Happy Friday! (and the blanks are back!)

Happy Friday all! I've been absolutely exhausted this week. I worked from home at the beginning (kudos to those who do that all day, every day - it takes some SERIOUS discipline!) and then did full time in the office alongside some extra consulting, and it seriously felt like I was ready to pass out asleep by 9pm every night.

Any fun plans for the weekend? I hope everyone had wonderful weeks with better weekends!  I am currently at the Toyota dealership getting my car tuned up (and I've blogged at my last three visits...funny!).  I was absolutely dreading it since it's so much money to just kiss good-bye, but I found out it will be much cheaper than I thought!  So hooray for that, and fingers crossed there are no other problems with my beloved Kharr.

Aside from that, I will probably be heading up to Orange County for lunch with a longtime best friend/former roommate - which of course means I'll be getting some shopping in! I've heard of a beauty supply place that has some serious discounts on nail polish, so a haul of that will probably happen.  It's reaaaally not necessary, but I can't help myself!  My brother and his friends are also having a Nerf war (yeah. that's real) on Sunday, so I'll probably pop by. The last one they had I got to judge/moderate on, which was pretty fun.

Onto the blanks!

Hosted by the lovely (and new mom!) Lauren :)

1. My favorite place i've ever traveled to is Alberobello, a small town in the city of Puglia (Bari province).  It is possibly the most quaint, cute and steeped in culture town I've seen to date.

2. Australia is somewhere I'd love to go someday.

3. I pass the time on a plane (or bus, or car ride or train) by reading, listening to music, and (pending where I am), singing loudly to myself.

4. My three must-haves when I travel are music, at least one book (preferably 5!) and lotion (ridiculously dry skin on airplane!).

5. My favorite travel companion is my brother.

6. The craziest thing that ever happened to me while traveling is when I was going to San Francisco - a friend had given me her mom's frequent flier miles for a free ticket, but she'd also spelled my name wrong when transferring over the ticket.  I definitely had an asterisk next to my name on the reprint, and everywhere I went I was completely and totally searched: bags, carry ons, and my own person. Thank God my dad works for the TSA so everything they were doing I know to be "standard," because it was pretty rattling.  OHOH there was also this time I was on a flight from Italy to Atlanta and a girl got a bloody nose around Hour 3 (of 6).  It literally did not stop for the rest of the flight, so of course everyone was properly freaking out for her. Flight attendants were rushing around for ice packs and continuing tissue and passengers were monitoring the girl to make sure she wasn't going to pass out or anything (that's a lot of blood to lose!). The scary thing is that I knew her, her family and mine happened to be on the same flight because we were all moving from Italy to the US.  They were supposed to continue onto the Texas portion of the flight with us, but they had to get off in ATL for medical attention.

7. The most exotic food I've ever tried while traveling is umm...french fries with mayonnaise?  I really don't try exotic foods, and that answer is cheating since I lived in Belgium and that was the norm for us. We didn't know it was considered weird until we moved to the US.

8. If I could live anywhere else, I'd live in Portland. It's absolutely wonderful and weird there.  Or go back to Europe, of course, but I figured I'd keep my answer to the US else this would go on forever.

9. I have been to fourteen (14) states in the US. CA, OR, WA, FL, NV, NM, CO, AZ, UT, MD, VA, NY, TX, GA

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Mondays are too difficult to really think. Have some photos of food, wine, work and Comic-con 2011. (It's never too late.)

I've been sorting and organising my hard drive and ran across some photos that never got put up on the blog...not that I meant to ever put them up, but they seem worthy now, I suppose.

Because all I do is whine about work, I thought I'd show you the space I currently work in.  That monitor in front? I set up that whole thing by myself (and broke a nail in the process), CPU and internet and hooking it up to the network included.

Friends and I went wine tasting. If you're in San Diego, I recommend going to The Wine Encounter in Hillcrest!  Thursdays you can do a 5 pre-selected wine tasting for $8!

I also HIGHLY recommend R-Gang Eatery in Hillcrest. Does this sandwich not look DELICIOUS?! It was my own food and I'm jealous of my past self for having it!  We went here for my mom's birthday lunch and oh heavens I am counting the days until I can go back.  For the inquiring minds, it's their Turkey Sandy: roasted turkey, brie, tomato, spinach, sun dried tomato pesto, and basil aioli with rosemary garlic fries. My mouth watered just typing all that.

Current nails. How different do they look in flash and no flash?! Safe to say they're normally somewhere in the middle (also, the no-flash one is suuuuper blurry. Sorry!).  Apologies for the tip wear, they're about 5 days old now.  It's L'Oreal - Jet Set to Paris from their new line. (The glitter overlay is China Glaze - Fairy Dust!)

And I stumbled upon a few of my Comic-con 2011 pictures that I know I meant to put up but never did.  Enjoy how old these are now!

FilmDistrict Signing, where people from Drive and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark were there. That's Ron Perlman, Carey Mulligan (girlcrush<3) and Nicolas Winding Refn (director) there. Hilarious to talk to. Ron was gruff and awesome, Carey was quiet and sweet and a bit tired, and Nicolas was druuuuuuunk.  At the other end of the table was Guy Pearce who was scruffy and charming and held up the line chatting with me.

Zach Levi (from Chuck). This was the last day of Comic-con and we were at Nerd HQ with him.

Yeah I look horrible (I was sick and tired and it was raining and I'd just spent a good 80 hours at Comic-con stuff), but the story behind this is that right as it was my turn to go up and have my 20 second chat and photo with him (I was going to tell him how much my mom loves him!), some bitch girl screams from the street how much she loves him and he changed her life and gave her the strength to really follow her dreams. UH--EXCUSE ME GIRL, YOU'RE INTERRUPTING MY ZACH TIME. I'm totally giving her the stink eye here. (But he did have his arm around my back sothere'salwaysthat)

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It is a Friday now. (This post is largely complaining about work, but also about Jeopardy. I think that redeems it.)

Normally I would have a Fill-in-the-Blank Friday up, but the lovely hostess Lauren had her baby earlier this week and is otherwise preoccupied, of course!  Head over to her blog to wish her and her beautiful family a congratulations!

First, a small housekeeping issue: does anyone know how to troubleshoot threaded comments? Apparently Blogger enabled replies to comments, but mine don't seem to be showing up! I've read all the articles and all my settings are correct (comments embedded and Site Feed is Full), but there's still nothing!  A reply option would be a world of help here and over at my Book Blog, so any help is MUCH appreciated!

Anyone have grand plans for the weekend? As far as I can tell, it's to be a dreary next few days for everyone. San Diego is scheduled to get a spot of rain on Saturday so lots of plans will probably get canceled.

My big bad super exciting plans are...work.  This project I'm doing for my job is turning into a massive headache, and I'm determined to just work my ass off and get it all done and out of the way. I'm telling you, glad my company is so damn successful and all, but not so glad when I have to click on the individual file names for 10,000+ accounts - TWICE.

This is probably the reason I've been going batty the past week or two.  It's like Chinese Water Torture, except I'm inflicting it all myself.

Highlights of the week:

• Broke a nail while setting up a computer at work. Thankfully it didn't break all the way down into the bed itself, but I now have one super short nail.  I was upset not because of the broken nail, but because I'd JUST re-painted them the night before - if I'd waited one more day, I wouldn't have had to go through the hassle of taking off the polish to inspect damage, clipping, then repainting to match.  Ridiculous.

• But Toy Story-themed band-aids do help.
• Am currently on track for my reading goal (100 books in a year).  As of right now I sit at 7, although that's not including 2 re-read books. Still unsure if those will count towards the total or not.
• Who's everyone rooting for this weekend? I'm fairly indifferent at the moment since the Broncos thankfully lost last week, but I will say that I'm rooting for the Patriots to LOSE.  They don't need another ring, thankyouverymuch. I guess I'm hoping for the Niners to take it all the way, but...meh. If it's not my Chargers, I hardly care.
• What's everyone reading these days? I've currently got Matched - Ally Condie, Close To Famous - Joan Bauer, and One Day - David Nicholls on deck.  (Yes, I read multiple books at once. No, I do not get confused.)

• I took the Jeopardy qualifying test last night, mostly for shits and giggles. I have no expectation of ever making it, but I thought it would be fun to see what it's like. I did a quick Twitter search an hour prior to the test and had a small panic attack to see people studying for it. SERIOUSLY?! I literally forgot I'd registered until I got the alert on my phone (thank you Past Ashley for having the forethought of setting an alarm!) 2 hours before.
• I also did a Twitter search a few minutes after the test ended, and apparently the questions were hard. I didn't think they were that difficult! I'm not at all saying I got them all right (I left 3 blank, guessed on a good 15, know for a fact I input the incorrect answers on 10 questions, and only knew 5 for certain. Like I said, I have no illusions of my failure.) (That said, one of those I'm certain about was a question as to what the stage name of Stefani Germanotta was - YOU KNOW IT.) but none of the questions were impossible.
• HOWEVER: after I saw this on Question 10, I kind of got snide. How am I supposed to take you seriously when you do this, Jeopardy test?! (Cropped since I have no idea what I am and am not allowed to share with the world. Who knew Jeopardy could be a legal nightmare?)

• Might take in a movie this weekend, though friend wants to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and I'm not ready to bawl my eyes out.
• My house finally took down our Christmas decorations. I know, it's almost fair to say we're 2/3rds of the way through the month - but we just had other things to do. And now that they're all down, the house feels sort of...empty.
• I have a German Chocolate cupcake from Sprinkles in my kitchen calling my name. I do believe I will go answer.

Happy weekend, all!

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