GA
The WeatherPixie

Showcase of a Shattered Mind (2006)

brighten j'lynn's day with an

current rantings or rantings of days past... 2005 or 2004 or 2003

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The WeatherPixie


tuesday - 12december2006 - 14:36
i don't do many of these kinds of posts but i've always been interested in personality quiz kinds of things. i always loved stuff like the myers-briggs the and the cube (yes i found a website with it; no i don't want to post the link because it's a horribly annoying geocities page with crappy loud music that you can't turn off). i find it amazing how accurate this kind of stuff can be.
What Color is Your Brain?

GREEN:

At work or in school: I work best by myself. I like to focus on my ideas until my desire for understanding is satisfied. I am easily bored if the subject holds no interest to me. Sometimes, it is hard for me to set priorities because so many things are of interest.
With friends: I may seem reserved. Although my thoughts and feelings run deep, I am uneasy with frequent displays of emotion. I enjoy people who are interesting and of high integrity.
With family: I am probably seen as a loner because I like a lot of private time to think. Sometimes, I find family activities boring and have difficulty following family rules that don't make sense to me. I show love by spending time with my family and sharing ideas and interests.
Take this quiz!


monday - 11december2006 - 09:39
we had a good drive south friday night. even though we hit atlanta rush hour and even though we got distracted and ended up going straight through atlanta instead of our normal bypass, the trip only took about thirty minutes longer than usual. not bad. saturday, my boy played with my sis's boy detangling, repairing, and putting up christmas lights on the house. oh yeh, they were both happy campers after five hours of that. i accompanied my sister and niece to a birthday party at an art school where all the kiddies made penguin sculptures. very fun. later in the afternoon, randal and i packed up the kids and took off for cocoa beach to watch the shuttle launch while my sis and bro-n-law went on their anniversary date. we got to cocoa and stopped at mcdonalds for dinner. this was apparently a great move on our part because the kids were very much wanting some izes of their very own. we then went to the beach and ran around in the sand for a while, chased some big birds in the water, and, when the bird ran off, we just chased the water. we then got out on the end of the pier and waited for the space shuttle discovery to launch. it was beautiful. growing up, i had always watched launches from outside our house and they were pretty and fun to watch. i had never seen one this close (yes, i realize we were a good twenty miles away but with traffic considerations, that was as close as we needed to be). my only disappointment was that i really was expecting to hear the rumble even as far as we were but we didn't. others who had watched launches from the pier before said that they usually did hear the rumble but the wind and direction of the shuttle were conspiring against us that night. i felt bad that we told the kids that we would hear the rumble and didn't. i felt like we let them down but they seemed to enjoy it anyhow. they even got their 15 minutes of fame when a small local paper interviewed them to get their reactions and then posted footage on their website. i'll have you know that we ARE the cool aunt and uncle. oh yeh. it's nice that their parents got proof that we took them where we said we were taking them. yesterday, we got up and went for a nice 4+ mile walk around the neighborhood and came back to the yummy smells of brunch. we then headed out to see katie and her son. i was glad that randal got to see the one-eyed, belly-floating shubunkin fish i had told him about. it's just freaky. we then went and visited with my brother and sis-n-law for a while. it was a nice visit complete with a yummy dinner.


friday - 08december2006 - 10:04
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, SIS & BRO-N-LAW!!! well it's the holidays so why not stir up a hornets nest, right? intrinsically, i'm a very non-confrontational person. sometimes, you just get tired of being walked on. on the bright side, we head south today. i even managed to get all of our gifts wrapped up last night (are those three new rolls of tape gone yet?). here's to good times with family and friends.


thursday - 07december2006 - 09:37
i feel some better about the matter. last night, we got our tree up and decorated and i decorated the mantel. that will be the extent of our inside decorations and we probably won't have time again for outside decorations but at least we have something. and we finally have a tree topper this year so the tree looks so much nicer with our very pretty star on it. i also got all of the gifts out and ready to wrap last night but then i had to go on a frantic search for my tissue paper stash - where the heck did it go?! and no tape to be found anywhere - where the *#%(&#@! does it go?! every bleepin year i buy scotch tape and it disappears; how in the name of christmas does that happen?!!! so i have to buy some tissue paper today, even though i have a huge stash of it somewhere. and i have to buy some tape today, even though i know it is going to mysteriously evaporate as soon as i get my last gift wrapped. i wonder if i'll have any time for christmas cookie fun this year.


tuesday - 05december2006 - 15:42
i'd apologize but my faithful reader is already used to my frequent hiatuses. not much been going on with me anyhow. we had a nice thanksgiving visit from my sis and family. we had planned on taking the kids to play in some snow but apparently 70° days are not the most conducive to snow-making. the kids were disappointed; i was disappointed. however, we made the best of it and went ice skating in the park instead. i don't think the kids had ice skated before so they enjoyed it. i would have enjoyed it more if the skates hadn't been so uncomfortable but we had a good time. we adults all took our turns helping jd-the-youngest skate away from the walls some. the kids didn't seem to mind the pools of water where the ice was quickly melting in the 70° sun (not even jd-the-middle-child whose pants were soaked from repeated falls in the melted areas). i was glad that they had fun and didn't even complain about not playing in snow. we also spent a day in a new area of atlanta for shopping and a movie. last week, my day off came back to bite me with a vengeance. monday morning i came in backed up with twice as many cases as i usually stay backed up. and if that wasn't stressful enough, i got a call from my boss saying that i was going to be training some people the rest of the week. don't get me wrong, i desperately want to get someone trained so that i have some help (and backup for when i'm out or on vacation), but it sure was hard to take the time when i was so backed up and then get even more backed up. this past weekend, we went to wedowee for a quick visit. next weekend we head south again so that the weekend after that we can do our disney christmas thing. these last couple of months have just been completely booked up. and we still have a week of vacation we need to figure out how to use before the end of the year (yeh, i probably need to get one of those people fully trained before i can do that). so, in summary: stress-level = high. down-time = little. apathy = growing. holidays = approaching much faster than i have time to prepare for.


monday - 20november2006 - 09:26
home again. saturday was a busy, busy day. i attended a surprise baby shower and then went on the aforementioned visits. i got to see katie's adorable punkins that she has lovingly grown as well as her upside-down-floating-fishie. and her five year old flirt proclaimed to by my boyfriend and told me i have the most beautiful eyes. could he be any cuter? i think not. from there, i went to see my sis-in-law (my brother was up in my neck of the woods instead of at home where i could see him). i was highly impressed by their new place. great remote location, beautiful view, excellent setup. by the time i made it back to my sis' house, i was pretty exhausted. the family, with my boy helping, was decorating the christmas tree (had to get a head start since they'll be up here for turkey day weekend). we were supposed to get together with jenny again but she said she and her new bf were having an evening in. which was actually fine with me because i was exhausted. and did i mention i was exhausted? we sent the kids to bed and had a movie night instead. yesterday, randal woke me up to get an early start home. the drive took longer than it should have due to a sit-down breakfast stop, a sick-stop, and an extra gas stop. we made it home at a decent time and i was able to get started on the company cleaning. i also managed to finally cut my boy's hair (not quite as eventful as cutting my cousin's hair - not even any paparazzi) so he looks like a person again. boy, he was shaggy. i have tonight, tomorrow night, and maybe a little bit of wednesday afternoon to get the house in order (not much left to do there as, somehow, it is actually mostly clean) and the shopping done. yay!!! company's coming!!!!


friday - 17november2006 - 16:41
what a week it has been. on the bright side, i got to see a very pregnant friend on tuesday for lunch. that was fun and exciting. wednesday, i missed poker night at my my cousin's due to catastrophe at my sissy's. i was happy that i could help out some but it was just one of those one-thing-on-top-of-another kind of weeks at their house. my poor sissy. i did go to my cousin's thursday night for dinner and ear- hair-cutting. right now, i'm waiting for my boy to come back to me and then we're going to head over to my dad's for dinner. at least he feeds his i.t. staff. tomorrow, i have a secret event to attend and then i'm gonna swing by and see my friend katie and then my brother and sis-in-law's new place.


monday - 13november2006 - 13:28
my boy has left me. i think this will be the first time since we met that we'll be in the same town and sleeping apart. big meanie. it was mostly a good weekend. saturday morning we got up and went to my nephew's sporting event, which my dad and his wife also attended. they the followed us back to the house and we all had a nice lunch together while watching slideshows of dad's memory card and mine. it was a nice visit. saturday evening we were down to just one child so us five went out to dinner and then the big four stayed up to watch a terrible movie. yesterday i did some secret shopping with jenny and we met up with my cousin and cousin-in-law for lunch. this afternoon, i dropped my boy off with a couple coworkers to be taken away from me. tonight, my sissy's boy will be leaving so it'll just be us and the kids.


saturday - 11november2006 - 18:07
die mütterliche situation wird beendet.


friday - 10november2006 - 15:26
it's been a migrainy week. started tuesday, still feeling it today. on the bright side, i'm headed south this afternoon. godawful heat, here i come!


monday - 06november2006 - 15:56
i wonder what person in chandler, az knows me by my maiden name. be thou friend or foe? how about sending me an to say hi? not much going on around here (shocker, i know). we spent the first half of saturday at six flags. it was actually kind of nice because it was the last day of the season and only for season passholders so there were virtually no lines at all. we rode all of our favorite rides multiple times with nothing more than a five minute wait (for the front, of course). we even ran into a coworker and a wedoweean cousin. after we were through with our favorites, we left and headed to hubby's softball practice. when we got home, hubby went to a coworker's to watch football and i treadmilled. sunday was a recuperative day from all that activity on a saturday.


friday - 03november2006 - 08:46
i know that my cousin is the much bigger checker-of-headlines but i happened upon this article yesterday and it sparked some feelings in me. luckily, these pages are called my rants so nobody will expect much more than the disorganized stream of ineloquent thoughts to folllow.
Spurred by reports of suicidality in pediatric antidepressant users, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration two years ago slapped a "black box" warning on popular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs such as Celexa, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft, warning of the possible risk.

But now a new study has found that this class of drugs may actually reduce the risk of suicide in troubled children and adolescents.

The finding has some experts worried that the "black box" warning will actually cause youth suicide rates to rise.

when i was in seventh grade, i was put on zoloft. this was before they bothered to think about the effects of anti-depressants on kids. for me, it was the worse ten months of my life. i'm talking real low point. after about two weeks of taking the pills, my every waking thought revolved around suicide. it was terrible. it took me ten months to convince my mom to stop making me take them. and i suppose i'm one of the lucky ones since i never successfully acted upon the constant barage of macabre thoughts. for years, i was angry that they would put kids on medications without knowing how those medications would affect a child. when the buzz started going around about increased risk of suicide in children on anti-depressants, i felt vindicated. i was adamently against the use of anti-depressants. now that i've grown up, i've known a couple very close friends who were able to ameliorate their lives through the use of anti-depressants. they may not have worked for me - and i'm really not sure anymore whether it is because i was a kid or if my reaction would be the same now - but i am glad that they work for some people. granted, i do not know of any child success stories, but i can no longer completely discount that they exist. the argument presented by the article seems a little inane to me now. i've become more of a believer that everyone reacts to things differently. it's the same with many kinds of medications, so why not with anti-depressants? it could very well be that my chemical makeup does not react well with the alterations that anti-depressants would make upon it. if i were to go on zoloft again today, i could react the exact same way that i did thirteen years ago. i'm certainly not willing to risk testing the theory, especially since i don't feel that i need it anymore. but i'm sure that not everyone would be affected the same way i was. when a friend of mine first said she was going on "happy pills" several years ago, i tried very hard to talk her out of it because of my prejudice. however, it turned out that they had a terrific effect on her, and there are times that i wish she would consider going back on them. according to this article, suicide is the "fifth leading cause of death in children and adolescents aged 5 to 14. In the 10-to-14 age group, suicide was the third leading cause of death behind accidents and cancer." if there is a chance that anti-depressants could help some of those kids, by all means they should try. but they should also be monitored very closely to see how they react to it. if parents are concerned enough to put their kids on medication, you would think that they would follow through to see how they react to it. you wouldn't give a kid penicillin and ignore when they break out in hives. i think a lot of the problem is that parents put their kids on these pills and then just assume that they've fixed the problem and stop worrying about it. it seems to me that once the decision to medicate has been reached, that's when the real worrying begins.


wednesday - 01november2006 - 10:50
my cousin is that house around the holidays. i envy her because, as a kid, i always dreamed i'd be that house. turns out i'm just a crummy boring adult. i can make all kinds of excuses - never home, no time, too expensive, insert other inane excuse here - but the fact is that i'm just not the fun adult i always thought i would be. what a disappointing realization. could i change this? maybe. will i? i doubt it. such is life. halloween of 2004 (from which i apparently came away with the same feelings) we had less than twenty trick-or-treaters. last year, we spent halloween in hawaii so i don't know if the neighborhood trick-or-treating picked up any or not. last night, figuring there wouldn't be much action, we only had four bags of candy to give out. at approximately 19:30, after close to seventy kids, we ran out and had to turn our lights out. how embarrassing to be that house. and what's worse, toward the end of our candy supply we were trying to hold out for our neighbor kids so that we could at least give them candy. just as they were crossing the street toward our house, three car loads (including a huge hay wagon) pulled up and kids galore came running up. so not only did we run out of candy with a huge rush of kids right there waiting, but our neighbors were too late. we actually ran inside and grabbed cans of soda to give to the ones we ran out on (including the neighbors). it was a shameful halloween indeed.


tuesday - 31october2006 - 14:22
HAPPY 3rd ANNIVERSARY, COUSIN and COUSIN-IN-LAW!!! long time, no updates. i survived my boy's absence. i did pretty well too. i treadmilled ninety+ minutes every night (turns out that my treadmill shuts off at one hundred minutes, which seemed like a nice thing until i turned it on the next night and it went berserk on me; i'll be sticking to ninety minutes from here on out). i spent two evenings shopping at kohls and managed to get more than half of our christmas shopping taken care of. i made a spontaneous blood donation friday night on my way into sams to get a gallon of milk. since i've always wanted to donate blood and somehow never managed to do so, i felt very proud of my donation. i intend to drag hubby with me next time. in-laws decided not to come over friday night but that turned out to be a good thing since hubby's flight was delayed and he ended up getting in after midnight. in-laws did decide to show up saturday so we waited around for them to get there and then we all loaded up and headed to the blue ridge parkway. we barely managed to find a couple of rooms to stay in saturday night in henderson, nc. sunday morning we ran up on a very nice and unexpected waterfall on the side of the road while we made our way back to the parkway. it was beautiful. we also were pleased to find much more leaf color in our sunday driving (yes, we know that we were at least a week past peak). we drove the parkway almost to virgina, turned around and hit the interstate back to our house late sunday night. monday, i took mom-in-law shopping (welcome to kohls!) while hubby took his dad and nephew to anna ruby falls. monday evening, after the in-laws had left for home, i collapsed on the couch.


tuesday - 24october2006 - 15:17
my boy has left me! and like that's not bad enough, the big meanie is going to be playing in the snow without me. sure, he says he'll be working but i know the truth. i don't know where he packed the saucer sled but i know he snuck it in his suitcase or pocket or something. meanie! the weekend was an uneventful one in wedowee. he took his niece to the homecoming game friday night (which i found amusing because when i talked to my dad sunday night, he and his wife also arbitrarily attended a high school football game that night) and i went out to dinner with his parents. we got back home late sunday evening. last night, before packing to leave me, he helped me get the house good and clean since there's a decent chance that his family will be coming friday night, probably before his flight even gets in. at least i don't have to clean the house all by myself. although i do still need to tackle the bathrooms. anyhow, as my customary way of creating a silver lining to being abandonned by my hubby, i'll be stocking up on junk food this afternoon (good thing he doesn't leave me very often). on the bright side, this should also ensure that i guilt myself into doing plenty of treadmilling while he's gone. i haven't treadmilled since thursday because we were gone for the weekend and i ended up having to poke another hole in my toenail and made it hurt all over again. it was feeling better last night but there was much cleaning to be done. tonight, it's me, the treadmill, and maybe ben & jerry too!


thursday - 19october2006 - 15:24
i heart my treadmill! last night we got home from work and randal went to mow the lawn so i got on my treadmill. i walked for ninety minutes, five miles. the first forty-five minutes i passed by talking to my dad, the last forty-five minutes i watched a csi rerun. this morning, i woke up at 0530 and was unable to go back to sleep. knowing that if i layed there i would finally fall asleep about 0700 and be really ticked when the alarm sounded at 0720, i decided to get up and treadmill about 0610. so i walked sixty-five minutes, 3.5 miles this morning. of course, bl immediately destroyed any good that i had done in all that exercising by bringing in MORE KRISPY KREMES this morning. !#^%$(*#$%# and i've been exhausted all day. such is life. but let the record reflect that after dragging me to the gym at lunchtime, randal was the one who cut the workout short. that's a first. generally, i'm the one calling it quits or it's just time to get back to work. there's also more sad news around here. i noticed this morning that hobo the tomato clownfish has some sort of tumor-looking growths around his gills. i'm very worried. dh said that pépé le [cleaning] shrimp should help take care of that but hobo has to go down to pépé le shrimp to initiate the cleaning and i don't think that hobo quite knows that's how it's supposed to work. pépé le shrimp has pretty much just been hanging out by his lonesome in a corner all day. i haven't seen a fish around him at all. dh said that if hobo has what he thinks, the water may be infected too and the medicine to treat it will kill the live rock, feather dusters, and shrimps. please think happy thoughts in the general direction of our little office reef.


wednesday - 18october2006 - 16:20
HAPPY 3rd ANNIVERSARY, KATIE & LOUIS!!! i finally got to break in my new treadmill last night. i walked, jogged, and ran for a total of forty-five minutes. it was not much different from the treadmills at the gym. the flex-deck kept it from jarring my knees and the fan, which i figured would be useless, actually helped keep me cool. i'm pleased. and since coworker bl was a huge meanie and brought two dozen krispy kremes in this morning, i will try to do an hour or two on it tonight. on the topic of coworkers, please say a prayer for dh and his family. his uncle, with whom he was pretty close, passed away yesterday. an apparent heart attack at forty-two. quite an eery coincidence. very, very sad. in happier news, we got some new reef residents today. one blue hippo tang named doree; three feather dusters named babette, dusty, and pledge; one cleaner shrimp named pépé le shrimp; and three flame scallops named pyro, flash, and animal. our reef is growing like crazy!


monday - 16october2006 - 11:52
excuses, excuses... so, saturday the holloway b&b underwent some renovations to include a fitness center among our amenities. i've been shopping around for a treadmill and i found a nordictrack that i liked at sears. it was on sale last week when we looked at it and the sales person said that the sale would run through saturday. i spent the week doing more research and by saturday i had decided on that treadmill. it was no longer on sale at sears but it was still on sale on the nordictrack website. luckily, sears agreed to price-match so i was able to purchase it there. i probably would have saved the tax if i had ordered it from nordictrack but we try to support sears when we can because of their heavy involvement in extreme home makeover. in any case, i bought my treadmill. woohooo! so, on the way home, we decided to move one of the guestrooms upstairs and make that room into a gym. when we got home, after helping randal get the very big and heavy box out of the car so that he could start working on removing its contents, i got to work on disassembling the bedroom. i was taking the bed frame apart, which i've done many times, and i managed to drop the heaviest piece directly on my left big toe. OUCH!!! i refrained from yelping or cursing but i did hop all around that room, the living room, and my bedroom. go me, the treadmill wasn't even assembled yet and i already gave myself an excuse to not use it. being the good little worker that i am, i quickly got back to the job at hand and finished moving the bedroom and then helped randal carry in and assemble the new fitness equipment. my toe was throbbing pretty bad but i did get on the treadmill briefly to test it out. granted, i've only walked on it for two minutes or so at a very slow speed but i'm quite pleased with it so far. i walked around the house getting things done the rest of the night with a throbbing toe that i thought would surely quit. when i went to bed, i removed my sock to find that about half of my nail and the toe itself about halfway to the knuckle were very bright blue. well, that explains why it hurts so bad, i got it pretty good. i went to bed thinking that it would be better by morning. once i layed down, everything went downhill. i couldn't fall asleep for all the magnified throbbing that was happening. by 0230, it was throbbing all the way to my knee and every twenty to thirty seconds, it felt like my foot and lower leg had exploded. it just got worse and worse. i tried motrin. then i tried excedrin pm. nothing was helping. and the comforter was so heavy on my poor toe. so i got up and went out to the couch at 0248 where i could elevate my leg on the back of the couch. it helped some, only my foot was throbbing now but it was still excruciating. i finally fell asleep around 0700 but i woke back up with it hurting again at 0830. randal woke up and came out to the living room at 0850 so i went back in the room determined to get a little sleep. i fell back asleep around 0930 and woke back up at 1100. i could hardly walk it hurt so bad. you know, i've broken that same toe/foot twice before and it never hurt like that. finally, i did some research and found that the only way to relieve the pressure and throbbing from a subungal hematoma was to actually pierce a hole in the nail. the idea really did not appeal to me and i tried desparately to find anything that said hot/cold treatment would help but nothing even mentioned that. everything i read said to take a red-hot paperclip and hold it against the nail and it would melt a hole right through it which would immediately relieve the pressure. as unappealing as it was, the pain was nearly unbearable so i decided to follow the interwebs' advice. they lied. it wasn't near that easy. the paperclip, no matter how long i held it in a flame, never would melt through the nail. and everytime i tried and had to push against the nail, it just hurt and throbbed more. finally, i resorted to just punching a straigh pin through. it did the trick (though not the immediate relief the interwebs promised) and started releasing some blood. the throbbing didn't stop but at least it was back to just my toe throbbing. it kept throbbing and bleeding all day through my bandaid. still hurting, but not nearly as much, i was able to sleep most of the night. this morning, it's still bleeding and throbbing but not as badly as last night even. however, wearing shoes does not please my poor toe at all. speaking of shoes, randal tried to say that this wouldn't have happened if i had been wearing shoes when taking the bed apart. i see where he's coming from, but i don't like the idea of blaming myself for such a horribly painful consequence. i think i'll just blame bush instead. and, just for the record, two days of treadmill ownership = two days of treadmill avoidance excuses.


friday - 13october2006 - 15:48
happy thirteenth! not to mention, WOOHOOO FOR FRIDAY! not sure what this weekend hold in store, but the respite from work is very much welcome. although i just gave up on my first effort at aquarium photography. i thought i could get a few pics of each of our fishy officemates to show you guys (you know, since i'm so on top of posting pics). turns out taking pics through a tank is harder than underwater photography. c'est la vie. it at least gave me a few minutes to decompress between cases.


thursday - 12october2006 - 09:11
i guess since it's almost this weekend, i'll talk about last weekend. after sleeping in saturday morning, we got up and went to helen for oktoberfest. we spent the whole afternoon walking around helen and enjoying various live bands set up outside the different bars and restaurants. it was pretty crowded, but since helen is always crowded and touristy, it didn't seem much worse than usual. it's just a cute little town and hanging around there is always an enjoyable afternoon. sunday we went down to the mall to visit the sports store so that we could find randal some softball necessities. it was a nice relaxing weekend away from the couch. after work monday we did some more shopping. we stopped at kohls and i got a couple of very cute fall outfits. i heart kohls. we've also started shopping for a treadmill for home. i'd like to get one in the very near future but there's lots of research to be done. tonight, my boy is playing ball with the other boys again. i'm thinking about going to watch. oh, last night we got a call from our lake tahoe friends that we met on the cruise. the big meanie called to rub my nose in the fact that they've got snow already. how rude! on the bright side, she talked about trying to entice us out there to play in the snow with them. road trip anyone? i hope they realize that we're not the kind of people you casually invite to visit thinking we surely never will. they'll be surprised when we show up on their doorstep one day with saucer sleds in hand. i'm so ready for some snow! nothing much else going on around here lately. please put gma h back on your prayer list. they've called hospice back in again. i pray that she finds peace and comfort soon. i hate seeing her suffer. also, say a prayer for kv as she is having eye troubles again. it's her good eye so i pray that it resolves on its own quickly.


friday - 06october2006 - 09:31
it's been a week full of migraines and insomnia. i LOVE those weeks. i would love to chop my neck off. clearly, that would stop the hurting and i'd surely sleep. my internal clock has somehow gotten set to 0230 so that's when i've gotten wide awake every night this week and not able to get back to sleep until after 0700 (alarm goes off at 0720). i HATE insomnia. and the more i read, the more convinced i am that it's not helping with my self-loathing. last night, i managed to sleep until 0400 and then never fell back asleep. at least it's progress. today, my head isn't really hurting as much as it's nauseous. only people who have had a nauseous head will understand what that is. randal to this day shakes his head when i use that term. how can a guy who's never had a headache unless it comes with the flu possibly understand? anyhow, wednesday, my boy had to fly down to orlando and back. long, long day for him. last night, he was invited by the neighbor to play softball. i could have gone to watch but my poor neck/head just didn't like the idea. not to mention (semi-shamefully) that thursday is my tv night. it's the one night i really don't like to miss. i am glad that my boy has found another boy to play with. i think it's good for him. he's been getting out and playing tennis with him and was asked last night to join the softball team. not sure if he will commit or not since they practice on saturdays and have games on thursdays and we don't stick around that much on weekends. it's just good for him to have someone to play with. since his lazy, good-for-nothing wife doesn't enjoy tennis and such.


monday - 02october2006 - 10:24
it was a pretty uneventful weekend in wedowee. the grandmothers were both doing fairly well. we showed them pics from the cruise. gma h was pretty blown away by such a big boat. we told her that boat would hold four wedowees and she was just amazed. such a sweet woman. on the way home yesterday, we made a stop for groceries and randal dragged me, kicking and screaming, into stevie b's, where i ate entirely too much, despite my efforts to limit myself. when we finally did make it home, i collapsed on my bed and slept about two hours. i never sleep well in wedowee. too hot. too noisy. it was such a nice nap. after a couple more hours of holding down the couch with my boy, i decided to drag him for a walk around the neighborhood. we did four laps, which comes out to about 3.2 miles. of course, i wore a blister on my toe. stupid socks. well, i suppose that's enough exciting reading for now.


saturday - 30september2006 - 23:13
the only thing worse than self-loathing is when someone inadvertantly jokes about that which you loathe about yourself. you know they don't mean it maliciously but they have no idea how much you struggle with it. and then they try to make you feel as though the maternal situation must be your fault. you may refuse to feel guilty over it, but it doesn't help the depression over it.


friday - 29september2006 - 10:22
between the depression over the maternal situation, the self-loathing, and the constant drowning at work, it's been a pretty rough couple of days. i couldn't get my mind to turn off last night so it was a toss-and-turn night again. we're in wedowee for the weekend so i am working hard to ameliorate my mood. i hate being in a mood when we're here. the in-laws must think i'm such a horrible person. speaking of the in-laws, please say a prayer for randal's cousin's baby who was born three months premature this weekend and weighed in at two pounds. mom-in-law says he was actually breathing on his own, which i find incredible, but he still has a long road ahead of him. i pray that he is strong and is eventually able to go home with his mom and dad in good health. that news combined with the content of one of my favorite tv shows last night and some old memories (and my emotional mood in general) led to some quiet sobbing on my part. i am unable to deal well with baby drama. there's nothing worse in this world than a funeral with a tiny coffin.


wednesday - 27september2006 - 12:08
turns out, we're social people. it took going on a cruise to figure this out. this past week, we've spent all kinds of time outside talking to various neighbors. last thursday, we had a game night with the new nextdoor neighbors. we played guesstures and they tried to teach me rook (i've never been too good with card games). friday night, my boy and her boy went and played tennis together. saturday, we organized a neighborhood (well, really just our end of the street) cookout. sunday we held down the couch most of the day. monday night, my boy and neighbor boy played more tennis. and i felt bad because i didn't invite cb over because i thought she was stuck home with the kids and, well, i have nothing for kids to do. but i found out last night that the kids have been going with the boys when they play tennis. i scolded my boy for not informing me about this because i would have been neighborly and had a girl's night kind of thing with her. i guess i'll know next time. last night, i stayed outside a couple of hours talking with diaganal neighbors and then nextdoor neighbors joined as well. in other news, i woke up depressed today. i had a dream about my mom last night that made me very sad. no, i don't wish to go into details. suffice it to say i sobbed into my pillow for a while and i've been down all day. i guess it's hitting me that things will never ever be the same again. perhaps i'm nearing elizabeth kubler ross' final stage.


friday - 22september2006 - 13:43
hopefully hanibal (formerly known as speedy) got all of his deviant ways out of his system yesterday afternoon. today, some new residents arrived. the clownfish are the most adventurous. they are swimming all over the tank. even sunny d is getting out and about. she's so much bigger than anything else in there. our two original damsels are displeased, to say the least. fraidy (our yellow-belly blue damsel) is living up to his name. green (the yellow-tail blue damsel) is even worse. it's been an exciting couple of days around here.
14:00 - thanks, cousin, for the publicity. important news like this so often gets overlooked in today's world.


thursday - 21september2006 - 16:28
there's been a murder in our little office today. not to mention canibalism! one of the hermit crabs in our salt-water tank murdered another crab. he then proceded to "clean out" the shell. naughty crab! i got up a few minutes ago to see if he's still masticating and i found him completely out of his shell, pulling the last bits of meat from the depths of the other shell. of course, i scared him and he quickly withdrew into his own shell again but now there are body parts hanging out of the other shell and he's keeping his eye on them. i'm very worried for bumble bee (our bumblebee snail - he's my favorite and he hangs around the crabs a lot). it's not like he's even upgrading to better real estate because the victim crab was much smaller. big dummy can't even fit in that shell. looks like he just figured that out. he's leaving the smaller, emptied shell behind. bad crab! bad, bad crab!!!


wednesday - 20september2006 - 16:58
i don't want to hear it. i'm certainly not any happier about it than you are. you think i like work interfering so much with my important personal business? but there's not much i can do about it and it's only going to keep getting worse so i just have to suck it up and deal with it. c'est la vie. ahh, so much to catch up on but so little time to get caught up. we'll just go week by week i suppose.
26aug-2sept ~ panama city beach ~ the only thing that randal wanted for his bday was to go hide out at the beach. i was happy to oblige. we rented a condo for a week and drove down early saturday to check in. mostly, it was a relaxing week. we walked next door to spinnaker beach club almost every night for the live music. on the big birthday day, i got randal a very yummy ice cream cake. i then put together a picnic of cocktail shrimp (sandwich for me), blue bell banana-split ice cream (his fav), and wine. we went down to the beach, had a picnic, and watched the sun set. it was a beautiful one too. after the sun had set but before it got dark, i gave him his cards (my dad and sis had mailed them early so i brought them with) and his gift. he was surprised by the gift - like i wouldn't get him a gift. silly boy. for those who don't know, i used shutterfly to make him a photo-book of his life. since one of his favorite songs is buffet's a pirate looks at forty, i decided that was an appropriate theme so i titled the book a wanderer looks at forty and carried the "wanderer" theme throughout. it came out very nicely, if i do say so myself. i was quite proud of it and hoped he would like it. he loved it. he wept (don't tell him i told you). yes, it made me quite happy to see him weep over my gift that i had put so much time and thought into. i think he thoroughly enjoyed his birthday. the whole week was about making it a great birthday for him.
2sept-8sept ~ orlando ~ when we checked out of our condo on saturday, we headed to orlando. we got there at a decent hour and relaxed with my sis&fam. sunday, we had plans to have dinner at my dad's. on our way to his house, while sitting in the rain in the parking lot that is i-4, some idiot wasn't paying attention and slammed into the car behind us, who, in turn slammed into us. no injuries, no damage (not to our car) but a long holdup waiting for the police to come and make their report. we finally got to my dad's an hour and a half late and had a great visit and dinner with them. monday afternoon we had lunch with a friend of mine that i haven't seen in a decade. casey and i met back in third grade playing ball together and stayed friends through high school even though we never went to the same schools. it was great to see her again. and her boyfriend happens to be an old friend of one of my exes so it was funny to see him again. after lunch with them, we went to my cousin's and my cousin-in-law cooked us a fabulously yummy dinner. tuesday night we met up with katie and her family for dinner. sammy, who is in school this year, sang us a days-of-the-week song. he's getting to be such a big boy! wednesday, we took it upon ourselves to invite jenny along to my cousin's poker night. fun poking was had by all. my cousin and i ended up heads up when she decided to kick us out. thursday night we pulled some kid duty while my sis and bro-in-law went to open house at the school. the kids were good. fairly uneventful. friday night we packed for our cruise. my sis had their bible study group over for a kick-off-the-new-season-party. we hung out with them a bit for pizza and conversation. turns out one of their friends found a db the week before. that was a fun story. saturday morning, we got up and headed to my brother's. we hung out with them and went to breakfast and they drove us out to port canaveral and dropped us off at our ship.
9sept-16sept ~ caribbean cruise ~ woohooo, vacation!!! no computers, no cell phones, no way for work to touch me!!! boy was i needing that. i am glad to report that randal didn't hate it. i was afraid he was going to feel trapped and bored. luckily, we only had two "at sea" days where we were just on the ship all day. i think having four ports to stop at helped him a lot. we stayed pretty darned busy the whole week but it was still relaxing. it was so very different than all of our other trips that there really was no comparison. we stayed up late every night, woke up early most mornings, and socialized constantly. i think we both enjoyed it and i'm sure we'll do another cruise but probably not real soon. i'll put together a travel log as soon as i can for pics and details.


tuesday - 22august2006 - 16:47
good grief! did someone get the license on that truck??? i would have to say that yesterday was the single worst work day i have ever in my life experienced. i've spent all day today just trying to recover and catch up with logging the cases that i didn't even have time to look at yesterday. in.sane. i'm telling you, i need a vacation. not too much to talk about. we were in wedowee over the weekend. friday night, we took randal out for a surprise family bday dinner. saturday we had a family gathering for gma h. saturday night, we stopped at the grocery store for some milk after playing dominos with gma m and the car refused to start back up. we're talking dead as a smelly neighbor boy who hasn't been seen in three weeks. it was fine and then nothing. the funny thing was that we had four car-fulls of wedoweeans stopped to help us and yet a police car just drove right on by without so much as a glance. makes no sense since there's not even a donut shop anywhere around. sunday, after church, we had a family gathering for gma m and then headed back home. the family gatherings are nice but, after seven years, i still can't get used to so much family. it's just weird. i'd say the best thing about the weekend was that i came to a peace of mind while sitting in church sunday morning. i sent my mom an email to share my feelings with her.
lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change, the power to change the things i can, and the wisdom to know the difference. ~amen~


thursday - 17august2006 - 09:35
last night we stopped by a coworker's house to see his pumpkin patch. he grows competition pumpkins so we're talking giganto jack-o-lanterns here. his record is six hundred seventy-something pounds but he has a couple that he thinks may beat that this year. i was highly impressed. his two favorites were higher than my waist. one was white and one was orange. of course, the gigantors were not very prettily shaped. however, there was one that was only about three or four hundred pounds that was absolutely beautifully shaped. it was perfect. i want it! i took pics so one of these days (yeh right) i'll post them. it was fun to walk around an oversized punkin patch. felt very fallish.


wednesday - 16august2006 - 14:22
i'm beginning to think that i'm never going to be able to catch my breath at work again. my level of irritability is through the roof as a result. anyhow, on with the updating. the weekend was mostly vexing and depressing due to family drama. i don't know why my family feeds off drama and games. i'm an adult, i don't feel the need to play games like that. saturday night, we and dh tried out the nightlife a little closer to home. i think we just chose the wrong place. we'll probably try another place next time. if we strike out there too, i don't think we'll give it a third try. not when we like our buckhead hangout as well as we do. it would just be nice to not have to drive an hour to a nightlife hangout. sunday night was the night i had been looking forward to for a week and a half. since i heard the promo on 99x for this week's unplugged in the park. when i heard that blue october would be playing, it instantly went on my calendar. not that i really knew anything about blue october. i just knew the hate me song and really liked it so i figured it would be well worth $0 to go see them live. i was right. we dragged dh (who when when i first mentioned liking the song when it was playing on the radio referred to it as "heavy metal". wtf???) and made our way to atlanta. we got there decently early and were able to secure a table out in the grass to sit at through the two opening bands. the pennys played first and their set couldn't be over quick enough for us. we didn't enjoy their particular brand of screeching one bit. the films played next and, while they were quite frightening to look at (feed those boys some sammiches for pete's sake!), i really enjoyed their sound. the only complaint i have about the whole setup was that the stage was not at all visible from the general seating area of the grass. i think that could have been better arranged. for this reason, we had to give up our nice table to go stand around and wait for the headliner. my pretty new shoes were not made for standing for long periods of time (my poor knees!) so i just hoped it would be worthwhile. when blue october finally took the stage, we were about twenty feet away and right of center. we would have had awesome viewing if it were not for the very rude seven foot tall guys that kept insisting on standing right in front of me no matter how much i attempted to maneuver around them. jerkoffs! as the band played their first couple of songs, it struck me that we were the only three people in the place that did not own all of their cds. everyone there was singing along except us. who knew they had more than one song? now, i haven't really been to many concerts. in fact, i can think of three (potusa, the wallflowers, and eve 6) and i barely classify them as concerts. but i was blown away by this performance. justin furstenfeld is an awesome performer and absolutely made every song come to life. the only thing that upset me (other than the freakishly tall duckheads in front of me) was that i had forgotten my camera. i didn't really care about taking pictures but i would have loved to have made a video clip when they sang hate me. not that i didn't love the other songs too but that was the one i was there for and it was artfully done. i left wanting their cds so one of these days i will have to collect some of those. even dh decided he liked them despite them being "heavy metal". i am very impressed that a band that is currently blowing up into a nationally recognized band with a huge hit song played a free concert in such a small and intimate venue. it felt very exclusive. i'd say that there were only a couple hundred people standing around the stage. eventually, i'll steal some of these pics, but for now you can go look for yourself. if you look close enough, you'll even see a pic of me, my boy, and dh loitering around a pole. i feet so special having a pic of us posted. it was a great show. well worth my achy feet and legs and being out late on a sunday night. although i was quite tired monday. and i didn't sleep monday night because my boy was gone far, far away. and still very tired today after waiting until midnight for him to get home last night. poor guy was exhausted. ooh! the good thing about moday was that before we left work, dh checked the mail and randal's bday gift had arrived so i was able to sneak that home and look at it after he left for the airport. it turned out great and i'm very excited about it. here's hoping he likes it. now why can i not find a shred of wrapping paper any where in the house? i know i own some.


friday - 11august2006 - 10:30
all i can say is bring on the weekend! i'm exhausted. wednesday afternoon i had to drive to thomson, ga. i'm not fond of long (anything over thirty minutes) road trips by myself. i get sleepy easily when driving alone. luckily, i had katie to talk to and keep me awake. i got there and checked into my hotel and was only a few minutes late to meet up with my boss. several of us were taken to dinner in augusta. it was quite yummy and i enjoyed the conversation and meeting people i work with anonymously all the time. it was semi-late when i got back to the hotel. i've never stayed in a hotel alone. at least not since i worked at the evil place and would nap in a room between shifts or something. and i guess i have either gotten over my worries about hotels or i was just too tired to worry. i worked a bit, soaked in the jacuzzi tub a few minutes, talked to my hubby several times, and worked on his bday gift until it was finally finished and ordered. i'm very excited about the gift, although i am a bit concerned that he may not like it (or at least not appreciate it as much as i would like for him to). i put a lot of work into it and am proud of it. i wanted to do something special and meaningful for his big 4-0 3-9 again rather than another piece of junk to shove in the closet. he's so difficult to buy for. why are men so difficult to buy for? anyhow, i really hope that he likes it. if not, at least he's getting a week at panama city beach too. hmmm, got off on a bit of a tangent there. after all of that, i finally got to bed around midnight and surrounded myself with pillows so that i wouldn't miss my husband too terribly. i slept fairly well but i sure didn't want to get up when the alarm went off. i felt like i was moving in slow-mo getting ready. i grabbed some quick continental breakfast and checked out and made it to the office right around 0800. from there, i spent most of the morning and half the afternoon in meetings. it was interesting. i finally got on the road to head home a little after 15:00 and it wasn't thirty minutes before i was violently shaking my head to wake up. i tried calling hubby a couple of times to wake me up but i kept getting poor reception in nowhere, ga. then i ran into all the traffic in athens and garmin refused to take me back the way i came and i got frustrated trying to find it on my own so i just broke down and followed garmin through all the little podunk towns he wanted to take me through. i was displeased to say the least. especially since i still had not had lunch and there was nothing to eat on the roads he was making me travel. finally around 17:30, i stopped at a kfc (not my favorite at all) and grabbed some "lunch" to keep me from starving the rest of the way home. i made it home a little after 18:00 and grabbed onto my hubby and told him not to let me go again. i was exhausted. i was cranky. i got hugged for a very long time. i really could use a day to recoup from all of that but instead i have close to thirty cases stacked up and waiting on me. when i left wednesday, i had it down to one. and i worked a few wednesday night and thursday morning and this morning. they just keep multiplying. *sigh* is it weekend yet???


tuesday - 08august2006 - 09:58
good fences make good neighbors. well, i guess that's probably true but the point here is that we are good neighbors for a change. the house next door finally became occupied. we arrived home after a long day (which consisted of me getting dragged out of bed to exercise, going to the gym at lunch for cardio, and going to the gym after work to lift weights) to find a big moving truck and neighbors. we offered to help them. we went in and ate some dinner and, since i needed to bake a belated bday cake for rc anyhow, i baked some brownies for the new neighbors. while i baked, randal went ahead and began helping to unload the truck. we brought them water and gatorade (no fridge yet) and brownies and paper plates and plastic cups. the parents were highly appreciative and the kids were highly affectionate. one girl kept hugging me and asking me to pick her up and told me she loves me. the other girl gave me a necklace and said i was her first best friend here. the little boy streaked and laughed a lot (he's two). they've got three kids and one on the way. so, clearly, they're a bit nuts, but they were very nice. we finished helping and got back home just after midnight. then i had to assemble and ice a cake for rc (one of my lousiest efforts yet) and shower. it was after 0100 before we got to bed. but we felt good about being helpful neighbors. it's the least we can do since our across-the-street neighbors have been so terrific to us (noticing we had a flooded house and hunting down people who had the keys, picking up our mail anytime we're gone more than a few days, picking up all the pieces of our mailbox when it gets run over). and, since randal was thoroughly exhausted too, i didn't get dragged out of bed unnaturally early today. and to top it all off, i'm wearing one of my new tops that i bought saturday which is über-cute.


monday - 07august2006 - 15:23
i'm pleased to say that i'm having a feel-good-about-me day. despite hubby dragging me out of bed at the crack of oh-my-god-it's-early to walk around the neighborhood a few times. i abhor waking up in the mornings. the earlier, the more i hate it. especially when i was never able to fall asleep until after 0100. so i was pretty crabby for the first part of my morning, but i put on an outfit that makes me feel good. it took it a couple of hours, but after receiveing a compliment on my outfit from a coworker, the feel-goodness finally kicked in. and then i decided to go to the gym with dh during lunch since i was not invited to go to eat with randal and customer and programmers. i wasn't able to treadmill as long as i would have liked because the tvs were not working. i kept forcing myself to keep going but at 17.5 minutes i started to go insane. i'm really incapable of cardioing without the tv. after i returned from the gym and got cleaned back up, i let my hair down and decided it was really working today for some reason. no really, my hair looks fabulous today! so it's good to be having a non-self-loathing day for a change. they are sadly rare. it was a decent weekend too. i went on a shopping spree saturday since it was tax-free. i didn't go overboard. i found three blouses that i absolutely love. and i found a pair of jeans that fit me! i haven't had a pair of jeans since highschool because i can never find any that fit me. generally, if they fit around my huge hips, they bulge out badly around my waist (i'm trying my best to stay positive and not allow myself to think that the only reason these fit is because i've gotten so fat). i don't love the jeans, but they fit and they allowed me to wear a top that i've been dying to wear but could really only wear with dark blue jeans. and i got to wear that top, with the jeans, saturday night when we went out with dh to our favorite buckhead bar. the entertainment happened to be a guy we had seen there before who is really great for the first couple of hours until the jäger kicks in. i had a great time and we didn't get home till after 0300 so it was like being young or something. sunday afternoon, we went out to walk through some new houses being built in the area. i could live there. we also did a quick grocery trip and stopped at the office to see whether the a/c was working. that was about all the activity that i could muster for a sunday afternoon when i didn't get into bed until 0330. i was hoping that this week would be less nutty than last week, but we're not off to a good start. busy busy busy all day. and ever so tired. and the a/c, which seemed to be working wonderfully this morning, is apparently having difficulties again. we've got it pushed down to 70° but it's 75° in here. granted, much more bearable than 91°, but still not the most comfortable for me. such is life. life is such.


friday - 04august2006 - 18:50
what a week! i've averaged thirteen cases a day at work this week. typically, i average five or six cases a day and that's busy. i'm so glad that it's friday. i've worked from home the whole week since they never got the a/c working at the office. randal called around lunchtime today and said they finally got it fixed but by the time he got home this afternoon he said it still wasn't working and they were going to have to come back out over the weekend. i just don't feel the need to subject myself to that. i don't deal well with heat. there's a reason i got out of florida. next week i've gotta go out of town for a couple of days and then randal's gotta go away a few days the week after that. i'm missing him already after being separated all this week during the days. last night he came home and told me to get ready and we went out on a date. mostly, it was walking around stores and then dinner at p.f. chang's. so.incredibly.tasty. we haven't been there in a couple of years and i had just about forgotten how absolutely yummy it is. it was a wonderful dinner. we held hands and talked and ate great cuisine. i love date nights with my hubby.


tuesday - 01august2006 - 16:41
CONGRATULATIONS, SANDRA & TONY, ON YOUR BUN-IN-THE-OVEN!!! sandra and i have been friends since kindergarden. how strange and exciting for a peer of mine to be expecting. i can't wait to see her pregnant! the funny thing is that she is due on her birthday so the baby could be born on her bday, come five days early to be born on my bday, or ten days late to be born on their second wedding anniversary. as for the lack of updates lately, you haven't missed much (other than that exciting announcement). we spent last week in wedowee. it was a long week for work, especially since i decided to catch a cold and feel lousy for most of the week. and i seem to be having trouble letting go of it too. took yesterday off and slept almost all day because i felt so lousy. today's been better but i am still working from home since i've been informed the a/c at the office is non-operational this week. randal said it was 91° in there yesterday. today, bl said it was a refreshing 87°. gee, none for me, thanks. personally, i believe they're nuts for sticking around in there. so i'll just work from my nice, cool home until they get the office good and frosty again.


wednesday - 19july2006 - 10:48
i suppose it's time for an update. been having a good time in orlando. we've had lots-o-fun-time with my sis and her family. we've visited with my cousin, brother, dad, and some friends. saturday we went to the beach with my sis-in-law. been a long time since we've been to cocoa beach, 5dec2003 to be exact. i was pleased to get a bit of a tan. at least i won't blind everyone on our cruise. i've also been doing a good job of getting on my sis' elliptical at lunch time each day and jump-roping and swimming. hey, it's something. well, you might think that after such a long absence i'd have something more interesting to talk about. if you thought that, clearly this is your first visit to my rant. i'm boring. i'm fine with it.


tuesday - 11july2006 - 09:52
orlando may rejoice - the holloways are headed to town! it's going to be a looooong night since i only slept about four hours last night. so it goes. i was highly amused by my talks with my sissie the last couple of days. when i talked with her sunday night to see when it might be a good time to intrude on them, she mentioned that our bed had broken (the frame of the futon finally gave up). so we had a good laugh about the byob clause to our reservation. who doesn't travel with an air mattress anyhow? at the end of the conversation, it was decided we'd be coming down this weekend. last night, i harrassed called her again to ask if twenty-four hours notice would be sufficient or if we should just wait until midnight tonight and call to say we're pulling into the neighborhood. she said we were welcome to come tonight (hey, she might be lying but i'll take it) but then she said "oh, wait". so i'm thinking, well, maybe wednesday night then. to her hubby: "hey honey, do you think we could get a toilet seat for their bathroom by tomorrow night?" i laughed and laughed. this b&b is really going down hill. byob, byots - we'd better be getting a mighty steep rate discount! i told her that we've got a whole toilet assembly sitting upstairs, never out of the box. highly amused, i was.


wednesday - 05july2006 - 13:54
and now to brag on my terrific husband. yesterday morning, we got up at 0500, were joined by coworker dh, and the three of us headed to atlanta for my husband to run the peachtree road race. we dropped him off in the vicinity of the start and we drove to the vicinity of the finish to find a parking spot and a piece of curb so that we could see randal when he ran by (yes, we had every intention of being able to spot him in the throng of 50,000+ runners). randal wanted to do this as a challenge for himself in the face of his upcoming BIG birthday. since he hasn't run since college, he's been training for the last three months. his goal was to run the 10k in under an hour and i am so proud that, despite the frustrating crowd, he accomplished his goal. guess what his time was... go ahead... no, really, take a guess... 59:58! talk about making it in the nick of time, eh? he was glad that he made his goal but he is confidant that he could have shaved at least five minutes off of that if he hadn't had to dodge so many inconsiderate walkers. in any case, i am very proud of my husband for setting a goal and accomplishing it. and next year, dh and i might try our running legs out as well since we're probably a little more comparable speed-wise. i am certain that i could have done it this year but i would have been at least 15 minutes slower than randal and i hated for him to feel like he had to wait on me when this was an important goal for him. for dh and i, it was an interesting people-watching event. i think the craziest i personally saw was two different guys at different times running in black business suits. yeh, coat and tie and all. and it was hot. nutjobs, i tell ya. after randal ran by, we walked up to the finishing area to meet up with him after he picked up his prized t-shirt and the three of us meandered back to the car. when we got home, dh went home and i made randal some much-earned breakfast. we went back to bed for a couple of hours (what's up with getting up at 0500 on a day off?!) and the the three of us met back up later in the afternoon to go to the fourth of july festivities at the mall of georgia. we watched some live bands, ate some backyard burgers, and "ooh-ahh"ed at some lovely fireworks. unfortunately, the parking lot screening of pirates of the caribean was cancelled due to the rain. such a shame, i love outdoor movies. all in all, a great fourth was had by us. hope it was great for you as well.


tuesday - 04july2006 - 14:49
HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!! and what better way to celebrate than to watch the ultimate firework?


monday - 03july2006 - 13:33
now that was a good weekend. i got to sleep in both saturday and sunday, which is the basic foundation of a weekend anyhow. saturday afternoon we went down to the mall and walked around a bit just to get out of the house. it was nice. sunday afternoon we went to three sisters vineyard, which is a winery that a coworker of ours frequents with his wine-making wife. he talks about it so much that i figured it would be nice to go see. it was a very pretty vineyard. i wish we had gotten to see all the german vineyards in season. we were there when all of the grape vines were still dead looking for the winter. i'll bet those vineyards are magnificent to see in season. anyhow, back to three sisters. we enjoyed a nice wine tasting. i think we tasted a total of ten wines. i only hated one of them. it was really spittable. we liked one well enough to buy a couple of bottles of it. it's a red wine, but it's sweet. i guess that's not an oxymoron afterall. after the winery, we went to dahlonega and walked around the square a while. all of the elements for a nice weekend were present. sleep in - check. get out of the house - check. quality time with my wonderful hubby - check.


friday - 30june2006 - 13:46
fridays should never EVER be recurrent-mondays! this is the second friday in a row that i'm having a recurrent-monday. it's just plain wrong!!!


thursday - 29june2006 - 17:18
i keep all of my website stuff on my thumbdrive. my thumbdrive is trying to die. thus, no posts. well - that and the insane week at work. i'm just exhausted. i have noticed several hits from mexico lately. from someone searching on my name nonetheless. and this perplexed me until i remembered that t&l j moved down to mexico recently so i suppose perhaps it is her. if so, drop me an and tell me all about mexico-livin. we've got a couple mexican stops on our cruise in september. i'll be sure to wave in your general direction.


monday - 26june2006 - 09:16
what a busy, social weekend. it's a little hard for me to consider it a weekend when i had to wake up to my normal alarm clock time both mornings. we spent pretty much all day saturday with dh and rc on rc's boat. we covered most of northern lake lanier i'm sure. we rode, we swam, we tubed. it was a good time. about seven hours late i came to be of the opinion that seven hours is too long for a single application of sunblock. so it goes. still not nearly as bad as the infamous hawaiian burn. much worse than the excess of sun was the mind-shattering migraine that i had by the time we got home. i took some excedrin migrain and sipped on a soda in the hopes that caffeine would calm it slightly while i waited for the excedrin to kick in. i was only able to drink a couple of sips of the soda when i just started bawling from the pain. randal got the soda out of my hand and picked me up and carried me to bed. he wrapped my blankie over my eyes and turned on the fan and i cried and cried and cried in pain until i finally fell asleep. i haven't had a migraine that bad in a while. after about an hour, i woke up and was able to sit up with minimal pain. the rest of the night, my head was a dull throb and i was sick to my stomach. sunday morning, we got up and went to six flags to meet randal's cousin who is visiting with his family from taiwan. i was still migraine-queasy all day long. i only rode one coaster before realizing that my stomach was not in the mood. most of the day was spent at the kid park anyhow for cousin's six year old. it was a pretty good day. it was rainy (mostly drizzling) which made it nice and cool and uncrowded. and it was nice to get to know randal's cousin because i've heard so much about him and how close they were growing up. and it was neat to meet his wife and son who are taiwanese. they've even invited us to come over and spend some time with them and travel around asia. sounds good to me. we went to dinner after a long day at six flags and then we parted with them. they may or may not be coming up to see us next weekend.


friday - 23june2006 - 15:47
i make cakes for all of the guys at work for their birthdays. tomorrow is (would be?) ron's birthday so i made some brownies and brought them in. we didn't sing but i just hated to ignore the occasion. his wife and parents and the rest of his family and friends are going to his favorite ocean fishing spot this weekend to have a great big party and spread his ashes. what a terrific thing to do! it's just so hard to believe it's been three months already.


thursday - 22june2006 - 10:33
there is almost nothing worse than waking up feeling like it's friday just to find out it's only thursday. clearly, the week needs to catch up with me.
16:10 - woohoo! we've finally got some travel plans for this year. nothing terribly exciting but it's something neither of us has done. yep, we's cruisin'. we're going to do a seven day western carribean in september. no hurricanes allowed!!! anybody care to join?


tuesday - 20june2006 - 13:53
as if it's not bad enough that i loathe the gym - must they insist keeping the friggin a/c broken??? re.dic.u.lous. it was hotter in there today than it is outside. and it's 90 friggin degrees outside today. even having two industrial fans pointed at me was no relief whatsoever. it was awful. but i am proud to say that i forced myself to stay and keep going. fifty-five minutes on the elliptical in 95° heat. i might as well be taking a cardio machine into a sauna room. i am soaked through and through in sweat. i am quite certain that every one of the thirty-two ounces of water i drank were immediately sweated out and thensome. if it's like that tomorrow, i quit.


thursday - 15june2006 - 18:18
i haven't completely forgotten about you guys. i've got several new pages of pics posted. as usual, the newest are boxed. so that's gotta make up for some of my slacking right? what can i say? work has been much busier than i like. good thing i decided not to let it stress me anymore. over the weekend we went hiking again. the last two weekends we've gotten a good little foursome together from work for hiking. it's almost like we're social or something. nah... that can't be it. monday night we came to wedowee. it's kind of nice now that we've got dsl here because we can come down and visit during the week and be back home for our weekends. it's not so much that i even necessarily want to do anything on my weekends - sometimes it's just the opposite, and i want to do nothing - but i just like having my weekends. is that strange? anyhow, we've been visiting. we went out to dinner tuesday night with the whole family. shane, anna grace, and olivia came back and spent the night at his mom's with us so we got some baby time. last night we spent a couple of hours jetskiing around the lake. more visiting tonight. starting now.


thursday - 08june2006 - 14:00
my husband returned to me yesterday, as promised. he called me at ten till five to tell me he was almost to the house. i packed up and left in a hurry so that i could meet him and hug the heck out of him. i'm so happy to have my husband back. and he seemed equally ebullient. we went for a drive in the rental car so that i could play with the xm. it was an enjoyable ride around different neighborhoods looking at houses, holding hands, and catching up on our last couple of days. i love my husband so very much! with him being back, it was lunch-gymming time again today. and, for the first time in i couldn't say how long, they had the a/c on! it was wonderfully cool in there. i didn't even hate my 45 minutes on the elliptical. i can't remember the last time we walked out of the gym and it was hotter outside than inside. i might not abhor the gym so tremendously if they would have the a/c on all the time. i don't do hot well.


wednesday - 07june2006 - 16:03
for those who haven't already seen it over at pereiraville, go check out vigilante justice at its finest.


monday - 05june2006 - 15:23
my husband has left me. big meanie. i just got back from taking him to rent a car and he's off to mayberry. he should only be gone tonight and tomorrow night but that's still a long time when you're never apart from your spouse. dh is trying to guilt me into going to the gym with him while randal is gone. my explanation to him is that i immensely dislike it when my husband leaves me so i have to find some sort of a silver lining to make it tolerable. my silver lining is lethargy and junk-food-fest. hey, it gets me through. so, yes, my plan is to go to the store and buy all manners of junk food, perhaps rent a movie, and hold down the couch until he returns. personally, i think it's a splendid plan.


friday - 02june2006 - 09:46
june?! where has this year gone?!! blink of an eye, i tell you. life just needs to slow the heck down. really, what's its rush? there's no need to be flying by like that. better start deciding where we're going this year before this year is over.


tuesday - 30may2006 - 13:35
what a great weekend, why on earth did it have to end? we finished straightening the house and getting packed friday night. i got to sleep in just a little bit saturday morning before we got up to load up the car. as we were getting ready to leave the house, my brother called to let me know that they had gotten to the campground the night before so they were already there. we finally got up there just shortly after 1300 and i was surprised that my other friends from orlando had not beaten us there. we immediately got out our camp chairs and i sat and read my book while my hubby joined in a game or two of horseshoes. i don't get that game. i suppose i should try it sometime and see if i can figure it out but it just confuses me. and i'd rather read quietly. around 1400 the others showed up and we made introductions and assisted them with their tents and such. after a while we all headed to the olympic center for pics and such and then stopped at the lake for some refreshing water time on the way back to camp. not much swimming but just wading through the water was enough to take the heat away for a bit. when we got back to camp, my wonderfully terrific chef sis-in-law got dinner started for all twelve of us. we had steaks, baked potatos, chili-mac hamburger helper with bambi, and some jambalaya rice. it was a camping feast. julie's the greatest. we all hung out around the campfire for a few more hours before it was bedtime. i was pleased that our eclectic crowd all seemed to be having a good time together. i didn't sleep well. i'm not really sure why, but it made for a long night. sunday morning i got up ready to go rafting. coworker dh arrived early enough to meet everyone and then we all loaded up to go rafting. we had a great trip. randal and i had a raft of newbies so the paddling wasn't as strong and coordinated as it needed to be so we had our first major wreck. i think it was our second decent sized rapid we hit when we lost duckworth, jenny, and our guide. in all of the scramble to get jenny and duckworth back in the raft, our guide's disappearance was slightly overlooked and he floated down river and jumped in some strangers' boat. once we got our friends back in and realized we were guideless, randal jumped in the back to steer and i started barking out paddling orders and we successfully (read: frantically) guided ourselves over a sucession of four or five smallish rapids until we caught up with the boat that had taken on our guide. "dana, come back to us! we miss you!" we all shouted in unison. and with a skillful jump, he was back in our raft, ready to guide again. the only casualty was jenny's left shoe so she shall forever be renamed one-shoe chang (or changoneshoe in chinese). dana also shared that jenny went so quickly into survivor mode that she was pushing him under water trying to climb back into the raft. clearly, she didn't realize that the guide was much more useful to us than she was. silly girl. duckworth, incidently, thought getting thrown out was great fun and highly laughworthy. go him sporting such a cavalier attitude. especially after dana told us that a man had drowned in the same spot they all went out because the water sucked him under. throughout the day, we stayed fairly close to my brother's raft so we got to do a lot of laughing and joking back and forth with them. we got really close when they were pulled to the side at the bottom of a rapid and we went over the rapid. randal sounded a hearty "beep beep" as we slammed right into them and knocked kelly clear out of their raft. poor girl. it's one thing to get thrown out on a rapid, but to get thrown out on the side of the river... yes, she was laughed at heartily. after lunch, we did some hydrolic surfing and since i was the 7th on the back (jenny traded seats with me at lunch out of fear of getting ejected again), i got to go up to the front of the boat and kneel while we surfed. i got a good drowning. it was quite fun and i decided to call that "riding the horse" since it's not as big as "riding the bull" but still great fun. shortly thereafter, bull-riding opportunities opened up. stefani was the first to "ride the bull". i respected her being the first to jump up there. she got the photo-op rapid on that. after she went, i jumped up there and stayed up through a good half dozen rapids. duckworth was the only other volunteer in the boat and he got to ride through "hell hole" which was the rapid that i rode the bull on my very first time rafting and i couldn't hold on. duckworth didn't hold on either. it's really a big rapid to ride the bull through. for those wondering (and since it's highly unlikely that i'll have photographic explanation up anytime soon), "riding the bull" is where you get up and sit on the front of the raft with your feet hanging out and hold a rope while you go through rapids. it's terrific fun to feel like you're battling the rapids one-on-one and crashing through walls of water - it's just a rush. after we were through wild water ride was over, we went back and broke down camp. everyone took their time and several spent some time buying photos and souvenirs. after a while, we started our five-car-caravan back to our house. talk about slow-going. i don't know if my brother or his wife was driving but they were pulling up the rear and they are just terrible followers. they kept getting so far behind that they would fall out of range of our two-way radios and us four cars would have to find a way to pull off before a turn and wait for them to catch up so that they wouldn't get lost. the other three cars stayed in a nice little line behind us. t and julie, most of the time they were nowhere to be seen back there. silly followers. finally we made it back to our house and gave the tours while dinner was ordered. everyone claimed their beds or air mattress spots and lined up for showers and went their own ways. it was nice. i spent most of the evening scanning rafting pics (yeh, you would think that i would have them posted but you'd be wrong). when everyone started dropping like flies, randal and i got our showers and went to bed. i heard someone up at 0700 and gave serious consideration to getting up but i just needed a few more minutes of sleep. at quarter of nine i gave in and got up. only about half of our guests were up and about. i started making breakfast and the stronger the smell of bacon got, the more faces i started seeing up and about. funny how that works. i was proud that julie got the wedding video that we had made for them out and had a group sitting around watching it. i'm glad we were able to give them something that seems to mean a good bit to them. i finished the bacon, pancakes, and eggs and everyone ate. after food was consumed, motivation ensued and the packing of vehicles began. my brother's group took off around 1100 and hayman's group followed shortly thereafter. exhausted, we went back inside and worked the rest of the day just to get caught up while the customers were closed. it was a great weekend. it would have been nice if it were longer but i can't complain. we had good fun, good company, good times. i love having houseguests.


friday - 26may2006 - 10:05
i guess it's about time that i rant something again, eh? it's been uber busy lately. i'd say i've been stressed over it, but i made a decision a few weeks ago to not do that anymore. apathy works much better. our nights and weekends have been busy too. we went to wedowee two weekends in a row - the first to see oliva (yes, i have pics; no, i don't have any idea when i'll get around to being a good aunt and posting them) and the next to see his cousin get hitched. since we've been gone on the weekends, we've had to use our week nights to straighten and clean the house for company. my brother and his wife came up for our third annual memorial weekend rafting adventure. they got in wednesday afternoon and left yesterday after lunch. they went to meet up with four friends to raft the chattooga this morning. randal and i haven't done the chattooga yet so we would have liked to have gone with them but they were all booked up by the time i called. maybe next time. we'll meet up with the six of them and four of my friends from orlando at the ocoee on saturday. we'll have a great time camping saturday and then sunday we'll have 13 of us rafting the ocoee. we've never had such a big group and it should be a blast. after rafting, i'm pretty sure everyone is coming back to our house to crash before driving back to o-town monday. ten houseguests means a full house. i love having company. i've got a bunch of stuff to get done tonight still to get ready for camping and houseguests but i'm excited. it's going to be a fun weekend. we haven't had one of those in a while.


monday - 15may2006 - 14:40
tonight we're going to the melting pot for our anniversary. two years. it feels silly to say it's our second anniversary when we've been together 24/7 for nearly seven years now. don't get me wrong, i loved the wedding and being formally married was very important to me, but how does the four and a half years of constant togetherness before "i do" get tossed aside? not that any of that matters. what really matters is that i'm getting mmmmmmfondue! HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, MON CHER!


friday - 12may2006 - 10:06
day two of working in wedowee. i think gma is feeling more comfortable around us today. she kept feeling like she had to stay out of our way yesterday. we tried to tell her that she doesn't have to worry about us. she can go about her daily business, watch tv, talk on the phone - it won't bother us. heck, we go down to orlando and work with three kids running around. today she's been talking up a storm so i guess she's more relaxed about the situation. or perhaps she's just decided we're not really "working" anyhow. lol. the whole impetus behind our dsl installation here was that olivia was supposed to be born wednesday (impatient little girl) so we were going to come wednesday after work to see the baby and work thursday and friday rather than drive back home and not get to visit around. well we headed over wednesday after work and had every intention of going to see the baby but teresa called and said the weather was really bad by them so we just came straight to wedowee and got the dsl set up. so although our whole visit was about seeing the baby, we haven't gotten to see her yet. we are all going to load up and go after work this afternoon. we'll all meet up for dinner and then go to meet miss olivia. i'm looking forward to it.


thursday - 11may2006 - 11:59
this is our first time working from wedowee. we had dsl put in at gma m's so that we could work from here. we're hoping to extend our visits to 4/5 days at a time but limit the frequency to once a month as opposed to every other weekend. it'll be nice to have some weekends to ourselves for a change. we just don't have nearly enough of those now. so anyhow. it's a bit strange working here. luckily, it's not winter so the heat is not on. it's only mildy hot in here. and poor gma just cannot figure out what the heck we're doing. "what do you make?" we don't really make anything. "where's your paperwork you have to turn in?" we don't turn in any paperwork. "well, who checks off on your work?" nobody checks off on our work. poor woman was just so exasperated trying to figure out how it is we think we're working. "back when i was able to work, we actually worked." lol. these old country people can't see how working with your mind can be considered work when they had to break their backs to earn a living. times, they have a-changed.


monday - 08may2006 - 09:50
WELCOME TO THE WORLD, OLIVIA!!! Randal's niece was born saturday, 12 days before her due date and 4 days before her scheduled delivery date -- looks like patience is not her virtue. we had planned on being there wednesday when she was supposed to be born so we are going to keep that plan. should be good since they'll be home by then and we won't have to bother them in the hospital. anyhow, we are very excited about our new niece. in other news, HAPPY one-day-late BIRTHDAY, JENNY!!! i'm a lousy friend, i thought about you all day yesterday but just wasn't quite willing to get up and get my phone. not much else this weekend. i finally got to do some well-deserved sleeping in. i love sleeping in on the weekends. really, i would love to sleep in every day but apparently, i only get paid if i actually get up and work. silly job rules. we purchased the sink and commode for the upstairs bath which randal has 1/2 plumbed. we also found the shower we want but we'll need to go back with a trailer for it since it was too big and heavy for our car. i moved food from the old fridge/freezer to the new fridge/freezer (after cleaning all the blood off it) and then emptied the big freezer into the two fridge/freezers so that we could defrost the big freezer. might as well while i've got enough freezer space to put everything, right? cleaned the kitchen all weekend and it still looks like a disaster area somehow. how does that happen?


friday - 05may2006 - 15:34
well it took long enough to get here this week but it is finally - finally - FRIDAY. thank heavens. it's been a long and quiet day. i'm really ready for a nap. i just finished off the last sliver of oh-so-yummy cake that i made for mn's bday yesterday. which really just made my eyelids that much heavier. after work we'll be going on a shopping spree. shower, sink, and toilet are the big ticket items. randal's not exactly ready to install fixtures but i'd rather go ahead and have them so that all of the space and plumbing and such is measured out correctly for the fixtures that will be in there. it should be a very nice bathroom when he/we (much less emphasis on me) are finished. my biggest contribution will be painting so i really need to figure out what color to go with. i love the way the room came out, i want the bathroom to be the perfect complement to it. anybody know why it's not 1700 yet?


wednesday - 03may2006 - 04:04
it went from a miserable day to an even more miserable night. i went to bed with such a fever that i was wearing winter pajamas and thick socks and still freezing under the blankets and comforter. and every square inch of me ached till it was just excruciating no matter which way i laid. around 0130 i decided to take some motrin to see whether it might help break up the fever. it knocked me out for about 30 minutes and when i woke up, the freezing and aching were gone, replaced by sweating and being wide-awake. joy. i laid awake listening to the very impressive thunderstorm and watching the lightning light up the room and eventually turned on the tv for a while. then i decided to give up and come out to the living room and start working. it's just wrong. there shouldn't even be a 0400 in the morning. and i've seen it too many times this week. the good news is that i'm not feeling very sick anymore so if i hold these crackers down, perhaps i'll be able to eat actual food by lunch time. i miss my husband so very much. he had better be prepared for some serious hugging when he gets home today.


tuesday - 02may2006 - 15:10
on the bright side, i'm pretty sure we didn't poison et this weekend. not that i really thought it was food poisoning anyhow since we all five ate the same things for every meal. i've been throwing up all day. i hate being sick. and my boy's out of town until tomorrow night so i don't even have anyone to nurse me. i'm fevery and achy and downright miserable. and since i don't have any backup at my job anymore, i'm having to work while being miserable. which is difficult considering i can't sit up because it makes me sick to my stomach. what a crummy day. yes, i'm pathetic and whiny when i'm sick. i want my hubby home to take care of me.


monday - 01may2006 - 10:35
well it was certainly an interesting weekend. we bought a refrigerator from co-worker dh on friday. while he and randal were unloading it from the trailer in the driveway, he sliced his finger on the underside of the fridge. we're talking blood all over the driveway. i rushed him to the emergency room and we didn't get back home until midnight. poor guy. took 6 stitches to reattach the finger tip. so i got home at midnight, had a small bowl of cereal for dinner, and got into bed a little before 0100. then we had to get up at 0700 to go over to beth/jeremy's to watch the kids for the weekend. 0700 is ever so early on a saturday. beth and jeremy ended up leaving around 1100 and it was fun and games the rest of the day. we played some at home. we played at the playground. we had dinner and a movie. we put the three of them down to bed with no problems at all. after a nice shower, i sunk gratefully into the bed around 2230 for some much needed rest. not five minutes after laying down, the 4 year old is screaming/crying. beth had warned me that she sometimes wakes up crying and she just needs to be reminded to get up and go potty so that's what i did. she was screaming bloody murder so i went into the room to help her out of bed when i noticed the horribly pungent stench. and then i noticed that she was covered head to toe in vomit. and then i left the room to get randal and to get a clean breath so i wouldn't follow suit. poor girl. she was freaking out. i took her and threw her in the tub to wash her off. she was crying and shaking and very upset. randal was great and cleaned up the room while i bathed her. after getting her and her room cleaned up, we took turns holding her and comforting her to calm her down for about an hour and then she was sick again and we started all over. this went on until 0430. long night. poor child. i felt so bad for her. it's no fun getting sick. of course, sunday morning, both her and her big brother were up at the crack of dawn and ready to go. in the interest of making sure that she was feeling better, we did a movie marathon morning. after a semi-late lunch, we got all three dressed to go to the playground when beth and jeremy walked back in. we helped them move some furniture and then came home and crashed on the couch for three solid hours. the kids' behavior was exemplary and there was no problem with parent-separation-anxiety, but having kids is a tiring job.


tuesday - 25april2006 - 15:06
day three of frustrating depression. and our first day back in the gym. why must i abhor the gym? if i have to go, why can't i just like it? or at least be ambivalent about it. so hard to do something that you loathe every day. especially when you can't see it doing a darned bit of good.


monday - 24april2006 - 10:54
CONGRATULATIONS, T & JULES!!! i'd like to whole-heartedly welcome my new sis-in-law to the family! yes, that's right, my brother finally got married this weekend! it was a wonderful wedding and it was very heart-warming to see my brother and julie so happy. i was quite proud and honored to be asked to play the part of best man. i got to stand up with my brother (which meant that i was one of the four people close enough to hear his vows that he had written) and give a toast and everything. it was a very special day and i was thrilled to be such a big part of it.

on a highly related note, i've been pretty down since the wedding. don't get me wrong, i was elated when i heard that they were getting married and i was excited and grinning ear-to-ear all day saturday. the problem is, i have a dysfunctional family. and it saddens me. i'm the only one in my immediate family who has a solid relationship with all of the other four family members. that's just pitiful. a long time ago, i thought that being in this unique position charged me with the responsibility to bridge the other relationships. a long time ago, i realized that was not true, nor even possible for that matter. i can only control the relationships that i have, not a relationship that two others have, or don't have, as the case may be. i take a lot of pride in having a relationship with all of my family but i also work very hard at these relationships. i don't think it would be such hard work to maintain these relationships if i weren't always getting put in the middle of the other non-functional relationships. it's a huge stress on me. i don't like it. and it puts a strain on my relationship with individuals when they are constantly trying to get me involved in relationships i am not a part of and cannot control. i have about gotten to the point where i realize that i just need to speak up and tell them that. you putting me in the middle of this hurts my relationship with you. i'm sorry. i hate that our family is so dysfuntional. i can't fix that. all i can do is continue to nurture my individual relationships with each of you and pray that one day in the future, things might be different.


friday - 14april2006 - 10:06
it's been a good florida week. i may regret saying this, but the weather has been absolutely gorgeous. it's been semi-cool and windy. beautiful. why don't i remember having days like this when i lived here? and i'm sure i've now ruined the magic and it's going to go back to being hideously hot. oh well. we got to visit with both of my parents already. visited with my cousin and our friend duane on poker night. that was actually a lot of fun. it came down to me and duane in heads-up poker action but his stack of chips was much larger than mine and he called my all-in on a bluff. big meanie. i enjoyed it. we weren't playing for $, just fun. i got randal a very nice poker set for christmas and we've tried to talk some of the guys at work into a poker night but we've been unsuccessful. guess it's time to start hounding them again. tonight we're going to see sandra's new house, which i'm very excited about because it is so much closer. the weekend's a little up in the air still. church and easter yummies are on the schedule but not sure about anything else. i hope you all have a terrific easter weekend!


wednesday - 12april2006 - 08:47
i appreciate that someone got to my site by googling "how to care for duck with seizures" yesterday and today "peking ducks as pets". perhaps i should expand my duck page to include more useful information. hey, it could happen. and, for those of you who think i've just been lazy all week, check out the new pics i've posted. maybe one of these days i'll have last year caught up and can start working on this year.


friday - 07april2006 - 15:13
HAPPY one day late BIRTHDAY, COUSIN-N-LAW!!! saw this over at richmond's and thought it was pretty darned fun:

Names

  1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet and current street name)
    Doubleshot Amsterdam (this made me laugh and laugh, the first three pets i remember were three cats named doubleshot, rum ricky, and bacardi - i don't remember who named them but they clearly had a problem)
  2. YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME: (grandfather/grandmother on your mother's side, your favorite candy)
    Shirley Reeses (mmmmmmmmmreeses)
  3. YOUR "FLY GIRL/GUY" NAME: (first initial of first name, first two or three letters of your last name)
    J Ho or J Hol (shouldn't this be #8?)
  4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite animal, favorite color)
    Duck Silver (i can just see the film noir now)
  5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
    Valarie Summit (sounds like a snobby, whiny, soap chick to me)
  6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (first 3 letters of your last name, last 3 letters of mother's maiden name, first 3 letters of your pet's name)
    Hol Berroz (couldn't figure out which pet this should be so i went with the last one i really had, i miss my duck)
  7. JEDI NAME (first three letters of your last name, first two of your first name, first two of your grandmother's maiden name, first three of the town you were born in)
    Hol Scsum (yeh, pronounce that one)
  8. P0RN STAR NAME: (middle name, street you grew up on)
    Valarie Turkey (hmmm, must be one of the f3t!sh flicks)
well that was fun. i was highly amused. and now it's off to orlando!


wednesday - 05april2006 - 08:41
it's sad in the office again. late yesterday afternoon brenda stopped by. i think she mostly just came to try to get access to ron's computer (nobody knew his passwords) and to say hi. she was smiling and joking and generally trying really hard to be doing well. i admire her. anyhow, she ended up cleaning out his office. not his furniture, but all of his photos and artwork and auburn stuff. when she left, i walked by his office and started crying again (i'm such a girl). he's gone now. no more pretending he's on vacation. there's nothing left of him other than furniture and stacks of scribbled work notes. it's sad. please continue to pray for brenda's strength. after work, we took dh on about a four mile hike. it was good exercise without being tied to a treadmill or elliptical. i think he enjoyed it. i think we enjoyed it. enjoyment and exercise were had by all. when we got home, we were pleased to be greeted with our first flower of the season. it's one of the pretty purple ones that bloomed last year. last year, we had three pretty purple flowers bloom. this year, it looks like there are thirteen pretty purple flowers getting ready to bloom. the shame of it is that we will most likely end up missing all of them being bloomed together. it looks as though there are about four, maybe five, which will bloom this week while we're here to see them. they'll probably all be dead again by the time we get back home from our two weeks in orlando. such a shame. i'll bet they will be awfully pretty.


tuesday - 04april2006 - 11:04
somehow we've gotten into twice a day gymming over the last few weeks (trying to help a newbie gymmer at work). so now we're going at lunch (most days) and after work. comes out to between 2.5 and 3 hours of gymming a day. if i don't start to see some results in the next few weeks i'm going to scream! anyhow, the three of us are working out together (i started doing some weights again since, clearly, high intensity cardio isn't doing anything) which is kind of a nice system. and we've got a schedule and a tracking sheet. anyhow, tuesday and thursdays are going to be cardio only so we're going to drag dh out to the woods for some hiking this afternoon. we'll go to the same place we went sunday with mn, which happens to be a mile or so from the office. since this will be his first hike, we're only going to do a moderate three mile loop. should be good for him. we had planned on taking him to panther creek last weekend but then we all got the call and nobody was interested in hiking anymore. probably just as well we take him on a "starter" hike first anyhow. panther creek is the prettiest waterfall we've seen in ga, and the trail is fairly easy since it mostly follows the creek, but it is 7 miles. the bad thing is that we're going to have to find a way to keep up with our exercising for the next couple of weeks in orlando. i think the plan is to head down after work friday and stay for two weeks. lots of visiting this time. i was a little worried about imposing on the dawsons for such an extended period of time but then jim called randal yesterday and told him that we needed to head down last night because he had magic tickets for tonight. so i guess they don't much mind us intruding. i guess they're smart enough to realize that they could easily get some free kid duty out of us. not to mention that we're going to be bringing down our wet saw and tiling tools as well as sodding tools. when you're a visiting vagabond, you've gotta find some way to pay your way.


monday - 03april2006 - 17:11
it's a strange feeling. today was pretty much back to normal. but when i walk by ron's office i feel guilty for it feeling back to normal. or when i ran a function and was informed by the system that a notification email would be sent to ron.bush@ourcompany. strange it feels. anyhow, the weekend was a pretty decent one. it was good to relax after such a sad and stressful week. saturday i got to sleep in, which was very nice. and then i spent most of the rest of the day reading, which was equally nice. i couldn't even say the last time i just sat and read a book. sunday morning we got up and met up with mn for a hike. we sort of combined a couple of loop trails so i'm not sure of the exact mileage we put in but it was definately over five miles. after the hike, we stopped for a little grocery shopping and then went home to hold down the couch for the rest of the day. it's just good to have some down time every once in a while.


friday - 31march2006 - 13:13
it's been a rough week. yesterday was ron's memorial service. it was very nice. a couple of his friends and one of his brothers got up and told stories about him and his life. overall it was a very light service, focusing on what a great life he led rather than mourning his death. i think he would have appreciated it. his family was holding up very well, considering. brenda, his wife, was a pillar of strength. she said she’ll be coming by the office here next week to visit. it also turned out to be quite the southern data (the company most of these guys used to work for, which randal left when he moved to orlando and met me) reunion. i would say that between old sds people and people at our current company, there were 40-50 of his past/present coworkers there. we met up with beth and family before the service for lunch and ended up with a party of 17 (i'm sure the servers loved us adding more tables and chairs and people every few minutes). most of the former sds people i had met before so it was good to see most of them again and to meet those i hadn't. on a related note, i had forgotten to mention it monday, but one of our coworkers had such a nice reaction to the news about ron. we had tried to contact him on sunday to tell him the tragic news but we were unable to reach him so he is the only one who didn't find out until he came in to work monday morning. randal and i happened to be the first ones here so it was on us to tell him. after some talk about what a shock it was and how young he was and how no one is guaranteed a tomorrow, i noticed mn get in his truck and take off. i asked randal if he knew where he had gone. he had went to his wife's workplace to apologize for a stupid argument they were having. they had been fighting since sunday about drapes and, in light of the shocking news, he decided life was too short to be arguing over something so trivial. anyhow, i thought it was a beautiful reaction. a wonderful tribute of sorts.


monday - 27march2006 - 11:14
one of our coworkers,
RON BUSH passed away this weekend. his wife went to wake him up yesterday morning and he was gone. he was 42 years old. please keep his wife, brenda, and his family (they had no children) in your prayers. i'm having a very difficult time with this. i didn't really know my grandparents, i've never had any close family or friends pass away. i work with ron everyday. heck, randal's worked with him for 15 years. there are only eight of us in this office so we all converse on a daily basis. we all go to lunch together once a week. we tell stories and laugh together every day. i usually spend an hour a day in his office trying to resolve some customer issue and learning from him. i've never had someone so close to me to pass away. and i'm a girl. so i cried all day yesterday. a group of us congregated to go to the house yesterday afternoon after all of the family had arrived (both of their families live in al). we brought food, drinks, plates, cups, napkins, ice. and we showed brenda that we all love ron and her (at some point in time she worked with several of these guys as well, that is where she and ron met). i cannot imagine what she is going through. we're all just shocked. he was fine friday. we went out for chinese on friday. he went to get his saw sharpened to do some yard work over the weekend. we figured out a problem that has been reported by many customers over the last several months and he was so proud that he wanted to call and explain it to the customer himself. and this morning his desk is still stacked with papers and notes that he's scrawled out. like any minute he's going to walk back in and get back to work. we all actually sat around his office this morning telling stories and reminiscing. then we read some scriptures and said some prayers and cried (yeh, even the guys let some emotion out). it just doesn't seem real. he was forty-two. that's only three years older than my husband. i didn't sleep at all last night. i tossed and turned and cried. i prayed repeatedly for brenda's strength. and though i know it's silly , i tried to keep a hand on his chest or wrist all night. just to make sure he wasn't leaving me. i watched the clock and waited for the alarm to go off so that i could finally get out of bed. you'll recall that another coworker, td, had a double lung transplant the first of this month (and he actually showed up at the house yesterday as well - it's amazing how well he is doing). that event sparked some conversation around the office and ron stated that if he were to die tomorrow, he's had a good life. i'm so thankful to know that he felt that way. i know brenda will always feel like they were cheated out of their time together (they've only been married five or so years) but at least she can know that he felt like he was blessed with a good life.


friday - 24march2006 - 17:20
on fridays, most all of the office (there are 8 of us) goes to lunch together. occasionally, someone will have a craving for something in particular but a lot of times we just end up at our old standby - a mexican restaurant down the street. well, today we headed to our old standby and one of the guys tried to pull open the door and it wouldn't open. we looked up at the door and there was a hand-scrawed sign saying "closed for dignity day and right to work in america!" dignity day?! wtf?!!! the protest is in response to a bill that is trying to be passed here in ga that "would deny state services to adults living in the U.S. illegally and impose a 5 percent surcharge on wire transfers from illegals" (emphasis added). so basically, they are protesting that we want them to stop breaking our laws. needless to say, we are henceforth boycotting "our old standby". bunch of ingrates.


thursday - 23march2006 - 13:54
AMEN!!! this is the best news i have heard in a while. "State senators are considering a proposal that would allow South Carolina to execute those convicted two or more times of sexually assaulting children." i don't understand why it has taken so long for a state to step up and take some initiative in protecting children from becoming victims. those who know me are probably aware of how vehemently i feel toward sexual offenders. it is a victimization that stays with you for life and forever changes who you are. and child offenders are especially vile. personally, i'm of the opinion that one crime against a child is too many and the offender should be shot on site. of course, that will never happen (unless it's the parents who find them), but at least if south carolina passes this into law, these offenders will only get one second chance instead of the multiple chances they get all over the country now. i studied sexual offenders fairly extensively in my criminal justice classes and, though i can't properly cite statistics right now, it was alarming. the recidivism rates among sexual offenders are rediculously high. generally, their crimes escalate over time. overall, treatment does not work. chemical castration removes anatomical ability but not the depraved thoughts and desires (there have been several cases where chemical castration did nothing more than cause the offenders to get more creative in using objects). i pray that sc does pass this law. and i pray that every other state follows suit.


tuesday - 21march2006 - 17:08
two weekends in a row of being young. we went out again friday with a few of the guys from work. we went to the punchline comedy club for a comedian that rc is very fond of. it was a good show. it got a bit smutty toward the end, but very humerous overall. after the show, we stopped at american pie to hang out for a while. i'll have you know that my boy KICKED BUTT at the pool tables. he beat eight or nine people in a row. i was very proud. i mostly people-watched and amused myself with listening to the guys. boys are funny. yes, yes they are. we didn't get home until after 0200 so by the time we got all of the smoke scrubbed off of us and got in bed it was 0300. go us being so young! saturday morning randal was kind enough to let me sleep until 0930 (ugh!) before getting me up to head to wedowee. big meanie. sunday we went to lunch with the family after church and then we went to randal's brother's house to see my grandkids (i'm very upset that i didn't know that would be on the agenda so i didn't take my camera with me). i can't believe my baby had babies. and they are adorable babies, of course. sis-in-law also showed me all of the stuff she's gotten for the baby's room, which they are in the process of decorating. it was very exciting watching her belly moving and seeing all the cute baby stuff. it'll be nice to have another little niece. babies, babies, everywhere.


thursday - 16march2006 - 09:09
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM-IN-LAW!!! well the dawsons came up to visit and left to go back home yesterday morning. we had a great time, at least i did. i so enjoy having houseguests! they got in late saturday night. we got up at the crack of dawn sunday to spend the day at six flags over georgia. we opened the park, rode the heck out of it, and then closed the park. it was the perfect day. it was warm but overcast enough to not be HOT. the park was virtually empty. we rode all of the coasters multiple times and never waited more than 10 minutes in any line. my nephew-the-eldest was just tall enough to ride all of the coasters with us. he had a great time riding some of our favorites like superman and batman. my sis and bro-in-law even rode most all of the coasters. my nephew-the-younger and niece had a great time on the kid rides. fun was had by all to the point of exhaustion. monday was a recouperative day. we worked until lunch and then spent the afternoon with them. randal and jim worked on building a bathroom while jonna and i went to the library and walked through model homes. tuesday morning we worked again and went to anna ruby falls/unicoi park in the afternoon. it was a good visit. and thanks to my wonderful bro-in-law being so willing to help, we now have a floored and framed bathroom upstairs, complete with a door to the attic. it looks very much like something that will one day be a room. we've been planning on going down to orlando this weekend but i think those plans have gotten changed. time to get out the calendar and start doing some figurin'.


friday - 10march2006 - 10:31
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JULIE!!! how happy am i that i've been wide awake since 00:30? well, truly intelligent person that i am, i managed to make that little blister on the bottom of my foot mad. yes, i probably should have stayed on the elliptical but since the fan for that side of the room was pointed the other direction, 15 minutes was all i could do. so when the treadmill upfront with a fan right in front of it opened up, i abandoned my ellipticalling and jumped on the slightly cooler treadmill. 10 minutes brisk walking, 15 minutes jogging, 5 minutes brisk walking, 30 minutes jogging, 30 minutes brisk walking, 5 minutes cooldown, and 1 very angry humongo-blister on the bottom of my left foot. looking back, it probably wasn't very sound logic to think that, as long as i made sure my sock was not creased under me again, it wouldn't get irritated. so this morning the blister was the size of a silver dollar and quite bulbuous, making walking quite difficult. i decided to perform surgery on it to doctor it up and now i have it carefully bandaged. randal took one look at the large bandage covering most of my foot and laughed that i've had my first sports injury. no sympathy for the dummyhead, i tell you. now i'm just hoping that by relieving the fluid, covering it in ointment, bandaging it, and staying off of it as much as possible today, i'll be able to walk tonight when we go out on the town with dh. should be fun. if i can walk. and no, i have not done a bit of cleaning for company yet. i will have to do all of my cleaning and grocery shopping sometime after i wake up tomorrow (so after 11:00 or noon). knowing them, i'm certain i'll still have plenty of time to get everything done before they arrive.


thursday - 09march2006 - 15:46
i jogged forty minutes straight last night! i don't know how i did it. and, quite franky, i'm surprised i survived it. i was on the treadmill for 95 minutes - 20 minutes brisk walking, 40 minutes jogging, 30 minutes brisk walking, 5 minutes cooldown. i was exhausted by the time we got home. and my legs muscles were so sore. but i was very proud of my insane achievement. the most surprising part is that neither my knees or the side of my leg are bothering me today. strange. i did manage to rub a small blister on the bottom of my left foot since i didn't realize my sock was creased, but it's not too bad. i don't know if i'll be able to duplicate my efforts tonight, or even if i want to, but at least i can say that, once upon a time, i jogged forty continuous minutes. now if only all that effort would start showing somewhere!


wednesday - 08march2006 - 10:17
yay! i had emailed my sissie to make our reservations for our orlando visit we were planning in a couple of weeks. well she called me this morning and said it was fine for us to come down next weekend but they were planning on coming up here this weekend. woohooo! i love having company. and there'll be more fun stuff to do with them now that it has gotten warmer. the only downside is that i now have to clean up the house. small price, i suppose.


tuesday - 07march2006 - 11:08
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, COUSIN!!! /cheerful tone. i'm back to loathing the gym. i just don't see the point. september 12, 2005 is when we started lunch-gymming. this means it has been just about six months that we've been gymming on a pretty consistent basis an average of four times a week for forty-five minutes at a time. of course, we've been gymming much longer than that but it has been a lot more consistant since going at lunch. so all that being said, six months and i see no difference at all. wtf am i doing wrong?! i feel like i'm killing myself and for what! why bother if it's not changing anything? i've tried weight training (low weights, high reps), i've tried high-intensity cardio, i've tried combinations of the two. i've pushed myself and pushed myself all in the hopes that one day i'll look in the mirror and not grimmace at myself. but all i could think today while i was struggling to force myself to keep going was "why effin bother?"


monday - 06march2006 - 11:07
i got some very exciting news over the weekend but i can't say anything to anyone so i'm about to burst. it stinks to have happy news and be unable to share it. in any case, a hearty CONGRATULATIONS to you-know-who-you-are!!! for those curious kittens, don't bother emailing me about it. it may be killing me to keep it quiet but i won't give it up without permission. it was a fairly uneventful weekend. we went to wedowee. the most exciting part of that was visiting the very pretty goatlet that my sis-in-law is raising because it was quite premature. such a pretty goatlet. i hugged her and petted her and loved her and tried to take her with me. randal said i could have some again this year but nobody informed me when they were being born and most of them are already born now. no one was able to tell me whether my sienna has had hers already. ideally, i'd like to raise hers. keep it in the family. i guess i should call up my bro-in-law and ask him about which ones are still due and when and whether i could take any of them. think my sissy is ready for another goatlet visit? on the way home yesterday we stopped at emory to check on td. we were amazed at how well he is doing. four days after surgery and he was sitting up, talking, walking around the hospital, and best of all - no more oxygen! he honestly looked better than he's looked this last year. it was so good to see him doing so well. after visiting with him, we stopped at kohls because i had a 30% coupon (i love kohls!) and it cannot be wasted. i bought three new skirts and two blouses and randal bought some new exercise clothes and then i got some kitchen goodies. i got the splash guard for my kitchenaid which i have been wanting in order to be less messy. and i got my calphalon cookware set! i'm very excited about this purchase. even more excited that it was 30% off. our cookware is a hodgepodge of pots and pans that don't match, don't cook evenly, aren't non-stick, and don't have lids. we have three pots, all the same size but different styles so only one has a lid that fits it. we also have one great big sauce pot we bought last year when we had our goatlets so that i could pasteurize their milk but it was a very cheap pot (although it did come in handy when we went camping with my brother last year since i didn't mind bringing it to cook over a fire). we have one large skillet that i hate to cook with because no matter how much pam i spray on it, everything sticks and burns. and it has no lid to fit it so i have to put a pizza pan over it if it needs lidding. and then we have one small, non-stick, frying pan which i use for most of our stovetop cooking because it's non-stick but it's too small a lot of the time. so now i'll have 12 matching pieces of good quality cookware in different sizes and lids for all. very exciting indeed.


thursday - 02march2006 - 14:59
td is off the ventilator and responsive to family. i'm so pleased that he is doing so well. hopefully everything will continue to go smoothly and he will be recovered in no time and healthier than he's been in years. not much else going on around here. today has been the first non-monday day this week (*knock on wood*). it seems like there was something on my mind to rant about over the weekend but after such a brain-draining week, i couldn't possibly say what it was. such is life. life is such.


wednesday - 01march2006 - 09:24
please say a prayer for td who has finally gone in for his double lung transplant this morning.
16:26 - td's wife just called to say they've finally brought him out of surgery. they say it went well and they were able to get the new lungs to inflate. he will remain on a ventilator for the next day or so to make sure the lungs are inflating and deflating properly and will remain sedated during this time. once they are confident that the lungs are functioning correctly, they will take him off the machine to assure that he is able to breath on his own. he'll be in the hospital for a few weeks but will hopefully be much healthier when he is released. please keep td and rd in your prayers. this has been such a hard road for them.
in other news, HAPPY one-day-late BIRTHDAY, SISSY and BRO-N-LAW!!! i still think it's pretty spiffy to share a bday with your spouse. it assures that they will never forget it. you haven't heard much from me the last few days because this week has been the never-ending-monday-from-hell week. i'm over it and ready for it to end.


friday - 24february2006 - 10:02
haven't had much to say this week. mostly because i've been busy with work but also because i haven't slept so i'm over-tired and cranky. consider yourself warned if i talk with you. we went to a funeral monday night, we went to a funeral tuesday night. one of our coworkers who has lived in atlanta all his life drove tuesday night so on the way back he decided to give us a tour of atlanta. it was interesting and much less stressful since (a) i wasn't driving; (b) i wasn't navigating; and (c) he confidently knew his way around. there are some ginormous mansions in atlanta. we also had a lot of fun conversation going on in the car so it was a good time considering it was following up a funeral. two nights of getting home around midnight during the week and still not being able to sleep through the night at all this week has been painful. i had about decided it's time to go to a sleep center but that our crummy insurance doesn't cover the one that is right up the street and the closest one they do cover is almost in atlanta. so much for that. i'm so freakin tired. tonight we're going to a georgia force game. not that i have much interest in arena football but our big, big, big boss offered our office tickets to the company's private suite at the arena so why not. i always wondered what goes on up in those boxes. only one of our other coworkers is able to go so it'll be us and him and his brother. should be a good time. it's very nice that our big, big, big boss thought of us. nothing much else planned for the weekend yet. other than trying like crazy to sleep. if only i could be okay with sleep drugs. i'm just not. though i am wearing down.


tuesday - 21february2006 - 12:18
HAPPY one-day-late BIRTHDAY, DAD and BRIAN!!! the week is off to a bad start. last night we had to go to wedowee for a funeral (not one of the gmas). tonight we (most of the office) are going to macon for a funeral (rc's gpa with whom he was very close). and yesterday rb was also in alabama at a funeral. i know they come in threes but i've never seen the three all on the same day. hopefully this will be the last of our funeral going for quite a while. on the bright side, the funeral we went to in wedowee brought one of randal's best friend/cousins back home (he happened to be working in washington state when he got the call but he lives in taiwan). he's the one that randal went over to taiwan to visit back in '98 and he has not seen him since. anyhow, he invited us over and said he's got dsl in his home. time to go to asia? he also said he hasn't been to china or vietnam and would love to go there so we could come visit him and then go asia-hopping with him. hey, you don't have to ask me twice. so anyhow, maybe we've got a trip for this year.


tuesday - 14february2006 - 09:58
HAPPY 1ST ANNIVERSARY, SANDRA & TONY!!! and happy thoughts in the general direction of jenny getting the job she wants! yesterday was a good torture day. we did our 45 minutes at lunch time and then went back for another hour after work. yes, one hour and forty-five minutes on the elliptical. that's got to be doing something, right? unfortunately, the pan of heart-shaped pbcup brownies that i made for the office today will surely put me in the red again. stupid ellipticalling not being brownie proof. and i think randal is going to take me to mmmmmacaroni grill for dinner (i do not at all believe in vday but that's my one day a year when randal takes me for italian and far be it from me to pass up a good italian meal) so there goes the rest of the week's gymming too. i got a call from my sissy last night asking if i had some news for her, some big news. um, no, should i? so i'm sitting there wondering if my poor 95 year old gma-in-law is going around telling people i'm pregnant again. apparently, she stopped by my site, which is a rare occasion, and read that i had cut my hair and was sad that i didn't call her and let her know it. i guess i didn't realize cutting my hair off was such a big deal. of course, i'm not really used to having a sissy (keep in mind, she's twelve years older so she was practically out of the house when i was growing up) so maybe hair-cutting is supposed to be big news in sissy circles. from now on, i will be more mindful to update her on such changes to my appearance.


monday - 13february2006 - 16:16
it was an interesting weekend in wedowee. we spent saturday afternoon with randal's ex-in-laws. surprisingly, it actually was not akward at all. (unlike when he took me and my mom there back in 2000 or so which was quite akward because we were not married and back then he was still getting over the past.) we mostly went to see his ex-gma-in-law (xgil) who has been in poor health. she welcomed us in and we sat and talked for a few minutes before the ex-parents-in-law (xpil) came down and joined the conversation. after about an hour of enjoyable conversation, xgil set the table and we had dinner with her. i felt bad that she had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to fix the meal. any time an 87 year old woman makes a big home-cooked meal for you, you eat everything and appreciate it very much. yes, i did choke down the three different kinds of beans and fried green tomatoes. luckily the roast and potatoes were quite good and easy to eat. after dinner, we all sat and talked for another hour or so. they were all so kind and welcoming and it was really an enjoyable visit. shortly before we left, xgil told me that sometimes two people just aren't meant to work out but she was so glad that randal had found me. which really meant the world to me. see, the thing is these people were randal's family. he and the ex lived on their property for the first five years of their marriage and they became very close. after the split, ex told them she didn't want them seeing each other anymore. which just seems wrong. i think i put them all at ease when i explained my feelings on loved ones. and randal was very appreciative of it. i just feel so bad that this group of people who care so much about one another has been kept apart just because two people weren't meant to be. it really made me think about how hard divorce can be on everyone, not just the two at the heart of it. when we got up to leave, xgil left the room crying and xfil got choked up himself. everyone hugged me and we assured them that we would make an effort to visit more often. i'm so proud that my husband is such a wonderful man that his ex-in-laws miss him so much after such a long time. and it speaks volumes about their character that they welcome his new wife with such open arms. i'm glad that he's not going to be left lamenting after xgil passes away how much he regrets that he never saw her again. oh, and she has the sweetest story too. apparently, she had a high school sweetheart and they both ended up marrying other people and living long, happy lives with their spouses but when their spouses passed away, they somehow ended up back together until he passed away a few years ago. just seemed like an incredibly sweet story to me.


thursday - 09february2006 - 09:38
i managed to hurt my leg and was unable to effectively gym yesterday. it started hurting while i was on the treadmill tuesday but it didn't cause me to stop so i figured when it was still hurting yesterday that i would be able to "walk it off". didn't work. i treadmilled for about 15 minutes and then i tried the elliptical thinking it would be easier on my poor leg. i managed to do 20 minutes of elliptical before the screaming of my leg won out. it's a strange place to be injured. it's almost like a bad shin splint but its on the inner side of my leg from just above my ankle to about 4 inches above my ankle. after i got off the elliptical i had a bit of a limp because it hurt to put any weight on it. i piddled around with some weights and crunches and iced it when we got home. it's still hurting this morning and i've been icing it at my desk, willing it to stop hurting. so far, not working. i don't guess i'll be gymming today. there's nothing cardio i can do and i'm just not ready to start serious weight training again. how the heck did i manage to hurt my leg in such a strange way?


wednesday - 08february2006 - 10:45
it only took four months for me to finish posting pics for hawaii. pics for days 13-20 now ready to view. that's about it for now.


tuesday - 07february2006 - 10:34
don't worry, yesterday got better. we ended up getting a bunch of snow, a veritable blizzard, for about two minutes before it turned into a full day of "florida snow". but that was a beautiful two minutes, i assure you. three other coworkers complimented my hair throughout the day. bl told my hubby that he thinks it looks sexy (yes, i enjoyed hearing a man say that to my hubby). and even randal seemed to be coming around. he said it makes me look younger, which i choose to take as a compliment, and he likes that i'm more willing to wear it down now than when it was longer so he thinks he'll be able to adjust to it more easily. boys are silly. yes, yes they are. i had a rough time at the gym yesterday. i was only able to do twenty minutes on the treadmill before i had to get off and sit down because i felt terribly sick. after sitting for a few minutes, i moved to one of the bikes and did twenty minutes on the bike. for some reason, i immensely dislike the bikes. when we got home, randal built a roaring fire. it was only the second fire we've had this winter (the first being when my family was up for thanksgiving and was mostly ceremonial). granted, our fireplace is mostly for decoration since it does not do much to heat the room but on a cold rainy night like last night it sure makes it seem warmer. it was quite nice.


monday - 06february2006 - 09:40
finally got some snow here this morning. too bad it's not really enough to have any fun with. and it'll probably turn to rain soon enough. about all it really does is prevent me from complaining about a completely snowless winter. c'est la vie. i'm having a low self-esteem day. i had randal cut off my hair saturday night and the whole while he was snipping, he kept saying it was the saddest thing he had ever done. then, when all was said and cut, he couldn't hardly look at me the rest of the weekend without coming close to tearing up. i think it looks pretty good. and it certainly feels healthier since my ends were just shot. unfortunately, since the bulk of my self-image comes from how others see me, my hubby especially, i'm struggling with regret. i changed three times this morning, which i never ever do. i lamented not having any cute clothes suitable for such a cold day (figures it would turn winter when i'm badly in need of wearing a feel-good outfit) and i settled on the cutest warm outfit i could put together. as i was brushing my hair randal made a comment that he thought i was going to try to dress cute today. there went that outfit. so i put on another warm outfit but i hated it with my new hair length. so outfit number three is an overly dressy, semi-warm outfit. i thought about just calling in today and i suppose that's what i should have done. it helps that i haven't slept in weeks again and i'm having terrible heartburn (that's what randal said it sounds like) for the last week. it's got me sick to my stomach this morning and even the yogurt i'm trying to eat for breakfast is not making it any better. nor the tums i took on the way to work. i'd say it's one of those days where i would have better off staying in bed but that i'm so sick and tired of laying in bed. i think i'm going to have to break down and start taking something to help me sleep. it's gotten way out of hand. on the bright side, one of my co-workers has noticed my hair this morning and said it looked fantastic. and that's why i luv bl.


friday - 03february2006 - 10:07
HAPPY one-day-early BIRTHDAY to SANDRA!!! i'm quite proud to say i gymmed twice yesterday. i gymmed hard twice yesterday. we went for our lunch gymming where i did 20 minutes of power-walking, 15 minutes of running, and 10 minutes of power-walking on the treadmill. then, gluttons for further punishment, we went back after work and i did 15 minutes of power-walking, 20 minutes of running, 25 minutes of power-walking, and 5 minutes of cooldown on the treadmill. am i svelte yet?


wednesday - 01february2006 - 10:07
it's a terrible person who can have such a great situation and be so miserable with it.


tuesday - 31january2006 - 14:43
what a lousy group of guys i work with. i went to the gym at lunch and did 25 minutes of power-walking, 10 minutes of running, 10 minutes of power-walking, and 5 minutes of cooldown on the treadmill. i came back and had my sandwich and was feeling pretty good about the extra calories i burned by forcing myself to run for 10 minutes. what do those good-for-nothing guys do? they call me into the kitchen and sing to me while shoving mmmmicecreamcake down my throat. big meanies! although i guess i can't be too mad at them since they assured me that it was fat-free and calorie-free. funny -- it sure tasted fattening!


monday - 30january2006 - 17:12
it's official. i'm old. one-quarter of a century to be exact. i never really considered 25 to be one of the milestone birthdays but i think it kind of is. i feel older now. not decrepit and worn-out old, but no-longer-a-teenager old (yes, i have been trying to hold on to that for the last 5 years). i guess i actually feel like a bonafide adult now. scary. so i suppose it's time for a look back on my first quarter of a century.
i have:
anyhow, it's been a great birthday. my wonderful hubby surprised me with a reservation at the melting pot. it was fabulous! exactly how i remembered it. what a terrifically thoughtful husband to take me someplace even though it's not his thing. we had a fantastic meal and then visited my furniture and went to kohls. a good evening was had by me (and i even think he enjoyed it a bit). but my birthday really became official when my mom called me at 13:33 to tell me the story of what i was doing 25 years ago (namely, putting her through 36 hours of labor and making her miss three meals in a row). i appreciate that she calls me every year at 13:33 to tell me the story of me. it really makes my birthday every year.


thursday - 26january2006 - 14:14
welcome to anyone who might actually be stopping by from
richmond's site. i'd like to say i've got some witty, enthralling posts here but that just wouldn't be true. sorry for dragging you into the ennui... it's been one of those weeks that seems like it's never going to end. i'm having my busiest month at my new position at work - 98 cases for the month and still 3 days left - and tuesday tipped the busy scales with 12 cases (10 after 14:00). it's just been insane. and i've been sniffly and coughy and headachy all week which just makes the rediculous busyness that much more painful. anyhoo. from the last update i got, gma m is still in the hospital, still disoriented, and still uncharacteristically ornery (she tried to throw her grits at her granddaughter). the doctors won't let her go home unless she allows someone to stay with her and she is adamently refusing to do so. poor woman.


tuesday - 24january2006 - 09:53
please keep gma m in your prayers. she's in the hospital with another spell of dementia. she was pretty bad sunday when we took her to church but apparently she got worse after we had left. the poor woman just can't get her mind straight. the sad thing is that they do not believe it is stroke-related this time. i feel terrible for old people. i don't ever want to get old. i pray that i'm able to go until i can't go anymore and then i'll just go.


friday - 20january2006 - 09:37
i've been having bad middle-of-the-night-migraines this week. there's nothing fun about middle-of-the-night-migraines. the shame of it is that i was actually sleeping solidly last night until i was woken at 0430 with severe throbbing and nausea. it hurt too much for me to even roll over and take the motrin sitting next to my bed. it wasn't until close to 0630 that i felt stable enough to do so. luckily, it kicked in fairly quickly and the throbbing had subsided considerably by the time i got out of bed at 0737. although i did lament not being able to lay there a little longer but i suppose that was my own fault for forgetting to get packed for wedowee last night. the good news is my head and eyes are feeling much better now. still a bit on the nauseous side but that too should pass. anyhow. during the time that i was asleep last night, i had a dream about jori pace and jillian galarza. we were all hanging out back in school and having a grand old time. which is a little off since the two of them never really got along so we never really hung out all together. i guess there's certain creative license in dreams. i do think about them from time to time. they were both great friends in their own way. jilliana was the most loving person i've ever known. she was always there with a supportive shoulder. jori and i had kind of a rollercoaster friendship and while i have occasionally said that i'm not sure she was a real friend, i think i've decided that wasn't all true. there were a lot of times that she went above and beyond to try to be there for me. everything else was just because we were kids and kids are stupid. above all else, she was by far the most fun person i've ever known. i actually ran into jilliana about 6 years ago but i was working and had a van full of kids waiting on me so i couldn't talk. i gave her my number but never heard from her. and on one of our trips back to orlando, just after we moved up here, i called jori's parents to give them my number to pass on to her. her dad actually seemed happy to hear from me, which took me a little by surprise, and said he was going to call her right then and give her my number. i never heard from her either. i occasionally think of them and wonder what they're up to these days. as i'm feeling older and older, high school seems like it was eons ago (though really it was just the other day). now i know some of you will think i'm a pathetic stalker-type since this isn't the first time i've posted about thinking of people from my past. and i'm aware that not all friends are meant to last forever. otherwise, the few who do wouldn't be all that special - would they? but i guess since i had so few people i considered real friends growing up, they'll always hold a place in my heart so i wonder about them and how their lives are going. what's wrong with that? i count myself fortunate that i'm still pretty close with a friend i made when i was almost four years old and another friend i made in kindergarten (luv you, katie and sandra!). it could be worse, i could talk about/think about no one but myself. how boring and egocentric would that be? (not to mention unnesessary, we all know it's all about me!) ;-D
13:36 - so my cousin tagged me for a meme. while i don't really consider myself a blogger since my rants are quite dull, not to mention uncommentable, i figured why not. here goes four:

four jobs that i have had:
four movies that i can watch over and over again:
four places i have lived:
four tv shows i love to watch:
four websites i read daily:
four places i have been on vacation:
four favorite foods:
four places i'd rather be:
four people to tag:


tuesday - 17january2006 - 09:15
we can't figure out what our big trip is going to be this year. we had really wanted to do kilimanjaro for randal's BIG BIRTHDAY but it seems like there is too much unrest in that region right now. which is quite disappointing because it seemed like such a great trip and a terrific milestone accomplishment. i suppose if we make the final decision to put that off, we might just try to do some small trips this year. afterall, we had two pretty big trips last year - six hours ahead in germany and six hours back in hawaii. of course, there's always the chance that we'll just find incredible airfare somewhere and go. that's how germany was decided, hard to pass up on $252 roundtrip to deutchland. no matter what, i want to do something special for his birthday. perhaps if i start planning now, i can actually come up with something good and pull it together by august.


monday - 16january2006 - 14:37
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRUDDER!!! unfortunately, that's really about all i have to say. it was a well-deserved lump weekend. for anyone trying to call me (lol), you'll have better luck reaching me on randal's phone until i get my new phone on wednesday and deem you worthy of knowing my new number.


friday - 13january2006 - 10:45
happy paraskevidekatriaphobia day! personally, i'm just happy it's friday. we're going to have a nice quiet weekend at home, which will be the first since the weekend of 11nov05. i'm looking forward to some relaxation. things have been far too hectic lately. on a more important note, congratulations to shane and teresa who found out the other day that they are having another daughter! of course, we are a little upset over this. we were hoping they were having a son so that we wouldn't have to worry about trying to have one to continue the lineage (randal and shane's father is an only son, what will become of the holloway line if shane and teresa decide two {girls} is enough?!) when randal read the email the other night he exclaimed a loud "darnit" and said that it looks like we're going to have to get busy. of course, this was said in jest since he's even more anti-procreating than i am. although i think if there were a way to guarantee a boy, he'd be all for it. but then, i might be more willing too if that were the case. girls are nightmares. they are cute and sweet and wonderful... but high maintenance is such an understatement! i digress. the point is we are very happy for shane and teresa and we are both excited that we will have a new niece to play with in a few more months!


tuesday - 10january2006 - 12:12
10 days into the new year, must be time to start up a new rant page. and speaking of rants, yes, it is one of those days where every little thing that comes at me just ticks me off royally. good day to start ranting again, i suppose. things have been crazy busy lately which doesn't entirely please me. other than gym time, there's been no time to breath hardly at work. today my boy disappeared, something about picking up a fridge with a coworker, so i guess we're not gymming (he's got a teleconference he's hosting this afternoon so we're past the window that we could go). so i figured if i can't go gym to get away and blow off steam, might as well rant. either that or i'm just going to blow up. it's just one of those days, you know. well, since this is my first post of the new year, i should at least catch up a bit. the most important thing is that we started the new year off debt-free. always a good way to start a year. after a very late night conversation with my sissy last friday, we woke up saturday (new year's eve) morning and decided to pack up and head to orlando. i woke up a little stuffy but i figured it was just from having the heat on in the house (i deplore having heat on in the house, even if it is just set to 57°). during the course of the 7 hour drive south, it became evident that i was coming down with a cold. great way to start the new year. we made some calls on the way down to see whether anyone had any great new year plans that we could crash. nobody had much of anything going but jenny just got moved down to orlando the night before so we figured we'd try to do something with her. when we got down there, we visited with my sis and family and had dinner and i sat around lamenting that i was feeling more and more lousy and then around 21:00, we decided that jenny was going to come over and then we were going to head downtown to watch the orange drop. we got a parking spot downtown at 23:00 and walked to church street to people watch. people watching in places like that is just fascinating. at midnight, we counted down as the puny orange prematurely dropped its five foot drop. we screamed happy new year and hugged and kissed and all was merry and bright. then we headed back to the car and went home. jenny stuck around for a little while visiting with us and my sis before she headed home. new years day was spent mostly on the couch feeling lousy (i'm a miserable sick person, no matter how non-severe it is). my niece had coughing and i had sinus so we were relegated to lay on the "sick couch" together and not infect the others. silly peoples. at some point, i did manage to get off the couch long enough to help empty out the living room and dining room. first thing monday, some guys came to lay hard wood flooring in the empty living room and dining room. amazingly, we were able to refill the two rooms by that evening. tuesday, we worked and then met up with sandra after work to play putt putt and get some dinner. it was good to catch up with her. i'm impressed that i still have a friend from kindergarten. wednesday i met up with jenny after work to help her shop for some business clothes. turns out that they don't sell clothes that fit chinese people in orlando. thursday we had a short visit with my cousin. friday, my mom came over to my sister's for the family movie/pizza night. saturday we did our christmas disney thing with my dad. we had a good time, stayed at mgm all day, closed out the park, and drove home. it wasn't as bad as i thought it would be after a full disney day. i drove the first leg and when the gas light had been on for an uncomfortable amount of time (and i couldn't keep my eyes open anymore), i stopped and randal drove the rest of the way. we made it home around 03:30 which was awesome time since we didn't actually leave the mgm parking lot until quarter of nine or so. sunday we slept in and then held the couch down most of the day. yesterday we got back into the gym at lunch and then we went home after work and i sorted and started laundry and then did another hour of exercising at home. go me. unfortunately, we did miss lunch-gymming today but i think i'll at least do some stuff at home again. after getting more laundry started (we're two people, how on earth do we have so much laundry?!). i guess i should have strived to have a more substantive, interesting rant for my first of the new year. instead, you get stuck with seemingly endless nattering about my boring life. if you're just tuning in for the first time, it doesn't get any better than this...

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