Sunday, October 28, 2007

Darn Cat


Just to update the last post, I am allergic to cats!


My eye was a little better this morning, but not much. So, we did make a run to the doctor's office.


He said my eye basically looked good, there is no serious injury. No abrasions, no problem with the pupil. Just swelling and that darn blister thingie. The doctor felt it was totally an allergic reaction.


Since it is much better today, he said to keep my contact out for few days and get some soothing eye drops to put in for a day or two. He didn't think I needed to throw money into a prescription for a month's worth of eye drops. That was good news.


So, I'm going to live! As long as you don't pay attention to my right eye, I look as normal as I did before.


From now on, I am NOT a cat person!

Saturday, October 27, 2007

I Think I'm Allergic

Can I develop new allergies at this time of my life? I thought allergies were for younger people.

Ron and I went out tonight with our friends, Larry and Linda. We went for a nice steak dinner. Well, three of us went out for a nice steak dinner. Larry actually ordered ribs and they were not a huge success. The first plate of ribs he got were stone cold. Not a little cold, stone cold. That plate was sent back.

Out came plate # 2 of ribs. Not stone cold, but no where near warm either. Since the rest of us were almost done now with dinner, he didn't want to send plate # 2 back and suffer the wrath of the chef on plate # 3. So, he ate what was in front of him and decided this was not a place he would want to go back to for dinner. Too bad. We'll miss him next time the rest of us are there.

After dinner we headed back to Larry and Linda's for a rousing game of Pokeno. I know, I sure do take the long way around to tell you a story about allergies, huh? Well, I'm getting to that.

Larry and Linda have three cats. I'm really not much of a pet person, aside from my fish. I'm less afraid of cats than I am of most household pets. I don't usually think of them one way or another as long as they are not hissing at me.

One of their cats was more friendly towards me than normal. Usually, I am tolerated or allowed to be in the house and that is it. Tonight, one of the cats tried to extend an olive branch of sorts. She was rubbing against my legs under the table and actually came up to me by the table wanting to be petted. So as not to appear rude to our hosts, I reached down and gave her a cursory little scratch behind her ears. It must have been satisfying because then she walked away.

Sure. Walk away! Now you know that you've infected me with Ick!

Based on how my right eye looks right now, we're assuming I rubbed my eye after petting the cat. A few hours of playing Pokeno and I was ready to rush home to remove my eye. No, not just my contact lens but my entire eyeball.

We did rush home and I popped out the contact lens and was really surprised to see what was left. My eye is red, swollen, weeping and there seems to be some kind of "bubble" under the cornea. It's not for the feint of heart to see. This has me so freaked out that I actually called a 24/7 nurst hotline associated with our medical coverage. She didn't have a clue what would be going on with my eye and suggested calling my primary care physican or if I coudn't reach him, going directly to the ER. Well, sa much as I'm freaking out about my eye, I'm not calling my primary care physician at midnight nor am I going to spend the dough to go to the ER. I guess if it's not better by the morning, I'll call the primary care doctor. Grrr. I don't know what to do.

So, Dr. Ron in all of his wisdom suggested taking a Benedryl. I've done that and it does actually feel like the weeping has lessened.

I've never been allergic to cats in the past. Allergies. At my age. Who'd have thought. At least that's what I hope this is going to turn out to be.

On the good side, Ron was the big winner at Pokeno and took home most of the nickles we were betting. Woo hoo! Good job baby! Next stop - Vegas!

Thank God I Made It Through Friday

I try not to talk about the dufuses that I work with but some days the stories are just too good to not pass along.

This week the four of us came in two cars like usual, but two of our staff had to head back on Thursday night for family obligations or whatever. That meant that I was now taking someone different home. By different, I mean dufus #1.

Here’s what happened Friday morning.

We had agreed to meet up in the lobby at 7:45 am to leave for the audit site. Yes, I was running a few minutes late and actually got downstairs at 7:50. Dufus # 1 is indignant sitting there and informed me he was just about to call me to see if I was going to work today. Hello? Like I’m going to sit in a hotel all day and not work AND leave him stranded in the lobby. Well, I did the adult thing and apologized for being late and asked him if he was ready. Being told he was ready a long time ago, I kept my mouth shut, and turned to walk through the lobby and out of the door.

We get to my car where I proceed to open the trunk and load in my luggage and my laptop. To which dufus # 1 looks at me surprised, let out an expletive and said he’d be right back.

Work with me here. This isn’t the first time he’s traveled for this job. We do go home every Friday at the latest. Yes, sometimes we leave a day early so we can have a day in the office on Friday, but normally Friday is our going home day. Believe it or not, Dufus # 1 forgot to pack! Unbelievable.

So, I sat in the car, smiling like the cat that ate the canary, while he proceeded to run upstairs and pack up his bag and check out of the hotel. That so beat my being five minutes late because I sprayed hairspray in my eye and then had to pry my contact out to clean it. Yeah, I’m not quite up to dufus status just yet.

Monday, October 15, 2007

And How Was Your Day?

Today was my first day back to work in awhile. It sucked.

Did I mention that I'm in Pittsburgh? Nothing against the fine people of Pittsburgh (less the ones on the road that thought I should be burned at the stake for being on the PA roads with OH license plates). But forget about that for now. Let's go back to the beginning. That would be at 4:30 this morning when my freaking alarm clock started going off.

Yeah, 4:30. In the morning. Even the neighborhood punks aren't out at 4:30 in the morning. I got up, got ready, packed up my car and I was pulling out of the driveway at 5:30. I actually made it to my boss' house five minutes early! Yeah, he was surprised to see me. On time I mean. I told him to mark it down because it probably won't happen two weeks in a row.

Most of the drive to Pittsburgh was ok. At least until that pesky sun started coming up high enough to blind me. Geez. Yeah, can you tell I'm not a morning person? Then the construction hit. It was everywhere. We slowed to a stop about 1/2 hour before our final destination in Pittsburgh. That 1/2 hour ended up taking us over an hour. I guess that's not too bad but I was white knuckling it and holding my breath through most of it. In one construction zone, we actually went from FIVE lanes down to the ONE lane in the middle. Check my hair, baby. There are a lot more gray hairs in there than there were 10 hours ago. How do people live like this?

Then, after the news of the poor souls in Los Angeles with the fiery crash in the tunnel on Interstate 5, it occurred to me that Pittsburgh has almost no roads. There are bridges and there are tunnels. That's it. If you can't go under it, you must go over it. Did I mention that I hate bridges and I hate tunnels twice as much as that. I tried to close my eyes and put my hands over my eyes when we went through the tunnel but for some reason, my boss wouldn't go for it. What? Like he couldn't be a human being for two minutes and lean over and grab the steering wheel from me? After all, I did drive the rest of the way and fought all that traffic. C'mon now, help a girl out.

Anyway, I made it to the audit site, a little frazzled, but I made it. We are in a conference room in a warehouse where the documents are stored. We are not allowed anywhere in the building but this conference room and the bathroom. Trust me, it's hard to decide which of the two rooms smells worse than the other. Ugh.

So back to the grind. I'm trying to think positively but it's hard. There's not much nice to say about this whole experience.

To top that off, I noticed shortly after I got here that my right hand is swollen. From about two inches above my wrist down to the big knuckle where my fingers start. My fingers don't seem to be swollen, but the rest of my hand is twice the size it should be. Don't know what that's about.

To finish the lovely visual for you, let's talk about the hotel. It's a decent hotel, the chain we usually stay at, and it's one of the nicer versions of this chain. I give this trip a point for that. However, upon check in, with my bag, my laptop and my 12 pack of Sprite Zero, I take the elevator up to my assigned room, # 502. I open the door and start to walk in and what do I see? I see sheets all over the floor, I see water bottles on the tv stand. I was afraid to look any closer than that.

I took all of my stuff back down to the front desk. I did tell the nice lady that I hate to complain, but I really must insist on cleaner sheets for my room! She was so apologetic that the room wasn't ready, as in her system it showed the room had been cleaned today. Surprise! It wasn't.

No big deal, within a minute, I was given another key to another room just down the hall from the first one, this time it's room # 510. This room is very nice. A few amenities that I haven't seen before such as this work desk on wheels! When not in use, it almost goes into a wall to be out of the way. When I want to blog (or work) I can pull it out and face it to the TV or to look out of the window or to where ever my heart desires. That's cool.

Then it happened. I had to go to the bathroom. Just as soon as I sat down, what did I see in front of me? ME! There I was, in a full length mirror, in all my glory. Let me tell you, I watched me do stuff no one should ever have to watch another human being do, let alone watch themselves do. I may have to rinse my eyes out with Clorox before the night is over! Why would someone put a mirror there? Oh my goodness, I couldn't make myself look away.

I'm ready for Monday to be over and to get on to Tuesday. I'm going to soak my swollen hand in the ice bucket for awhile then I'm taking a shower and going to bed. Maybe tomorrow I'll go buy a hammer and a couple of nails and nail up a towel over that mirror in front of the toilet. Oh help me, I never want to see THAT again!

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Now I'm Really Mad!


Friday night was not a good night around here.

It started out great, it just didn't end that way! Ron's oldest son, Alex, flew to town for a visit. We picked him up from the airport, had a great dinner then home for more catching up. Ron left his van in the driveway since we had no plans on anyone leaving for the rest of the evening instead of pulling it around the back of the house like he usually does. The only bad part about that is, he forgot to lock the doors after we all got out.

I bet most of y'all can guess what happened next, considering the neighborhood we live in. Yeah, someone went through the van and helped themselves.

Ron lost his GPS, a Garmin C550 (just like mine!), two packs of cigarettes, and a bunch of CDs that were in a holder on his visor. The CD holder was also holding one of our toll cards, which is a prepaid card to access the Ohio Turnpike without having to worry about carrying cash.

The kicker about the GPS is that it has a lock on it. Without the four digit code, you can't turn it on. It will be useless to anyone trying to use it. Small consolation since now Ron can't use it either.

He noticed the break in on Saturday, and of course, other than filling out a police report, we can't do anything else until Monday. I tried to contact my insurance company to file a claim on my home owner's insurance, but the office was closed. They gave numbers for emergencies, but I wasn't sure this qualified as an emergency. I couldn't contact the Ohio Turnpike to report a stolen card because they are not open either. Garmin is also closed, so we couldn't report the theft to them, either.

So in the meantime, we tried to be proactive. I know, sort of like locking the barn after the cow escaped. However, Ron went and bought some motion lights. Personally I opted for phasers set to pulverize, but he nixed that idea and just went for the motion lights.

We have just spent the last 45 minutes testing it! I know exactly how close you have to get to the house from all angles to set that puppy off. Now I just need to add a sign out there.

"I have PMS and a handgun. Go ahead, make my day."

Friday, October 12, 2007

Time To Make The Donuts

As some of you know, I have been on a leave of absence from work. After my Dad's funeral, I went to work for a few days and decided I didn't want to do it anymore. I still don't want to do it, but I am going back to work on Monday. Or, like I told my boss this morning, I'll be there Monday unless I can come up with a good excuse not to by then!

One of the biggest reasons that I don't want to go back to work on Monday is that I have to immediately go back to traveling. I just don't relish being away from home right now. Call me a wuss, but I am not ready.

To add insult to injury, I talked to my boss this morning about the logistics of coming back to work. He explained some things about the new audit they are currently working. And, since we are heading east to Pittsburgh PA, and I am the farthest one west, I would be one of the drivers for the four of us. I am going to pick my boss up and then the other two auditors will ride in another car.

So far, I was on board with this plan. THEN he goes on to ask if I could pick him up at about 6:30 a.m. on Monday since Pittsburgh is another two hours beyond him yet! Are you kidding me? 6:30 a.m.??? I laughed at that! Hey, call it what you will a leave of absense or a vacation, but in the last three weeks or so, I haven't been out of bed before 8:00 a.m. Now he expects me on my first day back to leave my house at 5:30 a.m. to be at his house at 6:30 a.m.?? HA!

I told him I'd get back to him on that one. If I'm in his driveway at 6:30 a.m. then I was able to make it. If he doesn't see me there, he should expect I'll be late!

If anyone wants to make bets on this one, don't bet on me being on time. Some things never change and one of those things is, I am my Father's daughter. Like him, I will probably be late!