The Blahs

AZ was great!  We drove around everywhere.  About half of the pictures we took are of cactai and the other half is probably the Grand Canyon.  Which was very cool by the way.  It just didn't look real.  We stayed in Phoenix and took day trips to Tucscon, Sedona, and the Grand Canyon.  We stopped in Flagstaff on the way up there to pick up lunch.  We put over a thousand miles on the rental car.  Even with all that running around, I still came back happy and relaxed.  I was even happy to go to work.  That lasted about 3 days and then it took me two hours to get there one morning and yeah, the bloom was off that rose pretty damn quick.  For all that it was absolutely gorgeous, I still think that I like SF better.  Sue me, I like water. 

 

I don't think much else has been going on.  All seems to be worked out with the band stuff.  The groom to be actually called the band's manager and set things up with him.  Naturally, two days later the band fired their manager so the groom then had to call his friend in the band and set things up again.  But whatever, I no longer have to be involved in any of it. 

 

I don't remember if I put anything up here about him recently - but my dad is doing better.  He hasn't smoked for 40 days.  He said hes  had some set backs but thats going to happen but hes trying to avoid the things that trigger a craving for a cigarette.  I don't know how well that will work long term but for the moment its good.  He was around my brother yesterday and my brother smoked but dad didn't (brother will be quitting soon.  Hes trying Chantix).  He is taking his insulin and blood thinners and all that and for the moment is taking ok care of himself.  He still has no feeling in his left foot but he can move two of the toes now.  Although, he can't feel them moving.  He says its weird, if he tries to move them when he has socks on, he'd have no idea because he couldn't see them.  He gets really bad stabbing pains in the leg, its still very swollen, and possibly getting infected as he thinks he's been running a low grade fever. He's alone with my grandmother a lot and its driving him nuts.  Shes getting really loopy and kind of (kindly understated!) mean.  I would like to get down to see him sometime soon.  Thankfully, one of my cousins is flying in and will be staying there for a few days until an uncle comes to get him.  At least there will be someone else to talk to. 

 

My sister's divorce will be final next week I think.  She also had a custody hearing and got partial custody of her kids.  Her husband will  have them two weekends in a row and every other holiday.  I think thats what it was.  I know thats got to be a relief for her.  If he had decided to push things, she'd probably have lost them and ended up paying him alimony.   

 

I just tried Mexican Chile Pepper tea and it is excellent.  The aftertaste is like honey and oranges.  Best thing ever!  Right, I just completely lost track of anything else I was going to put up here. 

 

Oh and can I just say I love wikipedia?  I know that you have to take the stuff up there with a grain of salt but I love being able to look up someone and read about them and link to other important people in their lives and read about them and just keep on going.  I looked up Louise O'Murphy the other day and also Queen Ann, Queen Mary II, Lola Montez, and Empress Maria Theresa and all of the siblings of Marie Antoinette and most of their children.  It was awesome!  

 

I need another cup of tea.         

i had no idea it had been so long since i had been on here.  almost two months!  probably no one checks my page any more anyway.  not that i blame anyone, i imagine it gets boring after awhile when there isn't anything new.  spaces looks different.  what changed?   

 

the saddest part of all?  i can't think of anything that i've been doing in the mean time either.  nothing exciting.  counting down the days to vacation. 

 

chris and his brother want to start a ghost hunting group.  like taps?  so last weekend, we went to gettysburg and walked around and took pictures in the dark and it was fun.  totally not creepy but i got to practice night photography.  and this weekend, we went to frederick and did the candlelight ghost tour that they do on saturdays and that was pretty fun, too.  again, totally not creepy but what do you expect when you have to stand outside the haunted building and look in on it.

 

oh, and i'm going to be in a wedding in october.  a friend of chris's is getting married.  i guess he's a friend of mine too since i've known him just as long as i've known chris.  anyway, chris is a groomsman and the bride to be had a "girl" drop out (more than one from what i'm hearing.  i believe she just had her third (!) person drop out) and so she asked me to be in it.  i said sure why not.  i could use another dress that i have to pay through the nose for and will never wear again cluttering up my closet.  um, no offense to those whose weddings i've been in.  yalls dresses were just lovely.  and i totally wear them out every weekend.  :o)  as i'm sure you still wear the ones you had to wear in my wedding.  anyway, this whole thing has been nothing but drama.  drama about the band, about the bride, about the music, place, blah blah blah.  and now, because i told her that i would help her if she needed me for something (thats what you're supposed to say right?) i have kind of been pulled in to the middle of things and have been placed in the role of breaking the bad news about the music to the bride.  yay me.  why these whiny baby asshole men can't talk to this woman and just tell her, "hey - what you want isn't going to happen so get over it and think of something else" i don't know.  its my job apparently to explain to her that the band won't play if she gets a dj and that she will need to talk to their manager and no chris will not dj for her either.  because, well, thats pretty much where the asshole part comes in.  i worked out a pretty reasonable compromise but he still doesn't want to do it because he wants to visit with people at the reception.  i have a nasty feeling its going to be me handling the music just so i don't have to tell this woman that shes not going to get what she wants.  i have a real problem with that.  i don't like to disappoint people.  and really, if someone had told you two months before your wedding that something you wanted wasn't going to happen how would you reacte?  (please don't say shoot the messenger.  please don't say shoot the messenger.)  anyway, it all kind of boils down to the bride and groom are presuming an awful lot that their friends are going to step up and want to do all of these things for them (free photography, free band, free dj) and their friends are getting ready to disabuse them of that notion and, lucky me, i get to be part of the fun! 

oi. 

 

oh!  and i have sad gossip about my old roommate.  she married the navy guy that she constantly fought with (we're talking very jerry springer-ish) and she got pregnant with twins (fertility drugs).  sadly for her, she went in to labor early and one of them didn't make it.  the other twin had a lot of complications and just recently was able to leave the hospital.  i don't know if he has any permanent damage.  i felt so bad for her when i heard.  i honestly don't know how capable she is of handling this kind of thing.  i wouldn't say she lead a charmed life, but definitely a superficial one.  anyway, thats my news about her.  my aunt is supposed to be getting me her contact information but i'm not sure i would do anything with it.  not particularly close/friendly with her.  i didn't have a whole lot of respect for her and was probably not particularly careful about not showing that.  if that makes sense.   

 

huh, i guess some stuff was going on all this time. 

 

on a work note, i have gotten extremely bored of my job.  they need to give me something new to do. 

We ripped out the remaining three really ugly bushes from out front.  And planted other, much cuter bushes in their place.  I think I have a before shot but I definitely have afters and I'll put them up here.  It looks so much better - you can see the porch!  Which made me instantly realize that Chris is right and we have to paint it.  Soon. 

 

We also had some friends over for a cook-out on Saturday.  As glad as I was to see them, by 2am I was falling asleep in my chair. 

 

Sunday we had to go back to Lowes to get another 14! bags of mulch.  There are still some thin spots where you can see the weed mat but there isn't much we can do about that until we put edging or something around it.  That's not going to happen until next year. 

 

We did decide though that we have 61 days until vacation (as of today) and that we should finish up all the other projects that we started and abandoned in the house before we leave.  I'm fine with this idea but I told him that he would be on his own for the Harry Potter book weekend. 

 

I have to get my car inspected this morning so I had better get a move on.  Still moving more slowly than normal today.  Who knew that being bent over pulling weeds and digging holes for 8 hours or so you would find thigh muscles you never felt before?   

when one uses the guest bed as the litter box and the other throws up in your new shoes. 

 

 

I feel like such a stupid asshat right this second. 

 

We have this nifty new thing at work called eprint.  You can send your large print jobs over to the print department over the intranet and can even specify the things you want, holes punched, tabs made, whatever.  Its wonderful and I used it for the first time yesterday. 

 

And then this morning I opened the first box and the first two parts were correct, and the third was completely wrong.  So I went back and checked the file I sent, and checked it again, and made sure that the data that was on the form was right.  And I couldn't get my head around the problem.  See, I sent a pdf file that looked one way, and when I got the print-out, it was totally in the wrong format, the data on the page was reordered, the paging was completely off, and the sort order was totally wrong.  So I'm thinking how the eff does that happen to a pdf?  So then I went to ask the IT guy if had used this thing and explained to him what happened and had him look at the file, look at the printed pages and check the data and he couldn't get his head around it either.  So before I called the printer to have HIM look at it, I opened the second box.  Yeah, there was the third print job and what I had been looking at was part of the second job.  We don't use that part of the file because, ha!  its not in the right format.  So generally, just the first few pages get printed.  I'm the only person here who prints and binds this report.  I have done this every 6 months since I've been here.  So yeah, started my day wearing my asshat and spent forever on something that really should only have taken me an hour. 

 

I would like to say that in my defense, the first box did say 'contains 3 print jobs' when really, it only contained 2.  So there, stupid printers.  

 

And now, I'm off to revise the SOP for this.