Ode To A Busy Week

It’s Friday I know but I can’t help but think
About the events of the past week
From Saigon to Shanghai to Rancho Santa Fe

We booked shipments of pets across the USA

The California exodus continued to reign
As owners of companies of fortune and fame

Called upon service in attempts to relocate

Their cockers and spaniels and danes that were great

Rulers of roosts more splendid than mine

Pets who likely drink not water but wine

I wonder what to think when I hear on the line

An owner who tells me “My cats want to fly”

“While I on the other hand am okay to drive
To my new home in Philly, it’s really a dive,

Only four bedrooms two baths and one car in the drive
Can this be done tomorrow, I don’t have much time,

I’ll fill out the forms—it’s on my company dime.”

Goodbye to the week, hello the weekend,
And in the night as the airline send
Dogs and cats and pets all around

I’ll look up in the sky from this place on the ground

And realize how money makes the world go round.

Saw An Inconvenient Truth tonight with LF at the Drafthouse(SoLa location).

Not to wax-poetically, but everyone really should be forced to see that movie. I mean it really is astounding to see, on a giant screen with high-tech images, that which is so inconceivable and yet so ominously staring everyone right in the face.

The movie did a good job of staying away from sounding too much like a presidential campfire chat and only touched upon the political elements of global warming at the very end. More or less, aside from having a celeb-narrator, Gore explained in fairly concise yet somewhat forlorn terms the challenges that are facing everyone in the world over the next 50 years.

There were a couple of perspectives the movie took which I found myself appreciating, fancy digital imagery aside. One was a simple graph showing how America, even when adjusted for population, is emitting almost double the amount of carbon into the atmosphere compared to every country in the world, even China. It's almost a good argument for communism to stare at that chart.

The other simple, slap-in-the-face image was a photograph taken in outer space, millions upon millions of miles away that the astronauts took. When blown up for the big-screen, Earth looks--Earth is--like a mere white pixel out of a screen full of black. Just a pixel. They kept the image up longer that what was comfortable and everyone in the theatre was forced to look at themselves as a blurry bit on the screen and realize that everything that has happened in the human race has happened on that one tiny blip on the radar.

TGIF tomorrow + 4th of July!!

A few housekeeping sidenotes that I also wanted to bring up:

1. Is Sleepless in Seattle not one of the best movies ever? I mean really. Horses, horses, horses, horses...

2. Who other than me misses The Wonder Years?

3. My elem-turned-high school-turned-twenties friend Noah sent me these pics from his recent show down at Tulane. Sweet. Good job, way to represent the Zilkerites.

One proverbial point to Old Matt for this link yesterday, which was at least somewhat interesting.

And a shoutout to the David Letterman show, where tonight's "guests" are Broken Social Scene AND the Diet Coke Mentos Experiment, which was our lunch hour fodder one day a few months back. Bizarre that both should happen on the same night...but I suppose stranger things have happened.

One proverbial point to Old Matt for this link yesterday, which was at least somewhat interesting.

And a shoutout to the David Letterman show, where tonight's "guests" are Broken Social Scene AND the Diet Coke Mentos Experiment, which was our lunch hour fodder one day a few months back. Bizarre that both should happen on the same night...but I suppose stranger things have happened.

A thoroughly intense evening ensued tonight.
Beautiful (Birthday) Girl B, also known as Chrissy, invited me down to the Paramount Theater , downtown on Congress, to watch the screening of Nobelity, a documentary by Turk Pipkin.
Beforehand we enjoyed Dos Equis and some happy hour grub at the Roaring Fork, a shi-shi place to see and be seen that is adjacent to the Paramount and Stephen F. Austin Hotel.
Quite moving, as any movie would be if you gathered a handful of Nobel prize winners and interviewed them set to footage of babies in Africa and atomic bomb mushroom clouds. Definitely propaganda toward change, but one thing it lacked was a clear path toward solutions. The usual problems were outlined (global warming, nuclear holocaust, starving/disease-ridden Africans, Indians and other Easterners), but no real solvents were given other than, "There's nothing magical about change. It is getting up off your ass and caring enough to take the first step, to contribute to change on the issue you care about (I quote Jody Williams, 1997 Peace Prize winner for her International Campaign to Ban Landmines)." Much, much easier said than done, however I suppose the other point made in the movie is that just because the answer may be very simple doesn't mean that it's the wrong answer (i.e. get rid of all the nuclear warheads).
One thing I can rave about was the view from the top of the Paramount, one of the most beautiful theatres I've ever been in. The picture to the right accurately depicts the screen upon which we watched the movie, and yet it was strangely adequate in terms of sight line and size. I have sat in many different areas in the Paramount--on the ground level and up in the balconies--and I am always struck at how efficiently the building was designed in that I always have a positive experience when I see a movie or a play there. I never really feel like I should be closer or irritated with the people in front of me. In this day and age of IMAXes and stadium-seating, the Paramount still holds its own against all of the Regals and Cinemarks of the world.

I am reading a great book right now called One Hundred and One Days that I picked up when the Madwoman and I did our annual pilgrimage to the South Lamar Chango's and Half Price Books. Engaging, fast reading for anyone who is interested in trivialities surrounding the war in Iraq, namely the invasion of Baghdad. I've been trying to upload a picture but seems it won't work, so you'll have to just Google it yourself if you want to know more about it. She also wrote a book called The Bookseller of Kabul which I intend to read next. Since the retirement of my 8th grade english teacher I have been thinking about rereading Alas, Babylon since I was so interested in it in 8th grade and would like to see what I think about it now, in this day in age.

That's about it...Wednesday tomorrow...err...in 30 minutes. So perhaps I should go to sleep.

"History is the history of war. It's not the history of other possibilities for dealing with global conflict. There is no history of peace. We're also taught that peace is wimpy, (that) it's a spineless, nonalternative to global problems. I think that's bull. We need to educate young people that peace is not a vision with a rainbow with a dove flying over it. It's hard work." Jody Williams

Interesting article about loners like myself. Makes some good points regarding the changing of America...namely people's dependency nowadays to only trust themselves and turn inward to seek counsel.

Best wishes go out to 1/2 Grim's cousin Bryan, who was injured in an explosion in Iraq recently but seems to be doing better.

We should all raise a glass to the fact that my Cardio Jamz is almost over...although I should just go ahead and say it was a very interesting lesson in "be careful what you wish for," as I was not too thrilled about what basically was my dance class until tonight. My regular instructor, Rock-Hard-LIZ, had some good qualities. Namely:

She wouldn't ever tell anyone how to do anything. Especially the people who sucked (me). She just let us dance around however we pleased.
She just smiled the whole time.
She had the class down to a "T" of the same songs every time so by the last time I went, I was actually somewhat coordinated and could follow along a bit, rather than just bouncing around dripping with sweat.

However, LIZ has gone on vacation to somewhere like Aruba and we were left with Stacy, a dude. I thought that it would be easier with a man--perhaps we wouldn't dance so much as kick box and hop around.

WRONG.
Not even close. I spent the entire hour doing pelvic thrusts parallel to the ground but suspended off of the balls of my feet. At one point I just started laughing and could not stop. It was too histerical combined with the fact that there were tons of 10 year old UT football camp boys (did I mention it is held on the bottom floor of the Castillian dorm at UT?) wandering around outside peering in through the door. Man...I'm sure that made great fodder for the next two years of fantasies.

Now I will depart and try to take a shower and cleanse my memory of that excruciatingly painful experience.

Good times these days. Work - excellent.
In fact, I currently have given new meaning to "bringing my work home with me" as I currently have, for tonight and tonight only, a little friend I like to call Buddy. He's currently relocating here from LA and will be staying at a boarding facility for the rest of the week. I was going to take him to my coworker's house for the night but when I picked him up this afternoon at the airport, I had a whole "Can we keep him??" moment and decided to take him hostage, at least for the evening.

Little dogs are like babies--good in short doses.
To the left I can be seen doing what I like to call "Blogging with Buddy" and doing my best puppy-dog eyes. I think he's got me beat though. He is so stinking cute. Way cuter than me, post-gym.


He's got mad skills--like begging while standing on his back legs...











Check the new office space, peeps. The "war board" (almost full!) and of course my bonsai...


Grace the Gemini comes home from medical school world this weekend. Should be an interesting weekend!

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Yep, that's really all I have to say as of right now. Aside from the internet acting queer (could have something to do with M dumping a glass of ice water all over the surge protector the other night...it's a miracle [her] computer is still running...), things could not be going better.

Life improves significantly as of 0400 tomorrow, when the Cav will be returning from NTC (or at least, the part of the Cav that matters to me). I have to say...out of all of the acronyms for HELL they've come up with so far (JTF Katrina, SIGO Course, etc.), NTC has taken the cake for most tedious, most insignificant, most disruptive, most inconvenient cross-country trek I have had to wait out thusofar. Those of you out there trudging through the barren deserts of Waiting-For-NTC-To-Be-Over-Land, congratulations! It's finally done.

Work is also going along swimmingly...and if you're into acronyms, here's a great one for you:

work : barn management :: play : pet relocation

Yeah. It could could not be a more straight-forward, hassle-free, enjoyable, user-friendly service. They ordered my business cards and Sidekick II yesterday (holla!), two months ahead of the 90-day period.
I'm that good.

In all seriousness, so far I have been pretty much kicking ass at my job...trying to keep my head down and my mind occupied. In fact, I have become such a great Domestic Accounts Manager that they are talking about moving me up to International Accounts Management...which of course, only the 3 people who have been there since the beginning are currently doing. Bad news about international accounts is that it's a lot more planning, a lot more difficulty (my coworker is currently getting a cat from S. Korea to Doha, Qatar). Good news about international accounts is that I make more money.

We are having a little "musical workspaces" on Friday. My bosses are moving into the same side of the building so that they can chase around the incoming baby that they're about to have. Now that they are going to be swamped, I guess that's why they're going to get me to join Matt, the other guy who is doing internationals. He and I got new desks today--very user-friendly horseshoe style configurations that will look sweet in the front office where we are going to move when my boss moves to the other side. Our old desks are going to be for the 2 new employees they're hiring to do more domestics.

I have been just soaking in everything--it is amazing to be around a business that is so incredibly booming with such little overhead. The excitement is definitely in the air.

But...most excitement that is currently swirling around is that I can block the word "Barstow" out of my mind!!!!

So this weekend was pretty good. Yesterday I went to the pool where the were having a luau which was actually nice because they were giving away free food and drinks. Christina and I hung out there all day. The only funny part of the day was that someone dropped a glass bottle in the pool and then fell in, fully-clothed and wearing tennis shoes. I made Chrissy take a picture. We then bathed Gus, who is staying with me for the weekend. Then I went to my coworker's housewarming party.
Today I went and caught up with my friend Jennie. We sat by her pool and dished the scoop. She is about to go to Paris for 8 weeks--lucky girl! I found out that this girl in my (real) graduating class, Kristen Frieda, just graduated from Harvard as the valedictorian and with a 4.0 GPA. She is the first person in the history of Harvard to graduate with a 4.0. That girl is amazing. I remember when I went to Cambridge to visit Jennie about 2 years ago during the BoSoxes' world series run we went and visited Kristen at the Quincy house and she was holed up her doorm, studying, and looked EXACTLY the same as ever. (By the way, the picture to the left is of me the night the BoSox beat the Yankees--taken in Harvard Square on our way back from seeing Seamus Heaney talk.)
Jennie's dad and mom are always so nice to me. They are always so interested and supportive of everything I do. Jennie and I then went to Chango's and Half Price Books for old times' sake. I thoroughly embarrassed Jennie when, after she disappeared into the Young Adult section, I walked up and said "Why is a Harvard grad with a masters in English Literature looking for books in a series called Gossip Girl in the teen lit section?" She bought a vintage 1955 copy of Catch 22 to validate her teen lit purchases.
Then I went and saw my mom at her new casita and came home.

Glad 6/6/6 is over.

Six (spooky, I know) things to be happy about today:

1. The Army has not abducted my boyfriend (well at least in the extreme sense of the word "abducted"). I actually received a phone call (albeit one that I wasn't aware of and didn't answer). Hope springs eternal.
2. My SJC - PHX Dalmatian should be arriving in PHX any minute now. My first true relocation on my 2 week anniversary.
3. I got a great email from a customer today which I will anonymously quote here:

• "Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed and comforting email regarding (my dog's) travel arrangements. I have two daughters (3 and 4) and he is everything to them...Thank again for your help. I can tell from the tone of your email and your voice that you are truly an animal lover and have chosen the right career."

This coming from one of my new clients who did not even know that I had only just recently chosen the right career. :)

1. (That should be 4 but this pre-programmed HTML thing sucks) I got to "ring the bell twice today at work!
2. (Five but who's counting...) I was nominated to write the "advertorial" that is going to be in the Austin American Statesman in a couple of weeks about PetRelocation.com. Anyone who knows me knows this is my absolute favorite thing to do (that is, when I don't have to worry about people complaining).
3. (Six) M and I are 1/4 the way through with our CardioJamz UT informal class, aka "UT Make Rachel Feel Inadequate" class. I suck at dancing and call it what you want--it's a dance class. I've just started to laugh throughout the whole thing.

I could get used to these kind of days!

YEP!

Wow. Got the pictures back from floating the river.
I just can't get over how less than a year ago, Shiri, Dunndee and I floated the Guad.
Things have changed.
So much.

It chose me.
oooooooooohhh...an omen.

Nah. Sorry, I couldn't resist putting the date stamp on (for posterity, of course).
Okay, peace-out!

Umlauf with the mom, 4/27

First off, I am amazed that I managed to pound out as much on this blog yesterday night as I did. I was not doing too well about an hour later. However: God played a wonderful part in my day yesterday as He turned on HBO and all of the cable channels yesterday morning and allowed me to discover them so that I could watch the Sopranos (eehk) and the Big Love (AWESOME) finales last night!! I'm not kidding--somehow I am once again getting free cable, this time with HBO. It was really yet another seder miracle. The Sopranos pretty much sucked and Big Love was its usual compellingly interesting self, however I'm most excited for season 3 of Deadwood and my Chuy-look-alike, Al Swarengin. Hopefully the free HBO decides to stick around that long and/or NTC ends so that I can just watch cable for free, thanks to boys.
It's a late night for me. I went to my fantabulous job today and got to "ring the bell" three times, which basically means I brought in 3 clients today. Another nice, productive day. As they say in fast food world, I'm lovin' it.
Then, today was M's and my first day of "CardioJamz," a UT informal class that M scrounged up on the internet that we decided to partake in. CardioJamz was described as being a cardio-dance class set to the tune of modern hip hop and also includes "Liz's Fantastic 15 Minute Ab Workout." Yeah. So Liz ended up being this completly buff woman with killer abs, which almost made up for the fact that I was shaking my ass in front of tinted windows in which the entire UT Longhorn High School Football Camp was sitting outside of (i.e. a bunch of high school dudes). It was actually kind of comical in a sense, as I was probably the only one there not formally schooled in dance moves. Had I been in an episode of "Making The Band," I would have promptly been kicked off for not getting the choreography right.
Nevertheless, when it was time to check our heartrate, mine was flying and I was dripping with sweat, so I'm going to guess that I was doing something productive.
I also learned a great dance move to Bombs Over Baghdad that maybe the next time Shirioke gets me on a bottle of wine we can film and share with the world.
(Please no.)
Then I stopped by and saw my mom. Yep. All for now.

Floated the Guad today.
Too drunk to elaborate other than to say we had a great time.
Some scenes from after the float, since we had to bring a water-proof, non-digital camera with us.

Ryan and Amy.



Amy and I, as drunk as I can get offa' beer.
Check the cans in the trash in the background.

All I can stand to write right now, perhaps more later when I get more pics from the waterproof throwaway.

I decided my blog might not be complete without it.

Got my hair whacked today. I think they took off about 2 inches--it needed to get cut badly. The whole I'm going to grow it out thing was getting old.
The lady made me so mad...she put more layers than I wanted and curled it at the ends so when I left I looked like early 90's Jennifer Aniston hair. Ewwwww. So I got home and flatironed it a lot.
Thoughts?Now I am off to yet another Blu pool party which I told myself I wouldn't ever go to again but Christina talked me into it. Wish me luck.

Three names you go by:
Rachel
Mean Rachel
Raquelita/o
Three screennames you have:
rtruairf84
rtruairf
lanebarrie (don't ask)
Three things you like about yourself:
work ethic
witty banter
empathy
Three things you hate/dislike about yourself:
anxiety
laziness
jealousness
Parts of your heritage:
we don't have funerals so I have no idea
Three things that scare you:
Armageddon
home invasions
beheadings/torture
Three of your everyday essentials:
jeans
shoes
iPod
Three things you are wearing right now:
my Wisconsin shirt and my cloud shorts (just woke up)
Three of your favorite songs (at the moment):
Crazy (Gnarls Barkley), Where'd You Go (Fort Minor), I Fall To Pieces (Patsy Cline--we played it on the jukebox last night at Gingerman and it reminded me how much I used to like it!)
Three Things You Want to Try in the Next 12 Months:
Getting my ears pierced for the first time, Alaskan King Crabbing, and sleeping
Three things you want in a relationship:
Sense of humor, dependability, friendship
Two truths and a lie:
I used to only have my left ear pierced and wore a green disco ball earring
I don't like martinis
I used to be a King crabber
Three physical aspects you find attractive:
smile, height (tall), hands
Three things you just can't do:
math
math
math
Three of your favorite hobbies:
writing
driving
fishing
Three careers you're considering:
early retirement
Three places you want to go on vacation:
Pacific Northwest
Bahamas
New Zealand
Three kids' names:
Beatrice
Farris
QUAID
Three things you want to do before you die:
jump out of a plane (and then die)
get married
wear earrings
Three people who I'd like to take this quiz:
Anne Frank
my late Nana
fans of Life's Short

As we used to say..."I love you--just in case..."



Also...had a little walk down memory lane tonight. I forgot about the video that started it all. Classic.