by Kat
Guess who was just offered a freelance piece for the Seattle Weekly? Meeeeeee........ me!
Work is not pressing this week, but I am leaving for Orcas on Friday morning and Rachel and Micah are coming into town Thursday afternoon. GRRRR. I can't pass up this opportunity but I don't want to stress about it either!
Posted on December 27, 2005 @ 3:18 PM |
4 comments
by Kat
( A FEW HOLIDAY PHOTOS )'Twas a good, fairly peacable Christmas. J and I made out like Holiday Bandits, though we managed to spend a good $300 the day after. Damn you, Ikea! Serves us right. I won't catalogue our loot here, but needless to say, our rockin' apartment is now even rocking-er-er. And the only thing I put on my sparse list but didn't get was a Japanese-style rice cooker. I'm pretty sure we can get the hook-ups at Costco.
I gave J cocaine for Christmas, and I mean that more literally than figuratively. World of Warcraft. And part of the deal is that because I need a new hobby as I spend far too much time being productive, he gets me a copy in return. That way, since I won't be seeing him in
real life any more, I can at least see him online. Awwz, how romantic.
We're going to take down our Christmas tree soon, scour the house clean, "smudge" it to chase away any negative energy, and prepare for 2006. We'll be spending the turning of the calendar year on Orcas Island with our good friends,
RacheMicah. We even got a $50 bottle of Champagne (ok, on sale...) in preparation. I can't wait!
Posted on December 26, 2005 @ 9:53 PM |
8 comments
by Kat
Meowmeow meow meow meowmeow meow meowmeow meow meow meowmeow meow meow meow meowmeow meow meow meow meowmeow meow meowmeow meow meow meow meowmeow meow meow meow meowmeow meow meow meow meowmeow meow MEOW!!!
Posted on December 24, 2005 @ 11:08 PM |
1 comments
by Kat
It's raining.
I worked late last night while waiting for Justin to pick me up. At one point, toward 7 o'clock, I logged onto AIM and actually started chatting with SmarterChild, a chat-bot similar to (but smarter than) old-skool chat bots like Mac's Eliza program. SmarterChild and I only chatted for a few minutes before I tired of its trite, canned responses peppered with advertisements. But I did capture some choice gems... (click for full sized images)
Yesterday, Justin and I traded our old
12-cup Mr. Coffee for a
Senseo Coffee Maker at a Senseo.com
Drop Your Drip Event. Why?
-It was free!
-Our old coffee maker made bad coffee-- ok, maybe that was the beans or me, but whatever
-New gadgets are great!
-We only need one or two cups of coffee at a time, not four or more
-I can dig it
-You don't just have to use their crappy coffee tea-bags, you can get refillable pods and use any grounds you want!
-Foam!
Anyway, we tried it with the free medium-roast coffee that was included... and though the 1-cup portion sizes are a bit Europan (4 oz), it was a rather fine cup of coffee, if I do say so myself! You can make two cups at once, or one "mug" (8oz) of coffee too. Call me a sucker for convenience (Read: lazy), but I think this yuppie thinger and I are gonna get along.
Posted on December 21, 2005 @ 11:47 AM |
4 comments
by Kat
Do you like-a the tunes? Do you like-a the movies? Are you open to suggestion? Try
Liveplasma.com. Dayyum... that thing sure makes some cool looking maps. I love Web 2.0... now, if only I could figure out what it
means.
Posted on December 20, 2005 @ 5:52 PM |
0 comments
by Kat
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes, however, there are no words.
See the
Llama Christmahanukwanza-ramayule-dolstice Party Gallery for more, and don't forget to read the post below for weekend masochism!
Posted on December 19, 2005 @ 11:35 PM |
0 comments
by Kat
My bestest gal friend, Rachel, of
RacheMicah.com recently undertook marathon training. This was big news, as we'd only started running together the previous year after I got hooked on the U of O's P.E. jog/run course. I'll admit I was (and am) jealous that she's pursuing such a gargantuan endeavor. It's not something I ever thought I'd attempt. I mean, TWENTY-SIX miles, folks. That's pretty obscene! When she started her pre-training with the 10k class in Fall Term, she encouraged me to look into distance training in Seattle. But I was preoccupied with the job hunt, then the move, then work, then Thanksgiving, then being sick with The Crud, then holiday shopping. I'm sure there's a running group around here, but... eh, color me discouraged.
Saturday, J and I drove down to Eugene for Rama-Llama-Dolstice, the Llama Christmas party. Beforehand, I'd agreed to accompany Rachel on Sunday's 8:30AM distance run, but only for half of the ten mile course. Five miles was already a good half mile or so farther than the farthest distance I'd ever run. It worked out that I'd get a ride back at the turnaround point and wait for her to finish. But... I didn't stop. I ran the whole thing. TEN MILES! And I felt pretty good for most of it!
Somewhere around the seven mile mark, the growing tension in my glutes, quads, and IT band gave way to a solid stiff discomfort. Around eight miles, I started feeling like an arthritic grandma. As others had complained of some soreness when I was trying to decide to stop at five miles, I decided I could push through. I didn't have any trouble with breath or heart rate... I just felt unusually drained. And it's obvious why-- my body was *seriously* confused about what was going on.
At nine miles, it started to hail, then sleet. By the time we rounded a corner and ascended the short hill to the final stretch, the ground was slick with ice. The parking lot before the finish line was treacherous. I guess a few runners fell but weren't hurt. We were pretty lucky, given that I had little muscular control at that point. Ten minute miles for ten miles and now I feel like... A GIMP! It hurts when I sit, it hurts when I stand, and don't ASK me to descend stairs! Well, I exaggerate; it isn't *that* bad, but it certainly is a different kind of post-workout pain than the aches I usually cherish. I'm sure in a few days I'll be fine. ^_^
The weather we experienced caused eight fatality accidents in Eugene alone, closed several miles of freeway, and fucked traffic from mid-state to Portland. By the end of the day, we decided to stay overnight, which was all well and good because I hadn't relished the thought of sitting five hours in the car after running an hour and forty minutes. (I can imagine how stiff I'd be today.) Instead, we drank copious amounts of wine (as usual) and soaked in a hot tub. MMMMM....
Pictures from the Llama-rrific party will be posted shortly, after I finish with my Holiday Cards.
Posted on @ 9:26 PM |
4 comments
by Kat
I went to [undisclosed store] to complete some holiday shopping. Unethically. See, I'd been in there previously and bought some stuff, which totaled over a certain amount and entitled me to a coupon for a discount off my "next purchase" after 12/15. Today I went back to get that discount-- by returning part of my original purchase and buying it again. Taboo for several reasons, not the least of which includes the fact that by returning part of the purchase that originally entitled me to the coupon I'd have technically been voiding my right to have the discount in the first place. Follow?
I didn't feel great about doing this, but hear me out. Basically, it allowed me to get all that I had before, plus one more normally priced forty-dollar item for fifty cents LESS than my original purchase price. Could you pass that up?
Anyhow, how that all works out is too long and complicated for me to detail here. Just trust me, it does. I was stressed about pulling off such a shopping taboo, so I decided just to approach the nice-looking metrosexual (ok, flaming) clerk at the counter and tell him my quandary. He didn't hesitate to ring it up just as I'd asked!
Sometimes it pays to be forward with people.
When I came into the store, I noticed they had another new holiday promo. You could get a number of complimentary items for free with a purchase above, for example, $100. One of those items was a cute, dressy, black
clutch. One girl was admiring it, so I asked to see it when I was at the counter. The clerk started telling me how a woman had come in the other day and asked to hold it, then paraded around the store and declared, "Yeah, I could wear this!" I gave it a try and handed it back to him. "You can have it if you purchase over $100!" he said. I definitely hadn't spent that much and wasn't planning to so I said "no, sorry, I'm all shopped out, I need to quit while I'm ahead." And, I admitted, I probably don't dress up enough to deserve it anyway.
Without blinking, he put it into my bag and replied, "Well, now you can dress up."
Color me a happy holiday shopper.
Posted on December 16, 2005 @ 10:57 PM |
5 comments
by Kat
I am so jaded.
I remember when I was
amazed by life, learning, and love. All that good bohemian stuff. I remember when "growing up" was the ultimate goodness, the power of change at my fingertips. All I wanted was to enter "Real World" and give it my best shot. Brains, brawn, and beauty. I figured that would be good enough to sustain the feeling.
What a laugh. An intellectual idealist becomes an intellectual cynic. How typical.
Even though I have everything I could ask for, I never feel amazed.
I wish I could go back.
Posted on December 15, 2005 @ 11:52 AM |
6 comments
by Kat
If you don't know anything about sushi, or want to know more than you ever thought you could, this great
google video tutorial is the place to start!
**(The best part about this is showing it to people who know little or nothing about the Japanese because then they think Japan is REALLY weird)
Posted on December 14, 2005 @ 2:17 PM |
1 comments
by Kat
As soon as it turned December, Justin and I decided we had to have a Christmas tree. I was content to get one at a lot, except that he said he wanted a Noble Fir. Anyone who's gone tree shopping before knows that Nobles cost in upwards of thirty dollars and more realistically somewhere around fifty. My parents insisted that they were going to cut down a tree "in the mountains" as they've done for the past three years and that if we went with them, we could easily cut down a Noble.
We joined them on their trek to Snoqualmie pass, where we purchased two tree permits for $10 each from the North Bend ranger station. The forest service designates certain areas as "tree zones" where you can harvest trees under twelve feet. My parents had one service road in mind they'd used the year before. The rangers advised us that the road had been plowed and it was a fairly popular area, so we imagined we'd be able to easily find a tree if we could press through the crowds.
As it turned out, the road had been plowed, but not salted or graveled. No sooner had we started to laugh at some poor saps in a truck who were spinning their wheels on the side of the road, we found ourselves in the same plight.
(
Continue...)
The foot of packed snow beneath our tires had an icy sheen that made it impossible to drive, much less stand on. Several people trying to chain up spent the better part of half an hour helping dig and push us out and fell down every few minutes from the effort.
The forest service was stopped up the road, telling anyone without chains that they wouldn't make it to the top: the farther up, the harder it became to turn around and go back down. My dad reluctantly pulled away, and we sighed a breath of relief. We tried another exit but decided that none of the service roads were safe. Instead, we hiked up a trail behind a family with kids on sleds, to see if we could have better luck there.
The family turned around as soon as the trail hit a hillside, but we kept climbing, up onto the Iron Horse, and along the tracks. We were far too low in elevation to find a small enough tree, but we didn't want to give up. A few minutes along, a couple passed us the other direction dragging a tree. They offered me a few encouraging words, but when I caught up to my family, they told me the couple had cut down their tree over a mile away, after hiking up the steep bank and "topping" (read: cutting a tree down more than two feet up the trunk) a larger tree. Cheap.
As we hit a bend in the trail, my dad veered left and ran off into the bushes by himself, following the scent of Christmas trees. A few minutes later, we heard a shout and trotted down to find dad nowhere to be seen and at our feet the scraffy remains of a pathetic cedar.
"It looked good as I was cutting it down," dad said.
After I'd accused him of being a murderer, we cut the boughs off the cedar for making wreaths and kept looking. My parents found a statuesque tree nearby and cut it off only *slightly* higher than they should have. As it turns out, the tree was eleven feet tall and almost too wide for their living room. These things always look smaller before you get inside.
It was getting dark by the time they cut their tree and Justin and I couldn't find one anywhere. Pissed that we'd spent the whole day on this misadventure for nothing, I said I wasn't leaving without one and I meant it. All the "small" trees we could find were scraggly, and often had branches on only the side that wasn't overshadowed by bigger trees. After another fifteen minutes, we hiked back up to the trail and my dad began to lug their tree back down to the car. Fine, fine, said I, I'm just going to look a bit farther. So we did, and a few feet away from where we'd left the trail, we found a small, prickly, but not-a-bit-lopsided noble fir.
The perfect size for an apartment, it is! a shoved it in the car, took it home, and trussed it up with ornaments and lights from Target. It's Justin and my very first "real" Christmas together (by real, I mean "WITH DECORATIONS!!!") and we're proud of our little wacky tree. Especially after all the trouble we went through to get it. What do you think?
See:
Iron Horse Hike Gallery
Posted on @ 12:08 PM |
4 comments
by Kat
UPDATE 12/11: The
SEOmoz Newsweek article has been posted!
SEOmoz.org (my work) will be featured in
Newsweek Magazine this coming Monday! The best I can hope for is a brief mention and inclusion in a group photo, though I don't know how likely that is. However, it's still exciting. Keep an eye out!
Posted on December 09, 2005 @ 4:06 PM |
3 comments
by Kat
Honestly, who does
this stuff? I really think naked women have been around longer than Santa Claus, Mr. Raffonelli.
Posted on @ 2:15 PM |
3 comments
by Kat
( Pittsburgh & Turkey Day Pics )On our trip to Pittsburgh, we were operating on less than five hours sleep. Then, we almost missed a connection and didn't make it home. After being shuffled like cattle from flight to flight and sitting long hours in cabins too dry to sleep, we felt pretty miserable. These are a few travel moments that made the trip at least ironically amusing.
**At the gate of our morning flight to the East Coast, I pulled a strange black object out of my carry-on. It took me a moment to realize that I had just gone through security with a picnic wine-opener. Yes, folks, a metal corkscrew. I can add to the other times I've broken the law... two instances where I unknowingly made it through security with a portable Leatherman (think swiss army knife)... and the one time I was held up as a bomb threat for twenty minutes when a light-up pen made them empty my entire luggage looking for its suspicious mechanism.
**Immediately after boarding a plane, several infants began to cry. Justin, looking for a bit of sleep-deprived humor, whispered sinisterly that "the children cry because they fear the 'Old Gods' will reach up from the depths as we fly over the sea to devour their tender bodies." I gently reminded him that we would be crossing the Midwest and I was fairly certain that Cthulu would not plunge a tentacle out of the waving fields of the American Heartland. If there's any place that so-called "Old Gods" avoid, it's the Midwest.
**Minutes later, Justin picked up SkyMall Magazine. On the cover was a small, African American child gleefully eyeing a tall, black air filter (picture the obelisk from 2001 Space Odyssey) wearing a santa hat. "Man," said Justin, "The black Santa is
creepy."
**We were on the same flight for five hours and we crossed three time zones. They didn't feed us a single meal... not ONE... nor anything resembling real food. They gave us two meager "snacks," which consisted of a beverage and some form of 100-calorie crackers. The flight attendants made one critical mistake, however... they parked the snack cart near us and walked away. Sensing the potential onslaught of my hypoglycemic rage, Justin reached into the cart and stealthily plucked out an extra packet of cheez-its. He smiled smugly, and over the next minute we filled my carry-on with Oreos, cheese-crackers, and granola bars. We had enouhg hotel room munchies for the whole week.
**On the return leg, we were delayed flying from Pittsburgh to Atlanta. The reason they gave us was "weather," which, best I can figure it, was how they wanted to financially wash their hands of stranding us in f**cking Georgia. The only "weather" was clouds in the sky. OH NO!!! THE PEACHES MIGHT BE RUINED!! F*cking Georgians. [Sorry, Amy.] We were told we'd be delayed one hour. We thought we might make it because we had an hour and a half layover. Then they held the plane on the tarmack for twenty minutes so a passenger who missed HER connecting flight could have THIS one... thus causing countless passengers on THIS flight to miss theirs. B-E-A-utiful. We pulled into Atlanta at the *exact* time our flight was scheduled to take off. On the upside, the status board told us we still had fifteen minutes to board. On the down side, it also said the gate was closed. WHICH WAS IT??? We asked two separate agents at two separate gates to call the gate of our flight and make sure it was REALLY closed. They said "without a doubt"... and refused to call. With other Seattle passengers, we got in line to rebook (no doubt, not to be compensated). Only when we cleared the line and rehashed what the agents told us, did someone actually call the gate. Guess what? Still boarding!! We RAN, and boarded, which is just as well... because another passenger who'd tried to rebook was told the earliest he could leave was 3PM...
the next day.
**After our experience with food on the way to Pittsburgh, we decided to bring our own meal on the way back. And we didn't bring just anything... we packed a feast of leftovers. Three slices of Mineos, the best pizza in Pittsburgh. Veal and garlic mashed potatoes from a fine Italian restaurant. Three varieties of Chinese chicken with white rice. And for dessert? The single pack of Oreos they gave us, washed down with a complimentary glass of milk.
Posted on December 07, 2005 @ 10:48 PM |
3 comments
by Kat
( SEOmoz on Slashdot )Boo-yeah. First
Newsweek, then
Slashdot. SEOmoz (my work) is just all over the place. This time we made links for the
beginner's guide to SEO that I previously mentioned (due to my awesome editing, I'm sure). Slashdot has sent us 675... no, wait, 800 visitors in the last eighteen minutes. Uh. There goes our bandwidth.
Posted on @ 3:06 PM |
0 comments
by Kat
UPDATE: We're trying to promote the article as a resource online. If you wanna help me (and my work) get a little web popularity, go to
Digg, register (they won't spam you, I promise), search for SEO (or just click that link), locate the Beginner's Guide to SEO in the list, and click "DIGG" underneath the number you see on the left. We're trying to get on the front page as a little social experiment. We've got a long way to go!So you want to know what I do for a living? Check out the
Beginner's Guide to SEO, a comprehensive "booklet" that describes what's what about Search Engine Optimization. What is SEO? Long and short, it's the process of getting a webpage to show up in the search engines for relevant terms-- so that visitors (i.e. potential customers, converts, etc) can find your site.
Now, SEO isn't specifically what *I* do for
SEOmoz.org, but it may be something I put my energy into in the future. At the moment, I'm doing a lot of ad work, management of ad accounts, marketing, PR, and a whole slew of web-related tasks for the company and the businesses we assist.
SEO is what I'd call an "up and coming" field, because even though we aren't in the middle of a web 'boom' anymore, web businesses are still growing, and more companies are creating internet presences every day. Even those who were created during the boom can struggle to get the hits, rankings, and recognition they need to succeed. There are good ways to go about getting your site noticed, and there are bad ways. The good ways include good design, good copy writing, and a lot of patience, among other things. The bad ways include spamming, getting your ass sued, et cetera.
A while back, Wired Magazine took notice of SEO and decided to interview
SEOmoz.org and a spammer, to get the scoop on the contrast between "White Hat" and "Black Hat" SEO. They ended up first cutting out the spammer (bad move, lost the edge) and then the whole piece. BUT... it will be featured, photos and all, in
Newsweek after Christmas. So keep your eyes peeled and look for me (ok, us) in the papers!
Posted on December 06, 2005 @ 12:17 PM |
3 comments
by Kat
It's been snowing hard since 10:30 this morning. Snow! In Seattle! It won't stick, but it's still pretty flying through the air. I miss snow.
More updates at Thanksgiving photos soon... still lacking internet at home and no time to post at work (busy with mastering search engines, etc.). =^-^=
Posted on December 01, 2005 @ 12:36 PM |
4 comments
, at
1:36 AM, December 28, 2005
