How Often Have You Googled Yourself?

So, this evening I'm sitting on my couch watching America's Best Dance Crew (I know, lame, lame, but whatever) and while the crews are dancing I'm just surfing away on my pretty MacBook. 

Well, I started out googling old boyfriends, because I am very lame, as mentioned above. Then I decided to google myself just to see what was out there in cyber space about me and well I learned the following things about me, or rather those other people out there that share my name....

1. I am a lyricist and wrote the lyrics in Sleeping Beauty: The Time-traveler and Her New Millennium Prince. Actually, I seem to be listed as the lyricist on a number of items. I must ROCK at writing lyrics!! 

2. I am the wife of a guy killed by a serial killer in a book called Nobody True by James Herbert. 

3. I am the co-editor of the newsletter Technically Write (which is actually true, I did co-edit that newsletter many moons ago). 

4. I am 17 and recently moved to Arizona from Alaska. 

5. I am on the board of the Creative Alliance along with my husband. 

6. I am the "matron" for the Acute Medicine and Therapies department for some medical facility out there in the world. 

7. I am the CDM Coordinator at Taylor Young and Owner in the UK. 

8. I do public relations for some company. 

9. I work for the Northern Counties School and we have an action plan based on the OFSTED Inspection that was carried out by three of Her Majesty's Inspectors. 

10. In September 2007, I had 2 tickets to the Atmosphere show for sale on craigslist in Grand Rapids. 

I learned all of this after only 2 pages of googleness. I also came across somebody's MySpace page that was in memory of some guy name James Martin. The eerie thing about this is I graduated from James Martin High School...freaky, huh? 

Okay, maybe none of this is as interesting to anybody else but me, but for a quiet Friday night, I could have done worse....

Kate Spade is Trying to Kill Me

Okay, before any of you go calling the police that there is a conspiracy on my life, let me state that I do not actually know Kate Spade or if she is a real person, but shoes that I have puchased at her store are actually trying to kill me.

Let me give you a little background. I love shoes. I love looking at shoes. I love trying on shoes. I love buying shoes. I reward myself with shoes (and books, and music, and jewelry, and food but that is for another day). Everytime I go out to the Stanford Mall I have to go by the Kate Spade store and go all dreamy over the shoes that they have. Last summer I happened upon a sale there where I purchased my first pair of Kate Spades (a beautiful pair of 3 1/2 inch heels with a cream and tan calf hair pattern). They were on sale, which is the only way I could possibly afford them and I thought I had gotten a pretty good deal, although I won't say how much I paid.

So, over the last couple of weeks while I had the Queen visiting me, she and I had to go out to the mall and eat at Long Life Noodle and pick up t-shirts for her to take back to Plano with her. Of course, we walk past Kate Spade and like a Siren song I am pulled into the store. I walk over to their display of shoes and pick up this wonderful pair of heels that are a tan leopard print. I turn them over to look at the price and I think my heart actually stopped. The original price listed was $390. Under that price was another sticker that said $50. I asked the clerk if that was the actual price or just how much was being knocked off. The answer came back with "that's the price". Well, I HAD to try them on and of the 3 pairs that they had remaining they actually had my size. As I was putting them on the clerk asked "how do they feel" and my reply was "it doesn't matter, they are beautiful!" So, needless to say, I purchased them.

Now you may be asking yourself, "so why is Kate Spade trying to kill you?"

Well, I wore my wonderful new leopard print 3 1/2 inch pumps to work yesterday, not thinking that I would have to trudge up the hill to the other office building at least once. As I'm walking in the door first thing in the morning with 2 laptops, my purse, and my lunch bag, I step in the door and step down on the edge of the dump rug that is inside the door and promptly twist my ankle. I some how manage to only bang into the door a couple of times and to not actually fall down. As the day progressed, I twisted my ankle a couple of more times, and bruised the ball of my foot when I stepped on a stone and didn't have any sort of real padding between my foot and the ground other than the thin piece of leather sole.

By the time I made it home, my arches were aching and my twisted ankle was swollen and while I may be overly dramatic regarding the conspiracy that my shoes have against me, I can only imagine what could have happened.

Today I opted for the lavender suede mules. They seem much nicer than the leopard heels, but we'll just have to see....

How'd She Do This?

I am truly amazed at how the Queen managed to keep it together doing this job. As you may know, I recently took on her duties so that she could move on to another opportunity. But now I'm really questioning why I accepted ALL these duties and ever morning I'm amazed to think about how she always stayed so organized and upbeat.

I know that some of my issues are just because I haven't gotten into the groove and set my own pace yet. And of course there is the learning curve, since the system we use to do most of our work was completely foreign to me. And hopefully this will all be smoothed out as I become more comfortable and confident in my actions.

What is really bothering me, though is the fact that everybody seems to think that when the Queen left she left her brain and all her history and knowledge behind as well. So much of this stuff is judgement call based on her history with a group, and I don't have that, yet. And the whole "I'm new to the job" doesn't really seem to fly either because I've been on the account for longer than the Queen, but just not involved in this particular area. Grrrr, people are annoying.

Okay, enough of my complaining. I have to take on the mantra that things will get better and that I will succeed at this job and that it is a great learning opportunity for me to understand even more of the overall running of an IT organization.

Attack of the Santa Cruz Mountains

This past weekend the BS Club tackled the Santa Cruz Mountains as we had heard rumors that there were some very interesting wineries in that area and the Queen wanted to have breakfast at this great hole-in-the-wall-biker bar place called Alice's. (I guess it can only be considered a biker bar place because it is a really cool drive up to it and rumor has it that it is a lot of fun to take the drive on a bike.)

For those of you who are fans of the Queen B's blog, you may recall stories of our previous trip over the mountains (http://queenbisme.blogspot.com/2008/01/playing-hooky.html). Well, this time we didn't fair much better. On Friday before we left the office, we told friends and co-workers what our plans were: Alice's for breakfast, Thomas Fogarty Winery, Bonny Doon Winery, Santa Cruz to see the ocean, David Bruce Winery, then to our friend Jill's house for a bar-b-que and goodbye party for the Queen. Everybody kept saying, "you know it is supposed to rain this weekend, right?" Well, we just laugh in the face of weather "HA! HA! HA!"And yet, we probably should have listened.....

We set out around 10ish in the morning and while it is cool the skies seem relatively clear for Northern California and the drive up through Woodside to Alice's was very pleasant. We had a yummy breakfast and Sam and the Queen had wine-based bloody marys. I, ABBA, being a designated driver expertise, had a glass of chardonnay. But we figured since we were having such a large breakfast that it would be okay.

We left Alice's and headed to our first winery, which is used quite often as a site for weddings and we could completely understand why. Even with the rain, as it had started to pick up, we could tell how beautiful the view would be. And, for those of you who are REALLY interested, this will be the place where ABBA is wed, if that day ever comes!! Thomas Fogarty Winery was established by Dr. Thomas Fogarty who was the creator of the Fogarty heart balloon catheter that is used during heart surgery. AND he makes a pretty decent glass of wine.

After Fogarty's we headed up and over and along the ridgeline of the Santa Cruz mountains to get to Bonny Doon Winery. Now supposedly we went the backwards way in, but crikey!! I thought there were times where we were going to have some hillbilly, hippy inbreed with one tooth jump out and attach the ABBA-mobile!! The road was little more than a single lane all along the ridge with a number of very tight switchbacks and steep hills. And of course it didn't help one bit that it had started to sleet some and it felt like we were driving through the clouds. Needless to say, I was VERY glad when we finally came to Bonny Doon. This is a winery that I would definitely recommend on ambiance and quirkiness alone. (But I would wait until you have good weather to get there, they say it is great in the summer when it is really warm down in the city.) All of their wine labels are very eccentric, and I think we can say that ABBA loves a good wine label. Again, like so many other wineries they seem to focus on reds, which ABBA is not a big fan of, but for some reason she managed to be coerced into joining the wine club at Bonny Doon so that Sam and the Queen could get the private vintage wines at a discounted rate. They also promised that they would buy the red wines from me, if they weren't my cup o' tea!!

While we were in Bonny Doon's, the sky literally opened up and dumped rain on the mountain top, se we decided that we just needed to stay indoors and drink a bit more. After the rain let up, the three of us piled back into the ABBA-mobile and headed down the mountain into Santa Cruz and Capitola so that the Queen could see the ocean one more time before she headed back to the dustbowl known as Texas. Naturally, as we are parking in Capitola near the area where Sam and the Queen learned to surf (http://queenbisme.blogspot.com/2007/09/surfing.html) the sky opens up once again. But that didn't stop the BS Club from climbing out of the ABBA-mobile and going to look at the pounding surf. The Queen jumped up on the wall and got a coupld of pictures with the ocean behind her and then we raced back to the vehicle in hopes of not being completely soaked. Luckily I thought ahead and packed a couple of towels for us for just such an occasion.

We dried off and headed BACK over the mountains to our third and final winery of the day (I know, compared the the precious weekend, this was pretty light-weight of us!). The turn-off to David Bruce's Winery was scarey, to say the very least. Again, we were back in the mountains on uphill, switch-back turns, with pouring rain and sleet. The windows of the ABBA-mobile were starting to fog up, so we had to use the towels for drying off after Santa Cruz to clear the windows. And yes, you are probably saying "ABBA, why did you not turn around? Why did you not take your precious cargo to some safe dry spot?" First, there was no friggin' way I could have turned around. And, second, we decided that neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night would stop us from our winery route!!!

We finally made it to the winery and Sam and the Queen both enjoyed the wines and even purchased some for those "special occasions" because I have to say, David Bruce is pretty darn proud of his wine!! We also explained to the barrista, who was no where near as fun as the Sonoma barristas, that I was the designated driver for two weeks in a row and as I was offering to go get the car and bring it up for Sam and the Queen, she asked if I would be her friend too. Its not every day that a stranger asks to become your friend!!

As the afternoon drew to a close, we headed off the Santa Cruz Mountains and over to Jill's warm and comfy home where a spread of great munchies were available along with great company and good laughs.

I don't know if I'll ever make it across the Santa Cruz Mountains without the storms, but I can only hope...someday.....