Buff Dirt On My Face

I just bought Bare Mineral Makeup! I found the Bare Mineral store in the San Mateo Mall, close to where I work. I walked into the store, and a young lady wearing WAY to much makeup greeted me. Her perkiness combined with her ruby red eyeshadow was kind of scary at first, but I decided to persevere. I walked out of this store with my "starter kit". I spent 82 bucks on this kit, which consists of a few "essentials", a DVD, and three brushes. I have never spent so much on makeup in my life.

I do not really have that much of an opinion on makeup, because I do not use much of it and for the most part I do not understand how it works. But I ran out of powder last week (which I use to make my oily skin not shine so much) and I decided that since I was putting this stuff on my delicate facial skin I should probably try to buy something natural looking that was not make out of chemicals I cannot pronounce.

When I got home, I showed Alan my DVD and proceeded to explain how my makeup was high-tech and cool. I though this would impress him, since he is in to things that are high-tech and cool. He was only mildly amused. I told him that my makeup was made out of colored minerals, no preservatives or chemicals of any kind; this is a good thing. As I said this I realized that my makeup was basically very expensive colored dirt. Alan then replied "Yea, girls will buy anything".

Whatever, I swirled. tapped, and buffed my face today. It was awesome.

GroomZilla, Cont.

Since I have Wedding Block, I have obsessed about finding a wedding location. I figure that the best way to start planning our wedding is to find a great location. Depending on the location we can figure out a date, and how many people we can invite. A beautiful location might inspire me out of my Wedding Block. Unfortunately, everything boils down to money: the places that we really like we cannot afford, the places we can semi- afford Alan detests, and the places we can afford are righteous dumps that we cannot make our family members and friends fly across the country to sit in. After two weeks of combing the internet and visiting places, I am done. This is too hard, and not healthy. All this wedding crap is getting on my nerves. I just moved and I am broke. Therefore, I am giving myself a break starting now from all things wedding related for at least until the next month.

Do NOT talk to me about wedding stuff for a month, please. This task is going to take a lot of mental effort on my part, since I love my groomzilla and I want to marry him.

GroomZilla

I have wedding-block (much like writter's block, only about weddings) and, my dear fiancee is groomzilla. More to follow shortly.

It Is About Time

It is about time that I start getting serious about my grad school goals. I'm looking into MBA programs. Guess what? They are expensive. This makes me mad for the following reasons:

1- Money is generally scarce among poor and middle class people.
2- Poor and middle class people need to go though grad school programs in order to increase their salary potential, and thus not be so poor anymore.
3- The good MBA schools (and grad schools in general) are expensive. Regular people cannot afford to attend "the good" grad schools. Therefore, logically, expensive MBA programs are designed for rich people to get richer.

I hope you are as outraged as I am. This brings me to the following noble cause: The Margaret Needs Help to Go To Grad School Charitable Fund. Would anybody like to donate about 65,000.00 dollars over the course of two years? Think about it as investing in the future of America, and the good of the world... something that the US government seems to believe is not important at this time.

Come and Visit

Dear Friends and Family: please come and visit! I really want to show you our new place. We have a pool, hottub, sauna, gym... and we are within walking distance of downtown Mountain View, where all kinds of little shops and restaurants are. I would love to make you dinner, and I need an excuse to bake a cake.

New Life

I am starting a new chapter of my life: I have a new job and new living arrangements! Alan and I found a cute little one bedroom apartment in Mountain View, just 2 miles away from Google central. We are currently in the process of opening the last of the moving boxes and decorating. We finally hung the hammock that my mom gave to Alan in April of last year... And, to make our new place seem more like home, we hung the Mona Lisa in the bathroom. We have a small, framed, Mona Lisa poster that we hung in the bathroom of Alan old apartment. I purchased this poster from the Louvre in Paris a couple of years ago. It was strategically placed facing the toilet, so that it looked at you with a knowing smile no matter what you did. Unfortunately, we were not able to hang the Mona Lisa in the same location in our new home, but the overall "Mona-effect" is still quite charming.

I cannot count how many times Alan and I have been to Ikea in these past couple of weeks. Almost everything in our home is from Ikea, and we still have more things that we need to purchase. We will probably be going back next week to buy a dresser for me. In general I would have to say that Ikea stuff is cool and affordable, but then you have to build it. The durability of the items that we have purchased is also somewhat questionable. However, for the prices I am paying I will not complain. One major purchase that we still must make is that of a couch. Couches are expensive! and Ikea does not offer a couch that we would like to habitually sit on and/or look at. So, we are on the look-out for a comfortable, reasonably priced sofa. I am especially interested in sofa-beds, because we only have one bedroom in our place. (If you have a nice sofa that you need taken off of your hands, please contact me.)

My new job is, ahhemm: Human Resources Manager for the San Mateo Branch! Thats right, I'm officially a manager now. I can't wait to start. The branch I am going to is about 1/3 of the size of the one I am working in now, so I expect to see a slowing down of pace. I'm so happy. I'm sure I have a lot of work ahead of me. I start in my new position this week.

Google News Flash

For the last 7 months I have gone through a love-hate relationship witht he idea of Alan working for this company. All of my friends and family know of the painful and dramatic saga that Google's HR has put Alan through. Finally, yesterday morning, Google reached the decision to hire my genius fiance. Alan and I are very happy... and we will soon be moving the the area of Mountain View CA.

I have been gloating about this non-stop for 24 hours; I am so proud of Alan. I could write for hours about Alan's virtues, but he would probably kill me so I will stop here.

YAY!

To Quell Complaints of Lack of Pictures

I give you... ME :

Pictures courtesy of Ms. Gwen, who bravely spent an afternoon trying to make me pose in interesting ways while working her camera magic. And, to Mr. Alan, for making me laugh.

4th of July and Random Ramblings

Yay! 4th of July! Oh, the overwhelming sense of patriotism that invades me as I eat my fill of ribs and chips, while watching things explode in the air. There is nothing like blowing things up and overeating to make you feel in unison with your fellow Americans.

(For those of you who know me, you would identify that passage as belonging to my slightly-off sense of sarcastic humor.)

We hosted the annual Bryden 4th of July Party, and I think it was a success. My friends came, which made me incredibly happy... especially since I haven't been able to see many of them due to work, and them moving away, and the general responsibilities of life that slowly take over your free time making it impossible to coordinate spontaneous activities with friends. So many people came to my house. My room was turned into "the bag room" and it was barely big enough. I spent hours cleaning my little house so that it would be presentable, and now I shall spend hours cleaning up the mess that the 50-odd people left behind. (BTW: A special thanks to those who took the time to help out a little before they left.)

I saw the Alameda Parade, which is always a joyous experience. I see the same parade every year, and every year it touches my heart. I love the small-town feel that it marches down the main streets of my little island.

The one thing I absolutely abhorred about this 4th of July was the day it happened to fall on. It should be illegal to celebrate national holidays in the middle of the week. Alan couldn 't come, and everybody kept asking me about him so I had to explain, what felt like a million times, that he was sick and he lives in Monterey and he has to work tomorrow... It was so hard to get up this morning; I barely got any sleep at last night. And today I am probably going to stay late at work because I have so much work to do. Ugg!

My Digestion Today

Dear avid readers: I am in Monterey this weekend, with Alan of course. Today is Sunday, it is about 7pm, and I am still recuperating from lunch. From my lunch experience I have derived a worldly truism that you should take into consideration effective immediately: "Stay Away from Indian Buffets". They are good and pleasurable at first, but then they turn into an evil source of torment after ingestion, especially if you are like me and can't help but to overeat at buffets. Why? Why are Indian buffets so good? Why can I never have my fill of naan bread? Why do their spices always dance in my mouth so nicely, so as to make me want to never stop eating.

Alan, seeing the state that I was in, tried to cure me by feeding me a Sugar Free Rock Star. Then he tried to chase me around the block. Needless to say, his well-intended efforts only slightly alleviated my distress, and gave me a serious case of the burps... which he then regretted.

Engagement Party

That right folks; we had a wonderful party with all of our family and friends to celebrate the engagement. The food theme was sushi (because Alan and I love sushi)... there were also plenty of cheeses and crackers. We had cases of wine and champagne. We had little sweet treats and servers who wore red bow ties. I wore a dress. Alan wore a suit with a black tie that had little white death skulls on it. One of the highlights of the party was when I got to dance with my grandpa (no small feat given his two artificial hips).

The week before the party was kind of stressful because I had so much planning and ordering and arranging to do. But once the party started, it was so much fun! I'm so glad all of my friends and family could come. I spent the entire night saying "I'm so happy".

Sinamaica

I did a little tourism around Maracaibo... and I found -after much crazy driving- the town of Sinamaica. The town is basically located inside the river Limon. Population aprox 5000. It is beautiful. People live primarily off of what they fish and tourism. For less than $50 (including tip)I got a private 1.5 hour tour on a boat with a local. It was amazing.

Pictures!!!

Here are a couple of pictures from my recent trip to Venezuela... check out the crazy tree growing along the river...