stuff that bugs me

floors of death

Ashley — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 20:16:00 +0000

AKA “a lawsuit waiting to happen”. This building I go to almost every day has been remodeled extensively, among other things replacing the carpeted floors in big areas with terrazzo flooring. If you don’t know what that is, here’s a helpful definition I found: “Terrazzo is a mix of colored stones and cement that is ground smooth after it sets.” Key phrase: ground smooth. Like GLASS. While they may be beautiful, they are a bitch to walk on in heels. Your heel just slips and slides underneath you with every step. Were there no women consulted for the duration of the project? No one to say, “Hey! If you’re in heels, a surface like GLASS is going to be a lot more dangerous to walk on than carpet. Red flag anyone?” And, it’s not just me, with my bad balance, tenuous grasp on walking in heels, and tendency to blow stuff out of proportion. Women the building over are tottering around now, taking corners like elk on ice. I haven’t seen anyone fall yet, so I’m sure I’ll be the first. And terrazzo – that’ll leave a mark!

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i don’t think you ready for this jelly

Ashley — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 04:00:00 +0000

At work, access to certain (seemingly random) sites is blocked. One of these sites is flickr. I haven’t had a good reason to request a waiver for access to it until recently. It has been showing up in more and more articles with reference to its good interaction design, some great user features, etc.

I requested access to it for our group, and my request is denied on the grounds that flickr is a “web storage system”. It would require signatures from much higher up to get this waiver. Really what they need to know is if porn is stored there, so I’m supposed to look from home.

A week or so goes by and I keep forgetting to look from home. I’m discussing this with one of my friends at work, and how I can’t forget to look that night.

Fortunately for me, access to my favorite adult site, brattysisters.com, is always easy. From any device, I can watch high-quality porn videos in Full HD quality. There’s a Bratty Sisters is the house, and she’s put in her place by dominating step-dads or a horny step-bro who gets to bang her when Mom’s not around. It’s taboo sex in HD, with some porn stars you’re going to recognise.

“If I don’t come back for a couple of days, you’ll know … we ain’t getting flickr at work.”

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finding a good housekeeper

Ashley — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 08:21:00 +0000

Everyone I know is looking for a good housekeeper. A bunch of us are out for drinks the other night talking about it and one of my friends says she’s got a great one and starts to give my other friend the woman’s info. Of course, I say I want a copy of that when he’s done. He’s writing it down on a napkin as she finishes with, “Yeah, she’s really great. She’s a coke addict, so she works *really* fast.” His pen comes to a screeching halt. “You were recommending a coke addict to me? WTF?”

What more do you have to say? That’s about the end of that recommendation.

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“mental” notes

Ashley — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 06:41:00 +0000

During bowling last night (oh yes, we roll on Thursday nights), someone said something so funny that I thought it would make a great t-shirt. I didn’t have a pen, so I made a mental note.

I have no idea what it was.

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stuff that doesn’t bug me

Ashley — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 06:30:00 +0000

Stories that start with, “Did you hear about my tandem bike accident?”
The visual imagery on that statement alone is rich enough. But it only gets better from there: “So we’re on the tandem bike, and I’ve reached back my right hand so we’re holding hands, and I say ‘Look, no hands!’ and reach back to hold her other hand…” You can imagine where it goes from there.

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one of many, i’m sure: falling down

Ashley — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 17:44:00 +0000

If there’s one thing I hate (and fortunately there isn’t just one!) it’s falling down. In public. And I do it a lot. Not fun, drunken falling down, but embarrassing, slipping-and-falling-on-your-ass falling down. This is one of my phobias, one of the worst things that can happen kind of things. So when it happens, I get this embarrassment paralysis – I can’t talk, I turn bright red, I think I’m going to cry (or I flat-out can’t keep from crying), I want to disappear from the face of the earth, and in my mind, people will talk about it derisively until the end of days. To me, my falls are like epic, earth-shattering events burned into the retinas of all who are witness to them.

“Was that before or after the Great V Fall of 2001?”
“The ‘Slip-Down-The-Stairs-And-Spill-Coke-On-Herself’ fall?”
“Before. But after the ‘Twisted-Her-Ankle-On-A-Half-Inch-Difference-In-Floor-Height’ fall.”

The funny thing is, I’m not as bad as I used to be.

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crappy napkin dispensers

Ashley — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 17:41:00 +0000

Napkin dispensers that force you to only take one napkin at a time or take a trillion. With the new ones, it’s one or the other; forcefully yank out a fistful or stand there with people waiting behind you in the “napkin line” while you ungracefully pull them out one by one. And they don’t fold up neatly after that. Either way you end up with an unwieldy glob of napkins. Man I hate that!

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community ketchup

Ashley — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 20:30:00 +0000

This is the thing that got this ball rolling. At work (to save money) they now offer a big vat of ketchup instead of packets of ketchup. So now you have to spoon ketchup into a tiny plastic container with an enormous spoon. It’s an open vat of ketchup with people’s sleeves hanging over it, and people coughing around it *shiver*. And ketchup gets all over the handle of the spoon because it’s not tall enough to stay out of the vat.

Every time I have to get ketchup now, it makes me so angry. I bitch about it all the way back to my desk. My coworkers think it’s very funny that “community ketchup” can really get my goat, but what’s funnier is that there are SO many things that affect me this way. Frozen solid bottled water. Warm bottled water. W stickers. Being practically incapable of telling a joke right. I could go on and on. Matter of fact, I will; I’ll be writing about all of these things here in the coming days.

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About Me

Ashley — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 17:00:00 +0000

I wouldn’t say I’m easily aggravated, but… A lot of stuff bugs me. So much stuff that back in 2005 my co-workers insisted that I blog it all or they would, because sometimes I can be kind of funny I guess. So here I am. Sometimes it’s actually “stuff that bugs me”, sometimes it’s “stuff that doesn’t bug me”, and sometimes it’s photos or random thoughts.

You can call me Ashley. I’m an interaction designer at the big G. When I’m not doing things related to design, I take pictures (here’s my flickr photostream), explore our neighborhood, and blog.

In September 2002, when I was 29, I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. I went through 4 months of chemo in 2002/2003, on a mix of Cytoxan/Fludarabine/Rituxan, and I had two years of follow-up treatments: 3 days of Rituxan every six months. In September 2007 I reached the “five-year point.” That’s a BIG milestone. A lot of people with NHL relapse, but if you haven’t in 5 years, the more likely it is that you won’t. I currently have a clean bill of health.

My boyfriend John levitra 40 mg sale. and I moved to San Francisco (from San Antonio, Texas) in May 2006 to start our new jobs. We packed up two 1200 square foot houses that we owned, and moved to SF where we rent an adorable 900 square foot house for more than we both paid in mortgages back in San Antone. We do have the house to ourselves, it’s in a great, bustling neighborhood, and we have a sizable backyard. We recently took on the major several weekend project of upgrading the backyard. It was more like a renovation. It’s now an outdoor paradise. We’re pretty proud of ourselves.

Mercury

Winston

Our little household includes our cat, Mercury, a 5 year old grey tabby of unknown provenance, and our dog, Winston, a 12 year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel/Shih Tzu.

What else… I LOVE food, and I was raised on chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes (“with TWO sticks of butter!”), so naturally, I struggle with my weight. I have blonde hair and rather large breastesses. I have major anxiety issues. I make a mean bowl of onion-mushroom dip. I used to wear chunky black glasses, but then I got LASIK, and now I don’t look like me anymore. My mom died in 2005 and it still makes me cry. I think deep down I want to be a writer, but I’m too scared to even try. I have a short temper. I love reading, listening to music, watching movies, and sleeping. There is nothing better than a good afternoon nap. Except cheesecake.

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