what's in a name

a challenge via Two Peas in a Bucket posted by melissaparada.

What does your name mean? (go here if you don't know) and does it fit your personality?

The name origin and meaning of Rachel
Name: Rachel
Gender: (Female)
Origin: Hebrew
Meaning: Little lamb, an ewe, one with purity

I actually had to look up the definiation of purity to see how i could get it to apply to me. I really don't think on first instinct that it does apply to my personality.

pu·ri·ty
1. The quality or condition of being pure.
2. A quantitative assessment of homogeneity or uniformity.
3. Freedom from sin or guilt; innocence; chastity: “Teach your children... the belief in purity of body, mind and soul” (Emmeline Pankhurst).
4. The absence in speech or writing of slang or other elements deemed inappropriate to good style.
5. The degree to which a color is free from being mixed with other colors.

(for number 2 above i have to look up 3 of the words!)

well, the most I can say is that i have a pureness (maybe i'm naive) about people in the world. i think everyone is really good and i trust unconditionally for a long time until someone hurts me. i also don't believe in looking back on past sins and guilt and just looking forward into having a future good life.

dinner party

i had a dinner party last night for my work folks. sam is leaving the project this week so we did a dinner in his honor. i made pasta with vodka cream sauce and got smoked turkey, green bean casserole, broccoli salad and potatoes au gratin from honey baked ham. food was yummy and it was all pretty easy to prepare. linda helped out a lot. the dogs got to lick all the dishes which was hysterical but linda told me later it was very tacky. julie stayed the longest and we talked about her and todd. marcia brought her middle daughter who i haven't really met yet. everyone had a nice time. i am a "great cook" and have a "beautiful house".

this morning i was doing a second round of dishes and when i picked up the roasting pan which was filled with water and grease i dumped it all over myself! had to clean everything up and even get in the shower.

mosaic in chinese

we just got an email asking if we could do a quick version of mosaicco.com in chinese. yeah right! this is too funny, these guys just have no idea how much is involved in globalizing a corporate site.

bummed out

i've really been depressed lately. i try to be positive and think of all the good things i have, but i have this overwhelming urge to cry. i feel very alone i guess. i don't know where these feelings come from.

i had a nice birthday on friday. i talk to my old friends and have some nice new ones. corey and breanna called me today. i didn't pick up and they sang happy birthday to me over the phone. maybe that is what has me in a funk. that or chris. he is going through stuff and in his boy cave - or else he's ignoring me. i hope everything is okay with him. he seems like a really good man and i hope he can get through all this shit he's going through so i can get to know the real him.

i just watched walk the line and while it was a great movie, it just bummed me out more. i don't know why i keep thinking about families and kids and getting sad. maybe because i'm alone the thought is appealing.

i've been sleeping alot which is not like me. i need to pull myself out of this funk. but it's not like there is a reason for it so i really figure out what i need to do. i'm just bored i guess but i don't feel like doing anything. even more not like me.

tomorrow night i'm going to hang with marcia and the girls. jimmy left her last week and they are separated for a bit. she's not sure where it will lead. we're all going to watch american idol and hopefully cheer us all up. wednesday night i have my team from work and spouses and kids coming over for dinner and to see my place. i have no ambition to clean and get it ready.

little sister, big problems

margie finally has started considering divorce. i spoke with her for about a half an hour yesterday and i feel so bad that she is going through this. i guess marcos has been calling her all weekend demanding that she tell him if she wants to work on their relationship or if she wants a divorce. she is now leaning towards divorce. he doesn't want to go to counseling and she feels he is being very manipulative. she's at the point where she has to tell him she wants a divorce and is afraid of how he will handle that. i told he that it is one of the most horrible sentences she will have to say, but that it is no worse from when she confronted him and told him she knew he was doing drugs or that she was moving out. it is just one more like that and it sucks.

birthday dinner

linda, ladonna and julie took me to dinner at 717 last night. dawn was there too. it was a swanky place for all the beautiful people. i felt like carrie bradshaw sneaking out for smokes and drinking a mango-tini. tasted good at first but i think i did me in. i can usually drink all night but i was in bed by midnight. spent the night over at linda's. after dinner we went for a drink at wiskey soho and there was good music for a while but no dance floor.

julie let out a bombshell that she has been fooling around with todd snow from work for over a year. pure little julie. must be true what they say about the quite ones. but i'm glad she fessed up cuz now her and i can compare notes between todd and chris :) makes girltalk all the more fun.

happy birthday to me

today is my birthday! 33 years old. feels more adult than 32. marcia called me on my way to work to sing me the birthday song over the phone and when i got in there were balloons and donuts at my desk. dave, alan and marcia took me out to lunch. we went to mimi's cafe. it was okay but the waiters all came out to sing a big birthday song which was hysterical. they grabbed their ties and did "mi, mi, mi, mi, mi" to clear their throats before singing a zippidee doo dah birthday song. tonight i'm going out for dinner with linda, julie, ladonna and maybe another one of linda's friends. i'd like to go to howl at the moon but since it's at channelside i doubt it.

i just talked to chris and he remembered it was my birthday. yeah! i really didn't want him to be one of those guys who forgets everything cuz that could be annoying. i'm supposed to see him tomorrow night after he gets off of work. i really like him and am excited to see him.

iExplore

my swan song! i worked so damn hard on this site. we did the entire thing from design to go live in about 10 weeks. and at such a horrible time in my life. thank god i had the project to work on. it was after this that i became a lead and started making the big bucks.

iExplore (Adventure Travel & World Travel)

just got an email from them that travelchannel.com chose iexplore to be their adventure travel partner. i remember the big party we had when national geographic announced they selected them as a partner. it was the first big one for that little company. now i don't even see national geographic highlighted as a partner. they show expedia, fodor's, travel channel and lonely planet.

yes, i peaked at the code. my trip finder and my iexplore code is still there. my good old jhtml pages and parms are still the same. so they kept the core, changed some of the design and added on. but my baby is still chugging!

birthday festivities

my birthday weekend gets to start today! lunch today with my project team, lunch tomorrow with my coworkers, dinner tomorrow night with the girls and if chris remembers it's my birthday and has some time hopefully something with him this weekend too. yeah! i love birthday weekends :)

beaten by a style sheet

okay, geek time. i am totally intrigued. i spent about two hours at the end of a long coding day yesteray wrestling with trying to get a style button to display. it seemed it just wasn't getting picked up. i even resorted to looking at online at basic css and html sites to verify i was doing everything right. this morning i came in and as a sample i added a third button for test purposes and whichever button is on the end the style doesn't work. i can through some bs in there but i really want to figure out what is going on. seems like a broken tag somewhere but it's not. i did restart my RAD so i do believe for some crazy reason the old stylesheet got cached in the EAR somehow. my nerdy developer mind can't let it go and it's frustrating!

killer bees

when i was a kid i watched a horror movie from the 70s that was on tv. it's about these rare bees from africa that swarm and attack people. after the movie when i found out they are real, not fiction, i decided that they are one of the thing i live i was going to be most afraid of.

Insecta Inspecta World - Killer Bees

this morning, while i was laying in bed, the stupid newscaster calmly announced that killer bees have infested the port of tampa. the last colony found was from a month ago in some teco machinery. they laid all sorts of traps but the bees have become too smart and are now going directly into the city.

the community where i live seems to me like a killer bees dream with all the trees and space. i guess the bees breed with our domestic european bees and they mutate and the african killer gene takes over. this does not sit well with me.

i can take the gators, rattlesnakes, fox, poisonous spiders, no see ums and everything else, but killer bees are having think chicago is looking more and more appealing.

crane attack

this is was so damn funny. i had the dogs outside this morning while i was getting ready and i heard this really wierd sound that i wasn't sure if it was a strange bird call or my alarm settings had changed. kind of like a pteradactyl. these two large cranes were walking by on the street behind mine and could see my dogs through the back yard. they were making the noises at them. maybe these things are territorial. they are bigger than my dog! taylor wanted to get them but when they started coming over i had to bring the dogs inside. they made it all the way into our back yard. taylor did not know what to do with herself cuz she had have seen that thing in chicago. and i kid you not, with all the barking,scratching at the door, strange behavior of the dogs and me taking pictures charlie bird asked "what the hell is going on?". i nearly fell out. it has been the funniest morning.

march word cloud

nothing doing

today is a kind of boring day with nothing going on. at work i only have one lunch meeting over at netpark which will be a nice break. but getting here at 8 makes the days so much longer and i feel like i want to do something fun. i'm going to channel my energy into my coding to get a sense of accomplishment but i can't get to that yet. i feel like talking to friends or something like that. missed american idol performances last night so i'll get to watch them tonight - the only thing to look forward to today. but that's fun :)

so sleepy

i'm so sleepy today. i should have gone to bed last night around 8pm but i yapped on the phone until 9:30 and then had to make dinner. didn't even eat until 10:30 and then i watched the american idol performances i missed last week. they sang stevie wonder songs and some were amazing and others really sucked. was good to catch up with glendy and tiffany so it was worth it.

american idol on again tonight. thank god it starts at 8. i'm debating a nap before or just going to bed after. i have to leave in about 15 minutes to go to the dermatologist. it's right by my house and i'd rather go home and sneak a power nap.

no see ums

these are little white bugs about the size of 1/5 of a gnat. i have at least 7 bites from them on my right arm and one on my booty. who names a bug a no see um? they are like mosquito bites on steroids. i went to the pharmacist at lunch and he recommended a combination of cortizone and benadryl cream. i put that on and they are going down but still itching like crazy. other people told me to use witchazel, rubbing alcohol and calamine lotion. i'm going to get some digestable benadryl on the way home and hopefully it'll stop the itch! so much for sleeping with the window open in a tropical climate.

andrew l. platt

sent out an email today of my "things i did once" list. andy emailed me back that i forgot "flashed my boss". Of course i never remembered doing this but do remember his constant requests for it. he had me cracking up so i gave him a call. he went on to explain that he didn't know i got married so when he was getting emails from rachel cordero at mosaic he had no idea who they were from. we caught up a bit and then conferenced in joann. he birthday was yesterday. it was so good to catch up and i got her email address so i can keep in touch.

andy is on his way down to florida next month. the weekend of april 7th he will be down in naples. i'm going to head down there after work on that friday and then we're going to go out boozing and catch up. he's staying at the ritz. imagine, andy at the ritz. too funny. i told him i'll probably crash on his couch and the awkwardness of that situation already has me in stiches. he's such a baby.

sailing away

i leave for san juan tomorrow. my flight is at 10:50 so i better leave for the airport around 8:45. i'll meet margie in the airport in san juan and we'll take a cab to the ship. we did the auto checkin already so hopefully we can just get on, get our room and start relaxing. my flight gets to san juan around 2:30 so i figure we will be settled by 5pm and have all night to just chill and relax.

then the fun starts. we have activities scheduled each day. everything from sightseeing, beaches, snorkeling, to sailing on and america's cup boat. that is a dick smith idea and we are going to spend one day with them. the two i am most looking forward to are not until thursday and they are both in the same day. snorkeling with turtles and taking a land rover into the rainforest to see the green monkeys.

we dock back in san juan early saturday morning and will check into a hotel there. we can then explore the city. i leave on sunday afternoon and get back to tampa around 6pm.

brandon mourns student

there was some really sad news this morning that shook me up a bit and i think it made me more intolerant this afternoon. paul hershberger is our new security guy at work. he seems like a great guy. yesterday afternoon we were all whispering about something happening to his son but no one knew what happened. we found out today. Below is the news article:

Brandon Mourns Student
Published: Mar 8, 2006

BRANDON - Josh Hershberger spent the last moments of his life in the same lighthearted way he spent many other moments of his life, having fun with his little brother and sister.

The 15-year-old Brandon High School sophomore was doing something many children do from time to time, ignoring the age-old warning not to play ball in the house, investigators say.

Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Debbie Carter said the teen was sitting on his bedroom floor Monday night with his 14-year-old brother. Their sister, who is 9, was on a bed, and a big rubber ball they were playing with bounced off the wall and knocked down a gothic-style ornamental sword that was mounted there, sheriff's officials said.

The weapon cut into Josh's neck and shoulder. He was rushed to Brandon Regional Hospital but was pronounced dead.

A family member answered the door at Josh's home Tuesday but declined to comment.

Josh's uncle, Harold Hershberger of West Virginia, said the teen was friendlier than most.

"With all the things you hear about teenagers now, he was just a good kid," Hershberger said. "He was fun-loving and outgoing."

Classmates and school staff chose words such as funny, soft-spoken and smart.

"It really hurt a lot of people," sophomore Evelyn Akins said. "It's something you'll never forget."

Brandon High students filed into classes Tuesday for a series of exams. After the first session, Principal Leslie Granich made an announcement about Josh's death.

By midmorning, a group of art students went outside to spray-paint a memorial sign on a large piece of cardboard.

Some classmates turned to a team of counselors who visited the school to help them with their grief, crisis intervention team member Charles Jaksec said.

He said Josh was extremely intelligent, friendly and popular.

"We lost a member of the Brandon High School family," he said.

He said a somber mood of disbelief spread across campus, and tears streamed down many faces.

"They ask, 'Why?' But you can't give an answer to how tragic that moment was," Jaksec said.

Outside the classroom, Josh kept busy with youth league football, weightlifting, computers and video games, his uncle said. He also joined the Future Business Leaders of America, school officials said.

His dedication to his teammates on the Brandon Cowboys football team impressed Michelle Warf, concession manager at the Cowboys football field off Kingsway Road in Brandon. She said he was on the injured list last season but never abandoned his teammates.

"He was injured most of the season, but he led his team every game onto the field from the end zone - on crutches," she said.

"His mom and dad were team mom and dad to our varsity football team and basically adopted the entire team into their family," Warf said. "There is not a nicer, more caring family that this tragedy could have happened to."

dilbert day

yup, i feel like dilbert today. not that i really read the cartoon that much, but i know enough that dilbert is surrounded by idiots. idiot manager. got that. idiot co-workers. check (feed group). i am just surrounded by it today. i hate to let it aggravate me but come on. pure stupidity and laziness one can only take so long.

plant city strawberry festival

went to the annual strawberry festival in plant city tonight with chris. we had an amazing night. we get along really well. he is really funny and we had a great night together. he had kind of a sucky day so i'm glad we decided to go out to the festival. the night may not have been the same if we just hung out at my place. i like him a ton and hopefully this will be the start of something really good.

world cup 2006

i have decided i want to start following soccer. i guess i'd prefer european soccer, but will learn about it all. the world cup will be held in germany this year. the final game will be on july 9. that means i have five months to start following it, watch matches and learn about the various teams. first challenge - find out where the games will be televised. I found that espn has a site called ESPN SoccerNet which I think I can use to follow what is going on in the sport. wish me good luck!

it only happened once

today's daily blog challenge from two peas is to list all of the things that have happened to me only once in my entire life. not sure if i can do a complete list, but here goes!

seen flamenco dancers in madrid . . . once
got fired from a job. . . once
purchased a home . . . once
made love on a mountain side . . . once
went to rocky horror picture show . . . once
won a radio contest . . . once
been to an ice cave . . . once
wrecked a car . . . once
seriously made out in the rain . . . once
worked in a retail clothing store . . . once
hiked through a gorge in germany . . . once
partied in ybor city . . . once
been to new orleans before katrina . . . once
experienced late night at a blues club in chicago . . . once
participated in a newlywed show . . . once
watched the sunrise from the tracks in sauganash . . . once
sang karaoke . . . once
sold corn during taste of chicago . . . once
sat in box seats at a concert . . . once
backstage passes for aerosmith concert . . . once
been a bridesmaid . . . once
wine tasting in napa valley . . . once
took a mud bath . . . once
explored hampton court . . . once
partied backstage with david lee roth's band . . . once
seen a concert at the aragon ballroom . . . once
got stitches . . . once
took belly dancing lessons . . . once
applied at an open modeling call . . . once
swam in the famous baths in budapest . . . once
got a tatoo . . . once
been a step-mother . . . once
seen a broadway play . . . once
visited the rock 'n roll hall of fame . . . once
snorkeled with sting rays . . . once
got my belly pierced . . . once
launched a website in ten weeks . . . once
owned my own business . . . once
stayed in the vienna woods . . . once
chased by a mime at madame tussaud's in london . . . once
took a boat ride on the danube . . . once
had a birthday party in las vegas . . . once
heard a live tiger roar . . . once
had my dog win $250 for impersonating a cartoon character . . . once
found salamanders in the smokey mountains . . . once
been stung by a bee . . . once
stood fifteen feet away from bono . . .once
saw a pelican dive and catch a fish in key west . . . once
visited ellis island . . . once
participaed in the wilhelm festival in new glarus, wi . . . once
drank bloody mary's while shopping in laredo, tx . . . once
shot a gun . . . once
visited the swarovski museum in austria . . . once
enrolled my dog in flyball classes . . . once
lived in a loft downtown . . . once
seen an aligator in the wild . . . once
got highlights in my hair . . . once

getting my first tatoo {sunflower}

a black sunflower which i got at a tatoo palor in ybor city when tiffany was visiting. it's healing well. the guy said it would take 20 minutes but it took about five. it didn't hurt that bad. only hurt when he was coloring in the spaces. it looks really cool when i see a peak when i'm getting dressed.