, we sat in the way upper decks with a bunch of rowdy people. pretty fun cheering and listening to everyone else cheer. boy, there sure are a lot of yankee fans at camden yards! the highlight of the evening was getting the wave to go completely around the stadium about 6 times! SIX! at least! it might’ve even been more. quite awesome! oh yeah… and the game was pretty good ‘cept for the end result- 6-5 yankees. close game though, orioles lost it after one of the players dropped what would’ve been the 3rd out of the inning. instead, the yankee runner ended up being safe and scoring on the next hit. BOO

on saturday, we got really nice tickets for tina’s birthday (yeah, it’s kind of late… eh). we were sitting in the outfield by the bullpens maybe 6-7 rows back. we went there early for batting practice and was able to get chien-ming wang to turn around and acknowledge us. (’cause we yelled his name in chinese) he’s a pretty nice player! later on, after one of his teammates caught a batting practice ball, he asked for it and then immediately turned around and threw it to us!! i gotta say, IF i were a yankees fan, that would make him my favorite player…. maybe. then during the first inning of the game, a home run was hit RIGHT to us! i had just been wiping my glasses (they were dirty) and thinking, man i should pay attention in case i get hit by a ball. immediately after putting on my glasses, the ball gets hit and i look up and it was coming!! i ended up waiting too long should’ve reached over the people in front of me! they ended up knocking the ball down and it landed in the lap of the person sitting next to me! bah!!! the best part was that it was an orioles home run! unfortunately, the orioles proceeded to lose the game AGAIN 6-5… another close and exciting game!

when tina got home afterwards, she watched the game on mlbtv. she played the first home run a couple of times… and we think we could see me standing next to the lady who caught the ball (at least we see my hair) and we can see talida’s pink shirt after i move towards the ball. she was holding onto the nachos so she couldn’t stand up.

finally, this sunday we went AGAIN. we were hoping to get chien-ming wang’s autograph… but they had photo day… where the first 5000 fans get pictures with their favorite orioles. unfortunately, u gotta get there by 11am to get in so we missed that. and then because that was happening on the baseball field, they didn’t have batting pratice so tina missed chien-ming wang. more FORTUNATELY, the orioles kicked the yankees butt 11-4.

so… i think that tina still jinxes the yankees into losing (she’s sat through a bunch of their losses every time she goes to the park) i still provide the orioles luck when they play the yankees (3 yankees vs. orioles games i’ve gone to had scores like 13-8 and 8-4 and now 11-4), but talida trumps us both and makes 6-5 yankee games . BOOOO… oh well, at least it was interesting

i am baseball-ed out

i usually try to catch a nap on the metro ride to work. particularly this week since my carpool is on a business trip, i’ve had to ride the metro for much longer… giving me enough time to catch a fulfilling powernap. (there’s nothing more annoying than napping, but feeling unrefreshed when waking up!)

since the stop i’ve been getting on at is relatively far out, i usually can get a seat. typically, i’ll get a seat and fall asleep. by the time i wake up, a stop or two before i need to get off, the train has become considerably more crowded. i’ve gotten used to waking up with people standing around me. a couple of times, i did get startled when i woke up to find someone’s butt/back in my face but that was only on the rare really crowded days.

today, the train i got on was a bit more crowd than usual (PROBABLY because it was the first train to come in over 10 minutes!! grr, but that’s another gripe for another post). since there weren’t any seats, i stood towards the end of the train car where there was a clear wall to lean up against. while there wasn’t any seats available, there was still plenty of space to stand.

after awhile, before even arriving at the next stop, i decided to sit down on the floor. there was plenty of space for this. basically the area i was standing had enough space for a seat had the metro people wanted to place a seat there. so i sat down and quickly fell asleep. i woke up a stop or two before my stop to discover…

a large man sitting on the floor right next to me. he wasn’t fat exactly, but he was large. and the amount of space available really wasn’t all that great… probably only enough space for 2 skinny people which neither of us were. his legs (sitting indian style! c’mon man! space is limited as is!!) were all up against my legs. i think in my sleep i had tried to shy away from his body, but i was in a corner so reaaaally there was no space to go. the man was all up in my space!!! it was so bad that in order to get up, i had to ask him to get up first!

was there any reason for this man to be sitting riiiight next to me? sure all the seats were taken (as they were when i got on the train), BUT there was still some space to stand! the train wasn’t terribly crowded. had he wanted, he could’ve stood ANYwhere. heck, he could’ve even stood next to me and wouldn’t have been all up in my space. but nooo, he tried to squish in where there wasn’t any space and sat down right next to me! >:O

i need my space. at least three feet of space if not more. there should be some rule that if someone is sleeping, you can’t touch them. do not disturb or something. that just ruined what was a great nap for me because i woke up so surprised and then i just didn’t feel refreshed anymore.