Who Stole The Kishka?

So, Kishka is a type of Polish sausage. In fact, "Who stole the kishka?" is a line from Brave Combo's "Polkatharsis" album. To set the record straight-- I love polish sausage and polish music, but I hate their dots.

polka dot
n.
1. One of a number of dots or round spots forming a pattern, as on cloth.
2. A pattern or fabric with such dots.
polka dot. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved May 28, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/polka dot

One must note that there is a distinct difference between a dot and a spot. A dot is a perfect circle. Spots are a more generic shape. Although their edges are curved, they often are oblong potato shapes. A dot, therefore, is a subset of a spot. However, when referring to a spot, it is usually not completely round or the term dot or circle would have been used instead.

Although not the most reliable of sources, an excerpt on wikipedia explains a little more in depth on the polka dots I dislike:

"Polka dot patterns are quite variable: they range from a series of dots that are equally spaced and sized to a random arrangement of multicoloured dots of different sizes. Polka dots are most commonly seen on children's clothing, toys, and furniture, but they appear in a wide array of contexts. The pattern rarely appears in formal contexts, however, and is generally confined to more playful attire such as bathing suits. Occasionally white on black regularly spaced polka dots appear on more formal clothing."

I've ordered these in decending order of my own preferance. I find it humorous that most polka dots are associated with clowns and odd animals.

Now, there are some really cute polka dot things. It seems that polka dots are allowable on completely absurd and silly objects, but there are some really hideous things out there too that people think are normal. Do these girls really get up in the morning, look in the mirror and think, "Man I look good!"?

Although these shoes aren't my personal favorite, I can understand why someone might like them.

It's probably the engineer in me that can only handle a certain amount of entropy in any given system. I'm perfectly ok with dots that are all the same shape and size. Varying the dot's diameter makes a person seem asymmetrical and lopsided. The dots should be distributed in a normal linear repeating pattern. I shouldn't have to calculate the limit of the summation of some countably-infinite geometic series of dots in order to determine why the dots appear as they are. I prefer the colors to be uniform throughout the pattern. Swirling greens and purples on a yellow background make me feel as if I've been on the merry-go-round a bit too long.

What Do You Think Sister Engineer?

So, I'm not sure how many times I can stress a point, and yet, no one seems to remember...

I am a leader of a church youth group. I am specifically over the girls from 14-15, but the whole group consists of girls 12-18, and I am considered their leader as well. Well, the girls have a camp each summer, and they all look forward to it, like you wouldn't believe.

So the other night we were doing prep for Girls' Camp, and they all wanted to know what they were going to get to wear up at camp. Not that they don't know what to wear in respect to pants and t-shirt. I mean each group gets a color to signify their group. And then they get to have 3 items to wear at camp, typically of that color, signifying they are part of that specific group. Now typically, these items are cute, have something cute painted/sew/ironed onto them. It takes some creativity to build these signifying items. Well, the girls were hounding 1 leader, and this leader says, let's ask Sister Engineer (that's me, and no she didn't really call me that).

Ok seriously... what part of geek do you not get? I never have had, nor never will have ANY artistic ability. Seriously. I depend on my friends to have that. I mean, check out the links on my page, their design capabilities far exceed what I could even hope to imagine in my head. I have said multiple times, this artsy-fartsy stuff should be left up to the OTHER leaders... not the leader who sits in front of computer all day, and thinks that silver anything looks the best. How boring can I get?

SIDE NOTE : Yes, I know that G is the exception. She is a geek, and has emaculate art abilities... seriously, check out these cakes Woo-Woo and Gumdrop.

And to add to my personal fear that I know I have no art abilities, I don't want ruffles, I don't want hearts or bows, I don't want someone to walk into my house and think country kitchen... so then I stress that maybe I should have some of that frilly stuff, so that my house doesn't look like a hospital room. How do I add that extra flare? How do I make my house look like a home, without adding all the extras? or without making it not me?

Well, all I have to say is thank goodness for a friend who taught me to copy. See a magazine page you like? Do it, copy it. I don't add my own additional crafts, I can't pretend to know what goes with what, but I can grab all the coordinating items at Crate and Barrel, or Bed Bath and Beyond, or other furniture stores, and put it up (in a ordered, aligned fashion of course, none of this crazy spontaneous design).

What Did It Sound Like?

So, if you are any level of geek, you have seen the movie Sneakers. (Fabulous by the way) In the movie the main character, Martin (Marty), gets stuffed in a trunk. After returning back to his friends/co-workers, his blind friend, Whistler, asks him what "What did it sound like?"

Today as I was driving down the lovely, heat stricken roads of the desert in Arizona, I was reminded of this movie. Why you ask? Well because of the constant thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk as we were driving. Now you geek experts automatically think... You were on a bridge! But no, oh NO, I was not. I was on a main road, and that road happened to have bad seams in the pavement every few seconds. Travelling at an average of 45 mi/hr, that means there is a seam in the road every 60 meters, or about 196.1388 ft. So, every 200 ft on a 2 mile road? Yikes. That's some rough driving there.

As bad as that is, I dream of the day when this is the worst part of driving in Snowbird-ville. But I guess I just have to be content with having a reason to look forward to the 100 degree weather.

Update on Talking Tomatoes

Remember that tiny little garden... check it out!

No Time

Sorry, no new posts....I'm really busy. The laundry has piled up. The dishes have piled up. We are out of cheese, sour cream, both of which are staples in our house. Then I'm sure the milk is bad... I haven't checked in probably a week. I have a deadline for work on Friday, I'm leaving town on Wednesday, and of course we're behind. Plus I've been busy working on 2 presentations for a technical conference that I'm going to in 2 weeks, and 1 I'm presenting for... wish me luck! I'm in charge of the next Combined YM/YW activity, which I won't be there for, so I have to plan twice as much so I can give it to someone else to run it. And I haven't visited any of my VTees this month. Oh yeah, and the house needs a cleaning SO bad.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever gets everything done.

Don't Cry Over Split... Water?

So today when I got to work.. I parked my car. My orange that I brought for lunch fell between my legs, so I just decided to get out. Well, apparently I didn't get up enough, because my orange squeezed a little juice out. Then I grabbed my backpack, which had my water bottle in it. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and the water bottle toppled over onto the pavement. Then I grabbed my water bottle, put it back in the side pocket of my backpack. Then I went to put the orange in my backpack's other side pocket, but it fell on the ground, when I went to pick the orange up, my water bottle fell. On its head. And all the water came gushing out. Spilling all over the pavement. In frustration I grabbed the water bottle and dumped all the water out. Not sure why I did that... the water from home tastes way better than the water at work. So I miserably walked to my building balancing my water bottle, my orange, my lunch, and my purse that kept falling off of my shoulder.

Here is the result of my sad day.

What Does It Mean to be a Geek?

This post is long overdue....


So the other night, we were at some friend's house. And some logistical questions came up about my religion. For instance, how does the church's welfare system work? How does a church leader know when they can help someone with welfare needs? Is it weird that both my husband and myself can answer that? Is it weird that I know about the inner workings? OH NO... Am I Religion Geek? I mean, I know I'm a computer geek, Star Wars Geek, EE Geek, Video Games Geek... but did I let it drip into the religious side of my life?

But then I composed myself, took a few chill pills (haha, remember that phrase, ok, I really am I geek) and thought, what is it that makes a geek a geek? Is it because I know a lot about something? Or is it the obsessive nature about 1 specific topic? Is it that you are the expert on a topic in your group of friends?! Or could it be simply that you take that topic to such a far extreme that you stop wearing costumes only on Halloween?!! Or that you in fact change your name legally to Obi-Wan Kenobi!?! whoa, ok, ok, gotta calm down again.

So I am putting a question out to you readers? What is a Geek? What defines it? I know that you can't spell geek without a EE (Electrical Engineer), but there has to be more to it than that? And can't their be music geeks? And scrapbooking geeks? And what about business geeks? Or car geeks? Are there types? Or what is a geek versus a dork or a nerd? I must understand this.