.:: Thursday, March 29, 2007 ::.

OMG, the weather ppl said nothing about snow on the news last night. but this morning i woke up to a 4-5 inches of it!! i thought we were done with the snow!!!

anyway, last night i made a deeeeelicious wingless buffalo chicken pizza. just thought i'd share the recipe with you. :) and a picture...

:: joyce 5:22 PM [+]::
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.:: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 ::.

sunday we started a little cosmetic surgery on my car. W got me interested in doing a few mods on the front end after reading thru the legacyGT forums. we replaced the front grill, repainted the emblem (sanded the dark blue off and replaced it with STI pink), cleared the amber turn signals on the headlights (by baking them in the oven!!!), and added a wind deflector. W finished everything today (it would've taken an afternoon had we not painted the lights black and a couple other little issues we ran into during the process). so after one afternoon and 2 evenings, voila!!

before the transformation & after:


old light, & new light:


old grill & new grill:


and a couple more of the finished product:


and a few more of our neighbor's very friendly cat, tiger:

:: joyce 8:14 PM [+]::
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.:: Sunday, March 25, 2007 ::.

well, after dealing with too many issues with our rhapsody subscription, we're trying a new music service, urge. so far it seems to be faster and more user-friendly. but we'll see how well it works with my sansa. i was having too many issues with the new version of rhapsody and my sansa (like having to re-sync the music after 3 days, when it should be 30; and not being able to download my entire playlist, only parts of it).

our neighbor's very friendly cat, hanging out with us on the front porch. see the trees blooming??? spring has sprung!!

:: joyce 7:42 PM [+]::
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.:: Thursday, March 22, 2007 ::.

greeaaat...our maytag washing machine has been recalled. you know, we got the more expensive washer that had the reliability and dependability that its known for thinking that these things wouldn't happen. luckily it's an easy fix, but i have 2 huge loads of laundry to do. :( i guess i'll just risk setting our house on fire. hmph.

:: joyce 7:16 PM [+]::
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.:: Monday, March 19, 2007 ::.

we had our first NASA track event of the season this past weekend. we had well over twice the number of drivers this year than we did our first event last year so we were all pretty excited. especially since we actually had enough participants to call it racing (i think last year we had 2 in one of the racing groups).

our new trailer hasn't arrived yet (we just ordered it last week) so we had to drive down to pueblo, probably for the last time ever! the weather was perfect, warm and sunny, in the mid to upper 70's. last year, we got stuck in a pretty crappy snow storm on the way home. but luckily the snow didn't start til after we all left the track.

anyway, it was a pretty eventful weekend. things got a bit hectic in the control tower, with me on 2 radios and also making announcements on the PA system (which i hate doing), and at times got a bit stressful, but that's the fun part of being race control! we had a crash on saturday, and 2 near crashes at the same spot, getting really close to the wall (right in front of the tower). a guy lost his wheel (don't worry, we found it, waaaaay off track). there was a camera crew there filming for a reality TV show starring one of our drivers, and giving NASA some great publicity. but the best part of the weekend was seeing the pikes peak acura NSX smoke the american iron guys. there was some pretty offensive trash-talking on the NASA forums, beyond the fun/competitive/joking nature of imports vs. american. apparently the guys at pikes peak acura saw this and decided to bring out the NSX to prove a point and make those guys eat their words. they were nowhere near the NSX, i couldn't even get a picture of all of them at the same time, cuz the NSX was so far ahead. and he was only driving at about 80%! but the race groups were really fun to watch, and i'm hoping that they just get bigger as the season progresses.

i didn't take too many pictures, since i don't have very much down time, but here are a few...

W going around turn 10 (just under the control tower)


pikes peak acura NSX...it's for sale if anyone's interested, only $100,000!


trying to get a shot of the sunset on saturday

:: joyce 9:27 PM [+]::
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.:: Sunday, March 11, 2007 ::.

just some random thoughts

the weather has been kinda wacky. last night, it actually rained. march is our snowiest month of the year, and it rained! and today, gorgeous and sunny. it's supposed to be in the 70's this week!!! i can't wait to wear my spring skirts to work! :)

just finished reading a long way down which was GREAT. i just love nick hornby, by far my fave author. it actually made me laugh out loud, which is rare for a book to do.

so why is it such a huge deal that daylight savings is 3 weeks earlier this year? ppl are making it sound like Y2K all over again! computers are gonna spontaneously explode? uh, no ppl, it's just the time. just set it yourself! get over it!!

W got me lumines for christmas, and i'm completely addicted. in a really bad way. i spent most of yesterday afternoon playing nonstop. and i usually keep playing til my psp battery dies. very very bad...but it's soooo addicting! think updated-tetris-like puzzle game, set to cool music videos.

okay, that's all. nothing new and exciting really going on over here. but just thought i'd say "what's up." :)

:: joyce 5:35 PM [+]::
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.:: Friday, March 02, 2007 ::.

so this gets even better. my boss told the HR rep about the lady mocking us yesterday, and it turns out she's pretty high up on the food chain!!! she fessed up when HR confronted her about it, and apologized. hullo??? how about an apology for US?! b*tch. the best part...HR told them that we're a production operations team and they need to understand that and deal with it. or MOVE! score one for the good guys! haha, i'm really hoping they move. we're all making conscious efforts to talk loudly on the phone to our borrowers (which isn't very hard for some!), order payoffs on speakerphone, and turn up the volume on our computers so that when we're IMing, all they keep hearing is "boink! boink! boink!" just so they go nuts, and they can't say anything cuz we're WORKING. so our plan is to just drive them away. :) hope it works!

i usually see them around the halls and in the breakroom, and we're usually cordial, "hello, how are you?" smile, nod, etc. but today, one of the ladies and i crossed paths, and she had this stupid grin on her face and made eye contact. i glared for a second before looking beyond her fake smile. what makes her think i want her to smile at me, however fake it may be? grrr...they're just so irritating!

:: joyce 5:08 PM [+]::
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.:: Thursday, March 01, 2007 ::.

yesterday afternoon, my boss called us all into a quick meeting. apparently, the marketing ppl that sit one aisle over filed a complaint against us to HR!!! they complained that we were too loud and they couldn't do their work with all our noise. wtf?! my manager was pissed that they went straight to HR instead of confronting her or our director. what is this, 3rd grade? we were all stunned. i mean, we are pretty loud at times, but would it have been so hard to just come over and ask us to keep it down? we're not children, we're adults thank you! their main complaint was some conference call they were on where they couldn't hear what the other person was saying. hello, you sit in a cubicle, there's a lot of noise around you! that's why we have small conference rooms with phones in them!! and then i guess they heard us laughing when we were in our "meeting" and complained to HR (again) that we weren't taking this seriously. first of all, how do they know what we were laughing about, and second, what the hell is their problem? so i guess they had a meeting with HR this afternoon, and our HR rep is supposed to get back with my boss to tell her what happened. and this morning my boss overheard them mocking us when me and J were complimenting K on her outfit. this is all just so ridiculous. so now everytime we see those losers we all just glare and give them the evil stink eye. :P i have never experienced this level of immaturity in a professional work environment. i think they're just jealous that we all get along so well! ha! and the weird thing is, they're in the marketing department, you'd think they would WANT to communicate with ppl!!! so now we're all practically whispering to each other when we talk. so f---ing ridiculous...

:: joyce 7:30 PM [+]::
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