Meeting Evelyn

I can't beleave it took so long but I have finally met my niece. She is so wonderful (slept the whole time). Beautiful too. Lillie does have a bit of a sharing problem (she fully admits it) but did a good job sharing with me. I think she knew I wouldn't take no as an answer.

Hopefully I'll get to spend more time with her over Christmas!

Photo's coming soon!

Shopping Part 1

Gingerbread waffles are normally a Christmas fare but they were requested one holiday early. Breakfast today was the waffles and they were delicious, I will definitely make them for more then just Christmas. After waffles Pat made a break for it and we went shopping (mom and I). we took allot of junk with us hoping to be called over to see the baby but it didn't happen until 3ish.

Unfortunately for my exhausted sister (who wanted us to bring dinner) we were on the way to an appointment and would still have to make the dinner but let her know we would call her after it was made to see if she still wanted to come up. The snow started up as we were cooking dinner. By the time we were done we chose to stay home because the roads were bad.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to meet her.

It feels like thanksgiving

How does it feel like Thanksgiving?

I spent the morning shopping with my Mother in Law. It was fun though I didn't buy much. I'm borrowing a purple shirt for the family photo and while i did find a few that were ok none were worth the price they were asking, ( I can be very cheep when it comes to clothing). I did get our yearly ornament and I found a cute one for Dylan.

Having Marks for lunch is the only thing that will always make me feel like I'm home. (aside from the snow in the winter). So I had a slice for lunch with Pat (who got wings, in case you were interested) and mom R (also wings).

After Lunch I got the biggest treat so far. I went out to see Dylan my first and oldest nephew. Once he got over his fear of me and stopped screaming we had a good time. He ate lunch and I made funny noises at him making him laugh so hard I was afraid he would throw up. Don't worry Doug (his Daddy) says he won't. I wonder if he ever did get that nap in.

Pat drove down for Dinner at my parents house (he couldn't resist salmon), I on the other hand enjoyed the left over Pork. As always we had a roaring hot fire going. I took a good hours nap after all that food. Luckily for me it was late so when I did wake up I pretty much went strait to bed. It was a great day.

Another day on the road

I think I travel too much. It seems every few weeks I have a blog traveled on the road. I just can't name it anything else as it usually wipes out my day. Today we left for Rochester early. I was hoping to meet my new niece but that's not going to happen as they got out of the hospital just as I got into town.

I did get to spend lots of time with mom and dad. Dad even cooked me an excellent Pork Roast, Mom and I did a fabulous job on the salad, corn bread and sweet Potatoes. It has been probably almost a full year but I realized that I should definitely try to eat them more often.

A little snow greeted us on the way up (luckily not enough to make it scary). Pat and I were like little kids driving up watching the accumulated snow piles get bigger as we drove further north. Even the little bit we saw falling couldn't deter out excitement. It's nice to see snow.

Chins

Today I went to the store with a friend to buy a chin cage, None of them were really great but one looked like it would do. It was more then I would like to spend but I can't put them in a small cage. they need room to bounce (literally).

Lucky for me the breeder ended up adopting 2 rescues leaving a cage open for my girls. That ment as long as it was big enough I could return the other cage. Thank goodness!

We dropped them off the cage was not ideal but they will be comfertable for the time we are gone. I do like going over to the breeders house I get to see all of the other chins, they are such cool animals! They enjoy doing what Pat and I dubbed 'Wall Runs', and it's very funny to watch. They essentially run up to a wall and bounce off of it they will bounce off of up to 3 walls in one jump. Tonight her's were showing us their moves. we had a few standard walruns, but one chin took the cake she was jumping from the top shelf of her cage bouncing off the front of the cage in a way that it was a neat looking flip. I wish I had a video, I can't do it justice.

We went out to dinner so we would not have to clean the kitchen tonight, great reason, no? It was great but we didn't get home until 9:30 and still had to pack.

Stress

I had a rental go a little awry today. I ended up spending my early afternoon trying to clean up a mess that was already fixed by the branch. Unfortunitly I was told about the complaint after the branch and customer had come to a resolution that worked for everyone. So I was calling all parties involved to make sure the resolution was good and see what went wrong. After I went to lunch the rental went from being needed at any time to needed right away. FUN!

Then I got home to work off the day's bad rental I got a phone call. I had left the breeder that is taking care of Gizmo and Pinky to make sure she had a cage available as the cage we have is too big to be moved. She called back 30 minutes into the workout to say she did not have an available cage. All of a sudden my vacation plans went south. Traveling with the chins would stress them out too much and they couldn't stay at my in-laws house because of the cat and dog, but my parents would be less then thrilled with the furry addition to the week.

We decided to buy a new (extra) cage because the extra cage we had was in NY (something I will have to rectify this weekend).

TMI

I called a customer to make a reservation. Shortly after the start of the conversation she decided to share with me that she had just found out that she's pregnant. Assuming she was telling me because she was so happy she had to tell someone, I gave an enthusiastic congratulations.

She was not sure how she felt about it, it was an accident. Um I'm sure it will work out just fine i replied.

It will I'm sure I'll be happy in a little while, she said. It's just that she had a 12 year old and her fiancee had a 2 year old and she didn't want to start over.

thanks for sharing. If it was simply that she was so happy that she could not keep her mouth shut, It would make sense to tell someone you don't know over the phone, excitement makes you want to tell everyone. But telling someone that it was all an accident and you weren't even happy about it that is silly.

Sorry about your luck lady.

What Financial Diet?

My Christmas Shopping is almost done, 3 more people to go. I have them all budgeted for so that's not a big deal, I'm just proud to have so much of it done.

Anyway I went shopping at lunch for a few baby gifts as there seems to be a never ending baby boom with in the office as well as friends and family. I went to get a family friend a gift as well as Poor Zach (who is nearly 2 months old) gifts. I went in for 2-3 outfits and ended up spending well more then I planned. The problem is that I LOVE Carters cloths they are so darn cute. As I told my mom It's just another of many good reasons to not have children, I'd go broke before it turned a year.

At least for the foreseeable future I can stay away from Carters as I can't imagine too many more baby's being born around me (not literally).

Financial diet back on.

Anne's Weddings

Today we was Anne and Tom's wedding. It was beautiful The Ceremony was at 10 AM which gave me plenty of time to go to the hotel gym and eat breakfast first. We arrived at the church It was very pretty. That's when I got my camera out to get ready to use it. Nothing. My battery was dead, I reached for the backup and they had fallen out of my bag. . . Grrr.

I had promised many photos of Anne's wedding to Lillie and Mom. I realized how much I take photo's at weddings and how much I missed it with out my camera. Also that I really want to get a nice new camera. Which is funny because I don't foresee too many more weddings. But their are many other photo opportunities.

The Ceremony was nice and because I did not have a camera, Pat and I went to the reception site as soon as it was done instead of lingering for photo's. On the way we were stopped at a red arrow waiting to turn left. A guy came over to us and started talking to us. Apparently he thought we were 'Looking'. Pat had his hand resting funny on his chest and the guy was worried he had a gun. UM WHAT?!?! no gun Pat said. It was at that point I told pat to run the red light. Yes you read that correct. The goody two shoes told her husband to risk a ticket to get us the hell out of there. The guy left so Pat didn't have to but if i was driving I would have left a few minutes before the guy left.

The 2nd best part of the wedding is that it was a BRUNCH reception. That's right I had french toast (among many other delicious choices). I ate brunch with one of her college sweetmates and Father (I think the other couple was her aunt on her fathers side). I wish I had photo's to post.

I'm going to read that later and realize how little of the wedding I actually wrote about. I just think I can't put weddings into words.

NJ gets something right

Driving to NY when we go to Rochester is so routine that I missed out on a key observation that a coworker made when we drove to the ski outing a few years ago. Tonight I fully appreciated that observation and realized NJ does do something correct. You see they number the exits by mile so you always know about how far you have to go. I hate having to remember how far we have gone and it is nice to be able to do some simple math and know how far we have left on the highway.

It was late and pat was grumpy and I had no way of knowing how far we had to go. We could have gotten an earlier start if Pat and I had done a through packing job this week but I had charged the batteries to the camera and placed a backup in the bag so all I had to do was pack the gift and camera, some how it took forever and Pat wasn't exactly ready either.

I made this same mistake with Sean's wedding but this time I had the essentials, medication, contacts and shoes that matched a decent looking outfit.

Better then a bottle of wine

I went to the Dr's office today for a regular check up. On the up side I get to lower my medication to 2 times a day. Only 6 pills per day, a good direction. While I would prefer getting rid of the other medication I'll be happy with what I got.

As for the more frustrating, I have to go in every 4 months not 6 as i had originally thought. That's a pain and annoying (I have a 35$ copay, it's a good thing i have a flex spending account). The even worse news is the doctor wants to do another colonoskapy this coming year. If you have never had one It's not the actual procedure that sucks. your actually asleep for the whole thing. It is the preparation that stinks. I never keep it all down and so far they haven't had any issues but i couldn't bear to wake up and find out that the test is void because I'm not 'clean enough'.

I have to laugh because I'm thinking of all the negative things about a colonoskapy. the second worst thing is the liquid diet for 24 hours. I LOVE to eat and no amount of liquid will satiate my hunger. no many how many calories.

It's a good thing really that she wants to be more on top of my illness. But I'm not sure if it's too much considering I thought once a year visit was good, twice is ok too. every 5 years sounded doable for the dreaded big test, two just does not give me enough recovery time. At least she will negotiate with me.

I was so frustrated when I left I tried to call Lillie to vent but she was still at the gym. So My release was the treadmill. It had been a while but the pain in my thigh is gone, 40 minutes of running was all that I needed. I felt great!

The Non Date

I had met an acquaintance at the gym. He came to the gym allot and we chatted every now and then. I won't give him a name.

Just before we moved to Somerset he asked me to meet him at a chain restaurant/bar for happy hour with him and his friends. I figured that it was a good size group and it may be fun, meet some new people and get out for the night. So I chose to go. Pat didn't have a problem with it, why would he.

So I showed up and he was already there. Alone. I can't remember why his friends couldn't come out but it weirded me out that it was just the two of us. We chit chatted for a short while, he drank god know what (but it was WAY too alcoholic) I drank Sprite as I don't drink much and Never when I have to Drive. I just implied that he was drunk. Let me clarify, He was far from it.

Shortly after I arrived the conversation got strange, gross really. He started telling me that he liked to sleep with married women. Um really, because I really don't see that working as a pick up line. He went on to tell me about his intimacy issues, he apparently could not sleep with the women for more then 6 months. To top off this brilliant confession he let me know that he couldn't actually sleep with the girl he had been dating for a while. Had I ever considered cheating? Um no.

Why was I still there? Pat asked me for a steak quesedilla and I was waiting for it to come out. Restaurants have a knack for determining when your hungry or if you want to make a run for it, It takes extra long to cook. As I was waiting I was amusing myself by letting him know that he needed to see a psychologist and that he was a freak, I would say I'm not sure why he stayed but maybe he thought he still had a shot. ( I usually refuse to admit that he wanted to sleep with me, it's just too gross).

When the Quesadilla finally came I paid and as I was leaving (he walked me to the door, how nice) he said that he hoped he didn't offend me and that we should still be friends.

I Went home and Pat had a good laugh at my 'non-date'. Come to think of it so did my evil brother in law. I'm still not sure why I seemed to be the only one grossed out.

Financial Tuesday

Here is the status on the last of the student loans;

US1- 475.37
US2- 474.90
CP2- 753.55
US3- 950.21
CA1- 1952.05
CP1- 3821.59
US5-1242.28
US6- 1952.04
CP04- 7637.74
CP06- 8453.75

Their is a faint light somewhere in the distance.

Black and Tan

I woke up and got dressed this morning like every morning, except I was missing something. I chose a striped blouse in black/white/grey and black pants. Then I moved onto the rest of my routine. Shower, brush teeth, wash face exct.

As it neared time to go I packed my gym bag and breakfast, then went for my keys. They were nowhere to be found. Pat and I scrambled around the apartment looking, not only were they absent from all the usual places they were not in even the places that have only the slightest possibility that I would leave them there. Finally I gave up and went to use my spare key (car only) and as I picked up the gym bag there they were. it's funny that I checked in the bag and in and around my purse but skipped looking under the bag.

So I go to put on my shoes for the day and I grabbed my brown boots. I even remember thinking I needed to wear my brown boots today. Then off to work I went.

It was around lunch that I looked down at my feet and realized that I had out on my brown boots with a black outfit. two things occurred to me, 1) how did it take so long for me to look at my feet? 2) Why was I so convinced that I needed to wear the brown boots this morning, where was my internal fashion police.

Monday Blues

It would be great to say that I chased my Monday blues away by going to the gym and having a great work out. Unfortunately the gym was closed again, what's a girl to do?

Me? I went home and ate the remaining apple crisp. OK, I finished folding the laundry too. So in a way I got more done but I really missed my workout, maybe tomorrow.

The Weekend of Naps

This weekend I was just flat out lazy. I never take naps and yet I took one on Saturday and today. I slept for two hours tonight I shouldn't be able to sleep tonight but for some reason I think I'm safe. On the other hand the nap must have been just what I needed as I got allot of needed cleaning done once I woke up (and shook that groggy feeling).

Here's hoping for a quick and sleep filled week.

Lazy Day

Normally I;m pacing in my apartment waiting on the gym to open. Today I got up around the normal time and promptly sat on the couch with my laptop. 9 am came and went. I was playing and the gym was not on the forefrunt of my mind. Finally around 10 am I went, I enoyed my workout.

After showering and getting dressed I promptly did nothing. Normally I run errends right after my workout but again lazynss won out. I even took an early afternoon nap. I never take naps.

I did eventlly leave the apartment and go shopping for a few things most important is a purple shirt. There are not many purple blouses out there. Or i should say not many that I like. so the hunt continues.

The Problem with FREE

The gym at my complex is free (or included with rent anyway). It works for me most of the time. The equipment is newer and (most of it) is in fine working condition. I have only seen it very busy once or twice and lucky for me I have always beat the crowd and got a machine.

My problem lies in the fact that their hours are not always the best and sometimes they are late opening up. I waited 30 minutes outside of the gym for them to open and finally gave up. I really need to start working out by 630 as I need to also go home and cook and eat dinner. I can't eat then workout because my stomach will not allow it. For holidays they have signs posted, but days like last night I'm left waiting having no Idea if the gym is going to open. I get to waste time waiting. I have no idea if they opened after I left.

Is it too much to ask for that a Free Gym be open for it's posted hours, am I over reacting?

I have a Job

At least for now. The first round of layoffs have compleated. Though their are no plans for further layoffs, I think more may come. Maybe that is because I grew up inRrochester, between Kodak and Xerox layoffs seemed to be a way of life. The department was hit harder then I thought it would be, we lost 3 people out of 22.

Next round I'll be much more worried.

Vote Vote Vote!

I thought I would be smart and avoid lines by going in the morning. My optimism lead me to believe that I would get to the polls and out fast enough to still be pretty early to work. I have to laugh at myself even as I type that out. I should have known better.

I knew as I pulled in that It was going to be a crazy morning, cars were parked every where. their was a short line to even pull into the driveway. The line was fairly short (as far as I could see anyway). I was feeling pretty good. Even in the first 30 minutes we seemed to be moving.

Then I hit the movie room, it took 45 minutes to get around the perimeter and it was a fairly small room. Lucky for me just as we were leaving the room to continue the wait in the hallway again when they pulled k-z's aside and jumped us up front, I was soo happy to be standing in the gym that it was another 10 minutes before I realized that we hadn't moved.

I watched in Horror as the voting booths remained empty for a few minutes between voters, all because we couldn't register/sign in fast enough (sometimes the gentleman running the booths was slow and kept people waiting too). Having only 2 voting booths should have been the bottleneck. 2.5 hours later I successfully voted. Hours late to work I still have not heard from my boss.

I am not good at waiting I had CNN up for the morning on the election page but the polls don't close until 6-7 at the earliest. Results will take a long time, but I'll keep checking.

Today's steps;

the week of Layoffs

I figured we would hear with in the next 2 weeks. They are even faster then I thought all decisions will be made by Wednesday. I have my moments of nervousness, when my boss came out he seemed worried sic, weather it was for his own job or for those he was about to layoff I couldn't tell. A few of my co workers that I speak with more frequently were also pretty worried.

I'm not sure if my lack of nerves is some sort of sick optimism or if I just simply realize that worry won't ensure my future employment. It will be nice if I am just as calm even though the risk would be much greater.

Football Sunday

I shouldn't fight it any more. I don't mind football, actully I like it in limited amounts. Sitting on the couch eating wings isn't bad either. Though I do have a problem with spending my entire afternoon on the couch. At some point I have to at least go for a walk though that may change as the weather gets really cold. I wish the gym was open for more hours, I could work out earlier and then do a second workout later in the day, if it's a football day.

Never Too Early

After my morning workout I went shopping!! 3 More people off my Christmas list (and one isn't even born yet). Unfortunately labels are not on sale yet. I can only hope to remember who gets what by the time I get the labels, though it would be funny if mom got a counting caterpillar. I am now about half way done with my Christmas shopping. I dont' think I have ever been this early with the shopping, of course once I have them purchased I can't leave them unwrapped. So below is the photo of my wrapped gifts. If only I had a tree, but that's a line I don't think Pat would allow me to cross.

It has benefits to be done so early. My Mom is flying to Chicago and will take the gifts out for me. That saves me postage and ensuring that the gifts arrive on time. I wouldn't want to be late for a first Christmas even if he can't open his own gifts.