Category Archives: Blogs

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Wil Wheaton…sex god.

Well, at least that’s what I’ve concluded after reading his Millionaire Playboy interview. Okay, maybe it doesn’t really cover any juicy details, but it’s a fine interview. If you haven’t already followed our links to his blog, you should. I must say, even though I am more of a “Stand By Me” fan than a “Star Trek” fan, I have a great deal of respect for Wil. He intrigues me. (Don’t get me wrong, I like “Star Trek,” I just haven’t watched very much of it since I was a kid, which is funny since I think it is probably far more enjoyable as an adult now.)

Do yourself a favor. Check out his blog. And then check out the interview. Highly entertaining and illuminating. Besides, you have to love anyone who gives Edward Norton the props he deserves.

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Lazy Laptop vs. Speedy Sea-Doo

When Kris met up with us this weekend at Lake Okoboji, he was shocked I hadn’t even taken my laptop out of my bag since I had left for this trip. Which of course explains the lack of bloggin on my part. But he soon realized the connection was brutally slow and that there was a much better time to be had sitting on the dock, gazing out at the water with a [insert favorite beverage here]. We BBQ’d up a storm and enjoyed the relaxing weekend.

My biggest accomplishment and the highlight for my trip was when two co-workers and I rented a Sea-Doo and rode all over the lake together. A Sea-Doo is like a three person Jet-Ski. It was amazing. The culprit who lured us out there let us ease into it, but then when she had the control she was wild! It was frightening, but exhilirating and eventually the two of us behind her were knocked right off the back. I loved every minute of it (despite the giggling and screaming I did in their ears). The best part was each time we switched drivers we would dip in the lake for a bit. The water was so warm I wondered why I love Seattle with its frigid cold lakes that never beckon me to jump in.

I do love the Pacific Northwest and I think it’s beautiful and I hate extreme seasons, which makes it perfect for me. But after this weekend, I completely understand this whole summer vacation mentality people have. When we first walked up to our rooms on the lakefront, it was evening and boats were still out on the water. A smell of water and gasoline wafted towards us and I looked at my co-workers and said, “Now THAT smells like summer vacation.”

Did I mention how much I am going to miss this job?

Sidenote: The beautiful mansion-like-houses on the lakefront go for 3 million dollars. Not as cheap as we all thought here in the middle of nowhere.

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Guilty Conscience

Growing up Catholic taught me many things. The first and foremost is how to feel guilty…for everything. Even for not blogging. I was thinking about this today and I started to wonder. My parents are notorious for not pushing religion on us or making it a big part of our lives. We went to church up until I got a job in high school and then that was it. But then there are times when they will suddenly throw a Catholic term out there that I’ve never heard before. I often forget they spent their entire lives in Catholic school and they often forget that I did not.

A few years ago when I came back from an exhausting trip moving Tonja to California and then back up again in a matter of four days, my parents told me, “Well, just think of all the hours of indulgences you earned.” This was met with my vacant stare. “Hours of what?” To their dismay, I knew nothing of this so-called reward for good deeds. From what I’ve gathered, we are all going to spend quite a bit of time in purgatory awaiting our entrance into heaven. By being a good person and doing right by god, you earn hours of indulgences, which translate into less time spent in purgatory. Now if I am wrong about this definition you can blame either my parents or my lack of listening to my parents. (Sidenote: I looked it up and if you read further down on this link it describes a similar idea.)

So, this brings us back to my blog. I feel guilty that I have had so much to say yet I have neglected my blog for almost two weeks. It’s sickening. The saddest part of all this is the fact I have now convinced myself that there is a place in purgatory especially for pathetic bloggers. In fact, instead of earning hours of indulgences, I believe for every day I don’t blog I will exponentially gain another day in purgatory. This is my plight.

Now for those who really know me, this all means nothing. The guilt I have is real, it’s achingly tangible, but I do not truly believe there is anything beyond this world that will punish me for the guilt I feel now. I believe the guilt is punishment enough. If you understood the effect guilt has had on me in my life, you would agree. Jeff and Scott always told me that I needed to stop feeling so guilty about things (i.e. not making it to someone’s party, not remembering things about people, not helping enough with something, not being able to pick someone up at the airport). Of course, both of them only said this when it involved the guilt I felt over other people, not them. Isn’t that always the way.

This was going to be an entry about my new amazing 30GB IPOD, but I will save that for tomorrow. Tonight I am working on instructions for The Toft Family website so my family members can upload pictures. Just ask Kris. I went about it the entirely wrong way. Don’t ever create instructions with pictures in a Word document if you intend on making it something like a webpage. Thank god for Scott B.’s class on making Word documents into PDF’s.

Now I must fill my gut because my guilt has eaten away at me and I am starving.

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Productive Weekend

A big thanks to Kris for teaching me and helping me with my Movable Type switch. I have completed all I need to get my entries in categories and my archives working. I am at peace.

We had such a great time this weekend. Stayed up so late working on my blog (I’m more of a perfectionist than I ever knew). We also saw so much of Milwaukee and fell in love with it. Kris already talked about that.

Here are some pics from a great time. My rental car I’m standing next was fondly referred to as the Jawbreaker this trip because it is so tiny and so bright, just like a piece of candy. Made me smile every time I saw it.

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Reading and not Writing

Linthicum, Maryland (not Lithium, although that would be nice)

So here I am killing time until I fly out tomorrow morning. I can’t wait to get home. I have so much to do. And I get to see Dave! Yeah! I would have flown home tonight, but Dave is flying into Seattle from Oakland tomorrow morning so we figured it would be easier if we shared my town car back. So I held off flying home early. He better feel special. 🙂

I am officially addicted to reading and planning on writing Blog Lists. We have some great ones on there. Now I just need to contribute more. The problem is I find myself spending more time thinking about that and not about my blog.

My other problem is that I read everyone else’s blogs when I get on my computer, but then when I’m all done I’m too tired to write my own. My eyes and head start getting that computer ache.

My roommate sent me this crazy posting from Craig’s List and I’m starting to think maybe that’s what happened to our cat.

On an “I’m pathetic and watch too much TV” note, I saw a couple episodes of the Nashville/American Idol rip off show and I have to say, those are some talented bastards. They have a song writing tryout as well. So first they sing and then they sing their own original song. It’s been pretty cool to watch actually. A lot of them play instruments. American Idol now looks like the Mickey Mouse Club. Um….not that it wasn’t already like that.

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Back from Europe

I’M BACK!!!!

I just spent all night catching up on reading Johnny’s blog from when I left for Europe until now. I don’t know that I’ll get to Kris’ or Joey’s or Aaron’s or…oh my god…I have so much to read. But Johnny always gets my first read. He’s my blog idol.

Coming soon on my blog will be the boring details of Europe, complete with pictures.

But for now I wanted to say I watched “Far From Heaven” and loved it. It was so eerie and well done. And tonight I watched “Hot Chick” and I hate to admit that I liked it. But of course, I’m a sucker for a bad movie in a hotel room.

Alas, for now, I must get back to reading the blogs and watching my HGTV Thursday night line-up.

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Movies and Commercials

Those Sprint PCS commercials go back and forth from being funny to just plain annoying. The monkey with a cold was cute, I admit, but a bunch of us couldn’t figure out why the guy got all the weiner dogs. What did he really ask for? It sounds like he asked for Dachsunds, but what he really said was Oxen. I finally figured it out.

These are the things that keep me up at night.

To rival Johnny’s Oscar list, I have compiled a list of all the eligible movies that I have seen this year. In doing this I discovered that I have a seen a great deal of crap. Mostly thanks to the hotel in-room movies. So I might have to separate the list into categories. We’ll see. Watch for it to come.

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Amateur Director

Whew! What a week. The video went extremely well considering how frustrated I was with it and how much I wanted to keep fixing it. At about 5:30am I finally just curled up in Kris’ bed and surrendered to the video as is (Kris was on the couch, zonked out by 11pm due to a hard day of travel that started at 3am). I must say, Kris has one of the most comfortable beds around, and I’m pretty in love with my own bed, so that says a lot. Still, his bed was not comfortable enough to make my few hours of sleep feel like more. Therefore, I ran on adrenaline for the presentation (during which Kris had to troubleshoot technical difficulties with four laptops and the projector, thank god for him) and got through it fairly well. But now, as we all remember from college, the day after is always harder. Hits you like a brick and you start to see tracers every time something moves in front of you. Who needs drugs? Sleep deprivation is cheaper.

My reward for all my hard work is this very Blog Kris designed for me. Since I wouldn’t let him touch the video and only used him for consulting on my ideas, he kept himself busy with this. You should have seen some of the cool designs he tried out. The night went sort of like this: “Hey Kris, come tell me if you think I should edit this part of the video…” “Hey Katie, come look at this template I’ve created for your blog…” “Hey Kris, do you think this song sounds okay for the video?” “Hey Katie, I’ve completely changed your template now, check this out!” “Hey Kris, I’m going to blow my brains out if I can’t get this to sync up…” “Hey Katie, let me tell you all the wonders of PHP, it’s way cool…” “Hey Kris, everything you are saying to me right now is coming out ‘blah blah blah’ so let’s focus on me, me, me and my video…okay?”

Well, something like that anyway. What a guy. The blow my brains out part comes to you care of Gary, who managed to work that phrase into my repertoire.

But what I’ve realized through the 30 odd hours of editing, is that I truly enjoy the whole process and regret that I ever strayed from the hobby. I remember in college I tried to get a job right away in the video productions department (not sure what they were really called, but that’s the side of it I wanted to work in) and the guy said he would love to have me since I had editing experience from high school, but due to the fact I was NOT on work-study, he couldn’t hire me. So we all know what job that sent me to. A sweet little local video store. And now look where I am. Well, okay. I guess the video store didn’t have any effect on my life in a negative way, but just think what path I may have followed, had I only been given the opportunity to fuel my interests and build some skills. Hell, I could be a female David Lynch by now. Or at least doing wedding videos on the side (ick.)

So this is my first real blog and I hope it was interesting for you. I’m off to pick up my friend and former co-worker Aaron Smith at the airport. He’s flying in from Maine because he desperately missed Seattle, as well he should. And as odds would have it, my sister Maddy is flying in on the same connection flight through Atlanta, so I get to do two favors in one easy shot. I love it.

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Videos and Blogs -Sleep

Kris and I spent all night working on a video. Well, really I spent all night on it; all he did was work on my template, which I guess gave him a multitude of problems (what’s this about CSS acting all funny?) He has to teach a journaling class in the morning, and he should be working on that, but instead he slaves away for me. Ah, the joys of having geeky friends. Tomorrow we give our big presentation, which I’m very nervous about. Yikes.