Love. Hate. Technology.

Obviously I love technology.

I blog. I use Twitter. I had a LiveJournal, a Xanga and a MySpace. I've plurked. I live on
facebook. I would feel disconnected if I dropped my iPhone in the toilet. I work
for a dotcom company. Google street view. Gmail. Google anything.

Obviously I hate technology.

I love a hand written letter. Postage prices go up more than gas prices. No one
reads the newspaper so my dad got canned from The AJC after 19 years. I got canned
from a stationery store due to email and evites. Polaroid’s are archaic. You
can’t have a conversation with someone without facebook or YouTube coming up. I get bitched out over emails and blogs.

All I know is this.

We need technology to survive these days. I can’t spell worth shit. I need
an application called CheckPlease to compute percentages at restaurants. If the
internet goes down at work, I go down. I’ve converted tapes to CDs and then CDs
to iTunes and what’s next?

Only if technology could cure cancer, erase our nation’s debt and feed the poor I will take back all the things I hate about technology.

Five Eyes Not Five Guys

Yesterday, after 8 hours of my left eye being blurry and everything not really feeling right, I decided to investigate what the crap was going on. I thought it was weird anyway since they were brand new contacts. When I took my contact out, I realized I got two for the price of one. I had 2 contacts in my left eye. TWO CONTACTS.

The manufacturing guys probably justified the two contacts since the contact package before contained a dried and shriveled up contact from an apparent leak in the top.

Assholes.

It’s a Thursday, but it feels like a Friday. The holidays make everything slow(er). Slow drivers. Slow days ticking by. Sloooooow. The only thing that is slow is the amount of gray hair that I am getting. It’s ridiculous.

The past couple of weeks have been crazy. A lot of big things have happened.

I like list.

1. CareerBuilder lays off 400 people
2. I gotz a new car
3. Lazarus Candle Light Christmas Dinner
4. Second Annual Polaroid Party
5. Spirit Week!
6. Poker (I hardly know her!)
7. Cubes Moving on Friday

CareerBuilder lays off 400 people…..

That was a scary and long day. Nothing slow about that day. A blog was passed around confirming that CB was doing major layoffs. There is nothing like hearing about a layoff and contemplating if you are really needed. I didn’t want 2008 being the year that I was layed off two times. But shit happens.

Luckily, I was fortunate enough not to be one of ones who got a box full of their stuff on
a Friday afternoon. Luckily, I am still employed.

I gotz a new car…..

This is a pretty big deal. My car was janky. Now I am a proud owner a 2008 Nissan Sentra.

How it was janky you ask?

• The emissions light had been on for 6 months (my bad).
• It survived two window bashing/break-ins. It’s been through a tornado that caused a window to bust.
• I think I got into two minor wrecks (not my fault!).
• The stereo crapped out on me 3 weeks ago, so I was driving around in silence. I thought it was a sign from the Lord that I needed to pray more. Only because after a service I said to me, myself and I would use my commute time to spend that time in prayer.
• That lasted for 2 days and then I had to get my Wilco fix in (Shot in the arm).
• My CD player eat a CD about a year and a half ago and never barfed it out.
• The handle on the outside of my car fell off a year or two ago. That was just an inconvenience, but when the handle fell off on the inside of my car, that was just absurd! So I was classy and rolled my window down whenever I needed to get out of my car.

Lazarus Christmas Dinner

David Gordon and myself are partners in crime when it comes to leading the food section for Lazarus events. He plans it and I email. It sounds easy, but when you
are car looking, over loaded at work and only have email access by phone whilst not at work it can be daunting. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying. Thanks to a success to a ‘Socket Drive’ that co-workers and I hosted at CareerBuilder, we were able to donate around1,500 socks and 100 blankets to the Homeless of Atlanta. FTW!

Spirit Week!

To boost office morale, we are in the midst of spirit week. Pajama day Monday.
Team/cube decoration on Wednesday. Movie day on Friday and much more. We didn’t win the decoration contest because we didn’t have a pregnant chick dressed as a penguin, but we did have the most original idea. As you can see.

Poker (I hardly know her!)

So I was leaving The Local last night at a reasonable time and I heard my name.
I turned and it was my friends Vince and Geoff from my Rounder days. I’ve been
itching to play cards again, I feel as the Lord has been telling me to start
playing again. I talked to Pat Tate about it on Tuesday. Saw Vince and Geoff on
Wednesday. Maybe not the Lord, just coincidence. But I would like to say the
Lord, because I always feel highly favored when I take everyone’s cash money
(records).

Cubes Moving on Friday

This will be a sad day. This will be my first cube move in the 7 months that I’ve been at CareerBuilder. With new sales alignments and the massive layoff, we are moving cubes and teams. I will part ways with a lot of my team members who I now call friends.
I know this has been a long one. But it’s been a long time since I posted last. Mike Dunn said he would read it at least, my fellow office job friend. I have two New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Buy new music
2. Blog more.
3. Have a legit date to my sister’s wedding in June (free booze!) I threw this one in on a whim or a desperate plea.

Adam Brody. Yes Please!

The OC makes things look so easy.

I mean, they make relationship drama look so easy and very appealing. I will take some drama if it means I end up with Seth Cohen at the end of the day.

If you know what I mean.

Funny things you say

Honest to blog.

Last week my sister, Megan, called and our conversation went mostly like this:

"Ashley, Ben Folds is not the same as Ben Folds Five right?"

"Are you serious? Is this a real question?"

"Yeah, it's just a coincidence, right?"

"Wait, you are being serious. The Ben Folds is the same as in the Ben Folds in Ben Folds Five."

"Oh, what? I thought you said once bleh blah blerg but I thought you said once blerg bleh blah"


That became my favorite conversation of my Friday, mostly because she didn't call just to ask, "Whatcha doin'?"

I don't know what you are doing on the third of October but I am going to see Rachel Getting Married.

Recurring Nightmare #281

Because of Natalie Dee, I am posting about a dream I have on many occasions but not as much lately.

There are some dreams that I have over and over and over again. The reoccurring dreams are as listed: A) the many scenarios that keep me from graduating college B) drinking gallons and gallons of water and C) my teeth are falling out by the thousands. My dreams are real. Almost too real. When I first wake it takes me a minute to realize what was a dream or what’s reality. I can go hours trying to figure out if a conversation that I had in my dream was really just the dream, or if it was real and I continued it through the dream. I know when I am stressed or upset or scared, I channel these emotions through my dreams. The one dream that I hate to have is the one where I am doing normal day things, but the whole time my teeth are falling out. Like spitting out watermelon seeds, I spit out my teeth. Or I pull my teeth out. But the thing is, it’s like I have 345 sets of teeth. My teeth hurt in the morning and I just feel weird.

Plurk Me

When you have an office job. And the first thing you want to do is update your Plurk!, this is not something that you want to see. Now who am I going to inform that I woke up with an old Girl Scouts song in my head?!



I promise that I will do a real post soon. There is a post brewing in me, but I want to be in the right mind before I sit down and start typing.

I double dog dare you

bloggity blog blog

The last time I swore off alcohol was January 1, 2006 at 8something p.m. This time it’s July 5, 2008 at 7something p.m. It might be for a day or a week or a month, not a year, but at the moment I will order water.

I don’t think anyone wears drunk well. It’s expensive, can get messy and ultimately as a follower of Jesus- is just isn’t good. I know moderation 96% of the time. But the other 4% of time I can just be foolish.

It’s my birthday on Thursday. Lauren will be leaving for Africa then and Tiffany will be on Warped Tour. Leah and Josh will be doing good things in Bolivia. Katja is still in Alaska so she won’t be able to bake me anything. Jessica Simpson and I share birthdays, so she will probably be in Dallas with Tony or hanging out with Ashlee and Pete. She said we would get together this year but I think she is going to be somewhere else, again. That Bitch. There are other things I can talk about to be more dramatic than I already am, but I will refrain because we are going to Après Diem tonight to celebrate me and Kelli. I will have my favorites with me then so I need not to worry about it.

I may make people meet me at Octane on Thursday. So I will be around others that I love. So keep your calendar clear and drink coffee with me. As I said to Lauren, I am going to Make it Happen on Thursday, not the ‘MIH way’, but the ‘It’s my birthday way’.

BTW/FYI/NBD, if you really love me, then you would get me the little man in the right hand corner of my bloggity blog blog for my birfday.

Dreams and reality go together like Britney Spears and The Flaming Lips

Before I go any further, has anyone else noticed that the
beginning of Are you A Hypnotist? by The Flaming Lips sounds uncannily to Lucky by Britney Spears?

Ok, it’s just me.

It’s good to have a dream and it’s good to talk about it. If you don’t talk about your dreams then it’s easier for let them to just become fairytales that never become reality and then it’s just something that you think about. Constantly. When Vinings Stationery closed in April, I closed that chapter in my life. I have a feel thousand sheets of paper with my name on them, the fanciest desk arrangement at CareerBuilder and some helpful hints to friends who are biting the bullet and getting married. I told myself I will always love stationery like I love Christmas mornings, but that will be the extent of it. I’ve been on this earth just shy of 24 years and whenever something comes at me big or small (that’s what she said?), major or minuet, it’s been very easy for me to just say, “I guess the Lord has something bigger for me”. I think I cheapen myself and the work of the Lord by just saying that.

For the past couple of years, I’ve dreamed of having my own paper store. To be able to roll around paper and envelopes and justifying to myself and my credit card on spending $100 every month on stamps. BTW, there are some awesome new $.42 stamps out. Next to my gym in Glenwood Park is an open space. On the corner. For all to see. I just walked and flashes of color and ideas started to fill my brain again. When I was in Savannah a couple of weeks ago, I walked into a boutique of paper, Parisian things and odds and ends and died a little inside. Just because I am not doing the stationery thing at the moment, doesn’t mean I don’t have it in my future. I believe- deep down in my gut that the Lord puts things on our hearts, and it’s then our responsibility to cultivate the dream and make it grow.

I haven’t met many people who do retail and love it like I do/did. Oh man, the burning in my heart that was felt when someone saw the finished product of their wedding invitation was my favorite thing. Even though they might need a second run of them with a different grooms name and date due to the big D, I still loved what I did.

So I am pretty much putting my dream in writing and for you to hold me accountable to not let it just be a dream. Also, whatever is on the internet is tried and true. Unshakable. The word of Lord. If it’s on the internet it has to be right.

Right?

Which came first?

The wheelchair or the lawnmower?


It takes a lot for me LOLz. But man, I sure did when I saw this beauty.

The Interweb

There's only so much that I can do on the internet. Perez Hilton and Dlisted don't update enough for me to be entertained for the last 3 hours of work. You can only drool over a Marc Jacobs bag on his Web site for so long that your keys are getting all wet. Not enough people have new albums on Flcikr and facebook to keep me entertained.

I need new Web sites to look at. Or maybe I just need to work more. But I am still in training so really there isn't anything to do.

BTW, I have a new job. Do I like it? Sure? It's a job. Like I said to someone, it's not stationery. Nothing will ever compare to stationery. Or at least I say that for now. I can't complain too much though. The people are very cool and look at my cubicle.

Sex and the City tonight. Oh man, how excited am I? Very! I love Carrie! I love the clothes. I just love it all. I fell in love with the show 3 years ago and couldn't stop watching the DVDs. Yeah, it might be scandalous and speak of things that good Christian boys and girls shouldn't be doing outside the bounds of marriage, but man oh man, how I love that show. Is it weird that I actually learned a lot about relationships that way. Not just male and female relationships, but also friendships. If you watch the show, you know each of the four girls are drastically different. I liked how they interacted. They were all honest with each other but the show still showed natural conflict. And I liked to see how they handled it.

All in all it was a great show and I wish it was still an up and running show.

Cornstarch

As I am sitting in training at CareerBuilder I am regreting hitting the snooze button 3.5 times and not washing my hair this morning. As many people know, I am 'that guy' that washes my hair everysingleday. I say 'I need to, my hair is greasy", but was corrected by Miss Amanda Ross that says, "Don't you mean oily?".

What else would I do being struck by complete boredom? Google hair powder. After realizing that I didn't want to spend forty monies on bumble&bumble hair powder I found a blog about using cornstarch. Here's the deal, I was born and raised and proud to be from the South, but I've never used cornstarch in my life. So maybe I could be called a Modern Southernist?

(Modern Southernist: I will expound on what I feel is a Modern Sourthernist since I just created that term just a secound ago. I really feel like I need to dedicate a blog (my life!) to this term in which I am now claiming.)

But back to Cornstarch vs. Bumble&Bumble...

Tonight, when I get home from work/Octane/picking sister bear up at the airport, I am going to walk into the Edgewood Kroger (of course after I redo make up and wear my trendiest outfit) to walk down the flour/sugar aisle (I think it will be down that aisle?) to buy my first bag of cornstarch for less than two dollars. At this time, I will fictionally be saving twothirtyeight dollars since I am not buying Bumle&Bumble.

Here's to Cornstarch and contributing to water conservation.

huzzah!