happy thoughts

cheerwine! yum! like dr pepper but from north carolina.
dc!
mater!
mack
in the woods with arianne
croquet, anyone?
so much sugar!
staying out of the rain... kind of.
not staying out of the rain.

gray day

feeling justified in anger is a bad spot to be. for me as soon as i feel that i am justified in being angry or in not liking someone i no longer have the desire to keep it in check. for example we have this server at work... she just... grates on my nerves. whenever she opens her mouth (which is all the time) i have the overwhelming urge to rip my head off just to make the sound stop entering my brain. at any rate for the first 4 months or so i would just smile and nod whenever she cornered me and the nails on chalkboard noises came out (aka speaking to me). but over the last couple months people will randomly come up to me and be like wow so and so is really annoying (that's what they say if they're being really nice and they're a mild person) and so now i'm like well no one else likes her so i don't have to try to be nice anymore either. and that's not good. i should try to be nice to people. instead we have conversations like this:

her: some lady called this morning, did she leave you a message?
me: i don't know.
her: well she wants to have a party. did she leave a message?
me: probably. ::i walk away as she is still talking::

what is so annoying about that conversation is some ladies call me all day long to plan parties. 'some lady' means nothing to me. i don't know what she thinks i do but when i walked into work that day i had 22 voicemails waiting. of which about 19 were some lady. all of whom were looking to have a party. that's why they call me. all of them. but that's besides the point. i should've have stood there and listened to her drone on about this woman who wants to plan a party and then been like 'ok well i'd better get to that message... i wouldn't want to keep some lady waiting.'

anyway my original point is that it's not ok to feel justified in anger. so i read the 5 dysfunctions of a team. my boss had asked me to read it, so i did. i think he asked me to read it so that i would be angry all the time. this book has cause me to feel justified in my anger towards our corporate office... because this book said to me "dear elaina you work for people who wouldn't know team work if it ran up and slapped them in the face. they are clown shoes." like i need to add justification to that fire. thanks a lot book. i think for christmas i will send copies of that book to the people at whq. ha.

i also think my boss was intentionally trying to get me to fly off the handle today. which is interesting seeing as how he's on vacation. he's not even in the state and he's trying to see if he can get me to yell at people. so anyway my whq boss sent out this thing with awards for people who made budget last month and we weren't on it, which i totally expected b/c no one cares what i do in sales since we're a new store, but i get this email from my boss saying why aren't you ever on his list, you always make budget. to which i responded with something along the lines of probably b/c we're new or maybe b/c that guys hates me. so my boss decides to email the whq boss and find out why. and i'm like dude i don't wan to be involved don't talk to me about those people you know how they make me angry. so my boss and my whq boss exchange a few emails the last of which my boss fwds to me with a "see below" and it's basically a one liner from the whq boss saying we don't really care what you guys do "ha ha". to which i responded ':) "no comment"' and my boss was like that was a nice comment. at which point i sent some sort of email to tune of tell him he's a wienie and that he can "haha that, sucka." that was actually the last line of the email 'haha that sucka.' my boss never responded. i think he was like 'finally the response i was looking for' and stopped checking his work email.

note to future elaina- when you read this blog entry some day this will crack you up: always remember that story today about grandmas telling people to dry off before getting out of the shower so that the ceiling doesn't collapse.

i was SOOOO close to buying a cap gun today at the store. i even text messaged dan to have him talk me out of it but he was just like no, do it. instead i bought alphabet magnets b/c i felt that i could justify them as edutainment. cap guns are just fun and not edutainment... though i could use it if i decide to be a cowboy in a stunt show some time. you never know.

warning to everyone who could possibly come within arm's distance of me soon: i've had the desire to hit people a lot lately. not hard or anything but my natural reaction instead of using words has been to just hit people. weird.

this just in: "should've" isn't a real world but "edutainment" is.

also, bears wake up during hibernation to go to the bathroom. so much for sleeping all winter.

and here i go just makin' the same mistakes

so vacation was AWESOME. it was really hot in ca but i survived. the highlights:

- going to the pier with felicity. she insisted on walking and would not get in the stroller for a very long time. we were walking along the bike path at the beach (at this point she'd probably walked about a mile... that's a lot for a two year old) and she would stop and look at me and say 'mimi, sit down' and she'd sit on the curb and recover for a while and then she'd get up and start walking again. it just cracked me up that she would rather stop and sit on the curb then get in the stroller! i was like dude if you want to walk you can push me!

- disneyland! it was so awesome to see everybody and to get to go there with all the babies. ultimate moment: amber and i were at the tiki room getting some pineapple goodness. we went in the waiting area, order from in there and watched the movies about hawaii. anyway we're on our way out and i see this guy flipping out. he's yelling at some poor old guy saying 'that's the tiki room not the dole pineapple express lane!' to which the man was responding with 'i would suggest you file a complaint with city hall.' we're walking away and i'm telling amber about what i just heard and who should should come up behind us? the crazy man still yelling to the woman he is with about the injustice that is 'the dole pineapple express lane.' at which point i made a zigzag so i would get the chance to check this guy out. anyway we wound up walking behind him the entire way to... CITY HALL. where he got in the world's longest line to complain about the fact that he just had to wait in a long line. oh the beauty of it! two things. 1. i would never complain about anything while at disneyland b/c as soon as someone suggested i should take my complaint to "city hall" i would probably fall over laughing and forget about it. the idea of being an upset citizen of disneyland and taking my problems to city hall is just too funny. 2. if i was the woman with this guy i would have been like dude you're on your own, i'll see you at the car. i had to stop myself from telling her 'seriously? you can do better.'

- jack in the box! they now have a touch screen ordering system, which means... I DON'T HAVE TO SPEAK TO A HUMAN. that is my favorite thing in the entire world. thank you jack in the box for being awesome.

- my new nickname. felicity has decided my name is now 'mimi.' why? no one knows. but i LOVE it.

- dave & buster's. we went to the store in santa anita. it was amber, felicity, adam, britt, james, my dad and me. we had lunch and then spend some time in the arcade. after about 30 minutes in the arcade we left. as we got out to the mall my dad shouts 'thank goodness we are out of that god forsaken hell hole!' and i say 'you mean DAVE AND BUSTER'S?!?' at which point my dad tried to explain that he doesn't actually hate my employer it's just loud and not his scene. it was hilarious mostly b/c that it was what i think when i walk out every day! ::hahaha:: oh that place.

- natural history museum. so this museum has like the world's largest bird display. miles and miles of bird information. they didn't actually make any claims about having the world's largest bird display, so don't try to fight me about it. i'm just saying that so you know it was really freakin' big. anyway they had this part where you walked through the jungle and saw the jungle birds. and what do jungle birds do for fun? EAT MONKEYS. there was a bird with a MONKEY IN IT'S MOUTH. i freaked out and was like since when do birds eat monkeys?!? it's just not ok. i can't decide if it was some joke the museum was playing on the good people of la or if there are really birds who eat monkeys.

so i just googled 'monkey eating bird' and got this: The monkey-eating eagle is the national bird of the Philippines. It lives in the rainforest and builds its nest in the highest canopy it can find. In the early 1970s the population was only 36-50 individuals.The monkey-eating eagle was discovered in 1896 by John Whitehead, an English naturalist, who said that their primary prey was monkeys. In the 1970's scientists found that they eat mostly flying lemurs. They were renamed the Philippine eagle.

so i guess they are real and the people in the philippines are a-ok with this.

- dallas detour. so monday i'm flying out of burbank but a bird hit my plane and i wound up having to spend the night in dallas. less than awesome. 'less than jake? i don't get it.' besides being stuck in the ONE STATE IN THE UNION THAT I DESPISE it was kind of cool. the airline put me up in a nice hotel and i got to eat pizza and watch cable! what's not to love? it was nice to have a quiet night alone before returning. it was kind of like a vacation buffer. plus it got me out of the majority of the work day on tuesday. gotta love that. way to sacrifice your life so i don't have to work a full day little bird. that's taking one for the team little buddy.

so now i'm back. the boys decorated my desk with balloons and a 'welcome back we missed you' sign. it was very sweet. except the balloons were all deflated when i got there and i was like uhmm did you guys just tie sad balloons to my desk or what? but no, they started as happy floating in the air balloons, so that was nice and not so much like oh hey thanks for tying crap all over my desk. last night jon and i watched the yankees / o's game at bww. i love baseball. yankees won, or course. because the o's SUCK. and on that note - the end.