Ktria's Little World

I guess I haven't updated this for a while...and I might as well, since I'm sitting in a hotel room with nothing better to do. Yes, my glamorous consulting job has finally sent me on travel; I'm in Tampa for the week. It's been kind of a mixed bag. The trip down on Sunday evening was a thoroughly sucky experience; just one of those "the universe hates me" days. The lines at Dulles were awful and I literally had to run for the plane (in heels, no less!). I made it on board, had an uneventful flight to Tampa, and realized at landing that my cell phone had fallen out of my purse and slid away somewhere. (Thanks to my helpful fellow passengers, it was eventually found under a seat two rows back.) My co-workers and I went to retrieve our luggage, only to discover that my suitcase had not made it on the plane. So it was a good thing after all that I was wearing a nice outfit...because I wore it to work on Monday! And my suitcase did show up that afternoon, so everything worked out in the end.

Anyway, being on travel is an interesting experience. It's kind of nice not to have to worry about the normal day-to-day chores - staying in a hotel where somebody else does the cleaning, driving a rental car, eating all my meals at restaurants. And it's fun getting to hang out with my co-workers, especially the ones who I don't usually see because they're down here full-time. But it's also hard work (we put in 10-hour days, so we can have Friday off) and I miss being home and getting to see Ed. It's nice traveling every once in a while, for a change of pace, but I hope I don't get put on a project where I'm away all the time.

Today what makes me happy is getting a fairly major piece of code to work, and having my group leader do a little victory dance in the middle of the office because of it. :)

I decided tonight that it was about time I cleaned up my computer desktop, which I clearly haven't done in a while. There were random homework assignments from two semesters ago, assorted crap copied from my old computer, old iTunes install files...you get the picture. There was also this image. I have no idea where it came from (more than likely I stole it from one of you) or what I was originally going to do with it, but finding it just made the whole cleaning process worthwhile.


Just thought I'd share. :)

Just to warn you...extreme narcissism and a fair amount of sappiness ahead. But what are blogs for, right? :)

As many of you know, Ed's and my engagement was not accompanied by any large sparkly jewelry - which made sense, as we were both poor grad students at the time. He got me a lovely Irish silver ring, and that was perfect. But a few weekends ago (the day of the Dave Matthews concert, in fact), we went to the jewelry store to - as I thought - get an idea of what they had. And before I quite knew what was going on, we were sitting down with a saleslady and getting a crash course on the different characteristics of diamonds, and suddenly somehow we had picked out a ring! I got shooed away at this point - presumably so I could pretend not to know how much it cost - and when they finally finished, all Ed told me was that it would take a few weeks to have it set and sized and he would pick it up when it was ready.

Fast forward to the following Wednesday morning, when Ed's alarm went off at 6 a.m. as usual - and as usual, I groaned and set mine for 6:15 and went back to sleep. But when I woke up again, there was a surprise waiting for me - Ed handed me a jewelry box, and in it was the ring! He had made up that whole story about a few weeks' delay, and I totally fell for it. He had actually gone back and picked up the ring later that same day, and had it in his pocket through the whole Dave Matthews concert, intending to give it to me there. But somehow, the pouring rain and mudsliding frat boys didn't create quite the right mood!

Anyway, it's on my finger now, and I've had lots of narcissistic fun waving it around and waiting for my co-workers to notice. I had my doubts that the guys would notice at all, but apparently they do pay attention to this particular piece of jewelry! Best reaction was from the guy who sits behind me, who sent me an IM which read: "Hey, can you turn that shit down? You're blinding me." Did I mention my co-workers are awesome?

There - that's my sappy story. And it's probably the most sappiness you'll hear out of me for a while, because my life has been taken over by - eek - wedding planning! At least until we find a reception site. Then I can ignore it for at least a few more months.

I have been doing other things with my life, like throwing parties and watching fireworks and walking the whole $%*#@ length of Arlington afterwards because nobody wanted to take the Metro, but this post is long enough already. :)

Today what makes me happy, and what will make you laugh, is that I was running on the treadmill and listening to my iPod today and the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" techno remix came on my playlist. I can't believe I still own that. But you know, it's actually a really great workout song!