25 posts tagged “alex”
Alex has had a Kindle for the last few months, and he loves it to pieces. He goads me over how wasteful and outdated my paper books are, and how much space they take up in the flat. Well you know what the Kindle is a pretty antisocial device. It is all well and good that you have instant access to any number of tomes at the click of a button but you can't share them. Alex has the two Obama books on his Kindle, and I really want to read them before November. I am either going to have to mooch them via BookMooch (as I am not meant to be buying any more books for a while) or get some timeshare situation going. I have a feeling that the former will be the easiest solution. The biggest pain though is not knowing what Alex is reading (unless he gives an electronic update somewhere). He could be rocking it with Henry James and Dickens for all I know. I really miss being able to see the cover of the book he's reading, and congratulating myself one what a smart husband I have. I have a fear that when the price drops the subway train will be full of them. I wont be able to spend my time scanning the titles being read and making a note of the ones that catch my eye because everyone will be glued to their little ecru boxes.
A few days ago as we were walking back to the flat I started to speculate about my exam results. Now that I know that I have passed there are three possibilities: I held my ground and got 2:1s, through some miracle that transcends my dyslexia I manage to scrap *whisper* firsts, or I fucked up royally and have transcended to the ranks of mediocrity with 2:2s. Given that Homer is practically embedded into my DNA I am hopefully that I have managed to hold my ground in 2:1 land. Alex had a slightly more practical take on my forthcoming results... if my grades have slipped then that means I've been watching too much TV so he will rectify the situation by setting up parental controls and restricting my internet usage. NOOOOOO!!! Surely if my grades have dipped it means that the 9-5 grind is getting in the way, and surely it would be better for me to work less than watch less TV.
If you're getting one, how are you planning on spending your tax refund?
I believe that we are getting a refund but I wont be seeing any of it as it is going straight into Alex's savings account. He will be able to protect it from me frittering it away on clothes (yesterday I left the office to get soup and came back with a second hand Marc Jacob's jacket that I got for an absolute steal) or books (do I really need four books on Alexander the Great?).
Do you know what Alex calls my W2 form (other than disappointing)? It's referred to as my W "Is that ALL that you have earnt this year? That's not very much." 2 form.
I think there is something up with my laptop as once again shut itself down when there was 1.50 hours left of battery life. When I restarted it the clock had reset to 1969, and my Mail application was once again frantically trying to send all the calendar reminders for the last four years. Luckily (I say that with a half hearted grimace) because it couldn't connect to the internet I was able to delete all the messages in the outbox and save myself from a "self-spamming" incident. Sad, sick laptop is now sat waiting for tech support. I just need my laptop to hold out till the summer, as I was planning on upgrading it then anyway (my dilemma is get a regular black MacBook or Air). It's had a good run for the past 4 years, and it was really only after being upgraded to Panther that is started to run very slowly and misbehave. Poor baby.
Update: Things are back on track in laptop land, and I think it was part of a wider "bad luck comes in three" scenario. As well as my laptop going loopy the dishwasher decided it had had enough of washing dishes and wanted to be reclassified as a cupboard, and the plug hole in the tub needed a good seeing to. Luckily our building has a really fast maintenance service and we are even able to log problems online. Very cool.
That is probably the best way to describe Alex and I's mood five minutes ago. Alex is grumpy and in pain, and I am just plain tired (with a side order of grumpy). In order the best explain why we are in this predicament I need to rewind a couple of hours...
This evening we were invited out to dinner with some friends (and friends of friends) in Queens. Though got the length of time it took us to get there and back we might have well eaten in the Yucatan Peninsula. It's nice to occasionally leave our hole to go mingle. The evening turned out to be more fun than I thought it would be given that the restaurant was in a really random part of Queens, and the decor was basically Italian deli with night lights and tables. (The Clintons apparently ate there a few months ago, so no doubt we were amongst the first wave of hipster to "discover it" in their wake). The only downside was that Alex had forgotten to set the DVR for the Aussie Grand Prix so we knew that we had to leave by 10pm. In fact if we left a minute after 10pm we would risk getting turned into a BAR racing car and then we'd never get home!
Come 10:20pm we have successfully negotiated restaurant maths, coat check and group good byes but we are running behind schedule. The gods are definitely against up for the jounrey home as we hit every travel cliche going. We miss the subway train, then when we finally get on one it terminates 3 stops early, then we go get cash and discover it is way too expensive to get a cab straight to Jersey City so we settle for WTC. We jump out of the cab and are hit with a red light AND traffic so we can't snake across the road. There is a group of people on the escaltor that wont move so we can't shoot pass them and as soon as we get to the PATH concourse a train leaves so we are stuck wiating for 20 or so minutes for the next one to leave.
All this time Alex is anxious, and because he pulled a muscle playing tennis (over reaching is a common problem in this flat) he is a lot of pain. I know he is in a lot of pain because even though he is not moaning about it he is walking funny and wincing. This makes the speed at which he walked from the PATH station home all the more impressive. I just kept quiet as I didn't want my open mouth to cause wind drag and slow us down.
The story has a happy ending because it turned out Alex got the time wrong and the race didn't start until 12:30am!!!! So Alex is happily watching the Grand Prix, and I am about to flick through the first few pages of My Sister's Keeper before failing into deep sleep,
Our building has started having a mini-farmers market in the foyer on Sunday mornings. This is a huge blessing when you are bleary eyed and in desperate need of baked goods, and don't want to get out of your pajamas. Minutes after I had woken up I stumbled down in search of a scone or muffin to go with our hot chocolate (the morning beverage of choice for those avoiding coffee), and I guess in my weaken state everything looked good. I ended up purchasing two apple danish (very yummy), two orange brioche (for tomorrow's breakfast), a loaf, and four peppered lemon soles. I get back to the apartment and Alex's gives me the look of "You went down for pastries and came back with fish! Is your krytonite fresh produce? Does it render you powerless?".
Yes, and you should be thankful they didn't have any preserves or chutneys!
For months I have been weighted down by my work in-box. The sheer volume of emails hobbling me, and I really can't see the proverbial wood for the trees. On the many occasions I had launched into a diatribe about the state of my in-box Alex had suggested "In-box Zero" and I always rebuffed him on the grounds that getting my in-box to zero was as likely as me running across big foot or a unicorn on my lunch break. Yesterday was the tipping point, and I need to implement a radically different approach because I am just not getting enough things done.
I am going to start overhauling my in-box as soon as I get to work, and hopefully will be able to devote a few hours to it. The way I "organize" things at the moment is that emails to be dealt with simmer in my in-box, and then I file everything I've dealt with by company, person or event. This sucks I have around 200 emails in my in-box to be dealt with and a scary number of folders to put shit in once answered. THEN I have all these folders mirrored in my archived in-box. This system worked when I first started at Virgin back in March '05 but nearly three years on it sucks.
First thing I am going to do is archive all the sub-folders folders of my in-box (bar folder of emails from the general public to-be-answered). Then I am going to delete all the sub-folder, and file things directly in archive. My in-box and its newly trimmed sub-folders will only deal with live emails. (I feel better or ready and I haven't even started yet.)
My aim today is to get down to zero emails in my in-box, and sort the pending emails into three categories (with respective sub-folders): urgent, non-urgent and general public. I think this is the only way I am going to be able to clearly see what I have to deal with rather than trying to remember or keeping all my urgent emails open as a reminder that this is something that needs to be dealt with that day.
Wish me luck, and you can follow my progress on Twitter.
What are you most grateful for in your life right now?
Submitted by Becca-Pink.
Having Alex home, and being able to spend quality time with him once he has finished Halo 3.
What was your major or field of study in college? Did you wind up working in that field or using that degree? If not, what field have you wound up in?
Submitted by sneuf.
Do I really need to rehash my life story again? I studied science. I studied geology. I dyed my hair every color of the rainbow to distract from the fact that I wasn't a good geology student (but I at least my magenta barnet added some flair to the lecture halls if nothing else). I was in the right place at the right time (as I met Alex there) but studying the wrong subject, any how I got my degree, and fled the hallowed halls of academia (for what I thought would be) forever.
I bounced from one admin job to another but spent the majority of my time in the sea container leasing industry. It must be said that no one intends to work in container leasing but once in it is like joining the mafia because you never really leave. I have gone back to the same company on three separate occasions. Then everything changed eighteen months after Alex had moved to NYC because we got married, and I got to give up my "career" and start over. I loved the fresh start that New York afforded me, and the chance to find my vocation. But, when it came to getting a real job I discovered that I had a secret weapon... an English accent. Combine my dulcet tones with not minding to start over as a receptionist (all be it a vastly over qualified and over competent receptionist who sadly set the bar very high) and you have the formula for success.
I have been at my current company for nearly three years (my longest job ever), and earlier in the year I was able to stage a mini coup and go to work for the not-for profit arm of the group. I am a lot happier but I am still not in my chosen profession. I have three and a half years of a part-time degree to finish and only then I will be within sniffing distance of my dream job - grad student.
