Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Emily's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Monday, December 22nd, 2008
8:59 am	Christmas! Christmas always makes me reflect. Maybe because it's such a...noteworthy time of year? It makes me think about what I was doing for other Christmases...who I was with, where I was. Which leads me to think about why I was there, or where I am now. I feel like I've come to a grinding halt in terms of my personal growth. Now I'm just focusing on getting through the day, and trying not to f it up by the time I go to sleep. And really, I'm not even doing so hot at that. I don't mean to sound like a complete downer, I'm still pretty happy with where I am and what I'm doing. I've got a really good job that I [usually] like, I don't have to worry about not being able to pay the bills, I'm making good friends in Indy, I found a church and a choir that really feels very right, and most days I enjoy myself very thoroughly. Tonight I'm going to see Lion King. That should be pretty fun! I'm headed to GE very late on Christmas Eve (I'm driving directly from the midnight mass - that should be interesting), and I'll be there through New Years. Anyone who wants to meet up should let me know. I haven't got anything really planned yet. I'm really becoming too full of myself and not compassionate enough. I need to work on that. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
3:53 pm	Lately - They've put me on a long-term contract at work. I hate the work I'm doing there. At least it gives me a normal schedule, so I'm able to do things like join choir and leave on the weekends. - Some people are amazing. I am not. - I'm going to Mexico in November. - Facebook is like LJ with ADD for me. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
1:05 am	Um...on a completely unrelated and lighter note, No More Heroes is super fun. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 7th, 2008
11:14 pm	A disjointed rant on femininity I'm going to preface this by saying, in case anyone had any ideas otherwise, that I am NOT a feminist and disagree with a lot of their ideas. However, I've had to do a lot of reconciling/self-searching about what being feminine means/means to me. I guess it makes sense to look at it from a historical standpoint. As most anyone reading this will know, I have a lot of...masculine interests/aptitudes, and have most my life. I'm scientifically-minded, emotionally guarded/suppressed, my interests include video games and computers, I'm not a full-fledged engineer in an incredibly male-dominated section of the field, and almost all my friends are guys (which perhaps follows suit). Any one of these things could be expounded on individually, but as I said before, I'll go through my own evolution of thoughts on the subject. Original thought: femininity is bringing me down and I need to crush it like a tiny bug This was around high school times. This was mostly brought about by the fact that I started having a lot of guy friends, and actually competing with them in classes and other activities. I thought to compete I needed to prove that I could do anything just as well if not better than they could. I could be just like them. I wasn't like the other girls they knew. I was also under the impression that the ideal girlfriend most guys envisioned was kind of like a best friend, but a girl. Someone who had your interests, someone like "one of the guys." I think what this caused was a terrible issue with identity and suppression. Anyone who's ever tried to be someone they're not (as I'm sure most people have at one point in their life or another) can identify with that, so I don't really need to expound on it. But it wasn't good for me, I can assure you. Evolved thought: femininity is not something worth noting The view held through most of college. It should neither be promoted nor suppressed...any attention to it at all is counterproductive. Any thought on it at all is pointless and stupid. This was a vast improvement. I still maintained a lot of the ideas from the original thought, but I discarded a lot of the suppression as it was pretty much impossible to keep up such a facade for so long. I dropped the things that were obviously fake but kept many things covered and suppressed. Current thought: femininity is a huge part of me that I need to accept and appreciate I think this is what maturing feels like. And I think most people did it a lot longer ago than I did. But regardless, I only came into this thought recently. I thought I was doing this the whole time, but I was fooling myself. This has helped me immensely. I feel so much better about myself and who I am, and I can accept parts of me that really are virtues without feeling like it makes me uncompetitive. I've also come to realize at some point that guys DON'T want a best friend as a parter...that's why they have best friends. Men want a woman because it balances them out, and they can (and will) love the things about you that make you feminine. This realization...made me feel very free. Like I could finally just be me, and the people who liked me would like me ACTUALLY for me and the people who didn't, well, it would have shown through eventually anyway. I could expound on how that made me feel and why this is the best way, but I shan't at the moment. Moving on --- I'm different. Sometimes it still feels wrong. Like I shouldn't be the way I am. It creates rifts and issues in places. Life would be so much easier if I was an elementary school teacher who liked to get manicures every week and just wanted to find a guy to take care of me. I'm also convinced that the vast majority of guys who say they want an independent, powerful woman don't actually want that. Maybe they think they do, but they don't. I feel so wrong for this world. Like God mixed up the wrong ingredients when he made me and just kinda said, "oh well!" Don't get me wrong, I don't feel like...transgender or anything like that...as I said previously I know I'm a woman and I like that. But damn if it isn't hard. I think I'm just getting to the point where this all is starting to be a hindrance to my relationships rather than a benefit. A severe, severe hindrance. OK this has taken me a long time to put together and I've been drinking wine the whole time so I'll put it bluntly and shortly. If you don't think I'm feminine, that's a damn cold thing to say. I may have quirks and interests that imply otherwise, but if you know me, REALLY know me, you'd know otherwise. My interests don't define me. I'm a goddamn woman, and not just because I like pink. Fuck all y'all. [ok I don't really mean that.] (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
1:14 pm	My job was awesome, then sucky, and now awesome again. I've been loving the callouts. I get to go to all different kinds of factories and see how things are made, and it's really tough work, too. The sheer breadth of knowledge I need to have is shocking. Things I've learned at different factories I've been to: - If you spend more than an hour at a dog food factory, you WILL smell like dog food until you shower and wash your clothes about 3 times. - A place like the ReddiWhip factory, which smells like milk very strongly, is annoying to spend an entire day in. - Watching molten glass become bottles in about 3 seconds is really mesmerizing. - Waste Water Treatment plants smell like shit. [no duh, I guess.] - It is NOT HARD to see why Japanese car companies are beating out US ones, it takes about 10 seconds in each factory to see major differences. - I don't like unions, I think they're bad for the company and bad for the people as a whole, though they served an important purpose at one point in time. - Ethanol plants are a big deal now. - Old factory guys don't take kindly to seeing a small, young woman walk in to fix their problem when they were expecting an old, experienced, burly man with a beard. - [related, but not something learned at an actual factory] Books on tape for long car rides by yourself are a life saver, and really great. That's all I can think of at the moment. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 30th, 2008
7:08 pm	2 things 1) Hair Donated it again. Before/after shots here. It's so short! :( 2) Smash Code = 3179-5836-7143 Can wii be friends? (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 24th, 2008
11:38 am	Have you been half asleep, and have you heard voices? I've heard them calling my name...is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors? The voice might be one and the same. I've heard it too many times to ignore it, it's something that I'm supposed to be. Current Mood: troubled (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
12:28 pm	When I went to Chicago weekend before last I went to Arlington Racetrack to watch some horses run.  I love doing that, by the way.  On a gorgeous day, sitting outside watching the horses, and getting all excited about cheering for your horse, wheee!  It's just a fun Saturday afternoon activity.  I usually only do safe bets and end up up about $5 for the day.  I decided to do an exacta box midway through the day though (betting two horses to win first and second, no order) and won that, so between that and my other safe bets that paid off I was doing pretty well.  If you bet at the automated machines, they give you slips of paper if you have money left when you're done betting to redeem later.  After my bets for the last race I had $1 left on paper, and if I didn't win anything I didn't want to wait in line to redeem it, so I bet two $0.50 trifectas (betting horses to win first, second, and third in a particular order).  Anyway, I won one of them!  And I also won an exacta I'd bet that time too.  So I ended up like, $75 up for the day.  Its nice when a fifty cent bet turns into $50.  And now I can say I've won a trifecta before!  Which is kind of funny, since other people I know bet those crazy bets every time and never win, and I always bet the safe ones. But then I had a $310 cell phone bill last month so I still don't feel like I have extra spending money.  Oh well! (Comment on this)
Monday, August 6th, 2007
5:05 pm	Thai officials hope Hello Kitty can shame errant cops I've had a lot of time to...do nothing, pretty much. I've only been on one call since I got back from Cleveland (the problem was that the customer had not pressed the second Reset button...so often it's the little things that get you). Today I put a dimmer switch and fan control in the bedroom. And I started my Animal Crossing: Wild World game again, since my little brother erased my last town. I've also been strongly contemplating replacing all the vinyl flooring in the place with ceramic tile. First of all, I hate vinyl flooring. Second, my place is pretty upgraded and higher scale than that in everything else, it just doesn't fit, and I think would injure the resale value pretty badly. The appraiser took off $3,000 on the "comparable sales" because the other places had wood floors. I think it would be a worthy investment. I've been toying with doing it myself. I think I could do the normal laying, cutting, and other simple stuff by myself pretty easily, but I'm not sure how to work around the edging (the bottom molding...whatever you call that). I think I have to tear it up and replace it after the tiles go in. Plus, moving the appliances is going to be really annoying. This weekend my parents and little brother are visiting. That will be fun. We're gonna paint! Maybe I'll take some pictures after that to put up. I watched Lonely Hearts last night, which was incredibly boring. Maybe I'll find something better for tonight. I watched Music and Lyrics last week, and I liked it. It's not like, a good movie, but it was very cute. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
10:59 am	Ooo, I had my first Wii tragedy today.  A couple of Wii remotes still had the old style strap on them, even though I had the replacement straps.  Garrett was Wii bowling and accidentally let go of the controller, broke the strap, and it hit my fireplace (very thankfully not my brand new TV) with great force.  I have a Wii-dent on the fireplace screen now.  Needless to say, I found the new straps and replaced the controllers that had the old style. Speaking of Wii, Super Paper Mario is really fun.  It's a little too similar to the other Paper Marios, and it of course still has the same Mario & Luigi style humor.  But if you liked those games, you'll like this one.  Just more of the same, with slight variations. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
9:19 pm	It's actually easier to think of things to say when I update on a regular basis. Now I feel like I have 6 months worth of things to say, and I can't say it all. I finished my training a few weeks ago for my new job. I got a kickass condo in Indy, sometime I'll have to post pics of it. It's gorgeous, though. 2000 sq ft, 2 car garage, a great kitchen, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bath, finished basement. Granted, way more than I need, given it's just me, but still REALLY nice. And brand new. Cleveland was fun for training, I made some amazing friends. And learned a lot. This job is going to be seriously hard. But I like a challenge. I haven't gone out on any calls on my own yet...I was in my second week of shadowing one guy, and they sent me back to Cleveland for 2 more weeks of training. Bah. Oh well, I'll absorb as much as I can while I can. When I go out on my own I'll appreciate anything that helps me look like less of an idiot. One major highlight from my on-the-job training was when one maintenance guy we were meeting in the factory met the guy I was shadowing and I, introduced himself very professionally to my coworker, and then turned to me and asked me if I was 18, and then shook my hand half-assed without making eye contact. Maybe he thought it was take your daughter to work day or something. Either way, getting respect from factory workers looking like I do was never going to be an easy task, and I was aware of that. It's kind of more amusing than anything else. We'll see how this turns out. I got my new car, a 2007 Impala. Not something I would have ever picked out for myself, but it's definitely not bad. It's a bit different than what I was used to, which was a little 2-door civic. It's bigger, less fuel efficient (which isn't a huge deal since I don't pay for the gas, but annoying because I prefer to be better for my environment and it means I have to stop for gas more), but has a lot more pick-up, which is something that, being a civic driver, I was definitely not used to. Plus, it's got a plug for an IPod or some kind of mp3 player, so now I need to get one. PS. Aimee and Cory got married. Cool, right? Hugs and kisses to them! (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 3rd, 2007
6:23 pm	All's going well so far with the job. I'm liking what I'm doing a lot. And I found out where I'm going to be after the training! I'll be in Indianapolis being a Field Service Engineer with a specialization in Motion Control. That means when our stuff breaks in someone's plant or something, I go fix it! That's what I was hoping for, so I'm pretty excited about it. I'd asked for Chicago, but that was as close as they could get. Really, it works pretty well though, because I'm still close to Ohio, and only 2.5 hours from Chicago. I'll be moving there sometime around July. Wheeee! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 11th, 2007
9:49 pm	Garrett's coming tomorrow! Hooray! I had tacos for dinner! Hooray! I have leftovers for lunch tomorrow! Hooray! ( Maybe I should be interested in more things. ) I have to give a 5-7 minute presentation at work next week on anything I want. I can't think of anything good to do it on, though! I mostly want to make it on something that would be interesting/entertaining for everyone else to watch. So far my best idea is to do stuff about our solar system, and talk a bit about the whole Pluto issue. Any better ideas? P.S. Wii is fun. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 7th, 2007
3:25 pm	I've moved into my new place and everything's going well. I like my roommate, the place is decent enough, and the area seems nice.  I start work tomorrow.  I think, after some major shopping over winter break, I've finally built up a decent wardrobe for this "casual business attire" thing. My biggest problem is that I miss Garrett a lot.  I think as long as we keep up with seeing each other on the weekends, it'll be ok.  Sigh. Also, my Wii number is: 0483 7138 6022 5944 Leave yours if you want to be friends! (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 1st, 2007
5:04 pm	Happy new year everyone! I'm feeling great about this year already.  I start my new job in Cleveland next week, and I think it's going to be awesome.  Plus, it'll be nice to finally have a little more breathing room in terms of finances.  I already have a massive laundry list of things I need to buy (correction: want to buy).  Boring grown up things mostly like real furniture, a computer chair, nice clothes, a nice TV, etc.  I'm of course trying to stay somewhat responsible with my money, though!  But it's so hard... Also, I finally got a new computer! It's so long overdue, I haven't had a working computer in years.  It's a Toshiba Satellite laptop, and for the nerds and interested among us, here's some ( specs. ) It was my graduation present.  I'm liking it a ton.  Still customizing it, putting programs I want on it, etc. For the first 6 months of my new job, while I'm in this extended training program, I'm going to live in this furnished corporate housing thing they suggested and have a roommate who's also in this program.  I never found someone to take my place in Columbus, so I'm paying double rent for the foreseeable future. Now I've got to decide things like what health plan I want to use, how much I want to put in my 401k, and damn it if I hadn't spent so much time playing Zelda this week I'd definitely feel like a terribly old adult. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 4th, 2006
7:58 pm	Job! I have a job! Rockwell Automation offered me a position in their Engineer In Training program, which I'm super pumped about. That was one of the jobs I thought I'd really enjoy. And they made me a great offer. I start Jan 8th, and I go to Cleveland for 6 months to do this training program. After that, I get one of three jobs in any number of places. I get to request where I'll go, and they "usually" do a good job of working with that. I'm going to either try to stay in Cleveland or go to Chicago or Milwaukee. So, new and exciting things abound. I'm really pretty pumped about it. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 21st, 2006
1:32 am	I love my mommy! She got me a Wii! She showed up to the Toys R Us she works at an hour before they opened on Sunday and, like the lovely, dear mother she is, waited around for an hour to get me a Wii! Fortunately, since she works there, she got to wait inside for the hour, while the rest of the line was outside (after they passed out numbers when there was max amount of people there). She got me the Wii, Red Steel, Super Monkey Ball, and an extra controller/nunchuck (all part of my Christmas present). I bought Rayman here as well. No Zelda, but hopefully they'll get more in at the old TRU soon enough. In conclusion, mad props to my wonderful mom, who spent 3 hours driving out to work, waiting around, and then helping them pass out Wiis to the rest of the line (her thanks for letting her wait inside/get one/etc) on a Sunday morning. I go home tomorrow and get to play it. Woohoo! Current Mood: Can't wait till tomorrow (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 7th, 2006
5:28 pm	Crisis narrowly averted No Academic Misconduct dealings for me. I guess they decided not to punish the guy. If you don't take him to Academic Misconduct (which, technically, they were obligated to do), you can't punish him at all. They decided not to go there because it would have gotten all lab members in trouble. So on one hand, it's nice that I don't have to worry about it anymore, but on the other, I feel morally bad about it because he got off scot-free. I guess there was no possible happy ending to this, though. He's still in lab, but I requested to be switched to the Thursday section, and my other group members decided to as well. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 6th, 2006
10:42 pm	Alright. Feeling ok right now. On the negative side, Lockheed Martin didn't even invite me to their stupid first interview, which they almost guaranteed me at the job fair, and I don't think Rolls Royce invited me to a second interview (someone else I know who interviewed when I did already got invited). So that's all stupid, and really stupid, and I guess I just suck at getting jobs. But on the positive side, there was just a function in the physics research building that had free champagne. And really good cheese, too! I guess Art Epstein just won some big award or something from APS. Point is, delicious consequences for me! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
5:05 pm	Academic misconduct like what ?? Ohhhhhh I'm so irate right now. There's this one guy in my EE lab group who's always pissed the hell out of me. My problem with him first started when he found out I was in another class of his and asked if I wanted to work on the homework together. I didn't want to, but he kept calling me so I eventually let him. He spent most of time calling other EE friends of his trying to find someone who had already done the homework. By the time he gave up on that, I'd finished most of the homework. So he tried to just copy everything I had, but I kept trying to just give him hints and get him to do it on his own. I finally gave up and went home to finish. Then today after lab, our lab TA calls everyone up to talk to them when we finished our midterms. He asks us who did what in some lab writeup we did two weeks ago. I looked at our group's, said one person did the whole writeup and we each took a report question at the end. The other groups say they had one person do the whole thing as well. He shows us my lab group's and another group's, flips through the pages, and they are word-for-word, as well as style and format, identical. Every single page. I remember that that week was the first group lab report, and our group was very disorganized. The one guy who did most of the report really did a shitty job, and two of us accidently did the same report question (leaving one not done at all). We asked for time to fix it up a little, and our TA said turn it in at the end of the day. The cheater kid offered to fix it up and turn it in. What the TA showed us today had NOTHING of our original report in it. He completely threw out everything we did, and replaced it with an old lab report someone who had already taken the class had (which is the same one the other kid copied). There words "academic misconduct" were thrown around. Our TA said whoever did the direct cheating would be dealt with in some way, and everyone else wouldn't be punished. We would just get that lab scratched out and our final grade would be out of 6 labs instead of 7. He also said that what he showed us was a photocopy, and he had given the original lab reports to a professor of his for advice on what to do. It SOUNDS like I narrowly avoided being charged, but I still could very easily be charged and found guilty. The precedent shows it. There have been other groups I know where one guy cheats without anyone else knowing, but everyone gets in trouble because they put their names on it. This COULD make me not graduate on time, because they give you an incomplete until they finish the trial, which usually takes about two quarters. WHY does this have to happen! And especially during my graduating quarter. I want to punch a huge hole in a wall right now. But for now it's class time. Current Mood: angry (6 Comments |Comment on this)