Monkeys is making me a drink me icon for my coffee, but he's busy at the moment, so I'm monkeying around myself with some of the Cafe Du Monde images I started earlier this week.

My mother got some gizmo that lets you record your vinyl albums to CD this christmas, so today I converted my Kyu Sakamoto, Johnny Horton, and Georgie Fame albums. Well, technically they were my mother's albums, but I stole them when I was about 13 and never looked back. It was a good day. :) We also finished watching the first season of BallyKissAngel.

I have TWO days left of the Christmas break. I am soooooooooooo sad. I do not want to go back to work. Tomorrow we are meeting some of Monkey's friends for lunch. They are in town visiting family and friends for the holidays. Then we are going to a friend's house for the evening - huzzah!! Friday Monkeys and I are doing major cleaning because our house is beyond a wreck. In a way it's kind of a date since it's the two of us, so I'm kind of excited. Saturday I'm helping my parents again during the day and that evening meeting with friends. Sunday I am doing NOTHING.



I have dishes to wash and laundry to do, yet I sit here making Kim Possible icons. I need help. Someone was doing a lot of "does her own stunts" icons, so I copied her slogan. :)

I have had an outstanding weekend so far!

First, I got to put my car in the shop to have the A/C finally fixed. Even though my warranty has finally expired, they still covered it since they ordered the part while it was under. (And probably because they were the ones who most likely broke it AND it took them two months to get back to me about the part. I think they forgot about me. I still adore them; they are lovely people.) While it was in, they also did an oil change and fixed my headlight. I dropped it off at 8 in the morning and got it back at 5 that evening. In the meantime, the plan was to hang out with my parents.

Plans change! Thursday night my cousin IM'd me saying she had to go to P'cola for work on Friday and could we meet for lunch. She lives in Tally, so I don't get to see her often. I was concerned about the timing, and I started babbling about cars and parents. She said "Well, my parents just got off the phone with your parents, and they are going to be visiting them tomorrow." I promptly called Mom to make sure they could still pick me up from the dealership, and we worked out modified plans for everyone (both sets of parents, me, Jay, Jay's kids) to meet up for lunch. It was a blast! I hung out all morning shopping with my moms, then we all met up in Destin for lunch followed by more window shopping. It was an awesome visit, loads of laughing and silliness. I was giving the kids horrible advice with a mostly straight face - after all, a godmother should look after their futures. We also had a bunch of crazy storms and awful traffic due to several (nonlethal) accidents, which caused additional hilarious conversations. I miss my family!

That evening we had dinner/movie plans with a friend. She brought along one of her friends who had driven up from South Florida and who turned out to be wicked funny. When I am more alert I should post more about her. Meanwhile I had sushi and got to watch Pass the Ammo & Saved.

Saturday I got to reunite with one of my best friends from high school. We reconnected thanks to Facebook, and I've been having a blast writing Shakespearean limericks and top ten lists with her. She carved out two hours of her time visiting relatives to have lunch with us at a local Greek restaurant. Again, there was tons of laughter and catching up and meeting the husbands and her adorable daughter.

After lunch, Monkeys and I went TV shopping. I think they guy we bought it from may actually outgeek Monkeys. Well, in some areas. We were there for maybe 2 hours, and only 30 minutes of it was spent buying the tv. The rest was a geekfest explosion. (In conversation we discovered he knew one of Monkey's fellow AF EOD guys.)

Tonight we have the Sat Night Gang over for Supernatural. We just finished watching four episodes. Now we are doing Garth M's Dark Place. So a perfect day!

Tomorrow my parents are coming up to watch that last Ms Marple again, because none of us had a clue about what was going on.

For anyone who actually uses this to keep track of me since I suck at writing real letters and only seem to manage a newsletter once a year now... Or possibly just for me as a kind of diary.

Work is alternating between crazy and there. Registration started today, so we're getting the busloads of people and enough paperwork to overrun a landfill. We are also shorthanded because there's been some real tragedy in our office. One person fell and broke some ribs (he's still been coming in half days), one person fell and broke an elbow (she's still coming in to work), one person is out having surgery this week, one is in and out because her daughter and her husband are going through medical issues, another lost her brother, and of course there's my coworker who's house burnt down the other week (she's back at work). Anyway, since we are at least one person and occasionally three people down, periodically I've been having to work the counter instead of my job. I am glad to help, but it does seriously impact my job and it's hard! OMG the phone never stops ringing and there *is* such a thing as a stupid question. :)

July 5th/Sunday was my godson's baptism! He did great. There was a reception after the mass, so I got to reunite with my friend's family - some of whom I hadn't seen since her wedding. I've known them since 9th grade, and I have lots of happy memories around their dining room table. :)

July 9th/Thursday was a coworker's 30th birthday. They "Over The Hilled" her office, several of us baked brownies (her favorite), and we all dressed in black. Other than the brownies, she was *not* happy.Then we had a power outage for 4 hours, so we got to just sit around in the darkness and chat. At one point I jumped in Karyn's office, yelled "I've had nothing to eat today but 3 brownies", did a Sugar Rush jig in the doorway, and ran away. Another time Carolina was singing a birthday song about Karyn and the moon with accompanying elaborate hand motions, but Karyn wouldn't come out of her office, so after every line Carolina would pause and yell at her "Hey, I'm singing to you here!" Finally, at the end of the song Karyn suddenly burst from her office in a single jump, landing like a gymnist, and yelled, "It's Karyn!" After work we went out for drinks, except I was driving so I had yellowfin tuna sushimi. Karyn is possibly my favoritest person on the planet because she makes the best faces and says outrageous and silly things. I want to be her when I grow up. Except she's younger than me.

July 10th/Friday was Dad's birthday. I've been spending Fridays with my parents anyway, but John took off work a little early so we could watch some British stuff together then have dinner at Logan's. (Dad's choice.) Then we walked around some stores for a while to burn calories. It was a lot more fun than this sounds. :)

July 11/Saturday. Despite the sad reasons, we got to spend Saturday with our beloved Soberchef. Continued prayers for her family and that's all I'm saying about that. We also met up with Joe and Zinger at Zaxby's and played some neat games. Despite the groans, I liked Martinis and Men. It was goofy, but I loved the artwork and the idea of matchmaking. I was impressed with R-Eco's competitive recycling. I didn't win the game, but I did better than I expected. My favorite was Tichu, but that may be because I had Joe for a partner and he rocks that game. I really want to play it again, so long as I'm not playing with (or against) anyone aggressively competitive and preferably with someone like Joe who makes outrageous bets and flamboyant moves. Zinger promised we could partner next time, so I'm looking forward to that. :)

Okay, end update.

Oh - and GI Joe actually looks *good*.

Last week was super busy (Holy Week, first week of registration, and workshop). Plus, immediately after work Friday we were leaving for GARF. So when we got a call from Monkey’s nephew on Saturday saying they were coming down for the week and would arrive on Monday, I wasn’t thrilled with the timing. Saturday was Easter Vigil and there was no way I could do anything but church related stuff that day. My parents were spending the night, and we had plans for Sunday – dying eggs, watching movies. I had from 3pm to midnight to get ready for company and pack for GARF since I wouldn’t be able to pack during the week. I also had a steadily worsening ear infection. Oh, and Monkeys had to work late a couple nights that week prepping for an upcoming TDY and I had classes on Tuesday. Really bad timing. I did manage to find a few moments at work to print out info on the Gulfarium, some water parks and go carts rides, area beaches and museums, etc. so they’d have something to do during the day while we were at work since we couldn’t take off to show them ourselves.

They arrived before we got home from work, so it was good that I had the bed made up for them Sunday night! When I got home they were completely zonked from the drive (they drove straight down), so it gave me time to run to the store to pick up a prescription and buy them some sodas. That’s when I discovered I didn’t get my wallet back from Mom on Saturday. Ooops! No sodas, no pills. Mom brought me my wallet Tuesday, so I cut yoga to get medicines and some supplies for them before going to Catechism. I was not going to cut that. Despite the visit’s timing causing Monkeys and me all sorts of work/GARF/when can we do laundry?!?!?! stress, it was a *good* visit.

Monday I cooked dinner (which they lied and said was good!) then we watched YouTube stuff. I got to share a lot of the things Matt/Raven/Toaster/etc had shared with me. Tuesday they went to the Gulfarium and the beach and got crazy sunburned! Ha! But they had a blast. That night Monkeys made spaghetti and they watched movies until I got home from class. Then Bobby made us smoothies and the kids showed us pictures from their day and loads of pictures of their 6-month-old. Wednesday all four of us went out for pizza and Bobby and I played pool at some crazy biker bar. I suck at pool, but it was fun!! I actually almost made a comeback for both games, which was a relief that I didn’t look like a total loser. The bikers at the other table and I kept nearly bumping into each other. Thankfully, although they looked tough they were very polite. Apparently Celia and Monkeys had a good time, too. From where they were sitting watching us they could also overhear a drunk, older man hitting on the young girlfriend of one of the pool playing bikers. They did impressions of pickup attempts all the way home, but they also gave the old guy credit for being very brave (or stupid) to risk the biker’s anger and to use such cheesy lines. That evening we played Wii until late in the evening. Thursday we took them Goofy Golfing and then to my mom’s for dinner. It was cute seeing them eat flan for the first time. Friday they hung out at our house until we got home for work so that they could say goodbye to us, then they headed home to WI. They are both incredibly good kids, so we really enjoyed their company. I love that they wanted to show us pictures of their house _{(which was bigger and better than mine!!)} and their new daughter _{(it was their first time away from her and it was driving them nuts!}) and that they wanted to tell us about their lives and show us things they liked. I loved that they asked us questions and wanted us to share our lives in return. Not all 20 year olds are like that, you know? They were always quick to thank us for anything we did for them while down there, and they brought their own food/drinks to try not to be moochy (though we insisted they could have anything in our kitchen for their breakfasts/lunches and tried to make their dinners). We made them promise to come back with more notice so that we could actually take off time from work and hang out more.

We’re going up to WI in October, and they have offered to let us stay with them if Monkey’s dad’s house gets too crowded. They are even going to schedule their daughter’s 1st birthday party around our visit if possible so that we can attend. Sometimes I feel bad for Monkeys that his family lives so far away, but at least when he does get to see him the distance doesn’t seem to affect the affection.

Okay, maybe not drink from it. But I did get to try to use one – they put out a lot of pressure! Last Friday we had our FACC Region 1 Workshop. Months ago several of us responded to our region president’s call for help with the workshop. I offered to do check-in because I thought it would just be an hour out of my day so as to not interfere with my real job while still letting me be “helpful.” Apparently others had the same idea, so she redistributed our offers to other tasks. I was told I was to run the mixer (a game) which meant I was in charge of getting prizes, determining how to run the game, and standing up in front of the 80 anticipated guests to present it. Not what I originally had in mind. Also, I ended up being one of the event photographers, the gift wrapper for the presenter awards, and helped with the goody bags. So I ended up being there all day. But it was a GREAT day.

( My part went great!! (short/boring) )

( What makes up a great workshop? )
Anyway, to sum:
* Day off from work
* Didn’t have an epic fail experience for my portion of the workshop, instead got compliments
* Excellent speakers/topics
* Kickass Bohemian Rhapsody done to bizarre choreography
* Played with fire hose in sunshine
* Two chocolate chip cookies and an ice cream sundae
* Met lots of nice people as my role required me to interact more than I normally do at meetings
* Won a recognition award for my contribution
* Won the best of the door prizes
* Got to bring back cookies for my office and be the hero there

I also felt proud for contributing and for the fact that I did a good thing for the school’s image (it was the highest reviewed workshop of recent years, our school got lots of praise) since it's odd time for the school right now.

Then home, hugged our company good bye as they headed off to Wisconsin, loaded up Toaster’s car with our stuff, and headed off to GARF! WooT!

Who needs rest!

So I broke down and went to the doctor's office today. They managed to work me in to see a PA at 2, so I skipped lunch and took an hour leave. That meant I still managed to get any priority work done before leaving - yay!

Last night I got maybe an hour of sleep because my ears were hurting too much. It's been like that for three days now, and the pain has been progressively increasing. The doctor didn't seem over concerned about my ears (they are bulging from excess fluids, but not yet infected - if the fluid doesn't clear then they'll be infected). He was, however, impressed with my throat. Apparently my throat looked awful, and he didn't understand why I wasn't complaining about that. He said it looked like this had been building up for some time, and I admitted it started about two weeks ago (maybe more), but it hadn't bothered me until my ears started throbbing. I have weird pain tolerances. Some things I can stand, but ears and back take me down. :( Anyway, I have two prescriptions. One I filled today, and it should clear up the fluids. If I don't feel better in three days I have a prescription for antibiotics because by then it probably will be an infection. Apparently I caved just in time to prevent it from getting really nasty. With registration and road trip upcoming, I knew this was my only chance to take leave, so I'm glad I caved.

Today was supposed to be the day my parents came up for lunch, so instead my parents came with me to the doctor's office! It was like being a kid again. :) Then we went to Walgreens and to Captain D's. I got the grilled tilapia and broccoli and green beans, but I also ate some of my mom's little crispy fried fish bits, a few of her fries, and my dad's hush puppies - when I got home I had to wash my face from the exposure to fish grease. :) Totally worth it. Captain D's actually has a fancy gated table with cloth, china, wine glasses, and silverware like in that commercial. Bizarre. Then Mom and I went to Big Lots and WalMart and got stuff for Easter (they are going to spend the night after Easter Vigil and Sunday we're dying eyes and eating scones while watching British shows) while Dad went on to my house to read as he was not interested in our wanderings. It was awesome, because I got to see them for about three hours instead of our usual one. Plus, Monkeys got home by the time we finished AND his new uke arrived, so he played for us before my parents headed home.

I think today was a good day. I'm tired and a bit stupid, but I have medicine and should be on the mend soon. I didn't fall behind on work stuff, so I'm treading water there. I found my wallet - last night I discovered it had fallen out of my purse. This morning I found it on the floor under my desk. I spilt a cup of hot tea on my desk, keyboard, bag, and floor - but it somehow missed my clothes and something on top of my bag soaked it all up so nothing under it got wet. In messing around cleaning the tea from under my desk I discovered my outlet had gotten unplugged which is why my microfische reader wasn't working all last week - so my tea accident had all sorts of benefits - 1) it fixed my lamp, microfische reader, & tea warmer, 2) it gave me a legitimate reason to wrap FACC presents at work as I had to wait for my keyboard to drain, 3) I discovered it was yucky tea, so I'm glad half of it spilled, 4) it got a laugh from my coworkers, and 5) I actually cleaned my desk. I did two tasks at work I had been dreading, so they are out of the way. I got to hang out with my parents. I got several happy or funny emails from friends. I'm excited about mass tonight. There were lots of little nice things that happened. So today is a good day. I'm just too tired to appreciate it. But it's a happy tired.

Our cat Artemis had been having trouble eating for a while now, and we were under the impression from our vet that it was because of her teeth. The vet was going to do something to her teeth, but her protein levels were off, so he had us switch to a different kind of cat food for older cats to try to settle the levels thereby allowing whatever surgical process was needed. She didn't like that cat food at all, and ate less and less until it got to a point where she wasn't eating anything at all. That prompted another vet visit. This time she stayed at the vets office for four and a half days, with the unsettling prospect that we might not get her back. We finally got to bring her home on Monday, but she was *not* herself. She showed little interest in anyone or anything, she did not move around much and when she did she was extremely unsteady, and she continued not to eat or drink. We've been force feeding her watered down cat food through a syringe twice a day. She manages to spill or spit up half, so it's a messy, stinky, and all around unpleasant process. We also have to force down two pills and a syringe of whitish liquid (an antacid) twice a day. Finally, because she isn't getting enough liquid through food and water, we have to hydrate her with an IV twice a day. It has been a horrible emotional roller coaster, and I've been steeling myself by saying "just make it to Monday" when we take her back to the vet. Words cannot describe how hard this has been and how much we have cried this week. Last Monday I honestly did not think she would make it to next Monday, and I prayed she just made it long enough to get past Monkeys's belated birthday party, so that he didn't have any associations with that. (At least it wasn't his actual birthday...)

Monday through Wednesday I didn't see much hope. Thursday was a little better as she drank some water on her own and seemed to acknowledge us more when we went in the bedroom. Friday was a great day. She preened herself for the first time since she got home, and she messed with her scratching post. I was stunned. It was the first time she actively expressed any interest in the world. It was also the first time I stopped worrying about her making it to Monday. The food and IV seemed to go more easily that day, too. Yesterday was amazing. She left the bedroom, she played with Cassie's scratching post, she "ate" three syringes of food, she drank water on her own, and she finally started seeking out people to pet her. We were having a birthday party for Monkeys (which we called off and reinstated twice over the course of the week out of stress), and I had been planning on letting friends know to use this as an opportunity to go into the bedroom to say their goodbyes to Artemis. Artemis is about 15 years old and many of our friends knew her as a kitten, so it was hard for them, too. We still sent people in there, but it was much less somber as this no longer seemed like a last chance to say goodbye. In fact, Artemis came out of the room and wandered amongst us for a while. (She was probably trying to sneak out in the garage - our biggest fear is she goes out there for a quiet, solitary place to end - but still she did wander all through the house!) This morning has been awesome, as well. When I woke up, she was an inch from my face, just like the old days!! She hadn't done that all week, so it was like she was finally starting to be Artemis again, instead of the zombie cat we brought home. Everything that had made her Artemis had been missing, but now we have started seeing bits of her personality showing through the fog.

We know this is just temporary. We know when we take her in on Monday, if the tests show no improvement to her protein levels we will be saying goodbye very soon. Even if the tests are improved, we'll still be saying goodbye this year. But I have found a lot of solace in the fact that today I held the real Artemis. It's funny how the thing that annoyed me most of all - her frequent attempts to seemingly smother me in the night by sleeping on my face - is the thing that made me most happy.

My head is killing me. :(

Saw this lamp on debgeisler's livejournal from Frank Buchwald. and fell in love.




Jeff Goldblum is joining the cast of Law & Order Criminal Intent. I'm so excited. I love VDO/Goren more than words, but Goldblum is a great actor, and I miss his shortlived show Raines. Plus, Monkeys is a big Goldblum fan, so he might watch with me.

Got the guest bedroom almost ready (one more blanket in the wash). I'm 99% packed. Can't really clean the bathroom/living room/kitchen as we are still using them, but have a plan for Wednesday so that S₂AK should be able to walk into a welcoming home.

Met with a friend's mom and sister-in-law to discuss shower planning ideas. I'm not used to cigarette smoke, and they managed eight cigarettes in less than two hours in a small room, so my head is killing me. Still, we set a date and time, divided out the food responsibilities, settled on a theme (mostly) and games, and discussed decorations. Her mother and sister-in-law never heard of Morgan Le Fay (not that she'll be in the shower, but I was trying to think of names of famous fairies).

Three days!

Now, I'm off to track down some Tylenol.

I am tired of feeling sick.

On the brighter side, I had a very interesting day yesterday.

1) I got photographed by a local reporter for a "man in the street" poll. The paper is doing a bit on "What do you think of the ban on fireworks...blah blah blah." I said something very stupid, and I was wearing some crazy arm warmers because it was cold, so I am convinced I'm going to be fired for giving the college a bad name. Ha!

2) The lady at the counter at McDonalds may have hit on me. I'm not sure. When she handed me a fork for my salad she kind of slammed it into my hand then held it there for several seconds. As she was holding it there, she either squeezed my hand a bit or massaged it; I wasn't quite sure what she was doing. She also said something to me, but I was so focused on trying to figure out what was being done to my hand I didn't quite hear what she said. I thought it was something like "Now you have a fork!" , so I may have said "yay, that's awesome!" then ran away.

3) I forgot there was a new traffic light and treated an intersection as if it were still a stop sign. Thankfully there were loads of cars coming which stalled me there for some time AND the car behind me also went immediately after I pulled out, so there is a big chance the light had turned green at the time I made my turn.

4) My best friend since birth emailed to tell me her son is doing much better after having been hit by a truck.

5) My best friend in high school emailed me to confirm our lunch date before our HIGH SCHOOL REUNION TOUR! Woot!!! I'm so old!!!

6) Class was great - I got mocked for my arm warmers, I passed our test, and I turned in a paper that used the words "crotch of fire" at least three times.

Bring on tomorrow!

There is the most lovely sounding thunder rumbling in the background.

Yay! They have an easy "Random Journal" link!! I've missed my random journal reading. I found the most interesting people that way. And odd.

Meanwhile, were someone to randomly find my journal *right now* they would find a boring "Day in the Life" type post that means nothing to anyone who doesn't know me and isn't already interested in my life. Heck, even my friends probably aren't interested in this work and school stuff...

( Work Work Workity Work )

We're taking Writing & Grammar this summer. My class notes read like church music. We're diagraming sentences where people are being called all sorts of names. And I now know that in the sentence Bill called Mary a crack ho. Mary is the Direct Object and ho is the Object Complement. ( It's an awesome class. )

* grrrrr to html and LJ codes and multiple edits just for formatting
* I need to post about the road trips (two GARF, one Wrath of Con, and some events w/friends)
* And So You Think You Can Dance is On - LOVE THIS SHOW. I'm amazed by what people can do with their bodies, it's so beautiful. I'm thinking about taking Tap Dance next semester...
* THREE Doctor Who's this weekend! Wo0T! And YouTube Saturday night with friends.
* Reading some great books right now.

i do not feel adequately prepared for tomorrow.
i'm not sure how long my guest speaker will talk - but probably an hour which is longer than i expected. at first i was thinking "easy night!" and was going to do the midterm review and be done. then i remembered i skipped memory when we did the listening/note taking/memory chapter so i have added a 45 minute memory overview BUT am not sure if it will really be 45 minutes or if it will take a bit longer. i can't afford that because of the midterm review game which HAS to be done. so i'll have to on the fly figure out when and what to cut from my memory spiel which i do not have memorized.
another extemporaneous night - which i hate.

but i have been treating it as an easy night and have found the time to ride my bike for an hour each night this week so far (Sun/Mon/Tues) and have managed to have the whatsface tension adjuster dooby on a higher level than i usually do. i had to because i finally reached my WW goal weight last friday than promptly on Saturday ate more at a family reunion than i ever have in my entire life. so i have to wrangle my way back to my Friday weight so that i don't get in trouble. If i can stay at or below my goal weight for six weeks than i get to go to the meetings for free!! huzzah!

i've also found time to read some of PD Wodehouse's Leave it to Psmith which is brilliant. that souldn't surprise me after all the Geeves and Wooster I've seen.

my new job has "started" in that i have taken over the BAS letters/admissions and the BSN letters - which at this point isn't a lot, maybe 5 or 10 a week. I also did a training session with the people that will be taking over my evaluations. but they can't start yet because they have to hire someone to take over their old jobs and train them. so at this point I'm still doing all my old job. it's not bad, though. and when the evaluations do get taken from me i'll get more responsiblities with the bachelors degrees.

yeah, boring post i know. but it catches Sarah & SoberChef & DBD up on my life since i haven't seen fit to write an actual letter!! Sorry!! Loves you!!

well, like toaster, i haven't posted in a while.

Monkeys is peeking around hte corner saying "MLR - come to bed. come to bed MLR. It's magical land of joy and sleepiness and sleepinessness" YOU MUST GO TO YOUTUBE AND WATCH THIS. i don't know how to embed the video.
Candy Mountain Charlie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5im0Ssyyus
If the link doesn't work go to Google and type in Candy Mountain Charlie

Anyways, here's what i've been up to lately... I've been busy!

busy worrying - because Monkey's company's contract didn't get renewed and since the last time that happened the new company coming in laid of 20% of the workforce we were a bit afraid that we'd discover Monkey's would lose his job just in time for Christmas. so lots of fretting and praying and being anxious for the past few weeks (and to some extent, months) but he just finished his interviews and got hired on with the new company so all is well and Christmas is saved.

busy with work - i just finished a project involving the changes to state recommended credit for exams (CLEP, AP, etc) and presented it at the two registration meetings with about 30 people each session. that was scary but i was proud of me. and i've been really busy working on getting ready for my class. if monkeys was gonna lose his job i wanted to make sure i had some extra income coming in so for that and other reasons i volunteered to teach.

plus we've started up the reading group again on Mondays (yay!), still doing movie nights on Tuesdays (yesterday we watched Brotherhood of the Wolf), Wednesdays are mandolin lessons (i'm getting better at improv! but considering how aweful i was when i started that's not saying much), Yoga on Thursdays (cuz life's been stressful lately...).

ha! weeks without a post and when i finally get a chance it's a bit boring.
anyone watching Heroes? I love Hiro!!!!