teresa

Elliott went to a function tonight in SF and I stayed here told hold down the fort in the East Bay.  When we talked about his plans to go to this event I told him, oh no… dinner by myself and free to do whatever I want, what will I do (filled with sarcasm and anything but a hint of imagined loneliness).

After I dropped him off at the BART station I went by Subway for a meatball sandwhich dinner, alway a good back up plan and I went back to work.  I “worked” only a little.  Cleaned up the piles and moved paper around.  Then I went through some of emails that I tend to save up of things to do.  Like we want to go to a San Jose Earthquakes soccer game, so I had an email reminder in a folder, so I ordered tickets and deleted the email.  I had some SWE business to catch up on so I did that as well.

Soon the minutes faded into another and before I knew it, it was 9pm.  The lights flickered, the automatic building energy managements way of telling me they would be shutting off for good unless I called in with my secret code to override it.  I called in another hour of light but I am not sure if the system is on Colorado time or what but they shut off anyway.  Oh well, the building’s way of telling me to go home, which I did.

On the way I home with my bag of industry journals, business newspapers, and dishes from the office to wash at home (we don’t use paper plates anymore, its a green thing) I realized something.  It is a Friday night.  Elliott went to SF and I stayed at work because lets face it I don’t have anything else to do.

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I awoke at 6:30am this morning no alarm, I have finally caught up on my sleep.  Apparently going to bed around 7pm a few nights in a row does the trick.  I opened the blinds, to assist Elliott in waking up and I grabbed our computer to catch up on the blog world.  Mom had a new post to me so I read it and cried.  When Elliott woke up he asked me if I wasn’t feeling well because I was sniffling, I explained my morning to him.

 Some how between last night and this morning I decided I wanted to do a juice detox I read about in a magazine, I told Elliott I would be doing a weekend juice detox and we was pissed.  He went to Sacramento today for a boys golfing trip and he didn’t want me to experience a detox without him.  After considering his feelings for a few minutes I realized he was pissed because he didn’t want me to lose a pound unless he had the opportunity to lose a pound too.  When confronted with this analysis he admitted it was correct.  We went for a run before he had to leave for Sacramento.  While he showered I walked to the store for the first recipe, he wanted to have at least the first juice with me.  I am working from memory but the shopping list included: beets, spinach, kale, aloe vera gel, carrots, apple, orange… thats all I can remember now.  I asked Elliott if he thought it was an issue that we don’t have a juicer only a blender, as the two produce very different results.  He thought the blender would do fine for the juice diet.  I prepared the foods and placed them in the blender poured 2 giant 8 ounce glasses and smiled because the rule in our house is the person who blends doesn’t have to clean.  Oh and olive oil, how could I forget, the recipe included olive oil.  The juice/smoothie was horrible.  The only good part was watching Elliott’s gag reflex which was hilarious even though I was choking down the same strange juice/smoothie.  Elliott commented that he thought the kale smelled like he does after a run, I said I didn’t think it smelled that bad but it definitely tasted pretty bad.  Elliott eventually left for his trip and I was left to ponder my day.  I showered and made latter made myself a fruit juice, a nice break from the vegetable variety, much better.  I went to Whole Foods to purchase my lunch and dinner items, you have no idea how expensive it is to buy all of these veggies.  I came back home and made a celery, orange, lemon, kale… the rest I have put out of memory juice/smoothie and suprisingly it was even worse that the breakfast smoothie – horrible in fact.

Throughout the day I surfed the internet and read about juicing, detox, raw good diets, even learned about strange things like oil pulling.  Around 3pm I realized it had warmed up outside so I walked across the street with a blanket and magazines and partially watched a girls soccer game, it was really nice to get some sun.  Back at the house 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through my juice detox I aborted the mission and had a spoonful of cashew butter.  I then ate some chips and salsa and started to feel normal again.  I decided to walk to Safeway where I bought a greasy burrito from the deli counter and some bananas.  I then walked to Block Buster and rented the Devil Wears Prada.  Once home I ate the bean burrito and enjoyed every bite.  I still don’t feel quite right, the unfortunate part is now I am not sure if the smoothies or the burrito made me feel bad.  Oh well, I think I can nurse myself back to health with some hearty food tomorrow.  Oh I forgot to mention I also tried a dandelion root tea with lunch, it helps detox the liver or something.

One thing I wanted to mention is while at Safeway the cashiers were really playing up their donate to breast cancer program.  I donate each time I go to the store, I gave this morning when I bought the veggies.  Tonight though they were announcing each donation over the speaker system and crowds of cashiers were clapping and celebrating.  I thanked the cashier and said I thought they were doing a good thing.  He shared with me that the general manager is a breast cancer survivor.  I told him my mom is fighting it right now.  It took everything I had to not break down into tears right there.  A year ago I would have maybe given a dollar, and probably never thought twice.

So I didn’t make it through the weekend detox and for whatever reason today has been an emotional day for me, I guess that is what I get for reading mom’s blog first thing.  Tonight I am going to drown my tears with more toxic food, probably some cereal, and The Devil Wears Prada, spread out in the bed as Elliott will be back tomorrow.

Today I passed on an opportunity to go after my dream job.  I was so sad I sat frozen for minutes debating what I knew I had to do.  A few weeks ago I read of a request in the ASCE (Civil Engineers) newsletter about a show looking for a female engineer co-host.  The same opportunity passed my email box again this week this time through SWE (Women Engineers) saying they had a rep in California and so were doing interviews of California women engineers.  The information I received explained it is a show that will be on the Discovery channel and the program will be about inventions or ideas to fight climate change.  It’s a great opportunity to do something truly fun within my career and also genuinely good in so many ways, from climate change to inspiring young girls to be engineers.

It sucks that I couldn’t follow my gut on this one, because I really really wanted to go after this opportunity.   But the other information they sent me said it would require a huge time commitment with 3 week shoots in November, January, February… five months, three weeks off each from work, ya I can just imagine Pete’s reaction.  The funny thing is Pete and I just had a great talk about what we want to be when we grow up and I shared with him that what drives me is to do good, and here is an opportunity calling my name to do something good and I turn it down because of my work commitments.  So bye bye dream job (I am hamming it up here, I am really not that sad about it anymore, but figure for the blog a little dramatic flair is appreciated) for whatever reason now wasn’t the time for me to go after one of the opportunities of a life time.  I guess I already got a pretty great opportunity this year, hence moving here so I suppose that is fair.

On a truly positive note, we had a new employee start yesterday.  She is fabulous, smart and fun – who could ask for more.  She even took us up on going to lunch, better than our last employee.  I think she is a keeper.  She is from China.  Today she brought in a moon cake to share, from the Chinese Moon Festival last week.  Jon was down from our Reno office so the 4 of us split it for dessert – she knows how to buy me.

It is amazing how easy it is to blog on BART. Went into the city tonight for a lawyers engineers architect accountants dentists women’s dinner. It was great, nice to meet some non engineers. The women were beautiful all in suits feminine and professional – it was nice to see – I do not get to interact with professional women very often.
I had a few glasses of wine, dinner and delicious dessert, fortunately the friendly gal next to me kept me from devouring the entire thing which I fully intended to do.
One of the ladies stressed me out and wanted to walk me to the bart station, I think she wasa counting how many glasses of wine I had! I made it to the bart safe and sound all by myself didn’t even stumble, trip or twist my knee.
Side note: over the weekend I burned my cheek with my curling iron, I look like Elliott beats me. I think that’s why I have been getting so much sympathy. I considered burning the other side so I at least looked symmetrical, kind of like semi permanent make up but I talked myself out of it.
Anywat gotta run almost to my final destination Dublin/Pleasanton station.
All is well here, way too busy and close to a major melt down at work but other than that things are great!
Will report back soon.

Elliott and I took a trip to Joann’s for fabric.  It was a trip down memory lane for Elliott and I who both remember running through the aisles of fabric as kids.  For us it was Cloth World, Krista and I played hide and seek, I remember the layout like that of a clothing store which allowed for hiding inside of the varied patterns of flannel and silk.  I was on a mission for gold material.  Each year at the national SWE conference the regions have a spirit contest.  Our region is Region A – The Golden West Region.  Last year we simply wore gold.  This year we have decided to wear gold capes, and I haven’t sold it yet to the rest of the region leadership team but I think a fun theme would be the Super SWEsters!  Would you believe Elliott came up with that….  he actually didn’t invent SWEsters as far as I know Elizabeth our Region Governor invented that term.

After dinner we walked into Joann’s having a conversation about what these capes were going to cost.  Elliott is supportive of SWE up to a point.  I told him it would be a dollar or two a cape, 20 capes, $40 max, he told me I was crazy – he was right.  I thought I could find some cheapo gold fabric that no one else wanted apparently gold is still in.  I did however find quite a few really cute options, one with stars and even one with flames!  One of the employees came over to assist as I was grasping a piece of the golden starred material over my shoulders trying to convince Elliott that this whole cape business could be cheap and easy.  She asked if we needed help, I explained simply that I needed material to make a few capes.  She eloquently asked did I want something that looked like a cape or something that just looked like fabric attached to my shoulders.  I explained that if it required sowing it wasn’t going to happen.  Using me for demonstration she showed Elliott how drapping the material at the top would dress up the rectangle of fabric and make it look like a more legit super hero accessory.  Fabulous.

She cut 20 (1) yard segments of the varied patterns as I shopped for pom poms, pipe dowels, ribbon and various admornments for the super capes.

Meanwhile Elliott found a pair of pants he wants to make in a magazine.  The pattern requires less than 2 yards of material so determined that if he could get someone to make the pants for him they would be rather inexpensive, which odd is an odd thing to excite the man who I struggle to get to look at the sale racks at Macy’s.  Furthermore, I not sure who that someone is who will be cutting and sowing the patters together, the closest I get to crafty is saving the extra buttons from my recent clothing purchases.

We finally left our childhood memory behind, $160 later… I hope the Super SWEsters appreciate their golden capes.