Amy Kay

Sometimes you never see it coming. Sometimes you see it coming but don’t have time to react. Sometimes you saw it coming but forgot and it’s like you didn’t see it coming. Sometimes you are blindsided.

In this issue:
I. You lose [Another ultimate story]
II. Shocking yet expected [Work just lost a great moral booster]

I. You lose [Another ultimate story]
Lets begin with a story from long ago where I clearly did not win. It was several years ago when I was still a nub (translation -> inexperienced player) and lacked the ability to know what was going on around me. There was also another nub on the other team, she ran track for Tulane and was quite good at it. The story goes like this, I am moving backwards watching the player I’m guarding, and then suddenly I am thrown across the field like a rag doll as the steamroller slams into my side.  I lost that round. But if you would imagine me flying around like a rag doll, It’s quite funny.

Now for the most recent story. My teammate throws to me, its not a perfect throw so I have to adjust my path in such a way that my defender has better position. Being awesome as usual, I know I’m going to catch it, but also know that my defender doesn’t know this yet. This also means that I will be stepping in front of her and she is going to hit me at a dead sprint. What do I do? I become more awesome, grab the disc, tuck my head, lower my shoulder, and attempt to bend over as she tackles me full force. Did I win? Definitely. She flew over my back and landed several feet away from me, I was up on my feet before she hit the ground. Booyah. That will teach you to get in my way.

Lets not test my awesomeness by tackling me every time we see each other. Just trust that I will win and you will get hurt. It’s much safer that way ;)

II. Shocking yet expected [Work just lost a great moral booster]

A few months ago some brilliant mind deep within our company came up with an idea that completely changed the workspace. In order to prevent the perpetual problem of unused pots of coffee, they would enact a system where only as much coffee was made as people would drink. This means each person would make their own single cup of coffee.

How did this work? Obviously we needed a new method of distribution. The solution: Flavia. There are bins of individual coffee packs that you place in this machine and it makes coffee. You have options. You can add a chocolate pack for a mocha. Or a “latte swirl” pack to make a cappuccino. Chocolate and latte swirl equals a lovely frothy drink. Obviously delicious. There almost twenty flavors of coffee. I found a french vanilla that is delicious and has much less coffee flavor. Then we had individual packets of used coffee grounds that we were able to throw away. After a month they finally got a recycling system going.

A good idea? All of us agreed it defeated the purpose of saving money. Then we were blinded by the deliciousness and forgot about it.

Today. BAM! A note is placed by the coffee machine. Turns out there was an increase in coffee consumption, and due to the cost of providing these beverages they are going to have to cut down on the expenses. (A layoff in the coffee department? This is getting ridiculous.) No more frothy lattes, or chococcinos. I’m almost certain my wussy french vanilla will be taken away.

Who would have ever thought individual packets of coffee would be more expensive than bulk off brand coffee. *gasp* obviously we don’t want a pot or two to go to waste everyday when we can produce enough trash to fill a grocery bag or two everyday. People still throw out half full cups. (See that optimism? More proof that I am awesome.)

Blindsided. I knew, but then I forgot. Solution? Hoarding. Every time I walk by I grab a packet or two of my favorites. Especially the coveted hot chocolate and frothy goodness. Current count: 3 choco, 3 latte, 5 french vanilla.  Judge all you want, but you have to admit its a brilliant idea.

I’ll stop here. There haven’t been many traumatic incidents lately. A few honorable mentions:
- Holiday snuck up so fast! I haven’t bought Christmas presents yet! (Shh don’t tell)
- The weather almost took my breath away. It snowed on Friday. This is AUSTIN. It doesn’t snow.

Until next time.

I’m being somewhat focused at work these days. The key word is somewhat. To celebrate I’ve decided that I will write an Amy Update. Just because I sat around playing catch in the office all last week does not mean I was unproductive. Turns out I wasn’t productive, but that could have happened without the fun parts.

In this issue:
I. Organization [An Update]
II. Surprise! [You’ll never guess what I do with my time]
III. The Future [Sometimes people like to know what I’m actually doing]

I. Organization [An Update]

I have a system. I walk in the door, go to my room, throw my stuff on the floor and put my keys on a little shelf. When I go to work, I put my keys in my purse right away, get out my phone, and put the purse in its special corner. I then proceed to get out my laptop, put the case in my backpack, and put the backpack in the special corner with the purse.

Result: I have lost my keys maybe twice since my last update. I have only lost my case once at work. Home is a completely different issue for the case, but the keys are still doing really well.

Issue: Phone. The phone is not something I just set down and forget about it. I want to use it occasionally. The problem is that I end up walking around the house with it. As soon as I’m done I set it down.

Result: I lose my phone at least once a day. Rarely at work since I sit in the same place all day.

Irony: I just went to grab my phone because it was in my purse. Looked in the special corner, case was not in the backpack. Put the case away, picked up backpack, purse was not in the special corner. Spin in my chair until I find it. Purse is by the door, keys are on the ground next to it. Today I failed. But I still had no trouble finding everything.

Final Count: I’m going to call this a tie. Each side gets a point.
Organization: 3
Me: 4

II. Surprise! [You’ll never guess what I do with my time]

I’ve started reading. Books. The kind with words and page numbers. It’s an amazing experience. Many years ago, before cable or a social life, I used to read for fun. I recently decided to start doing it again. You know what? I like it. Books are exciting.

I have to confess, I read Twilight. It is both amazing and horrible. It draws you in like Harry Potter, but the content is what I would consider… awful. I highly recommend it.

Here is a summary:
Lonely depressed girl moves to a lonely depressing city. She is infatuated by the most beautiful boy in school. Boy wants to eat her. She thinks he hates her. Finally boy wants to date her, but also wants to eat her. She wants to date him. She finds out he is a vampire. They become inseparable. He is cold like stone and still sometimes wants to eat her. They say “I love you”. She is chased by a mean vampire. Boy’s family tries to protect her. She is dumb and is tricked by mean vampire. Almost dies. Good vampires kill bad vampire. Boy takes girl to prom.

Note: I also like watching TV. It requires less effort.

My shows this season: Vampire Diaries, The Office, House, Project Runway, Americas Next Top Model (The short models), GLEE!!

III. The Future [Sometimes people like to know what I’m actually doing]

Not surprising. I play ultimate. The future holds a lot of running. A lot of soreness. A lot of awesome. A lot of time. Hopefully no more injuries.

To play ultimate I will be attending classes. I’ve decide to actually take courses in something I’m interested in. Know what that means? No more engineering!! I quit! (The school part, I’m still keeping my job.) My current major is Liberal Arts. I’m taking a psychology class this semester that is a prereq for all the cool psych classes. After that I can apply to the psych program and actually learn things I think could be fun. Who knows if I’ll ever end up actually getting the degree, but I think it would be cool.

The future also holds an exciting job. Maybe. We’re still waiting to hear from the EU, but theoretically I will soon be an employee of Oracle, doing the same job in the same place. Just had another round of layoffs so I think we’re good for a while.

The future also holds a meeting. 10 minutes until I sit in a room playing with my phone pretending to listen. Don’t judge. My attention span is virtually non-existent.

IV. Other things [You’ve probably stopped reading by this point]

* I sneezed with my eyes open. I swear. It was a strange experience.
* I found tea at work that is delicious. I drink it a lot. I need to drink more water.
* I’m getting worse at ultimate. I will hopefully get better soon.
* I got new shoes. New to me at least. I traded for a pair of cleats. Best cleats ever, but didn’t work with my braces. Dumb ankles. If only I was willing to fix them. So much effort! They are awesome and I wear them all the time.
* I forgot to set my alarm this morning. Only work up 13 minutes late. That’s like a long snooze.
* I found new music I like: Ludo. Owl City. Passion Pit. I forget the rest.
* My yard is a jungle. We built a firepit in the middle. Dug about 4inches into the ground before hitting rock. Booyah.
* My roommate made a garden in our backyard. Excitement.
* I won an ice cream scoop at a pie party last week.
* My meeting was just cancelled
* There’s a new woman in the office. Great. Gender equality blahblahblah. I just don’t want to share the bathroom with someone else.

That’s my update. Later kids.

Could you please learn how to post the entry with the formatting I have? K thx

Hello All! This one is actually on time!
In this edition

I. The texting generation (and the fall of the english language)
II. The hypocrite (but I’m always right)

I. The texting generation (and the fall of the english language)
Texting is great. I don’t have to talk to anyone. I want to ask a single question, I ask it, and I don’t have to deal with a long conversation.  Lets say I’m in class, need to figure out where to meet my bff (Best Friend Forever) for lunch, we can do it before we ever get out. The problem with texting is that you get a limited number of characters per text, and its difficult to always hit the right keys. It’s also hard to figure out if “haha” is sarcastic, hilarious, or just filler so you get the most out of your message.

This new technology has resulted in a mass butchering of the English language. I now struggle to capitalize my words when I right, punctuation is never correct, and my spelling is horrid because hopefully your phone will autocorrect it. Booyah.

II. The hypocrite (but I’m always right)
For all I know I am the most hypocritical driver on the road. But again I will take some time to complain about the ignorance of drivers that I have encountered.

1. Country drivers. When it is a two lane road and you are going 25 mph under the speed limit, the correct protocol is to go to the shoulder and let the line of 50 cars pass you. It is better than me cursing you for hours while I wait for the perfect time to pass. Turns out when you are in the back of a 50 car line, it is impossible to ever get around.

2. Left turn lanes. When there are two left turn lanes, the lovely line drawers have kindly added dotted lines so you know where to end up. Now the intersections I drive through always have the outside turn lane end up in the outmost lane. Tricky eh? Please stop going into the middle lane where I am trying to go because a) the line says I’m allowed to and b) I don’t want to end up in the left turn only lane.  Thats how it works. Follow your line. Yesterday, yet again, I almost died. Good thing I know people are stupid and pay attention. But really, you are dumb, or blind. Please stop trying to kill me.

I wrote this in July and am just now posting it. My bad.

=============== 

As with most updates, this one involves flying. I think I’m going to become an official air-time updater. This way, if you don’t hear from me you know that I haven’t left an 800mile radius from Austin. I think that’s fair to say. Basically I won’t go farther than St. Louis without flying. This time I am, however, flying there.  Now I could use this as an excuse to not write, but I think the deal is that I have to be flying, and not the distance from Austin that I am going.

In this update:

I. The voice (I know its time to update when…)
II. Murphy’s Law (A conundrum)
III. Running in the airport (yea or neigh)

I. The voice (I know its time to update when…)

The voice is back. I know its time to write an update when I can’t get it out of my head. It’s the one that narrates the world around me as if I was telling a story to an audience, instead of walking through the airport terminal completely alone. It can turn any humdrum day into an exciting and often dangerous trip through my warped brain.  (Note: warp does not imply bad. Ever heard of a time warp? Cool stuff. Definitely not bad)

The problem with the voice, is it makes me think I have magical powers. Like the power to turn a boring event into the most entertaining thing you’ve ever heard. It makes me think I should write a book. Every time, without fail, when the voice is around I am convinced that I am so interesting that everyone should be blessed with my thoughts and thus I should write a book. Who does that? Who has their own personal narrator AND then decides to use aforementioned narrator to write a book?  For now I will write an update. Book to follow?

II. Murphy’s Law (A conundrum)

Murphy law basically states that everything that can go wrong will go wrong.  First, who is Murphy, and how bad was his life that he could come up such a depressing law. Generally people who make laws (outside of the political realm) do so because they prove that it is in fact true. I’m guessing in this case he just went the easier route and showed that he had no counter example. Either way, very very unlucky man.  Also note, I am assuming it is a man because I don’t think I know of any laws named after women. (Again, non-political)

Let’s discuss. You see, I think I have just proved that Murphy’s law is not actually a law at all. I can show that it is invalid regardless of things going right or wrong. An example:

With a law like Murphy’s in effect, it is necessary to take precautions. Much like Newtons law of gravity, if I am going to be building a fort in my office, I need to make sure to prepare for the fact that the fort will want to fall down, and I must construct a way to keep it up.  In the case of getting to the airport there are many variables to be taken into account that can go wrong.

1) Waking up
2) Finishing packing
3) Traffic
4) Parking
5) Security lines

These are not a huge number of things. To account for 1 & 2 I just set my alarm extra early, and then a second, and then keep my original. This morning I had 3 alarms go off, not because I was paranoid but because I figured once in my life I’m going to oversleep and miss a plane and this wasn’t going to be the day!

I then accounted for traffic and security and a pit-stop time (had to run and errand before going to the airport_ All of which added up to me getting to the gate on time even in the worst possible case.

But something happened.

Everything went right.

There was almost no traffic (which at 8am I consider a miracle). There were no lines. I parked with no problem and then chose to skip the shuttle and proceeded to mosey to the terminal slowly because I wanted to take up as much time as possible. Security was no problem. I didn’t even have anyone talk to me, just whisked right through. So I sat down an hour before my flight. The Austin airport is small. There is rarely a reason why you should ever be this early to the gate.  I even ate my lunch while waiting (oopsy).  My hope came when I looked in the pocket of my bag with my earphones. They weren’t there! Alas! Something went wrong!  But no, I had moved them to their usual location in another pouch.

Lets discuss. I planned my life expecting everything to go wrong. But nothing went wrong. This, in my current situation, is wrong. I did not want to be sitting at the airport for over an hour. I wanted to be an expert planner. Able to feel the mood of the city from my bedroom and know what traffic would be like, and how lines would be etc.  I did not plan for the fact that everything could have gone as expected. So now the only thing that I didn’t expect to go wrong , went wrong.

So I just proved that Murphy’s law is not always true.  Not only is it false, but at the same time, in its falsity, it is also true.  A law cannot be both true and false. At the same time.

Therefore, by my brilliance, I have shown that Murphy’s law is a lie told to little children to make them leave the house on time. QED.

III. Running in the airport (yea or neigh)

Today I saw a little girl running through the empty airport (see above where I mention that there aren’t any lines). She ran to her mom in a manner that reminded me of my cousin Angela, and exclaimed “Hello!!”. That was definitely not the word I expected to come out. I expected an obnoxious squeal. Definitely the most mature 4year old child I’ve seen running through the airport. And so adorable.

Her mom said “Now are we supposed to be running in the airport?”

I wanted to speak for her! I wanted to say “As long as there aren’t people within 20ft of me and I promise to look incredibly cute.”  That’s what the answer should have been! But I bet mom expected “No.”

Mom’s always ruin the cute things!

That, my friends, is my life up until the end of July. A new update will probably follow shortly but I will give you a few days to digest this.

This update will focus on my attempts to “get my life together” since I am now officially an adult.

In this issue:
I. The Joys of Organization Part II
II. Nationals : My first real vacation
III. Another Ankle Update : Really? Why am I so dumb?

I. The Joys of Organization
Last time I discussed my quest to organize my life I ended with this count:

Organization: 1
Me: 3

This week organization has started fighting back.

I’ve decided to take it upon myself to fix all of my ultimate playing friends. As you probably remember (and will read about again in section III) injuries are very common in the land of ultimate. You may also know that I am one of the more obsessed people I know. Obsessed people find other obsessed people. People who play all the time tend to get injured and then continue to play because their obsession does not allow them to stop.

My job: Make people stop playing when they are injured. It is a very difficult job. Once I tackled a friend and took off her cleats so she would not play. (The tacking is a lie. But the cleat removal is not.)

I told a friend recently who lives out of town that I would call/email etc everyday to make sure she is resting. I felt bad for her since it was such a hard thing for her to do. I then decided I would attempt to share in her pain and said that I would keep my desk clean for everyday that she was not playing. Although it doesn’t sound like a fair trade, I’m pretty sure it is. Last week I spent 40 minutes cleaning my office. 40 MINUTES! Thats a really long time for a 8×10 ft space. I now have to keep all of my papers organized, clean my dishes after every use and not let them sit around for days, put my food away when I’m done using it (oatmeal or cereal boxes) and even close my food “pantry” so its not visible to the outside world.

It’s SO hard! I have a place for everything. My extra chair can now be used (although it was nice having it covered in junk so people wouldn’t sit in my office) and you can see my floor. After two days I thought I was going to die.

I’ve also decided that the desk is not enough and I will attempt to keep my room clean. I will pretend like I promised this friend the same. I expect a lot of pain in the next month. If I’m lucky it will turn into a habit. Or it can backfire like an unreasonable diet where you go off it and eat only ice cream for weeks because you can! I can imagine walking into my room and scattering the contents my bag/purse/laundry basket around the room in as many directions as possible. I will keep you updated.

Current count:
Organization: 2
Me: 3

II. Nationals : My first real vacation

Last time I also discussed the fact that my team didn’t make it to nationals. Don’t you worry, I still went. But instead of playing, I got to hang out with a million (exaggeration) awesome ultimate players from around the country. I managed to come back to the great land of Texas with jersey’s from UC - Santa Barbara, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Washington University. Not bad for a weekend of not playing.

For the first time in my life I rented a car all by myself. I know I celebrated the fact that I could finally rent a car when I turned 21, but I finally did it! What a great experience! I drove around Ohio, visited a concrete cornfield in Dublin, then spent the rest of the time bumming rides with people from several different teams. (Its expensive to have a rental for a week! Especially when you aren’t 25 yet)

The weather was beautiful, the fields were incredible, the frisbee was incredible, and I got to throw everyday. What more could an obsessed ultimate player ask for? The next part will describe the least fun part of the vacation.

Just wanted to share my first real vacation with you. Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to understand how wonderful it was, but trust me, it was good.

III. Another Ankle Update : Really? Why am I so dumb?

All of these things go together! Since I was already bumming rides and hotels, I figured I’d do it some more. The first night I rented a car in Columbus, and then decided to drive to Cincinnati late that night to meet up with the team from WashU. The next day I tagged along to their practice. They needed players since the rest of the team was meeting them in Columbus.

Here’s the predictable part. I rolled my ankle just before we were done practicing.

Luckily I was smart and realized that I looked like an ultimate player, so during the nationals game days I went to the trainer and got it taped. I was then able to run around and play, AND I also looked like a sad injured player and people probably thought I was part of a team! BOOYAH!

This now ties into part I. Getting my life together.

I have yet another friend who as taken it upon herself to make my ankles stronger and usable. She now tells me to do my strengthening excercises and ice my ankle everyday. It’s funny how these things work out. Not only am I getting organized, but I’m also getting my body (aka ankles) healthy. Crazy.

Now if I could only learn to eat vegetables….

Yet again I’m writing this on the plane. Some of my best stories come from plane writing. I have no distractions (or horrible distractions that deserve to be narrated), I cannot check my email or spend hours on facebook. I have no one to talk to me, and I just finished all of my ice cream. I started to read, but there’s only so long I can go without using an electronic device.  In this case it was approximately 15 minutes.

This update is called “Life Lessons” and should be pretty self explainatory.

Life Lesson #1: Don’t let your friends pick the topic of your next update.  
Today I was not surprisingly clinging to the last minutes of technology usage I would get for a long time. (This was 15 minutes ago) With my new sexy iPhone I can chat online with my phone. This is much cheaper than text messaging, and much easier when you do not have someone’s phone number.
In my desperation, I knew I was going to have to leave the outside world for at least an hour and a half *gasp* and requested advice from this new friend.  We meet officially last week at a tournament. I wanted to make her feel included! I asked what she would like to read about, giving several options: Embarrassing stories, life lessons, just plain random.  She picked life lessons.  Sadly I did not have any life lessons and had just decided that was an interesting topic choice.

Life Lesson #2: Don’t give people options that aren’t real options.
Example: Do you want me to mow your lawn or give you $10,000.  That is a poor choice of options. If you do not understand why, please do not ask for an explanation. Whoever you ask will judge you.
Life Lesson #3: If your toilet drips, fix it.

Some time ago (I will not give you the amount of time both because I cannot remember, and it might be embarrassingly long) I was lying in bed attempting to sleep when I noticed a dripping.  Drip. Drip. Drip.  You know the kind, just loud enough that it drives you nuts.

Aside: It would be important to know that there is no door between my room and my bedroom. Although there is a door to the toiletroom (what is it really called?) I often forget to close it.

The dripping eventually got loud enough that I researched the problem. May days of playing with the flapper (I looked the name up on google!) I determined that I was unable to fix it, and would need to get a new one. However, I did not fix it.

It turns out when you are extremely stressed things just seem to go wrong.  I had a day recently where all kinds of grown up things were happening. I was having issues with homeowners insurance stuff, and health insurance stuff (insurance is so frustrating) and someone had decided to sell my company so I was really not sure about my job, and we had just lost the game to go to nationals (more later). I called my mother and a fit of frustration, the kind you get when you are five and throw a temper tantrum, I yelled (The kind you do on the phone that is venting, but not actually yelling. Whining might be a better word) MY TOILET IS DRIPPING!!!!

That was the final straw. Not “I might lose my job”. Not “I lost my receipts and am out several hundred dollars”. Not “I just lost the game to go to nationals and I’m incredibly sad”. I chose “My toilet is dripping”.

It doesn’t end there.  Wednesday I solved all of the insurance issues, and also accepted that I cannot change the job thing, so I set out to fix the toilet. I turned off the water, flushed it so the bowl was empty, and then did nothing.  Last night I was forced to use the other bathroom. This morning I refused to admit defeat, so I just held it. I waited until I snoozed, got dressed, brushed my teeth, washed my face, packed (I’m on my way to a wedding), did my hair (obviously I am making this as difficult as possible), brushed my teeth, checked my email, checked facebook, checked the weather, and then went to the office.

Now I will get home, and forget that I turned off the water, and have to start the whole process all over.  Can someone fix it for me? Sometimes I dislike being an adult!

(Ultimate) Life Lesson #4: Don’t admit defeat until you are defeated. (Sometimes being right isn’t that much fun)

This past weekend my team headed to Little Rock, Arkansas for our Regionals competition. The top two teams go to Nationals. (Natties as most of us affectionately call it.) This time last year you may have remembered me talking about these things.

This year was different. Something was wrong. All season long we had been losing games that I wasn’t expecting. My performance was sub-par and everyone knew it. In early March I remember being at a tournament after another disappointing day, and thinking “We’re not going to nationals”.  The next day we played well. We won our last two games and looked great.
At our big tournament in Austin (the one I want Ellen to come to next year) the second day we completely destroyed the competition.  I had hope.

The hope only lasted so long. It was the 9th game of the weekend and I was exhausted. I knew were going to lose before we started. Were they beatable? Yes. Was it a long shot? No. Was I defeated? Yes. Then we lost. Was I right? Yes. Did I enjoy being right? No.

Don’t do that kids. It’s a horrible idea. Life is way less exciting if you think you are always going to fail.

Life Lesson #5: Focus!

It’s hard to focus. I could go on forever, but I will stop here. Maybe I will do a series on life lessons, or possibly go back to confessions. I still have lots of those left too.