Roamer's Zone

The past week has left me so exhausted. Moving to college each year was cake compared to what I am going through in order to prepare for this move to Virginia. But oh well I have made time to post a little blog tonight before the 3 hour long haul tomorrow. I wanted to share what I consider to be the best addition to my new apartment. But first a little exposition. ; )

Most people know that I am a huge fan of Angelina Jolie as well as the Tomb Raider video game series. But they might not know that I am also an avid collector. Collector of what you might ask? My true geek nature is about to be revealed. I started collecting stamps in the 5th grade and stuck with it through out high school. I haven't been able to keep up with it much since then.

I started collecting Angelina memorabilia in the 7th grade and have never stopped. I have pretty much every major magazine that has ever featured an Angelina cover (all in plastic sleeves of course). I have a promotional garter from Original Sin. I also have all the Tomb Raider action figures (never opened of course).

I am also a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer collector (I have the limited edition board game that I have only played a total of 5 times on special occasions in order to keep it in mint condition). This is only the tip of the Buffy iceberg. So you get the picture that I am a die hard collector? Below is a picture of what I consider to be the pride and joy of my Angelina collection. I look forward to displaying it prominently in my new apartment.

How many people can say they have a larger then life cardboard cutout of Angelina Jolie in their living room? And did I mention that I have two of them? One is for general public display and I have the other one carefully preserved. Hi I am Leslie, and I am a geek.

Here are two pictures that I took today using my cell phone. I was driving on a back road to the grocery store and saw what I can only describe as a gaggle of geese. These pictures do no fully capture the gaggle. It rained a lot here today and these geese were hanging out in and around the puddles that had formed on the side of the road.

I was pretty impressed with the quality of the pictures taken from this phone. I recently changed from an EnV to and EnV 2. The differences are small to some people, but I much prefer the former. I plan on blogging about my issues with the EnV 2 very soon.

Stephan Puff told me that I looked like the Toxic Avenger two years ago when I dressed up as a zombie for Halloween. At the time I didn't think this was very flattering or comical. Ironically I am now taking on the title of real life toxic avenger as I enter into my first post collegiate job. For the past 4.5 months I have been searching for professional employment and honestly I was beginning to lose hope.

Last Monday I was hired by e-Management Consultants Inc as a Jr. Program Support Specialist. The position title may not tell you much about what I am going to be doing so I will break it down. I am going to be working with two other contractors on site at the United States Department of Energy (DOE) located in Washington, DC.

The contract that e-Management has with the DOE is focused on a project called Environmental Management, which deals with the proper disposal of toxic/nuclear waste as well as cold war era chemicals that are stored in basements across the country. These chemicals are stored in vats, but many of them are unfortunately not labeled and have to be individually identified, diluted and then dumped somewhere safe that will not interfere with the lives of humans or animals.

There is also specific concern about waste dumping grounds located on Native American reservations and within low income communities. There are two advisory boards that e-Management deals with at the DOE. One is made up of scientists that are actively looking for ways to identify and dispose of the waste and the other is a citizen advisory board. My project manager tells me that there is at least 3 more years of longevity left in this contract.

Don't worry I won't be doing any of the physical identifying or traveling to the dumping sites, but I will be helping to facilitate the advisory boards as well as plan meetings etc. Basically I will be be doing anything they need me to do at this point. It seems like it is good work and will benefit people. I am excited, but they want me to start October 6th so I have been a busy little bee this week. After finding out about the job Monday I spent all day Tuesday looking at apartments online and calling the apartments.

Wednesday I traveled up to Baltimore and spent the night and Thursday morning I drove to Virginia to look at apartments. By noon on Thursday I signed a lease to my first apartment.

And now the race against time really begins. I have to pack up my life and move to Fairfax, VA next Wednesday and then start work on the Monday after that. Ahhhh! Things are crazy. And to think two weeks ago I was actually anxiety ridden about riding the Metro train into the District for my interview for this job and now I will be riding it every day.

All summer I have been helping to take care of this vegetable garden in my parent’s backyard. I will go out back and occasionally pick the tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, lettuce, and pears etc. Last week I was de-weeding the vegetable garden and doing a little harvesting when I picked two yellow peppers (not of the bell variety) as well as a lot of miniature tomatoes (though not cherry tomatoes). I didn’t think anything of it and placed the tomatoes in a bowl on the counter and just threw the peppers on top of them.

After about a week the peppers began to turn an orange/red color and now they are pretty much completely red. It turns out that the color of vegetables has to do with their pH levels. The tomatoes are red because of their pH level. When I put the peppers in with the tomatoes they began to absorb some of the akaline base and this change in pH level caused the color transformation. Generally tomatoes have a pH of -3.1 and peppers have a pH of -1.4.

I guess those science classes paid off after all.

I had to blog about this because it is one of the most amazing pieces of fan art that I have ever seen. I was looking on eBay for a life sized Predator head to display in my room. I know that may sound weird to some people, but I am a fan of the iconic alien film, but that is beside the point. While searching for this head/bust I found this sweet metal creation. Lets just say that this artist gives a new meaning to the phrase twisted metal.

The artist has the appropriate username of 'MetalDude' and even has his own eBay store. I have to say his sculptures pay homage to Predator for sure. I believe there were also a few Alien sculptures as well (another one of my favorites). The cool thing is they are all made from scrap metal. This was a very sweet find indeed and the awesome thing is that the artist is only asking $24.99 for the head alone.