Avenue Q

The Broadway show Avenue Q is in town for 2 weeks at the National Theater and we went to see the show tonight. It had the majority of the Broadway cast. I'm kinda a theater snob so these things are important to me. :) The show was hilarious. There's no way to properly explain it, but I will try. The show is based on the idea of Sesame Street, with puppets, but the topics are entirely adult. And coming from puppets, adult topics somehow become VERY funny. There are puppets that look like Bert and Ernie but have different names, and there is Trekkie Monster, among other characters.

Songs from the soundtrack include:

"What do you do with a B.A. in English?"

"It Sucks to Be Me"

"Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"

"The Internet is for Porn"

And the list goes on.......

Most of it is highly inappropriate but the overall point of the show is finding your purpose in life. With a lot of humor along the way. If you can see this show, GO! You will not regret it.

Kitchen Experiments

Today is a big day. This is going to sound crazy, but I experimented for the first time in the kitchen today. When people have told me to just throw some things together, I've never been able to do it. I'm a true engineer in the kitchen. Unless you tell me specifically how much of something to use and when to use it, I can't do it. A "pinch" or "some" are not units of measurement!

We made a recipe at the Pampered Chef party I went to last month and I decided to use the basic idea to create my own dish. Basically, I combined turkey, stuffing, and gravy as a filler between crescent rolls and baked it. It was delicious! Again, I'm so proud of me- I'm becoming all domesticated (haha, yeah right).

Politics at Work

Our CMMI consultant was in the office today and we tend to get into political conversations. It's interesting because he's a very religious, very Republican guy- so basically my opposite. It's always interesting to talk to him because while he holds very different beliefs than me, we are both mature enough to be able to discuss the issues without getting upset. I find that's a difficult trait to find. People get so emotional about politics; half the time I think people don't even know what they're talking about, they just passionately regurgitate whatever they've heard on t.v.

The conversation did get heated and I found myself frustrated because I don't recall detailed facts easily. When I read, I gather information in my head and develop an overall idea or opinion of things. But I don't retain the details. It's how I think in all areas of my life and I find it does hinder my conversations and even my work at times. I was frustrated because he kept asking for examples and I couldn't give them, not because they don't exist but because I have trouble remembering them.

I've been doing this since I was a kid. In school, I would retain information long enough for a test and then I would lose it because I didn't use the information on a regular basis. Probably not a good thing to admit, huh? I just don't retain information I don't use. How do you change a behavior that's been so ingrained?

New Washer and Dryer

It finally arrived! The new washer and dryer were delivered today. They are Samsung- who knew I could buy a washer/dryer and a phone from the same people? We have been doing laundry non-stop. I am so happy to finally have a working washer/dryer.

The catch? Oh yes, there's always a catch when it comes to the washer/dryer. The old unit was an all-in-one unit and the new units are separate; the closet where they are housed only has one outlet. So we now have an extension cord running through the house in order to run power to the washer. So on top of everything else, we will now have to get someone to put in an outlet. And the saga continues...............

Cursed

Last Friday we finally went to Lowe's and bought a new washer/dryer. We got a good deal because of Veteran's Day, so while I'm not thrilled that the warranty company is only giving us some money instead of replacing the w/d, I'm happy that we're finally going to be able to do laundry properly and we got a good deal. They were supposed to deliver today, but like everything with this w/d fiasco, that didn't happen. I got a call this morning saying that when they inspected the dryer, they found a big dent in the bottom so they are going to have to reorder it. So now we're scheduled for Friday delivery. Seriously, can anything else possibly go wrong?

A Lotta Nuthin'

I'm not forgetting to write; there just isn't much going on right now. We've had our first two weekends of no plans all Fall and are enjoying every second of it. We went to our favorite sushi place; I started my holiday shopping, did a little scrapbooking, and Toby and I went to the mall (big mistake on Veteran's Day weekend- at least for people like me who are crowd-phobic). I figure things will start getting busy again with the holidays so I'm enjoying the downtime while I can.

Case Studies

School this semester has been.... unusual. I'm taking a class that isn't heavily based in math or statistics like the other classes I've taken so far. Instead, it's a course on military operations research and focuses on effectiveness analysis. It's with a professor that I've had before and in the previous course, he was very focused on having a significant amount of homework and getting the right answers. So this class confused me by having much less homework and focusing on real world case studies. The case studies have no "right" answer since they are real world military issues. Once I shifted gears to this new perspective, it has been much more interesting.

I've been having trouble getting excited about grad school lately because it's so theoretical. That's fine if you want to do research, but I don't think I'll end up going that route. I solve real world issues in my career that have multiple potential solutions. The interesting part of this class has been learning various modeling techniques to help analyze multiple decisions and determine which will be most effective. I can actually use this stuff!

Kingstowne Shootings

Around 10 or 11pm on Halloween night, we started hearing sirens that didn't seem to be passing and decided to go outside to make sure our buildings weren't on fire or something. Instead, some passing neighbors told us to go back inside because someone had been shot and the entire area was blocked off while the police looked for the shooter. There was a helicoptor and police everywhere. We found out today that a guy shot his former roommate (another guy) on a landing and then went into a condo and shot himself (both died). However, the police didn't know the shooter had shot himself and were in our neighborhood searching until about 6am.

So some of you are thinking, "eh, it's DC". But we very much DO NOT live in DC. We live in the suburbs in Virginia and these types of things just don't happen in Kingstowne. Kingstowne has one of the lowest crime rates in the country so this was very uncharacteristic. We've since learned that it was a domestic incident and I think that the two men were in a relationship, not just roommates. People keep trying to make this into a "thugs in Kingstowne" story but it makes a lot more sense as a crime of passion or domestic violence. Horrible, but more reasonable for this area.

I was reading articles on the shootings and was angered enough by the ignorant comments in this one to create a user name to reply to the idiot. I'm E_Squared (not ESquareToo, who sucks for using my name). Here's the news story if you want to read more: Kingstowne Shootings