Treasure Hunt

My posts keep getting inspired by random conversations I have with people. Lately most of my replies to questions requiring more than one sentence of response have been "read my blog." I guess I'm being lazy and don't want to say something twice, which is really a bad habit because that means I will eventually communicate with friends via blog only... definitely NOT something I'm working towards! That said, Juliet, this one's for you :)

One of the joys of living/working in Seattle, especially in the summer, is the ability to explore hundreds of shops and boutiques, especially in the Pike Place Market area. There is an awesome blog that talks exclusively about Seattle's fashion boutiques, if you are interested in fashion. (http://www.seattleboutiqueblogspot.com/) But what I am interested in is finding bargains. And that I've recently found! There is a pretty big Antique store by Pike Place (http://www.antiquesatpikeplace.com/) that has a BUNCH of designer items for sale, and most of them at a great price! My last find (well, o.k. I'll be honest. My friend Inna's last find....) was a pair of Chanel flats for $140 and a pair of gorgeous Stuart Weitzman "Pomposo" pumps for $85! I searched online to see if I can find a picture of them, but I swear the ones in the store are special edition. All the "Pomposo's" available online start at $325 and are red satin with a rose. The store's shoes are burgundy, and the rose is beaded instead of simply satin. Anyways. I am in love. But I can't buy them because I'm saving up for something more important and exciting....

Another good place for designer bargains is Alexandra's consignment shop, located on Olive, between 4th and 5th Ave. (http://www.alexandrasdesignconsign.com/) It's exclusively designer, although the younger generation will still get the thrill of the hunt -- most items are from more established clients (obviously us younglings can't afford that stuff yet. Much less would we want to sell it soon after acquisition...). Last time I stopped by though, I've found a beautiful Prada dress for $290. I later found a version of it online in another color for $800. So if you do score an item and fall in love, buy without any worry that you're being ripped off.

That said, I sound like a designer fashion freak right now. And i'm really not. The biggest item I'm after is actually a coffee cup. I'd say about seven years ago, before my family was firmly established in this country, my mom did what we thought back then was a crazy crazy thing. She spent $400 in an antique shop and bought 180 pieces of beautiful MYOTT "Royal Mail" china. We already had several sets of that very design, but it wasn't the original, and it wasn't that many items. After my mom's acquisition, our family owned a total of about 250 pieces.

Well, it was inevidable, but after the last dinner party at my house, one of the real coffee cups fell and broke. With it broke a tiny piece of my mom's heart. So now I am on the hunt for another cup. You see, most of them tend to go in a set with a saucer or even more plates. And all I need is a single cup. The sad thing is that the west coast apparently doesn't have too many available for sale. Antique dealers here haven't even heard of that particular design! But i'm still hoping that somehow the cup has trickled down into some random shop that I will one day randomly walk into... That's why I'm out hunting for new places every day now. Who knows what else I'll find in the meantime.

For the girl whose heart got broken and the one who's about to fall for a jerk... And for the jerk.

I really wish I could tell you girl that you will be ok and it's all eventually going to go away. It won't. The real thing'll keep hurting for a long, long time. I am hoping that what you felt/feel towards him isn't real love, and that when the real thing comes, he'll be instantly out of your mind. The most horrible thing is having to chose between duty and desire. But hopefully through the pain you'll learn one thing: not to give your heart away to a man who is not your husband.

I heard this thought in Mars Hill last sunday, and posted it on facebook. Immediately, responses started flowing in with people's opinions. I found myself responding back, with not enough room to hold all my thoughts on the topic. A larger post was in order, and several conversations with different people after I realized it's VERY MUCH in order.

If you're not in love with him yet, stop yourself now. You really can control what you are feeling. Stop the thoughts, the dreams, the wild run of your imagination, and fill the longing with God! That's right. Read the bible. It's the only method that will help. But soon you will train your mind to obey, and will realize that you really CAN control your feelings. Do it before it's too late, and you'll save yourself many years of heartache. That's right. I said years.

If you are young and think that you'll grow out of it, I'm here to dissappoint you. There. I just did. You won't grow out of it. And the older you'll get, the more you'll realize that all you are doing is wasting time on somebody who is so not worth it. Then you'll start convincing yourself that a life with him will be nothing but bad news, and you are right. Listen to that inner voice of wisdom. This is NOT the time to listen to your heart! I have yet to hear a couple say that what they originally felt for each other is what made their marriage last. I have met plenty who fell in love with their spouses after marriage. I have met even more that fell out of love after marriage, and then there was nothing left to build the relationship and family on.

To the guy who is a player or is toying with the idea of a fling that won't lead to anything serious. You can really really mess her life up. I mean, make a major, gigantic, mess. You can turn her from a carefree, life-loving individual into a pathetic, unsure, depressed dot. Don't do it. You don't understand how long it takes us to bounce back. And that's from those secondary encounters on top of the one and only weirdo we're in love with. One guy came to me once, and complained that when he realized a girl he liked wasn't as faithfully into him as he hoped, it really hurt for a long time. Like three days. I laughed in his face. For an average girl, if she has any feelings for you at all and isn't a complete slut who hooks up with everyone (and those girls have feelings too once in a while by the way!) it takes about a year to stop feeling the pain. And that depends largely on how far you went with her physically. Sounds like a long time, right? That's because it is. So be a real man. Real men don't hurt real women.

To the reader of this blog who is thinking too much right now... Yes, it was partially inspired by personal experience. But mostly by conversations I've had lately with some of my close friends, as well as the comment from Mars Hill. Amazingly my heart hasn't been broken for a good two years now -- a pretty long time considering my track record. And I finally feel secure enough to write about it and warn other people. Hopefully it works at least a little bit. People have tried to warn me, but I didn't listen. Big mistake. Don't make it!

Couldn't find this song to embed, but here's a link to it.
http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=music.artistalbums&artistid=2997697&ap=0&albumid=5352643

Admin Woes

If you've ever worked as an administrative assistant (a.k.a legal slave, a.k.a executive babysitter), you will know what I'm talking about. What the heck is up with the entire office' expectation that the admin knows everything about everything?! Really? You are going to pay me the lowest wage in the office to take care of all the crap that you don't want to deal with and than blame me for it? You are paying me to write names on forms, enter data, answer telephones, and put appointments on your calendar. You are NOT paying me nearly enough to provide directorial advice, counsel and compose people who you have angered, fix hardware and software issues like an IT pro, and pick up your slack.

Ok. So out of the goodness of my heart, I wouldn't mind being your contact while you take your two week vacation, even though that's not on my job description. But out of the goodness of your heart, please TELL me about it and let me know what kind of things I might be dealing with as a result of that! How the heck am I supposed to know your workload (and 14 other people in the office)? I'm an admin, not a psychic!

I'm not even going to go into all the ways that admins aren't generally treated as people in the office. But honestly, stop blatantly taking advantage of us. We aren't a machine that can magically solve any problem that comes up. We also can't keep absorbing more and more work as an entire department decides to "delegate." We don't have anyone to delegate to! And if you are going to keep delegating, stop expecting it to be done right that minute! Honestly, with 15 people also expecting that, we aren't sitting at our desk all day waiting for you to show up and give us something to do. Use your head once. Do the math!

Oh and also... before you yell, please make sure we really are wrong. Or before you go and rant on us to the big boss. Try letting us know you are upset about something in a gentle way. Most likely there's a reason for something missing (like you took it home to work on, and then forgot about it, for example,) or neither you or anyone else has ever communicated to us that we are supposed to be doing whatever we are not doing. And please, PLEASE don't expect us to have our hearts and souls in our work at the expense of family, hobbies and social life. I mean, do you really expect a college graduate with a major that has nothing to do with what your industry is, doing annoying, unappreciated, never-ending busywork, on an entry-level salary, to be REALLY in love with what they are doing?! Get real! We got this job to support our families, social life and hobbies, not to abandon them.

Ok, I think you got the point. Other than everything above... I'm happy to be your admin (and the other 14 people's in the department.) I like helping people. I like learning new things (and I am.) I just don't like unreasonable expectations that aren't properly compensated. Otherwise I'd volunteer.

No Place Like Home - The Real One

I love home. It's a pain to get me outta there on weekends. People think I'm weird because I can spend Friday nights, Saturdays AND Sundays at home and not want to go out. Naturally, people wonder what on earth I am doing there and why I like it so much.

This is unusual for a 23 year old, but I find a lot of satisfaction in household chores. And as long as I don't have to do them everyday, I actually enjoy laundry, ironing, cooking and cleaning. Since done quite sporadically, those chores take up a hefty chunk of time on my weekends. Other times I'll spend hours on the computer organizing and editing pictures. Mostly though I'll just be outside tanning and reading a good book. (Current read: Jane Eyre. Never read it in English..)

Confession time: I still live with my parents. (I guess this only makes the fact that I love staying home more shocking...) I've lived with them all the way through college to save on room and board, since the campus was only 5 minutes away. And I've chosen to live with them after I was done to pay off my college loans. (Success! I'm a year out from finishing college and have no student debt!)

Confession time: I've chosen to live with my parents because I like it. I've been blessed with parents who are easy to get along with and wonderful to talk to. Especially now, that I only come home to sleep during the week (if even), and don't get to spend as much time with them as before. Quality time during morning coffee out on the porch is the reason I haven't given up my addiction yet. And evening tea conversations have been known to last for hours into the night.

The word that many have used to describe our house is "cozy." Cozy comes naturally to my mom. I have always rebelled against her herding and mismatched style by decorating my rooms with simple, elegant, preferably black and white minimalism. But to tell you the truth, I've never spent much time in my rooms. I tend to gravitate towards my mom's rose garden and plush lawn in our backyard (perfect for tanning!)Or to the family room downstairs which is filled with everything our family identifies with: walls of shelves filled with books, a piano, stashes of cd's, and myriads of photographs with panoramic views of Riga (the city where my family is from.)

Home is the place where I reboot. It's a place where I find unconditional love and support. It's a place to slow down and just... be. Even if it's only for a day or two. I hope that when I get my own place this fall I will be able to create the same atmosphere of home that I have right now, but somehow I think it's not about the decorations and the things. It's about the people and the relationships. So I guess weekends will still be spent... home.

No Place Like Home

I was born in a thriving, full of life and entertainment, European city, and since moving to United States have always aspired to go back to the urban lifestyle. So starting work in Seattle was like a dream come true. I was embarrassed to admit it at the time, but after graduating college my only "career aspiration" was to work in a high-rise in downtown of a large city on a higher floor than 6 and to wear cute office clothes to work. Well, I guess I have successfully achieved my professional goals :) I work in downtown Seattle, on eleventh floor. Luckily for me, our dress code is "business casual," which allows me to go as dressy as I want. It's also lucky because after only a few weeks on the job I realized that dressing professionally every day is about as much fun as cooking three course meals every day. Three times a day. For a family of twelve. It takes a lot of effort (and a lot of clothes!). I also realized that I should've dreamed bigger and wished for a workspace by a window. Right now I am effectively plopped in a cubicle in the middle of a large room. My view is grey cubicle covering in three directions (ok I'm lying just a little bit. I wallpapered the walls with colored paper. But they were originally grey!) and a professionally painted wall. A color that slightly resembles burgundy and brown, but is not quite either one... Basically I might as well work in a middle of a corn field in Montana. It wouldn't make a difference. Dreams really do come true!

So the reason this post is titled "No Place Like Home" is because I was going to write about how much I love it at home when I go back over the weekend and how much of a country girl I am at heart at the same time as being an urbanite. But it looks like I veered off the topic and have written enough for the day, so maybe I will dwell on my homey habits tomorrow instead. I don't feel like changing the title though. So I won't. :)

This is real humor people! :)

Sucks if you don't understand russian, but if you do... enjoy!

20 for R71

I'm sure that this post will make my blog unpopular and controversial. I definitely didn't mean it to be like that when I started writing, but there are certain issues I cannot stay quiet about. So here comes my serious theological voice.

Not sure what my views are on separation of church and state, but my church passed out R71's last Sunday. (Referendum that reverses the legislative decision to pass a law that effectively makes same-sex marriages legal.) Despite my hesitation on the topic of church/state separation, my views on preserving marriage as a union between one man and one woman are pretty set. So I grabbed one for myself to sign and figured I'd pass it around to the Christians I know who would stand up for this cause. To my utter surprise, I soon realized that I do not know 20 Christians, who are registered to vote, and wouldn't be afraid to sign such a petition. But I wanted to prove myself wrong.

Those who know me will vouch that I am no political activist. I'm actually a pretty solid introvert who is afraid to talk to people. And although I hide it well, unless they are with long-term proven-themselves-over-the-years i-grew-up-with-them friends, most conversations take tremendous efforts for me to start or continue. You can only imagine what it took me to approach people outside of church, in a workplace that just passed a decision to officially support that legislation.

Why would I put myself through the trouble of approaching people outside of church? You tell me my fellow church members. Right now I am not talking to those who aren't eligible to vote yet, or to those who don't attend a Slavic primarily immigrant filled church. (Or to those who already signed the R71 or are not signing because they are against it.) But the rest of you... You think you are so righteous and correct in your legalistic traditionalism. You preach pretty words from the pulpit to a crowd of people who are happy to agree with you at a moments' notice. (How brave of you.) But in your five, ten, fifteen, twenty-five years in the United States you haven't bothered to become a citizen, or worse yet - register to vote, which takes about 5 seconds online! Actions speak louder than words. Take the time to do something that can actually change the way things run in the country that is now your home! Especially my generation -- there is no excuse. But also Pastors and Deacons -- what kind of an example are you setting to the youth in church if you are too lazy to practice what you preach? LITERALLY!!! Instead of not finding 20 people... I didn't find ONE who would sign the petition. It's a shame, really.

So now I'm fighting my fears and approaching the people at work who I think might sign this referendum. It's as scary as it gets for me. Every person on my mental list is a battle, but I'm fighting my anxiety and approaching them, one by one. So far only one hasn't signed. I'm still determined to prove myself wrong and find twenty Christians, who are registered to vote, and will not be afraid to sign the R71 sitting on my desk.

Let me know if you are one of them. The deadline for submitting this Referendum is July 22nd.