30 Day Blog Challenge

So apparently these '30 Day Blog Challenges' are all the rage with the kids these days. When I first heard about it I thought it sounded like fun, but I knew I would not have the time to keep up with it. But now that grad school's finished and I find myself needing to distract myself while waiting for my final grades, I figure why not?

Now I spent some time on the interwebs looking at different challenges, and some of them seemed a little personal, and while I do like all of you very much, I still don't feel like this is a good medium to spill ALL of my deep, dark secrets. But I found these topics which seem pretty harmless, yet still fun:

Day 1 – A photo of yourself and a description of how your day was.

Day 2 – A photo of something you ate today.

Day 3 – Your idea of the perfect first date.

Day 4 – Your favorite photograph of your best friend.

Day 5 – A photo of yourself two years ago.

Day 6 – A photo of an animal you’d love to keep as a pet.

Day 7 – Your dream wedding.

Day 8 – A song to match your mood.

Day 9 – A photo of the item you last purchased.

Day 10 – A photo of our favorite place to eat.

Day 11 – What’s in your makeup bag?

Day 12 – A photograph of the town you live in.

Day 13 – Your favorite musician and why?

Day 14 – A TV show you’re currently addicted to.

Day 15 – Something you don’t leave the house without.

Day 16 – Your celebrity crush.

Day 17 – A photo of you and your family.

Day 18 – Something you crave a lot.

Day 19 – Another picture of yourself.

Day 20 – The meaning behind your blog name.

Day 21 – A photo of something that makes you happy.

Day 22 – A letter to someone who has hurt you recently.

Day 23 – 15 facts about you.

Day 24 – A photo of something that means a lot to you.

Day 25 – What’s in your purse?

Day 26 – A photo of somewhere you’ve been to.

Day 27 – A picture of you last year and now and how have you changed since then?

Day 28 – Your favorite movie.

Day 29 – Something you could never get tired of doing.

Day 30 – A photograph of yourself today + three good things that have happened in the past 30 days

Allons-y!

Happy Birthday to Me...

So this Sunday is my birthday. I will officially be a quarter century old AND will be able to rent cars without an underage drivers fee.

Yippee!

Now most of my birthday weekend will be spent sequestered, cramming for my Microcomputer System Design final. I really know how to party, eh? However, on Sunday, Steven was awesome enough to get a suite at the Rivercats game. So I will be celebrating in style with some good friends.

Speaking of style, I picked up an early birthday present for myself from ModCloth today. Now once upon a time, I was fairly fashionable - I bought designer purses, expensive clothing and shoes, etc. But in recent years I've kind of gotten over that. Funnily enough, now that I make enough money to be able to afford those things, I suddenly find it silly and feel that my money is better spent on other things. Shopping is now generally on a "need" basis, and mainly restricted to Target, Woot shirts, H&M or the Gap. 

Generally.

Every now and again a friend will bring something cute to my attention and I must have it. And that's what happened today, with a pair of shoes.

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me...

I mean, aren't they just darling? And they'll go with quite a bit, I think, whenever I'm feeling snazzy. And now that I've found out about this site, I've added several other things to my wish list. Like this bathing suit, which is ah-mazing, but I just can't justify spending $90 on....yet...

And this dress, which I have plans to buy as soon as it's back in stock in my size, and have dreams of making the flowers actually sing when I walk to match the name of the dress, 'Singing the Blooms'.

So I suppose if anyone is feeling nice, any of these items would make a lovely present. Just sayin'. ;]

Happy Weekend! 

Always Wear Sunscreen...

You would think that after almost 25 years of being, well, Casper-like, that I would have learned this lesson by now. But no, no apparently I haven't.

So on Sunday, a few of us visited the Jack Russell Brewery in Apple Hill for their release celebration of their Apple Ale. Boy was it de-lish. I partook in a few glasses. Anyway, we drank beer, played cornhole and I wore a cute dress. It was a good day.

Which brings me to my original point, sunscreen. The weather was gorgeous, only about 70 degrees, but sunny. And sometimes, when it's not too hot people tend to forget to put on sunscreen, like me.

Consider this a Public Service Announcement from yours truly. Always wear sunscreen, even if you don't think you need it.

Because it's Thursday, and I'm still burnt to a crisp.

New Who!!

Okay, so as I mentioned in a previous post, my love for Doctor Who deserves a dedicated entry. Honestly, I'm about as obsessed with Doctor Who as I am with Harry Potter. 

It's pretty serious.

Disclaimer this post is going to live up to my 'Gleefully Geeky' title, so if you're not interested, I'll forgive you if you stop reading. BUT YOU TOTALLY SHOULD! Also, 'Spoilers'.

Anyway, the new series started last week, and oh my goodness is it rocking my socks! Now, my obsession with Who started almost a year ago, and since then I've been through every episode of the new series at least 3 times, as well as watching any 'Classic' Who that's available on Netflix Instant.

For those of you not familiar with the show, Wikipedia it, I don't have time to rehash old episodes, I need to gush about the new ones!

Series 6 has opened with as many cliffhangers and action as previous two-part series finales! First, the Doctor dies at the hand of a mysterious astronaut, only to find out that scene was from 200 years in his future. Then we meet The Silence, easily the scariest mosters on Doctor Who to date. Basically, they've been inhabiting the planet since the dawn of time, except no one remembers because you forget them as soon as you're done looking at them.

The Silence, creepy, right?

Then we meet the mysterious astronaut, only to find out it's a little girl, who Amy immediately shoots. I mean, duh, she thinks the girl is going to kill the Doctor 200 years in his future. It's only natural.

So this was all part 1 of the premiere, part 2 gets even better! Amy tracks down the orphanage where the little girl lived - only to find a room with pictures of the girl and a picture of Amy holding a baby! What the what?

Then, we get to the part where the Doctor cleverly stops The Silence, obviously. BUT we also notice that the The Silence's spaceship is the broken ship from last series' episode 'The Lodger'. Shut the front door, how does this tie in?!

But then, in the final few minutes of the show, we see the little girl again stumbling through an alley. She tells a homeless guy she's dying, but it's OK because it's rather easy for her to fix it. And she regenerates - the little girl is a frakkin' TIME LORD?!


So what does this all mean? Amy had mentioned that she was pregnant to the Doctor, but then told him it was a false alarm. BUT none of them can really remember the time they spent on Earth learning about The Silence, so what happened during that time? And why did she tell the Doctor before Rory?

And there's been subtle hints back to The Silence in the Library, an episode from series four. It's where we first met River Song, and where people were being 'saved' from the Vashta Nerada, which meant that their consciousness was saved into a virtual reality where they lived out their lives. But time was sped up, with people jumping through parts of their day and having the memories 'filled in' later. Kind of the opposite of The Silence, but this has got to tie in some way!

Seriously, friends of mine, start watching Doctor Who so I can have someone to hypothesize with!!

Golfing, Who & Celebration Roast!

Well now that the week is halfway over, I figured it would be a good time to fill you in on last weekend's shenanigans. It all started early on Friday afternoon with my company's unofficial golf outing. It was a TON of fun and as it always happens when I play golf, left me wondering why I don't play more. I mean, look how great I look:

The 'outing' had tons of fun rules for holes, such as: taking shots of 99 Bananas or Wild Turkey, teeing off with a kids driver, putting with a hockey stick, and my favorite - the Happy Gilmore drive. Steven was also able to take the afternoon off, so he got to join in the fun too, which was awesome! And in true nerd fashion, I ironed a Ravenclaw house patch to my shirt before hitting the links. (Thanks Cappy & Eleanor!) 

Saturday was a pretty quiet day, I had to catch up on some work after taking the afternoon off on Friday. BUT it did mark the start of the new series of Doctor Who. Oh. Em. Gee, was it ever ah-mazing! For those of you that don't know I am a MAJOR Doctor Who fangirl, and this episode did not disappoint. I mean WOW did it start of with a bang. The Doctor dies, we see the scariest monsters yet AND we're left with a cliffhanger already?! This series is going to be awesome-sauce.

..But more on that later. My love for Who deserves a full post.

Then Sunday was Easter and we kept it pretty low key. I prepped an Easter feast for Steven & our good friend Kevin of roasted potatoes, asparagus and vegetarian 'Celebration Roast'. It was quite tasty if I do say so myself! Maybe next year we should have more friends over & put on an Easter egg hunt too!

Now I've just got 19 days until the end of my first graduate semester. Time to put my nose to the grindstone and finish strong! Then I'll have more time to dedicate here, which I know excites you dearest blogland.

Confidence, I haz it!

Phew...as I am sitting on my couch enjoying a very well deserved [I think] glass of wine, I can't help but think - where did this last week go?! Was there some kind of tear in the space-time continuum that made me skip a few days?

I mean, I'm a busy gal, I know that. I accomplished a lot this week: recorded and released a new video [see it here!], finished documentation for a revised product to launch next week, got ahead on some school work, and prepped for a large Open House event Parallax held for National Robotics Week.

Despite all that, I'm still surprised at how fast this week passed! Not to mention the weekend - it's really time to go back to work tomorrow?

And my birthday is only three weeks away. What the what?

But more on National Robotics Week, because I'm quite proud of the event I was in charge of organizing. I mean, I'm generally not one to "toot my own horn" - but it was an awesome event. We probably had well over 200 people show up, which for us [and being the first year we're doing this] is a BIG deal. We had demos, tours and raffles, and I don't think anyone left without a smile on their face.

On another note, thanks to a good four hours of hard work today, I can now say with confidence that I have graduate school on lock. Just a couple more hours of programming and I'll have my part of our "group" project done! With that out of the way, if my useless partner doesn't come through, I'll have a very good case to make to the professor as to why it wasn't completed on time.

HUZZAH!

Oh hai!

Well, as you can probably imagine, I've been really busy recently. (And I'm a terrible blogger.) While I've temporarily got the school monster under control, it still keeps me on my toes while trying to keep up with work.

This weekend I finally had a break from classes and spend most of my time designing a Jeopardy-style buzzer system for the Sacramento Rivercats. Unfortunately, Steven and I didn't get the mounting stuff together before opening day, so it won't get implemented until the next homestand. 

Speaking of, Opening Day for the Rivercats is tomorrow! I'm super excited baseball is back in full swing, since going to the games is always a ton of fun. There's nothing quite like a nice California evening, cold beer, good friends, and sitting back and enjoying a game.

Go Cats!

The other portion of my weekend was spent playing my new 3DS! Seriously, it. Is...Awesome-sauce. One of the best spontaneous lunch hour purchases I've ever made. Of course I grabbed the teal one (because black is so bo-ring) and Lego Star Wars III to go with it, and it has not disappointed. Seriously, so, so cool. I'm too lazy to go into details at the moment, but don't worry, they're coming.

I also posted a new video at work. (Because I'm a video-making machine!) And if you love nerdy white girl dancing, then you're gonna love this. Someone already thought I was dancing the Elaine Benes dance from Seinfeld...so you know it's gonna be good.

And for those inclined, I'm now a 'Twitter-er'. You can follow me @parallaxianjess.

Just six more weeks until the end of the semester! I promise I'll have more love for you then, internets.