milleniumgypsy | Entries tagged with signal

Well, today was Christmas here at Signal. The managers all get together and decorate the EDR (employee dining room) starting after lunch. Then they prepare a feast for us.

They also close down all the departments early. Everything is closed down by 9 pm.

Here's the menu, basically.

Appetizers:

Crab cakes, sausage and dip (these were some sort of special thing, but I wasn't going to eat them so I didn't pay much attention), a big plate of fresh fruit, a big plate of special cheeses and crackers, cheese puffs (no, not like cheetohs, they were these little wafer things with some type of cheese on them), and some other stuff.

Main courses:

Turkey (a whole turkey, and one of the main managers was cutting you pieces off of it and serving it to you), mashed potatoes and giblet gravy, prime rib with a large variety of sauces, seared tuna with optional wasabi and green onion sauce, lasagna with made with organic veggies, garlic roasted baby carrots, beans with those little onions...

Dessert:
Pumpkin pie with freshly made whipped cream, bread pudding with a whiskey sauce, brushette(???), a chocolate fountain with marshmallows, banana pieces, strawberries, oreo cookies, and brownie pieces.

That's the main menu, though I think I missed some.

For the dinner the managers serve the food, bus the tables, and wash the dishes. The tables are all made up with tablecloths, the silverware is wrapped in the good napkins, etc.

There was a secret santa exchange, and I drew a friend of mine. Rose drew me, and she made me a bracelet that matched the colors of Scottie's wedding outfit (another friend of ours is making Scottie's outfit since he doesn't have time with his current job, and he already has the stuff to make it!). She knew that I wanted a bracelet and she knew that I really liked the bracelets that she made. So she made me one. :)

For tonight they rented a bus to shuttle people to a building out in the bush that they store boats at. They have it set up to watch a slideshow of the summer- including pictures of people submitted to HR as well as scenery, there are funny staff made movies, etc. After the slide show there is a big bonfire outside, there are Xmas cookies, soda, etc. Lots of drunken debauchery. The bus will take people home at regular intervals until the wee hours of the morning.
Scottie and I didn't go to that, not exactly our cup of tea- especially when you have to wake up early.

But Christmas in the Park. Lots of fun. hehe

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Signal, home
Current Music: random Japanese music playing in my head

Well, the last couple of days I haven't written.

Things have been a little busy lately. We had scheduled to take the car in to be fixed on Tuesday (I believe), Scottie took off early to bring the car. Our (independent) mechanic is over the pass, in the area we lived over the winter. It's in ID while we currently live in WY. Anyway, he's a good mechanic who works solely on Subarus, and we have a Subaru. He's a bit more expensive, but he's worth the extra cost.

So anyway, she had ordered parts for the car but they ended up coming in late. So while the initial plan had been for Scottie to go over the pass on Tuesday and come home on Wednesday, he couldn't finish in time because of the delay with the parts, and because there was more to do than we had thought. So he gave Scottie a loner (Subaru Expedition) so he could come home and come back the next day. But because there were a bunch of emergencies the next day he couldn't get it done until Friday. Yes, he is a good mechanic and we are happy that we took the car to him despite this. We weren't thrilled with the delays however.

So on Tuesday Scottie left and came back the following day and went to work for a while that night. I had been working like normal for this time because I couldn't take the time off. Not that Scottie can either, but the only time we could get enough time for the guy to work on our car was on days that we were working. So Scottie's schedule can be more flexible at certain times, so we made it work. While he was waiting for the car to be finished he bought a guitar. The case was coming in the next day, she he was going to have it shipped here. After he found out that the car wasn't going to be done until the next day, he said he could come and pick it up. So that was all planned. Then we found out that the car wouldn't be done the next day on that following day. Because we'd already planned to pick up the case we headed out after work back over the pass and got the case. It was weird being over there! I'm used to seeing snow. lol I brought the camera, but the batteries were dead. I forgot to get replacements so no pictures from that day.

We went to Dairy Queen that night. I've been thinking about going there since last summer. So since I had eaten very well that day, I didn't feel bad about going and getting something from there. So me and Scottie both got a blizzard. Turns out that day all blizzard profits went to the Make a Wish Foundation (or something like that, there were notes from kids with cancer on the cups thanking people). So that was the best day I could pick to have one. :)

About the guitar. It is super pretty! He got a deal on it too. It's definitely not a cheap guitar, but for the suggested retail on the guitar alone he got the guitar, a very nice case, picks, and extra stings. He also got a guitar lesson book from there, and a couple of books from Barnes and Noble the following day when we went to Idaho Falls. One of his instructional things is the Estaban DVDs and book. I'll have to post a picture of the guitar itself soon. It has a very nice inlay.

So yesterday we left work and went to finally pick up the car. Since we were already over the pass we decided to go to Idaho Falls. It's a long drive from there still, but we were already nearer than we'd normally be out here at Signal!

We went and saw Stardust while we were theret. It is a very good movie! I thought it was really cute. It isn't really like the preview we saw for it, but in this case that is alright because the movie was still awesome. Scottie saw the preview for the Bourne Ultimatum and was very disappointed. The movie isn't like the previews we've seen for it. :/ But I won't go into detail because I don't want to spoil anything for anyone. But knowing the movie isn't like the preview isn't really what I consider a spoiler.

I saw the sunrise this morning when we were driving back from IF. We went to the movie at 10, so we were leaving IF at 1 am. We had A LOT of driving ahead of us, so we would drive for a while until Scottie was too tired, then we'd have to pull off and sleep for a while. We finally got home at 7 am.

I feel like there is other stuff that I wanted to write about... but I can't think of them atm. Maybe later. :)

Current Mood: content
Current Location: signal, home
Current Music: Scottie playing Mario Party 8 (Wii)

Well, we're still waiting on Harry Potter. Here's hoping that it comes in today! Scottie really wants it to come in today so he can read it today. He wants to finish it before somebody spoils it for him. I'm the same way, I don't want it spoiled for me! It's bad enough that I got spoiled by an icon for the previous book (if anyone remembers my entry on it, I was rather livid). But this time we preordered the book so I should be able to read it before I get spoiled. Scottie reads faster than me, not that I read slowly, it's just that Scottie reads ridiculously fast. I'm also going to avoid my friends page until after I've read the book (so sorry if I miss anything important!).

Other things that I wanted to write on. The other day after I was swimming I saw the two fawns again on the trail, along with two does. They were in the trail, and I stopped walking and watched them for a bit. The doe seemed unsure if I was going to continue forward, until I started to come forward. Then she moved off the trail, and after I took another step forward the fawns ran off into the bush. The second doe continued eating near the side of the trail until I was really close to her, then she decided to bound off into the bush too.

A couple of weeks ago me and Scottie went to see The Music Man. I thought that was pretty shiny! Scottie said that the amount of audience participation was higher than most shows he's seen of it. We paid for good seats and so were in the 3rd row of the audience. When the song about examples of pretty girls or something like that came up, the main character came down into the audience and took a couple girls by the hand and had them look thru a picture frame. He had done this a couple of times and moved further down the aisle past me, which was good, I didn't want him to notice me! But he backed up a step and came and picked me too. How embarrassing! But it was a good memory of it! lol
At their concession stand they had dole whips, which I remembered Krissy talking about having from her Hawaii trip and that they were really good. So me and Scottie got one to share, and then during intermission we got another one to share. They are really good! :D

Well, that's all I'm going to write for now. I do need to get horse icons! I thought I had some but I didn't, realized that I had them in a folder on my home computer. I hadn't had time to transfer my lj stuff from the home computer to my laptop before I left for ID this winter. Bummers. Oh well, I'll just have to "suffer" thru getting more or making more. hehe ;)

Current Mood: content
Current Location: Signal Mt Lodge, room
Current Music: Scottie playing Tiger Woods Golf for the Wii

I seem like I'm always lately missing out on writing entries that I may have otherwise written because I get backlogged on things that I want to write. That seems silly, doesn't it? The longer I wait to write more things the more things I have to write about. At that rate, I will never get anywhere.

Today I went swimming. I've been swimming a lot, it is the best stress reliever and it is something that I love to do. Since I live about a five or so minute walk away from the lake, it is silly to not take advantage of that, right? It's beautiful, I have across the lake a lovely view of the mountain range, and forest behind the shore.

After I went swimming when I was walking back up the trail I heard a rustling in the trees to my left. I looked and saw about 5-10 feet away two mule deer fawns. They looked at me, and since I was still and they were unsure if I was a threat, they watched me for a bit and then began to eat again. I watched them for a little bit, then the mother came into view. She looked at me, and the fawns bounded off behind the mother, then came back to where they had been. They didn't seem to be bothered by me, usually the deer around here aren't all that bothered by people. They started walking towards me so I moved further uphill down the trail. They crossed near where I had been standing and continued on their way across. Nothing terribly exciting, but they were cute.
This was a much nicer experience than last summer when I saw a bear in a similar area when walking down to swim. Everyone gets so excited about bears but I would much rather see deer than a bear, thank you very much.

This weekend me and Scottie saw a few movies. On Friday we were in Jackson and we watched Live Free or Die Hard. We hadn't realized that Harry Potter was opening that night until we had bought our tickets and saw the poster in the theater. We thought HP was opening on the 17th, but that is the book release date. Oops. Not that we'd want to go opening night! As much as we wanted to see the movie, opening night for HP? That would be way too insane. So we saw that movie, which was entertaining. We noticed that there was a midnight showing of Ghostbusters that very night. So we went to see that too. That was fun!

Sunday we went into Jackson again with the idea to get some chinese food and watch Harry Potter. Still opening weekend, but we wanted to see it. So we did. Theater was sold out and we ended up in the front row because that was where there was two free seats together. Walking in I saw 2 empty seats in separate parts of the theater. I have never been in a sold out theater before!

I loved the movie! I know that they had to leave out stuff from the book, there was no way to fit it all in and there were things that were left out of the previous movie so of course they couldn't be in this one, but still, it was good. I remember that OoTP was I think my least favorite book out of the series. I'm not saying it was bad, I did like it. But that was the most angsty book and sometimes that would wear on me. I don't feel like doing a full review so I'm not going to be giving away any spoilers. hehe

Me and Scottie are eagerly awaiting the last book, which we preordered from B&N. I'm excited!

Well, I think that I will give a quick rundown of movies we have seen so far this summer. Transformers (shiny and fun, lots of action and a couple of cute girls hehe), Spider-Man 3 (shiny of course, though we think that it would have been better as 2 movies), Evan Almighty (that was quite funny!), Pirates of the Carribean 3 (that was awesome!), Fantastic Four- Rise of the Silver Surfer (good, especially considering I have not seen the first one, though Scottie gave me the run-down of their story, not that complicated lol)... and I'm not sure if I've missed any. But I just felt like writing what I've seen so far. hehe

I've been reading a lot. I just read Fudoki, a story about a cat that becomes a woman in feudal Japan- written by a dying Empress. Both the fictional empress and cat-womans stories intertwine. It is very interesting. There is another book by Kij Johnson called The Fox Woman, and I really want to read that too. I've read Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, and am currently reading Speaker for the Dead. I started to read Asimov's Foundation trilogy, I just need to get Second Foundation (the third book) from the library. I've read other things, but those are the most recent books.
I've also been listening to audiobooks at work. I've listened to The Hours and Dragonflight. I started listening to Les Miserables and Flight of the Phoenix, but neither of them want to work all the way thru on the cd player I have there. Frustrating really. I also got Darwins Origin of Species.

Well, that's all for now.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: Signal Mt Lodge, room
Current Music: nothing