This Green Party girl lifts a glass in salute to you, Big Blue Killoggs,

and of course to our Chicago boy, you know, That One.



it's been all historical and stuff. This election has been really exciting and fun to follow.

Cheers.

What's up?

I'm totally making a post from my new google phone!

For the first time ever I have the new cooool phone!

I haven't been able to tear myself away from it since I got it.

I am not going to fight you anymore, coffee. I am weak, you are strong. You are free, the office is perpetually freezing.

No longer will I limit myself to just one cup in the mornings except for those 'really bad days'. I've decided that you don't add too much to my caloric intake, and in fact, many studies say that you may actually increase my metabolism.

Although I am still thinking that you are bad for my teeth. However, with my current dental plan, I can get them cleaned every six months now.

So no more fighting. No more avoiding. No more protesting against you, coffee.

You have won. And I have you. Slainte.

In the John Hancock building. By myself.

It was really exciting. I took a small nap on the floor.

Oh, why couldn't I have met you first.

I don't care if that's how it's spelled.

I am in Detroit right now easing off the last bit of my 4 hour layover with my 3rd martini. I have been awake since 2am Detroit time. My French sucks more than I thought but it's also better than I thought if that makes any sense.

I had a great time. At the same time I am so happy to be in an online cafe where they bring laptops and martinis to your table and they understand everything I say and everything is so cheap I'm just like... ordering seconds. And thirds. When it comes to the martinis. MARTINIS!! God I missed you.

I had a very good experience. Thanks to my friends that donated. I'm not sure if they want to remain anonymous but one person donated after I left so they'll have to settle for a Chicago postcard. I DID send postcards out to everyone that donated with descriptions of what I used the money on so if you haven't recieved those within a week or two, let me know and I'll apologize and tell you what I used the money on. I have just heard that sometimes postcards just don't make it.

If anyone is interested, I will make a post about my experience with the tornament, but I don't want to bore anyone. So feel free to email me if you'd rather. I think really only two or three people on Killoggs really care about the martial arts stuff, so I don't want to take up space otherwise.

Other than the tournament I saw lots of Famous Parisian Things with my Fancy English Friends. Eventually I'll have youtube videos and flickr pics. Did you know the Mona Lisa was a rockstar? Well, she so is.

I'm not too pleased with how this country is going. I don't think things are going to get better after this mud-slinging, high-drama campaign/election either. I had an escape plan to England, but I'm not sure how much that would improve matters. Canada doesn't seem that much better. From what I can tell, the Scandinavian countries are the way to go. I just need a way in.

How 'bout it, Reggie? Can ya hook me up?

It's not that I've given up.... it's just that I've almost given up.

So as most of you know if you've been following my journal entries, I've been doing savate for a couple of years now and recently started being competitive. I've made it onto the US Team for this year and will be going over to France to fight for our country! For reals!



Recently a suggestion was made that I put up a post for donations as it's going to cost me an arm and a leg to get over there. The federation is paying for a couple days room and board and that's it. So I'm trying to raise money for airfare, the uniform, additional hotel (I'm trying to meet friends over there to split the cost) and get around money.

If you guys want to help out, not only will I love you forever, but I'll send postcards and let you know exactly where the money ends up going. Also, I have very long layovers in Detroit (it knocked a couple of bucks off my ticket) so if anyone's going to be around there in September and wants to meet me in the airport for a hang out, that would be cool!

So did everyone get their "economic stimulus" check except for me?

So I was running today, it's hot, 84. I'm on my way back home and I'm stopped at a crosswalk. I'm doing my weightshifty thing (I don't do the jog in place dance at the crosswalks) and I see these two girls crossing in my direction. They're both really dressed up and made up and I wonder if they're hot and if they're make up is melting and they're both looking at me and I'm thinking "yeah, I'm a mess, so what, I've been exercising." As they cross behind me, one girl looks me dead in the eye and hands me this:



I mean, it's like... GOD leave me alone. I'm RUNNING. I'm not worried about heaven right now. Can't you see? I mean Jesus, I've got Timbaland in my ishuffle and I'm EXERCISING. I'm training for a FIGHT.

God.

So yesterday started 'serious' training for me. Not eating crap. No more boozing it up. (So obviously I was hung over from the night before.) My friend Greg and I decided to add rollerblading to the other physical conditioning stuff. So yesterday evening he brought me out to this paved trail in the woods that I had no idea existed. It was pretty cool, I saw six different deer, lots of raccoons and a skunk.

We got to the top of this bridge about three miles in and decided perhaps we should head back. It was starting to get dark and I was beginning to get the feelings of blisters starting on my feet. I hadn't been skating in a long while and was on brand new skates. We start back down the hill. It's really steep. A dad with two little girls on bikes passed us on the way down the hill. I tripped.

The next five seconds were incredibly long, because I knew I was going to fall and I knew it was going to hurt. I tried applying the break to no avail. I said 'fuck' in a normal, conversational tone of voice. I tried to grab on to the chain link fence next to me to attempt to slow myself. Obviously to no avail. Instead the interruption in my, up until this point, straight downward progress was now altered to the point where I was spun around violently and smashed face first into the fence and concrete breaker before bouncing off and to the ground, where I think I rolled once before completely stopping.

The dad and his little girls came back to see if I was okay while Greg was scraping me off the ground. I recalled that I had said 'fuck' and wondered if they had heard me. I didn't really care either way. We got off of the hill without further incident and then I fell again for completely no reason once we were on the flat. Greg just looked at me and said "That sucks!" Because yeah. What sucks about falling right after you're turning around after skating three miles into the woods is that you then have to skate three miles out of the woods while bleeding and embarrassed. A deer ran across the path about seven feet in front of us. I though how much it would suck if I ran into a deer.

I really actually didn't get banged up too bad considering. I have a big purple bruise on my lower lip, which is all swollen and my arms are all scraped up and there's a small scrape on my back, but I'm mostly fine. What bothers me is that I am going to have to go on that hill again sometime soon and I'm scared of it now.

Yesterday I ran home from work. As I do on most Tuesdays now since the purchase of my running bag. However it was unseasonably cold. Even colder than weather.com predicted it would be. I decided to go anyway, even though I packed my winter running pants away into storage a few weeks ago and have nothing but shorts. I had a long sleeved shirt, my dry weave jacket thingy and a big white hoodie, which I had planned on leaving at work, but decided I could take with me for extra warmth and I would be fine.

However I reckoned without the wind, which was from 17 to 25 mph, gusting up to 31. And of course I was running against it for the first few miles of my run. Ugh. It was shitty. Then I got hit by a wave. Seriously. I was running as far away from the lake as the seawall would permit and I got hit by a wave. This couldn't happen towards the end of my run, no, it had to happen at the beginning, so that I was all wet and cold for the entire eight miles. Then I got sandblasted. Fine sands from the beach abraded my legs and face for a couple of miles. At least there were no hills. Man. It was hellacious. I just had to post about it. My joints are still aching today.

So, some of you may know that my day job is an expense report auditor. It's perfect for me really because I don't have to deal with people on a face to face 'customer service' kind of basis that much and I get to write politely caustic emails fairly often.

So I come across an expense report that has this thing attached. It's a plastic credit card type card that says "Taste of Vino" on it and the Whole Foods label. Hmmmmm. Is it a bribe? I check the report and find nothing that seems to indicate that they would have tried to pass this thing off as a receipt. I take the card out, put it on my desk and toss the report in the file pile when I'm done.

I come across the card again today. I have no idea who's report it was attached to at this point. I decide to google.

Wine lovers can taste before they buy or just have a little drinkipoo while they shop at the new Sauganash Whole Foods. Stop by the cheese counter to get your rechargeable Vino Card and add any amount you’d like in $5 increments. Snag a real glass from the shelf, peruse the 16 selections available “on tap”, and select the wine you’d like to try. Prices per taste are illuminated above each offering, ranging from 75 cents for a nice Spanish rose to $3.25 for a fancy Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon. Just insert your card, position your glass under the desired spout, press the button, and out comes your wine at the perfect serving temperature. You might just find yourself volunteering to do the grocery shopping more often.

Dude, so should I totally try and use this thing or not?

I've been getting water stuck in my ears a lot. Like after I take a bath. It's really annoying and this hasn't really happened since I was a little kid and would swim in the pool a lot on the weekends. Is this indicitive of something more serious? It sure is annoying. My accoustics are all screwed up.

So I haven't made a front page post in a while and I am procrastinating on an extremely busy workday (part of my new leaf, today is review day and we've pretty much been informed that bonuses and raises will be extremely minimal) so I thought I'd throw something up here.

This morning at 4:36am I experienced my first earthquake! I'm kind of oddly excited about it. I woke up because I heard something like a rumble and wondered what was going on outside. It seemed to quiet down almost instantly but my bed was kind of shaking. I thought the cat was on it like, vigorously cleaning himself or something, but I looked down and he wasn't there and yet the bed was still shaking. I looked at the clock, saw it was 4:36, kind of looked around wondering why things were shaking and considered texting someone to be like 'what's up, my house is shaking' but decided that I shouldn't wake anyone up. Then it stopped and I went back to sleep. In the morning I wondered what the hell it was or if it had been a weird dream. Then I heard we had an earthquake. I was like, 'Wow! I was in an earthquake!" But it was only little.

My mom just notified me that I have jury duty. In St.Tammany Parish.

I don't think I'll go.

Above is a very unflattering picture of me, Jake and the pumpkin that we carved yesterday. Really, I did most of the carving and Jake ate a few bits of pumpkin innards. It was very difficult to get a picture with him. Most of the others turned out like this:



A friend of mine helped me bake the seeds. I've been eating them all night. We put salt and chili pepper on some, salt, sugar and cinnamon on some others and salt, sugar, cinnamon and chili pepper on some others. Really you can only taste the difference between the ones without sugar and the ones with. But they're all pretty good.

I had the day off work Monday because I was dead ass tired from a three day seminar I took. I tested in Kali stick fighting afterwards. The seminar was in Kali, Silat, Jun Fan Jeet Kun Do, knife and sword and there was some Sarong fighting stuff in there too. It was really fun but my butt is still sore. And I was so brain dead by the end. I was only planning on testing for beginner one for the Kali, but (probably because my partner was really good) it was indicated that we should stay for the next level. I'm not so sure I passed that one. And I'm not really sure when I'll find out. But since I was only planning on going for the first level anyway, it doesn't matter. And it was still fun. I have lots of bruises though. Lucky long sleeves are in right now. :-)

Since I spend the day sleeping and bumming around eating sandwiches and carving pumpkins, I still went to class last night. I hurt my thumb again sparring, which pissed me off because the thumb is such a wussy sounding thing to hurt and yet it's damn inconvenient. Regardless we had a really fun class. We all put on white t-shirts and Greg (our instructor) gave us washable magic markers in different colors (I chose blue) and we had a knife fight. That way we got to see how many times we were killed. It was pretty neat. I think it would be fun to do a paint ball vs. marker fight. If the paint ball person had to draw from a holster.



Happy Halloween!

Today, I had the day off of work. It was gorgeous weather again. I was nicely sore from my run yesterday.

I got up late, around 9am. Met a friend, had breakfast at Starbucks and went to a shooting range where I shot live rounds for an hour and a half.

I'm not a bad shot. And I shall only get better.

Shooting's kinda fun.

As you may or may not know (or care), I keep my schedule full. Currently, I work 30-40 hours a week downtown, spend a lot of time at the gym doing martial arts crap, and try to cram as many auditions and shows into my life as possible. (Then there's the drinking and hanging out with friends that I try to fit in there too.)

Theatre was slow this past year, and for the past two years my rehearsals have worked out so that I was able to squish my marital arts schedule around them. Before I was let go from my last long-term job, I had a gym that I could go to during the workday also. This has changed.

I'm in rehearsals that conflict with just about every class and normal workout day that I partake in. Not only that, it only opens up slightly once the show is open. Marial arts will be there when I'm done and I'll be able to take enough classes so that I don't fall behind, also, a break may allow me to heal some injuries. My main concern is now "getting fat." But where can I fit excercise in when my downstairs neighbors threaten going to the association if I run on the treadmill any time other than 4:45-6pm on the weekdays, I get home at 5 from work and have to be at rehearsal at 6:30 (with an hour commute from my house to rehearsal)?

I'll tell you how.

Today, with my much searched for and newly delievered running backpack, I will run home from work rather than taking the train. It is a beautiful day, it is supposed to be a high of 75 and sunny and so far it seems like it will keep it's promise. This could be the most awesome day ever.

The run will be a little over six miles, so if I keep at a 10 minute mile or less my commute should be about the same as if I had taken the train.

The running backpack could change my life. I will keep you updated. Whether you want me to or not.

I think my Ipod has died.

I was on the treadmill the other day and went to turn it on (after having listened to it on the train earlier) and it wouldn't come on. I reset it and got the Sad Ipod icon. "Oh, no," I thought to myself, "it can't be!"

But apparently it can.

I made an appointment to take Kharm (my ipod's name) into the Apple store and see if anything can be done. But I think I already know the answer. We go in at 12:45pm central time.

We had a good three and a half years together anyway.

I haven't made a front page post in a while. Nor a journal entry really. Other than that one I made when I was drunk and don't even really rememeber making much less what it was about. So I thought I'd make one today.

This weekend I did a savate seminar and tested for rank at the end. Savate is a French form of kickboxing. It's pretty neat. I probably burned 50,000 calories this weekend. The weekend was made a little more rough for me due to the fact that I fractured my fibula six weeks ago and was up for a promotion on Wednesday (that I didn't get) and so got SEVERELY roughed up, including three thai kicks to my left thigh and a bruised up nose and upper lip. I was very pretty. So I had to wrap my left thigh and left ankle for the whole seminar.

Friday night went from 6:30pm to 9pm. We were all pretty tired after two hours of drills. Then Saturday went from 10am to 6:30pm with a two hour break for lunch. We all thought we were going to die. Then Sunday started at 10am with drills and then testing started at noon.

I didn't really know what to test for as I've only really been doing savate since January and until today was unranked. The ranks go blue glove, green glove, red glove, white glove, yellow glove and silver glove. I just filled out my form, which included some ... interesting questions like "How do you promote the French culture?" I left it blank. But I should have put "I know this chick Myriam, she like, speaks French and I'm totally down with that."

By the time the testing came around I was like "I never want to do any more savate ever in my life." Everything hurt and I was tired and achy and cranky and another couple hours of jumping kicks and blocking punches didn't sound fun to me. I expressed this thought to my friend Greg who was doing drills with me and he said "You're testing. Suck it up." So they put me in the white glove group and I ended up being the only girl and thus, the shortest and also partnered with my friend Mike who is like, nine feet tall and all leg.

The whole premise of savate testing I really like, because not only are you trying to show your skills and technique, you are also trying to make your partner look good. So you don't go at it just to beat the crap out of your partner. You're both trying to help the other one pass and show off your best stuff also.



Mike and I both passed. So obviously the one foot height disparity worked for us. We were also told we were the best in our group and probably could have gone for a higher rank. But we have our White Glove. I guess the fact that I skipped to the fourth rank is pretty cool. My friend Dana tested for Silver with three other people. Only she and one other dude passed. The dude had a metal rod in one of his legs from a motorcycle accident and was doing like... these flying spinning kicks. It was pretty amazing.

So now I have a brown belt in martial arts blend and a white glove in savate. (Which means, I could officially compete in savate competitions ... if I were so inclined.)

Hello, Killoggs. I am a homeowner now. I moved last weekend. I have questions for you:

1. Do I have too many shoes?

2. When does one throw old magazines away? Why is this hard?

3. Will I ever listen to these cassette tapes again?

4. Why do I have so many VHS tapes? Where the hell am I going to store them?

5. Anyone need a microwave, monitor, couch, ugly lamps?

6. Anyone got a treadmill that folds up and or a nice bookshelf ya wanna give me?

So I was at work yesterday and decided to check my bank balance to see if my direct deposit had gone though. It had. Something was wrong however.

Somehow work had deposited $11,593.00 into my account.

It's been a while, and this is a few days late, but I feel like posting.

To begin, let me explain a little bit about how my day job works these days. I have a pile of expense reports to verifiy. This means I check to make sure nothing spent was not according to policy and make sure all receipts match up and are in the correct period. Then I initial it and put it in either my 'flag' pile or my 'file' pile. They hired me on as a contractor because they're really behind in this verification. I also file all of the reciepts that have been verified and I do a lot of the approvals right when we recieve reports.

There are two other girls in this section. J is our immediate supervisor and recieves anything we've flagged and eventually either approves or denies it. M basically does what I do, except she's officially hired by the company and is supposed to have a few more duties. Although I don't really know what they are.

Anyway, M is constantly late, always leaves her desk for hours for no apparent reason telling no one where she goes and is constantly filling my 'to do' box with stuff that she hasn't gotten to. Whatever. J is aware of it, so I dont' really care.

Anyway, M called in the other day saying she may not come to work. Whatever. Our boss, G told us. So J and I are looking for a certain report. She says it looks like one that I've audited because of the comments. I go through my 'flagged' pile twice and can't find it. So I start going through M's pile. About a third of the way through the stack, I see reports with my initials on them. I pull them out, there are more, lots more.

"Hey, why's my shit in her pile?" I say. "You're kidding me!" J says and runs over.

There are like 100 reports of mine in her pile. Over half of her 'finished' work consists of stuff that I have done. We show G. My pile is literally two feet higher than hers once my work is returned to it's rightful place. He says 'Thank you' and leaves.

What's been done about her stealing my work and trying to pass it off as her own?

Nothing.

This is partially for Ed. I believe he wanted Pauly and Paris pushed down.



So, I don't want to be alone on New Years. Why? Because it's a stupid holiday and it has been programmed into my brain that if I am alone on New Years that I am a looser with no friends who is undesirable and a future spinster who should cry. With her cat. While she knits. And gets drunk on cheap champagne. Which is still an option mind you.

Stupid New Years. So, everyone I WANT to spend New Years with will be out of town. I have an invite to a party thrown by a person I don't know very well. Eh. I have another invite by a friend, who is a boy. I don't want to date anyone right now. New Years is a loaded holiday. If I go, I risk possible attempted kissing and awkwardness and friendship ruining. He even once mentioned 'crying' with me at my house instead of going out. And even though he said it in jest ... you just don't say those things in jest. If they're REALLY in jest.

Blah. New Years sucks and it's adding to the drama of my life. I need no more drama New Years. Unless you're offereing me a hit series on HBO. Or even the WB.

I've been getting headaches for a little over a month. They're weird headaches. They start at the base of my skull very suddenly and then shoot up to my forehead. I get them at weird times.