Vote For Me!

I have a more important story about voting today, but this story is on my mind right now.

While I was at the booth casting my votes today, I came across the position of coroner. According to the website dictionary.com, the definition of coroner is: "an officer, as of a county or municipality, whose chief function is to investigate by inquest, as before a jury, any death not clearly resulting from natural causes". Gee, call me silly but it sounds to me like there should be some kind of training or qualifications needed in order to be a coroner. It shouldn't be someone who wants to run for office and doesn't know what they're doing, albeit like most politicians. But I digress.

While I came across the position for coroner, I saw the note by the voting blocks that stated there are no candidates for this position. All of a sudden, my mind went into overdrive! I am going to write my OWN name in that spot and vote for ME! Yes the notoriety, the accolades, the money, the TV show (cue Quincy theme music here) yes, all for me! The hell with auditing! My next career is coroner! I was out of my mind!

Then reality hit.

My nephew had quite a scare from writing his name into a position for Crawford County Assessor last year. Luckily, I remembered his story just in the nick of time.

Whew. Thanks, Michael! You just saved my life! Besides, I wouldn't make a good coroner. I hate the sight of blood.

Did You Hear That Beep?

Well, neither did I!

I woke up the other night to see Ron standing on my side of the bed using his cell phone as a light looking for something.

"What in the hell are you doing" or words to the effect came outta my half asleep mouth. Ron stated that he kept hearing this beeping sound and he's looking for where the beep is coming from. Unfortunately, the beep only happened about every minute or so, making it difficult to follow the sound to the source.

Finally, he decided that the beep sounded like a cell phone beeping that the battery is low. And, since he had both of his cell phones in his hands, I was looking like the guilty party.

I know I was a bad girl that night getting ready for bed. My slacks ended up in a pile on the floor in the corner of the bedroom with my cell phone in my left pocket. Since that is not a place you usually find my slacks or my phone, he was aiming the light from his cell phone at my night table, thinking of course, that would be the obvious place to find my phone. However, three in the morning or not, I had to join him out of bed and look for my phone.

Sure enough, it was me! I woke Ron up at three in the morning because MY phone was running out of battery on the floor of the bedroom. Sorry honey!

My bad.

Welcome To My World

Every day, at least twice a day, I have to survey my world. It's part of my OCD! Every night before getting into bed, I walk by my bedroom window and I have to open the blinds, look outside and make sure all is right with my world. The first thing I do when I get out of bed in the morning, is open those same blinds and once again look outside and make sure all is right with my world.

We had snow last night. A lot of snow. This picture is what I saw out of my bedroom window this morning.

Say what you will about the snow, it may be cold, it may make driving horrendous, but it is beautiful to look at, especially through a window. The view above is a view from the back of the house, straight back out of my window. You can see a little bit of Ron's snow covered van parked right in front of our plum trees in the bottom left and our garage on the bottom right.

The view above is out my window looking to the left. You can see the side street up towards the top left as well as our neighbor's house and again, our plum trees on the bottom right. I am hoping to get those plum trees out of there this year and replace them with maybe some kind of fir trees, but that's a story for another post.

So, now I am fully awake and very aware of the snow situation. That does something in helping you get your butt out of bed and into gear. The snow didn't look so deep that I was afraid to get out of the garage and down the driveway, but as anyone who has lived in snow country before knows, the hard part is the bottom of the driveway mess!

Our street is an emergency route as there is a long stretch of nine blocks with no stop signs or lights. That means that the ambulances, police cars and fire trucks all love to zoom up and down our street as well as a lot of other traffic trying to avoid all the stops on the main streets running parallel with our street. The good part of that is our street is always well plowed. The bad part of that is that our street is always well plowed, right into our driveway.

Whatever the plow is moving off of the road, goes by design to the right. That means a lot of that crap all piles into the bottom of the driveways. If you can get out there quickly to remove it, it's sometimes not too bad. But, the longer you leave it in your driveway, the harder it is to remove since it all seems to turn to ice. This morning, the bottom of my driveway was my concern. Sometimes that stuff is too laden with chunks of ice to power through with my Honda.

I'm cleaned up, dressed and getting ready to head out the door. I'm in the kitchen getting my cup of coffee ready to go with me when I hear a rumble. Lo and behold, our friend Larry was backing up our driveway with the plow on his truck! Go Larry!! In less than a minute, he not only had our driveway down to the cement, but he had all of the crap from the bottom of the driveway out of there too! Thanks, Larry! That was a HUGE help!

With no excuse left to not go to work, I grabbed my coffee and my laptop and out the door I went. It was still a harrowing drive at times since some of the roads were slippery. Luckily though, since I go in a little later, I can avoid some of the traffic of rush hour and have a quieter drive. Below is a picture of how the turnpike looked on my way to work this morning. Visibility was down, but the turnpike was well plowed and salted. Here's hoping I can make it home with no problems.

Family Tag Team

Sunday was the first Mass to be said for my Dad at his Church since his passing. I may not know what I believe in anymore, but I do know this would have been important to my Dad. I knew that brother Jim would attend, and I felt compelled to join him in Church.

Unfortunately, the Mass was in my hometown of Erie PA at the ungodly hour of 8:30 am. That may not be ungodly when you live in Erie, but to get there from Cleveland on time would be close to a miracle.

I happened to be talking to brother Philip (who lives in California) Saturday evening. I was telling him about how at 9:00 in the evening on Saturday, my plan to attend the Mass for Dad on Sunday morning was a good idea. However, I had a feeling that come 5:00 am on Sunday that idea might not be burning so brightly. Here came Philip to the rescue! He offered to call me in the morning to make sure I was awake. I thought that would be half the battle. As long as I could wake up on time I figured the trip would be a no brainer. So, thanks to Philip, who stayed awake until 2:30 am California time, just to make sure I got up in time for Church! That's what big brothers are for!

Since I was now awake, I did the kind deed of waking Ron up to go play with me. Why should I make the trip myself? Luckily, Ron was jiggy with the day trip, and he got up with no trouble.

The only bad part of this day was the crazy woman who was standing in the middle of I-90 just past I-271. She was standing over a dog that I am assuming was hit by a car. Keep in mind, this is 6:30 in the morning, the sun is not quite up yet, so she is almost invisible in the morning twilight. Sorry honey, but if it was me, I'm not putting my life on the line to save an injured dog in the middle of the freeway! Some people.

With this little fright moment aside, the trip went well and we even made it to Church on time.

After Church, we offered free breakfast to brother Jim and to Aunt Mary too. Aunt Mary cited a better offer from her great-grandkids so she didn't join us. That didn't stop the three of us from going without her! We had a great breakfast, great conversation, a little family gossip and lots of laughs. Not necessarily in that order.

I did go in and look at the old homestead for awhile. It's really strange. The house is the same, but it isn't. The furniture is moved around a bit or not there at all. And, like the rest of us, it's showing its age. Every room I went into, the memories came flooding back to me. It was good, it was bad, it was surreal. The only thing I don't understand is how my old bedroom could have gotten so much smaller? For real, I remember having a LOT more room in there! Even with all of the same dressers and bed in there, where did the rest of the space disappear to? It's not that Jim has anything stored in that room that doesn't belong there, it just still looks so dang small. Weird.

Since Jim had to eventually head to work, Ron and I opted for heading home. The day didn't finish there though, as we stopped at brother Michael's on the way home to scarf up a free meal from them! Mary Jane's meatloaf IS one of my favorite meals in life so who am I to say no? Again, great dinner, great conversation, a little family gossip and lots of laughs. Not necessarily in that order.

All in all, a darn good day. We finally had a decent weather day, and the trip was mostly uneventful coming and going.

As for me being in Church, just like the old days, here is the bulletin as proof! And, no I didn't run into St. John's just for the bulletin like Cathie used to make me do as kids. Honest, I really did go this time!

Laundry Emergency

I know, I can find trouble in places most people wouldn't imagine.

Last week when we had a lot of snow, Ron went to power up the plow to clear the driveway. The first thing to do is to add the gasoline. It was so cold out, the plastic spout of the gas can cracked when Ron went to bend it into shape. Unfortunately, he didn't notice it until he was trying to fill up the plow and the gas spilled all over his gloved hands.

When I got home from work, Ron told me that he got gasoline all over his gloves. I told him to just throw the gloves down to the basement, and I'd wash them with a load of clothes.

Yeah, as I've told people this story, most people stop me right there and ask if I'm nuts. Well, even those of you scratching your head now . . . where were you when I needed you?? It made perfect sense to me to put those smelly nasty gloves in with our clothes.

As most of you can probably imagine, I did not end up with clean gloves. Instead I ended up with an entire load of clothes that smelled like gasoline. I thought if once was good twice had to be better. I ended up washing that load of clothes five times before I accepted the fact that I was in the midst of a true laundry emergency.

I called Mary Jane, my sister in law. And, of course, she had the answer. I was to put a container of baking soda and run it through again. It's a good thing the new washer only uses 16 gallons of water per load instead of the older machines that use 45 gallons per load. I still had to use a lot of darn water, but I guess it could have been worse.

The clothes still smell a little like gasoline, but not as much as they did before. They may not be our good clothes anymore (as if they ever were) but we could save them as lounging clothes.

So, I had a laundry emergency. I learned that next time, I just buy Ron new gloves and call it a day.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yeah, right. Whatever.

I have never been a believer in Valentine's Day or Sweetest Day or any other made up holiday. If you want to buy me flowers, buy me flowers. If you want to buy me candy, buy me candy (Reese's Cups, please!). But don't buy me flowers or candy just because of a media blitz from Hallmark tells you that you have to buy the women in your life all of this stuff. To me, that's just ridiculous.

So, yesterday, Ron and I were discussing what to do for dinner. Neither of us felt like cooking so there went that idea. I didn't really want to go out since places would be busy due to Valentine's Day. Ron them came up with the winning idea! Our Friday night date place!

Yes, Popeye's Chicken on the Turnpike!

We are wild and crazy people, aren't we? Well, we had a great dinner, "our" table was open and waiting for us and it was just a very nice evening.

I've told Ron from the beginning that I think he's lucky since I don't fall for the commercialism of Valentine's Day or Sweetest Day. However, y'all know how I feel about my birthday! He's not off the hook on this holiday. I've warned him that if he forgets my birthday, it's not going to be pretty!

At Least It's Not Broken

Sometimes the best laid plans just go awry.

Yesterday I started an exercise program. Today I was at the hospital for x-rays. I suck.

Let's go back to the beginning. The girl I work with found out that the rec center in the town where our office is located would let us use the facilities for a nominal cost. So, we decided that we would at least go walking at lunch time as they had an indoor track. We started on this new plan yesterday.

We went to the rec center, put on our tennis shoes and went walking. The track is small as it's over the basketball court. It takes 16 laps to go a mile! We decided that we weren't going to count laps, we were just going by time. We were going to do a good 30 minutes and then call it a day.

You'd think that 30 minutes of walking would be an easy start to an exercise program, wouldn't you? Well, keep in mind that this is ME we're talking about. We did our 30 minutes, I bought a bottle of juice and we headed back to work.

I sat at my desk doing what is supposed to be passing for work for a couple of hours. When I did try to get up, suddenly, my right foot wouldn't let me put any weight on it. What the heck is up with that? I hobbled around the office a bit, eventually my foot started to feel a little better but it still hurt every time I tried to put any weight on it.

I sat back down and tried to forget about it. Eventually, I hobbled to the car, drove home and hobbled through the evening. I took a long hot shower last night and I thought that helped as well. My foot did seem better than it did so I really didn't think too much about it.

Then I tried to get out of bed this morning. Big mistake. My foot would bear absolutely no weight whatsoever. Getting to the bathroom first thing this morning was a freak show to say the least! I am definitely not graceful on two feet, let alone one.

I was able to garner a doctor's appointment at 2:20 since I really was worried about what could be wrong with my foot. She examined me and decided it was either a stress fracture or just a ligament strain. She sent me off with orders for an x-ray just to be sure as well as a prescription for anti-inflammatories and directions for applying ice packs, soaking my foot in warm water as well as some range of motion exercises. I am to stay off of my foot as much as possible, keep it elevated for the next few days and follow the directions I just mentioned.

So, Ron and I headed right to the hospital for the x-ray. Surprisingly, we got in and were sent within five minutes to x-ray. We sat down long enough there just to take my jacket off and get comfy when I was called back. Flo was taking care of me today and trust me, she was a hoot! I even got stickers because I was a good girl. Go me! Anyway, Flo took three pictures of my foot and then returned with another person in a lab coat named Diana. Diana asked me what my doctor told me about when the results would be available. I said that I was told that the results would be ready by Monday. Diana looked at me very seriously and said that she would suggest I wait back in the waiting room while she got the radiologist to read this x-ray and call my doctor. She said it would only take about 10 to 15 minutes. She said that would be better than my leaving and then having to turn around and come back once the doctor was told my results.

Now she had me scared. Why was she concerned that I not leave the hospital until the radiologist talked to my doctor? Just what in the heck did she see in my x-ray?

Ten or fifteen minutes later, Flo did come back to the waiting room to tell us that the radiologist has read the film and the x-ray was negative. He had also talked to my doctor and my doctor said to carry on with the instructions she gave me in the office and I was free to go. What the heck was that all about? She had me nervous as all get out for that 10 to 15 minutes for nothing! Grr. At least my foot isn't broken, and it's just a ligament strain. This is a perfect example of why NOT to ask the technicians what they see and wait for the radiologist to review the pictures.

I got my prescription filled, and I'm back home with my foot up. I guess the good news is that my foot isn't broken. The bad news is that my butt will remain as big as it is for now. I hurt myself when I try to do anything about it. So, if y'all will excuse me, I'm going to the freezer to get my bag of frozen peas. I need to ice my foot.

The Good The Bad And Brother Michael

As soon as I received the title to my car in the mail last week, I was waiting for the shoe to drop.

Sure enough, last Friday on my way home from work, the car started to make noises like I've never heard before. It was a screeching, grinding, metal on metal sound. All I knew is that it couldn't be good, AND it sounded expensive.

So as not to ruin the weekend, I parked the car in the garage and decided to ignore it for the time being. We just used Ron's van all weekend!

Sunday, Ron was nice enough to pull my car out of the garage, pull the front wheels off and look at the front brakes. He thought that might be the culprit, but my brakes ended up looking just fine. As it was a damn cold day, that was the extent of the driveway car repairs. We finally decided that the car could still be driven, and the easiest solution was to drive myself to work on Monday, and try to get into a garage by the office that is used by some of my coworkers.

I was able to get an appointment to drop my car off on my way to work, so all that was left to do was go to my office and worry if I could pay for the needed repairs. The garage called me less than two hours later and said that all of my tires had been removed, and the all of the brakes have been inspected. All brakes looked just fine and were only down to 60% (whatever the hell that means) so that wasn't my problem. However, he did say that there was dirt in the back brakes. He blew the dirt out of the back brakes and my total was going to be "twenty three thirty five". I said TWENTY THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS???? To which he laughed and said NO! Twenty three DOLLARS and thirty five cents! Yes ladies and gentlemen, I have a new best friend!

So my day went from bad to good with that news. I picked my car up that day at lunch time and he's been running great ever since.

Monday evening, Ron and I were going to meet at a restuarant over by Sam's Club since we were planning on doing some shopping there that evening. I called Ron when I was less than 30 minutes away so he'd know when to leave the house. I'm driving along, almost got hit by a car, and then my phone rang. Ron was at the restaurant and checking on my progress. I was a half a block away (how's THAT for timing!), shaking like a leaf from the near collision and would be there soon.

I pulled into the lot and parked next to Ron. Ron came right over to me to hug me. In the middle of a great hug, I hear "oh shit". Trust me, not words a girl wants to hear, especially in a cheek to cheek moment. Ron just realized he locked his van and his keys were still in the ignition. Yes, his day is definitely going from good to bad.

The van was off, the keys were dangling and my set of keys to the van were at home, about seven miles away. I said the heck with dinner, the heck with shopping, I'll just go get his keys and be back shortly. Luckily, he came up with a much better plan B. We called my brother Michael and his wife, who live maybe a mile up the street. We said we're in the neighborhood, having a bad day, come help us salvage it. Believe it or not, they came to our rescue!

Before you knew it, the four of us were seated in the restaurant, enjoying the company and exchanging war stories of the day.

Then it happened. Michael is not called "The Perfect One" for nothing. Suddenly he says "hey, I have Triple A"!! Once again, he saved the day.

Triple A showed up pretty quickly, they broke into Ron's van, got his keys and all was right with our world. And, that all happened before the main course was served!

The day sure had its ups and downs. But thanks Michael and Mary Jane, for making it end on a high note!

After all that, I still need to get to Sam's Club!

I'm No Longer A Virgin

A Starbucks virgin that is!

Friday night, Ron and I had a date night. Don't laugh, but we went to the rest stop on the Ohio Turnpike for our date.

I happen to love Popeye's Chicken and the closest franchise to us is this rest stop on the Ohio Turnpike. Besides, we happen to know the back way into the rest stop, also known as the employee parking lot. From the lot, you walk through a man door in the fence and you are into the parking lot of the rest stop. The best part is, if Ron doesn't want Popeye Chicken, he has four other choices for dinner. None as good as Popeye's in my opinion, but there are other choices.

I enjoyed my favorite order of a three piece spicy chicken strip meal with a side of mashed potatoes and cajun gravy with a biscuit. They have the BEST biscuits, bar none.

Even on a Friday night, the rest stop is not packed with people, we can always find a table and of course, I love the food. After dinner, we enjoy a few rousing games of pinball in the arcade and then usually head home after all that fun!

This Friday, while walking from our great table over to the arcade, we passed by Starbucks. While we were in California, I found out my sister almost lives on Starbucks White Mocha Chocolate Lattes, or something like that. It's Friday night and I want to stay up late, so I figured this was the time to try it.

I tried it. I don't get it.

It was $5. For a cup of COFFEE. Coming from someone who thinks a perfect cup of coffee is a cup of black Maxwell House coffee, this Starbucks was definitely not for me. It's sweet, it's sugary and did I mention it's $5 a cup? Paying for two cups of coffee almost came to what we paid for dinner!

I don't understand how these things are popping up on every corner. Well, I don't understand how there is enough business for them to be popping up on every corner. $5 for a cup of coffee? No refills are included! Wow.

Now at least I can say I've been there, done that. I don't see me doing it ever again. However, we WILL be back for Popeye's and pinball!

Another Milestone Reached

Have I mentioned lately that I'm getting old? Well, maybe not old, but definitely older. Try as I might to ignore that fact, it keeps coming up and hitting me in the face!

Case in point: Thursday night after work, I had to go to my eye doctor's to pick up my new glasses. Yes, my BIFOCAL glasses. The recommendation for my new glasses is to not wear my contacts or go back to my old glasses for two weeks. I am supposed to give the glasses a chance and work on getting used to the new glasses - for two weeks. It's been two days and I'm ready to flush them down the toilet!

First let me tell you something about my lenses. They are progressive lenses, so there is no line of demarkation between the regular prescription and the bifocal. It goes from the regular prescription on the top of the lens, the middle of the lens is a lighter bifocal and the bottom of the lens is the stronger bifocal. I kind of like that part, but you hold a book and I have to bob my head up and down until I find where the right spot is to read the print of the book. Unfortunatly, you sure do give up some clarity on the peripheral vision. No one warned me about that part. Well, my brother Jim complained about the same thing on his glasses, but who listens to him?! (I love you, brother!)

One thing I should not have done is drove to work on Friday without a back up plan. I am amazed, and very lucky, that I made it there and back safely.

If I just sit here, I'm fine. If I try to sit and read a book I'm fine. If there is any movement involved however, I am in a boatload of trouble. I can walk up the stairs ok, but walking downstairs I've found it much easier to just close my eyes and count the steps. I lose all vision looking down while going down the stairs and I've almost gone ass over tincups down the stairs once already. I'm woozy, dizzy and quite a bit nauseous. Yeah, good times.

Friday late morning, I had my annual review at work (which surprisingly I passed with flying colors, thank you very much!) and when I walked into my boss' office, he said he was surprised I looked so nervous for this. I told him I'm not nervous, I'm nauseous and proceeded to tell him about the new glasses. Ok, he may laugh now, but he's only a couple of months younger than I am so his day is coming soon.

So, now I have my new glasses. I'm trying to move as little as possible so I don't throw up. Then, Friday afternoon I took my glasses off for a minute to rest and rub my eyes. I am blind as a bat without my glasses, so without them on my face, I held them up close and was just getting a good look at them. I picked them out after my eyes were dilated, so I really wasn't sure what I picked! I was impressed with myself, that I chose so well while not being able to see! They are a purple, or maybe burgandy (did I mention I'm also color blind?) well, they are a lot darker color than my last pair. They have two very small fake gems on each earpiece and then I saw a little something on the piece that holds the lens in. I went to scrape if off with my fingernail when I noticed that it was actually the paint or enamel or whatever it is was peeling off of the frames! What the hell? After the arm and the leg that I had to pay for the dang things, how can this crap be peeling off already?

I immediately called the eye doctor's office and expressed my lack of satisfaction with these glasses. The answer I received was "well . . . that's unusual". I actually had to tell her that I expected her to replace the glasses. "Oh." Supposedly she is ordering me the new ones. Here's hoping that when they come in I am not so frustrated with the dang glasses.

I may be old and I may have bad vision, but I'm not blind! Here's hoping I can find no defects with the next pair. And that I'm no longer nauseous.

Great Gift Ideas!

Yes, I am at work. Yes, I am bored. So I went shopping!

I do love a good Amazon wish list as most of you know. Heck, today I even went shopping for items on my own wish list! These items are after all on my list for a reason. I'm outta holidays for this year and really wanted something on my list. (It was the DVD of the original Poseidon Adventure with Gene Hackman and Shelly Winters if anyone had the need to know that!)

After I made my purchase, since one item came off of my wish list, Amazon gave me the option of inserting the person's name for which I purchased the items. That way, you can keep track of what items you've purchased for whom and all that.

Having a barely controllable case of OCD, I can appreciate a good list. I inserted my name on both items and I was then forwarded to a page that listed all the names of people who I have purchased items from their wish lists. I also had options to look at their current wish lists, or I could see recommended gift ideas for this person.

Aha! Amazon is not as all-knowing and all-loving as I thought!

For example, I have four great-nephews. (Well my regular nephew is pretty great too, but I mean the next generation with the great-nephew part!) The boys range in age from just over 18 months to barely six years old. While they are all great kids, I seriously doubt any of them would want what Amazon suggested I buy for them.

Let's start with Grady. The youngest of the bunch had a recommendation for a cool Canon Digital Camera that is pictured here:

From there we'll go to Isaiah, who is a few years older than Grady, granted. But how this Kitchen Aid fits into his gift wishing future is perplexing me!

Now, is this a case of parents messing with the wish lists and getting things for themselves through their kids? I think not. I think Amazon thinks I'm crazy! After all, who else would spend $14 on a DVD and then spend another $11 to get $5 in free shipping.

Actually, I spent another $17 on myself to save the $5 shipping charge.

Now as for the wish lists, I think I'll stay away from Amazon's recommendations and stick with the parents' recommendations. The parents do a much better job at recommending gifts for their kids.

It's $5.39 Cold

It's cold out there. It's damn cold.

When the temperature drops to a certain level, it really doesn't matter the number you put to it. Is 14 degrees really any better than 12 degrees? No. They are both just damn cold.

That's how I judge the weather now. It's damn hot, hot, warm, cool, cold and damn cold. Today I came up with a new name for weather. Today was $5.39 cold!

I had to stop to put gas in my car on my way home from work. When I gas up, I always fill the tank. I might not like it, but I fill it. A tank of gas for my car usually runs between $40 and $45, depending on the gas prices.

Today, I was standing out there filling my car and I stopped the pump. I was just too freakin' cold to stand out there and wait for the gas to fill my car!

Yes, it was $5.39 cold out there.

IT'S ALL MINE!!

Ok, I have to brag. I made my FINAL car payment yesterday! I checked this morning and Honda Finance has my payment posted to the account leaving a zero dollar balance!

After all of these years, my car really is mine!

Now if I can only one day say the same thing about my house.

Back To Reality

Talking about a long crash back to planet Earth!

First, thanks to all for the phone calls, the text messages, the post comments and the e-mails for my birthday! That truly made it an awesome birthday!!

Then, the next day, I came crashing back to reality.

I had my yearly eye appointment the day after my birthday. During the last few years, the appointments went very well. My vision had changed so slightly that it did not necessitate a new perscription for glasses or contacts. That all changed this year.

It's official. I hit the big 4-5 and it all goes to pot! Yes, I had to order my first pair of b..b..b..bifocals. Argh, the horror! Bifocals! This is what I get for laughing at brother Jim when he got his bifocals!

Happy Birthday To ME!!

I haven't mentioned my birthday on here before, so I decided I needed to do it.

Not every body likes birthdays. (My sister Barbara for example.) I happen to love birthdays, especially my own. I figure what the heck. Celebrating another birthday is sure better than the alternative!

You know, so many people celebrate Christmas, or Kwanzaa, or Easter, or Cinco de Mayo, or 4th of July, or Memorial Day etc. But - this day, today, is for ME. It's MY day.

So c'mon, help a girl out! No, I don't want presents. All I want are Happy Birthday wishes!! And LOTS of them!

So, call me. Or text me. Or e-mail me. Or leave a comment here. Or, send smoke signals. Or, send happy thoughts. Whatever works for you, works for me!

Happy birthday to ME!

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Every clock I own seems to be on a different time. This morning I was driving to work wondering how late I'm going to be and I hear the morning DJs stating one time while my clock in my car has another time and my wristwatch has yet another time. For once, I want to know the actual time!

I'm sitting at my desk still thinking about this. I'm sure there is a myriad of ways to figure out the correct time. What did I choose? I called 814-452-6311!

That was the number for the time and temperature in my home town of Erie Pennsylvania!

As a kid, I think we called that number daily. It was just something we did. That way, you knew how to dress for school, or how many layers to put on to go out to play. I know, I could have just looked outside and if I saw snow I'd know to put a coat on. But this was just part of the routine of getting ready when I lived in Erie.

It was always the same lady's voice, stating time the current temperature in Erie in that nice broken robot voice of hers. But it was familiar like an old friend, I had heard her so often.

I haven't called that number at least since I left Erie 12 years ago. And I STILL remember that number! And it STILL works!

The free service is now corporate sponsored but I guess that is to be expected in this day and age. But, the important thing is - The time is 11:28 a.m. and current temperature is 30 degrees.

I got the warm fuzzies over here over that! Good times.

I Knew I Was Good For Something

One of the ladies has a nice little 10 or 20 gallon fish tank in her office. She has some live bearers in there, a few platys and a few mollys. One of the few things I know about since they are in our tank as well.

One morning last week, I was in her office chatting with the office inhabitant as well as the supervisor. The three of us dispensed with work quickly but then started to chat a bit about the fish.

I told them that we were looking for some female silver mollys since our two males were looking lonely. Both ladies looked at me and were surprised that I could tell the boy fish from the girl fish. HEY! I'm suddenly an expert here!

I said sure I can tell and I offered to show the two of them. They got in close to the tank as I knelt on the floor to get a good look. I started to explain that the boys would have a gonopodium and instead of a gonopodium, the girls would have two little fins. It's easy once you know the secret! (Thanks, brother Michael!)

These ladies were so impressed with me. Then, the supervisor said to me "well, I've finally learned something useful from you!"

Ouch! In four years, and with all the money she has paid me for my services and THIS is what she finds useful?

I'm glad I came in handy for something, but if we could not tell my boss that sexing fish is what they find helpful, I'd appreciate it. He thinks it's my auditing skills that keeps this division profitable.

Pizza Time

Friday was our last day at the Chicago audit. There is such a large staff at this audit, we can’t take everyone out of the department at the same time to go to lunch so we usually order some pizza to be delivered for everyone right before we’re done with the audit. Friday was pizza day!

I called Papa John's on Thursday evening to place an order for eight large pizzas to be delivered at 11:45 am. That should be an easy task, but has anyone ever tried to come up with eight combinations of pizzas on a whim? I tried to do a mix of a few with meat, a few with only veggies and one plain cheese pizza for the kid from Home Alone. So, I got all of the pizzas ordered, and we start the process of where we want them delivered. I gave them my work cell number, and he rattled off the address of the audit site complete with “second floor”. Dang, I am known just about everywhere! Ok, it probably had to do with the fact that I ordered pizza from them last year, too.

I don’t know if Papa John’s doesn’t trust their employees, but they wouldn’t take my credit card number on Thursday night, I had to call them with it on Friday. I was told to ask for the manager, Jim, and give the number to him.

Unfortunately, when I called this elusive “Jim” I was told he was not there nor was any manager on site. I explained that I had called an order in the night before for eight large pizzas to be delivered and I was calling to give my credit card number. I swear, if English is not a good language for you, you probably shouldn’t be on the phone with customers. He kept asking me something that I swore was “what’s your orders?” to which I replied “eight large pizzas”! In a frustrated voice, he then said “NO! What’s your orders???” Um, ok, I again said eight large pizzas! Now in an exasperated voice, he asked again for my “ORDERS”. I said I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re asking. Then he yelled again “YOUR ORDERS”! You know how people do when you don’t speak their language. Because everyone knows that if you only speak more slowly and a lot more loudly, everyone will understand you no matter what the language.

Then, one more time, “WHAT IS YOUR ORDERS?” I said “my orders? Do you need to know what each and every pizza is that I ordered?” By now the guy is ready to punch me in the nose if I had been close enough and I wasn’t much better. Finally he tells me to hold on while he did whatever he did. He finally came back and said “is your ADDRESS (sorry, it kept sounding like ‘orders’ to me) 123 Any Street? Ahh. Now I get it! I confirmed he had the right address and then he yelled when he asked my what my credit card number was. After I gave him the number, I made the mistake of asking if they had two liter bottles of soda. He said yes they did, but he had already rung up my order and if I thought I was going to order sodas NOW he’d have to void the whole order and start over again.

Now he’s put me in a bitchy mood. So I said hey, I do NOT want to cause you any more work than I have to; I’ll spend my money elsewhere. He seemed happy to hear it. Oh well.

C’mon Papa John’s. You claim to have a better quality pizza, how about some better quality employees? It was easy enough to find another store to take my $15 for soda.

On the good side, out of eight large pizzas, only three pieces of pizza were left after lunch! Now that’s a hungry staff!

Alexander And His Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

As far as Mondays go, this one really belongs in the crapper. The title of the above book just seemed so appropriate since it really was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I know of what I speak! I own this book!

We both had a rough night last night. Poor Ron wasn’t feeling well (I’m the one that cooked supper, that’s all I’m saying about that) and when he’s up during the night, it usually means that I wake up too.

That aside, I was up early this morning, in anticipation of catching my flight to Chicago. I was going slow and steady getting ready, basing my timeline on Ron taking me to the airport. Did I mention he wasn’t feeling well? By the time we decided that it’s best he stay home in bed and I drive my own butt to the airport, I had to put some speed into my movements. If I have to park the car and walk forever from long term parking to the terminal, I better get a move on. Besides, it’s Monday morning, and as anyone who travels knows, Monday morning trying to get through security can be a nightmare.

So, I drive to the airport and at first, pull into the wrong parking lot. You’d think it would be as easy as watching for signs but it just ain’t so. I followed one set of signs and it took me right into the Sheraton’s parking lot. So, now I have to exit that freakin’ lot and beg them not to charge me the $6.00 fee for 0-3 hours and find my way back to where I was supposed to be.

Guess what. Yes, I missed it again. Now I’m in the uber expensive lot and by now my frustration level is at about maximum. Obviously, I have a low tolerance.

I find a parking space I hope I can remember (on the right just before the ramp that heads up in case someone is available to remind me that on Friday) and I head to the trunk of my car to get my luggage. Suitcase and laptop accounted for, I lock the car then I open the flap of my laptop case to throw my car keys into it. Guess what’s missing? Yes my wallet.

Hello??? MY WALLET???? My wallet is ALWAYS in the front flap of my laptop bag! Where is it? Where can it be??

Aside from not being able to pay for my meals or hotel room, I can’t even get on the plane since my identification is obviously in my wallet. Holy crap, can this be any worse? It’s 7:00 a.m. and my flight is at 8:20. I do NOT have a lot of leeway here people. I definitely don’t have time to run home, grab my wallet and get back. I also don’t have the option of just having Ron overnight it to the hotel. I need my freakin’ driver’s license to get on the plane. Actually, to even get into the airport.

So, I did what I do in crisis. I called Ron and cried.

I actually made the poor guy get out of bed and run my wallet to me at the airport. We agreed on an out of the way place to meet to alleviate him having to negotiate a lot of traffic and there I stood as if on point.

The smart thing to do would have been to load the car back up and move it to the correct parking lot – if I could find it that is. But no. I was rooted to my rendezvous point from when I hung up with Ron until later when he pulled up to me with my wallet in hand.

I get into the terminal and now it’s 7:45. Keep in mind my flight out is at 8:22 and they close the gate 15 minutes prior to the flight. At best (if my wristwatch is correct) I have 20 minutes to get my bag checked in, get through security and run through the airport to the God forsaken D terminal (the absolute FARTHEST point from where I am in the airport) to catch my damn flight. It ain’t gonna happen. To change my flight is going to personally cost me close to $200 in change fees and a taxi to the audit site from the airport since my team won’t wait for me plus a personal day, since I would HAVE to go home and continue my breakdown in private for the rest of today and then see if I could get a flight tomorrow. I’m too cheap and I can’t afford to throw all that away.

Inside the terminal, I see the line at the counter is very long. I run outside to my buddies, the Skycaps. I get right through, tip double and explain that my flight is leaving at 8:22, is there anyway to get my bags on that plane? She took the tip and assured me my bags would make it.

I ran in the door to see the line at security was at least an hour long and it’s now 7:50. There is no way to make it through security let alone the 10 miles to my gate. I am crushed. I walk outside and back to my Skycap. I ask her if there is any way to uncheck my bag as I am likely not going to make it out today and here’s hoping for a flight tomorrow. She looked at her watch and looked at me and said “oh you can make it. Just use the other security check point!”

Bonus points for her! I hadn’t thought of that. It was a bit of a trek in the wrong direction, but chances are I’d get through a lot more expeditiously than at the main security checkpoint. Sure enough, I’m through and running back through the airport heading for the D terminal. I walk past my original checkpoint at 8:00. Holy crap, no way I can cover that much ground in five minutes.

Then . . . I saw the electric cart! Crying so helps. They don’t like to run the carts for just one person. I told him that I was dangerously close to missing my flight in D and was there any way he could help? I also had some money in my hand. Go figure, he said he’d be happy to help! He whisked me way and to the stairs that take you under the runway over to D. I couldn’t get an electric cart through the underground area, but I was able to hustle on my own accord and get through there and up the next flight of stairs. So lucky for me, my gate was only two down from the escalator and I was able to jump right on the plane a few minutes before they locked the gate! Go me! I texted Ron to tell him I made it as the flight attendant was making her last trip though the plane before shutting the door.

What a way to start a Monday.

First and foremost, thanks go out to Ron. I would not have made it if he hadn’t jumped into action at the first cry of hysteria. I am really sorry that I couldn’t let you sleep like I promised. I am truly more trouble than I’m worth.

And the bright spot for today? My bags did indeed make it on the same flight I did. Bonus.

How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?

Well, I warned you - I am definitely mentally unstable. That was for the few of you out there that might not know that fact yet.

I am not a pet person. Even the fact that we have fish sometimes amazes me. I’m not one to care for another creature to the point of sustaining its life. And, if I have to clean up after it to boot, well, that is just not going to end well. I really don’t like when you have to clean up pet hair, or poop in the yard, or food out of the bowl, or muddy foot prints, etc.

Also, I am afraid of most everything. Especially if it moves of its own free will. I don’t care if it has two legs, four legs, eight legs or one hundred legs. Chances are I’m afraid of it. Dogs especially are at the top of this list. I don’t want to talk about them, be anywhere near one, or even think about one! The mere thought of a dog nearby will start my heart racing in a panic. I can usually spot a dog a hundred yards away and when I do, I am trying to climb up on Ron’s shoulders to get away from it. Yeah, he’s not crazy about that part.

Anyway, we came back from California with a few days down time to blow before having to get back to the grind. On one of our days off, Ron and I headed to our local Petland. While Petland does have an assortment of creatures I don’t care for, on the whole, I can avoid those creatures. When you walk into the Petland building, you’re in a vestibule. From there, you either walk through another door to where the dogs, cats, mice, rats, etc are kept. Or, you can walk up a flight of steps and be in what I call the “safe zone”; the fish department.

I swore I wasn’t buying any more fish, but I’m down to only two mollys left and they are both male. They are starting to look at each other kinda funny and are getting way too chummy. So now we’re thinking maybe we need to get a couple of female silver mollys in there to get them males back in line. Between that excuse and the fact we needed more frozen food for our fish, we made the trip to Petland.

For us, it’s usually straight up the steps, look at all the fish, pay for the food or chemicals or whatever and back out of the store. Only once was I confronted by a dog and I hid behind Ron upstairs in the fish department while the puppy’s owner decided to check out the aquatic section before taking his puppy home.

But, this last trip of ours found the store to have no female sail fin silver mollys so we grabbed our frozen brine shrimp and a pack of emerald entree (the fish's favorite!) and started to head out the door. As a last minute decision, I told Ron I wanted to go downstairs and through the door and look at the dogs. Yes, Ron looked at me like I suddenly had two heads, but he went along with me. The dogs are behind glass, so I thought I might be safe. I walked up and down all of the glass cages, and even petted a puppy one of the workers was holding. Who was this girl? I don’t willingly get within 10 feet of a dog! And here I am petting one!

And then, there she was. The cutest little black fur ball that I have ever seen. She was napping when I walked up to the cage but when her neighbor started squawking at me it woke her up. The neighbor puppy started jumping at the glass and biting it, as if to take a chunk out of me. Yeah, I usually have that effect on dogs, and a few kids, and a few men. But I digress.

As much as the neighbor puppy was making a scene, my new little passion just turned around, looked at me, and walked right up to the glass. She pressed her little nose against her side of the glass and I had my hand pressed against my side of the glass. I stood there for awhile talking to her, and I swear, she looked me right in the eye and understood everything I said. She was begging me to buy her, I swear she was!

She was just a little maybe 10 pound fur ball. She had a little white stripe that ran from her chest down her tummy and little white spots on her toes. I swear, she was just too much. In my mind, I had her bought, paid for and in obedience training before the day was out. I looked at Ron assuming he’d be on the same page with me, maybe even grabbing a cute blue leash to go with her! But no! He was looking at me with a look I’ve never seen from him before. It was the “ARE YOU FREAKIN’ CRAZY???” look.

C’mon now, people. We’ve lived together for almost five years now. He’s seen a lot of good and bad and yes, even crazy, when it comes to me. But this was totally a new look for him. I’ve never seen him look at me like that! And, he said NO! What the heck is that about?

According to the puppy employee, I was told that the dog was part poodle and part something else. She didn’t believe that the dog would get much bigger, maybe another 10 pounds at the most. But c’mon now, this is Petland. The girl looked to be about 16 years old. Does she really know that the dog will only grow another 10 pounds or so? Or did she miss a zero and really mean the dog will only get 100 pounds or more? After all, the employees up in the fish department aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, so why would the employees downstairs be any better trained? I walked away from my little girl and made the rounds again, even looking at the mice and rats, but made my way back to her again. She was right there, waiting for me. Her little tail just thump thump thumping away as I walked back by her cage.

Even now days later, in my mind, I still see my little puppy in our house, I have her named and I already know what furniture she’s allowed on and what furniture she’s not allowed on. It’s absolutely crazy, she’s become an obsession, my little Sadie! (that would be her name in our house!)

It has taken everything in me to not go back to the pet store and see if my little Sadie is still there. I know if she is, I’m coming home with a dog, regardless of that look on Ron’s face. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t let me out of his sight in the last three days.

I don’t know where this obsession has come from. I’m still terrified of dogs, I’m not a pet person, and here I am aching to bring that dog home. I think I need to be medicated. Or admitted. Or both!

Although one thing just might cure me of wanting to stampede back to Petland and bring home a puppy. I never did ask them . . . How much IS that doggie in the window?

I Did It In 24 Words

The idea for this post was stolen from my nephew Michael.

So, here is my last year in 25 words or less:

got a promotion
bought a gps
Cubs are NL Central champs
my Dad died
serious family issues
had a breakdown
first vacation with Ron

There was definitely some good in 2007 but unfortunately, the bad WAY outweighed it. Here's hoping we make it through 2008.

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

Yes, vacations are wonderful things!

Aside from joy of being around family, the accommodations were first rate. This picture above is the view out of our bedroom window which was a guest room at my sister's house. What a view to wake up to! It even made up for having to listen to the coyotes howling at night and the roosters crowing in the morning. The view outside of my bedroom window here in Ohio is nothing like this.

I am not a good house guest in return, that's for sure. Poor Cathie's household was in an uproar the entire time I was there. First of all, I recently found out that I am allergic to cats. Cathie and Dan have two cats. They did their absolute best to keep a couple of rooms cat free for me. Poor cats were locked out of a few rooms and for that I'm sorry. I'm sure now that I'm gone, they don't miss me in the least! As for the allergy problem, I did well the entire time there, except for Christmas Eve night. After dinner, we all gathered in the dining room to exchange presents and for some reason, Cathie and Phil exchanged gifts of stuffed cats that looked like they were sleeping in cute little cat beds. I did check the tags on these cats and there was no real cat fur used in these fake pets. It was all man made material. However, after playing with the fake cats, my eyes swelled almost shut. Go figure! Cathie hurried Benedryl into me and I went and shut myself in my room for the rest of the night. By morning, I was fine. So, the real cats didn't get me but the fake ones did. That's what I call realistic!

Another uproar in the Feeney household because of me was poor Franky. Franky is the family dog that thank heavens is an outside dog. However, his chain had to be shortened up so that the dog couldn't reach the steps meaning I could get in and out of the house without coming in contact with Franky. I tried the entire time I was there to gather up my courage to go and pet Franky but it was a no go. Ron, however, became Franky's new best friend! Ron played with him every time he went outside for a cigarette. In case anyone was wondering, I was not the one taking the picture of the dog. I couldn't get this close even with a zoom lens! Picture is courtesy of Cathie. The picture doesn't do him justice though. He is a beautiful dog, but he is also well over 100 pounds.





We did have a great time while we were there. There was a little sight seeing but mostly just family time. As evidenced by the rest of the photos here.

Christmas eve had all of us together enjoying the California tradition of potato pancakes for dinner. Here are Philip and Ron doing spud duty, Philip grating and Ron peeling. Ron, Cathie and I then took turns on the frying of the potato pancakes so that everyone could have a turn eating a warm dinner.

Life doesn't get much better than this! It was because of good cooks, even though we had a bunch of them stirring the pot.

I have a few pictures of interest to go along with this story.

It may be out of season, but here is a pomegranate tree! I've posted before that Cathie picks me a bunch of pomegranates when they are in season and ships them out to us. Who knew they didn't just come from the produce section at Giant Eagle! What a concept.

You can see the old pomegranates still hanging off of the tree on the right. These trees line the whole drive way up from the main road. I'm guessing there are about 10 of these trees. That's a lot of pomegranates!

Aside from pomegranates, there is also a lemon tree in the yard! I picked a few lemons off of the tree and that was a first for me.




I actually saw a lot of new sights in California. I saw cilantro fields. Again, the only place I've seen cilantro is in a Mexican restaurant. Who knew they came from field in California?!

There are also these windmill contraptions that run on electricity (I didn't get pictures) that are in the orange tree orchards. For some reason, when the temperature drops, and there is danger of frost, these windmills turn on and somehow, instead of cooling the crop, they actually warm the crop a few degrees and can help prevent damage from frost. Only in California does this makes sense. But, it works, so what do I know.


The last picture I have to post here are the cypress trees at Cathie's house. These are gorgeous trees that have to be every bit of 40 feet high. The only bad thing was that during the Santa Ana winds the one night, I was seriously wondering if these trees were going to bend straight over and onto the roof over my head or even all the way to the ground! Santa Ana winds aside, the trees are beautiful.




Now all I have are stories about the flight home.


Cathie and Philip both took us to the Oxnard airport. Gotta love small town life, especially when it extends to small town airports. You were to show up one hour before your flight, not the two to three that bigger airports recommend. Just before we were summoned to board, Ron and I went through security and into a glass room while Cathie and Philip walked beside us and ended up in another room on the other side of the glass. I am an emotional wreck, especially at good byes and basically stood there hand to hand with Cathie with the glass between us and crying. Some jerk on my side of the glass thought this was a funny sight that I was a crying wreck and proceeded to tell whomever he was talking to on his cell phone about me as if I couldn't hear. Oh well. It takes all kinds.

We got on our little puddle jumper with propellers to head to LA. The ride into Oxnard was actually very pleasant, especially since the scenery was so spectacular. However, the trip back to LA was more than a little bumpy. Ok, it was extremely bumpy. I have to admit that this was the longest 15 minute flight you can imagine. I was white knuckling it all the way, hoping that we wouldn't plummet to the ground from our lofty height of 5,000 feet. Somehow, we made it into LA still in one piece.


This time, we caught an electric cart ride the 10 miles from our incoming gate over to our outgoing gate heading to Chicago. That was much better than the run through the airport on our last trip. We found our gate, and headed to the closest food court, just around the corner. We grabbed a fast sandwich and then on to the plane.

This plane was actually pretty cool. I don't know what the plane was but it had two seats, an aisle, three seats, and aisle and two seats. We had the right two seats, way in the back of the plane. The best part is that the seat in front of you had a screen on the back of their seats. We could watch a myriad of programming once in the air. One option was one of about three or four in flight movies, or some programming from the A & E Network, a handful of music channels and my favorite, the map channel.


The map channel (obviously as I call it) showed a map of the USA with a little plane icon showing where we are at any given moment. We had a slide show presentation during the entire flight. The screens showed our height, speed, outside air temperature, miles traveled, miles to go, time in flight, and estimated time of arrival. Couple that with being able to listen in to the flight deck, it was an enlightening flight. I gave up on the flight deck talk, but did enjoy watching us cross the United States. One map would be a total overview, then the next map would be of one or two states on the screen, so it was much more detailed. I thought it was a fascinating and entertaining way to spend the flight in between my naps.


We did get delayed in Chicago for longer than we anticipated. There was severe weather in Denver that had us all delayed. Our plane that was to take us from Chicago to Cleveland originated in Denver then it went on to Dallas before coming to Chicago. So, we sat. And sat. And sat. By the way, if anyone out there has ever had to spend a long stretch of time with a smoker than can't smoke, it's no fun! (HI, Ron!!) Luckily, as soon as we finally got to Cleveland after 1:00 am, I sent him directly outside while I went to baggage claim before one of us killed the other one. Five minutes later, he was back to his old self. Thank goodness!

We got home very late, and once home, we woke the fish and counted them to make sure everyone was still there. We did have someone come in to feed the fish a couple of times while we were gone, but unfortunately, no one noticed that seafood pizza on the counter. Yeah, that was still waiting for us when we got back.


I seem to be having a few issues with the time change on this side as well, but once I get that licked, I should be ok. Actually, I was talking to my sister in law Friday afternoon and she thought I was absolutely out of my mind! She wanted to talk to Ron to find out what happened to me.


But, that will be a story for the next blog.

Decorating Sense

Ron and I just got back from vacationing in sunny California.

The most important part of this vacation was to see some of my family, as I have a brother and a sister living out there.

I also have a niece buried in California. We stopped at the cemetery to pay our respects and to let her know she may be gone but she is not forgotten.

I come from a family of cemetery visitors. Our visits consist of prayers or heart to heart talks with those that have gone, some flowers, and maybe a little manicuring of the grass or plants around the head stone.

In the cemetery where my niece is, there were many graves that families have visited with a lot more than we ever did.

Granted, we were there two days before Christmas, but I have never seen this many Christmas decorations in one place, let alone in a cemetery. Ron grabbed a picture of one grave shown here.



So many of these graves are lined in tinsel, with flowers and/or gifts all over the grave. We have seen crystal figurines to full Nativity sets, to children's toys. I am not sure what the significance of this grave decorating is, but it was a sight to see.

Our Mary didn't get tinsel, or a Christmas tree, or a stuffed horse that was bigger than I am, but she did get a bouquet of pink lilies, and a long heart to heart talk filling her in on all that has been going on with the family.

From what I hear, Christmas isn't the only holiday that warrants a giant makeover at the cemetery. I know we all grieve in our own way and we all deal with the aftermath our own way. I don't know the whys of the decorating, but the result was beautiful.

Santa Claus IS Coming To Town

In case you haven't heard, Santa Claus is coming to town.

But in this day and age, he's modernizing away from the cold sleigh and him and his reindeer are traveling mini van style!

Is it Santa? Or is it my brother, Philip?



Brother Philip has all of his reindeer up on his dash leading his way through town. I had to get a picture of him driving down the road because I thought unless you see it, you wouldn't believe it.

Y'all better be good for goodness sakes! You never know where you're going to run into Santa!

Welcome To LA!

Yes, we are now in sunny California visiting my sister Cathie and my brother Philip. Saturday was a loooong day of travel, but aside from a few glitches, we made it in one piece.

The first glitch was the Friday night for dinner we had a seafood pizza. We didn’t finish the pizza and since we were leaving town, I figured I’d just throw out the leftovers into the garbage can outside. When we were half way to the airport, I realized that I left the pizza box right on the counter. Ugh. Do you have any idea how that is going to smell when we get home? If anyone out there that has a key to my house feels like going over there and throwing out that box, we’d appreciate it!

We had three legs of travel. Cleveland to Chicago was first. Aside from being delayed out of Cleveland, we still arrived in Chicago with enough time to grab a fast bite to eat and then get on our plane to LA.

The Chicago to LA leg was a little more uncomfortable. Just because I had the middle seat and I was afraid to move through most of the flight. Bad news is they had a sucky movie playing, so I opted to sleep most of this leg. I guess that’s not such bad news after all!

The final leg of this trip was LA straight to Oxnard. On the ground, this is a 60 mile trip, or about an hour drive. Fighting LA traffic. Since we’re on vacation, we decided alleviate as much stress as we could. We ended up opting for this third flight, so it would be an easy drive from Oxnard to Ojai, where Cathie lives and little to no traffic.

This flight kind of scared me in theory. It was a turbo prop plane (yes, this means propellers) and nothing that archaic should be getting off of the ground, especially with my big butt in it. The plane was even scarier when I saw it in person. Maybe 10 rows of seats not including Skippy, our 12 year old pilot and that was it. The plane bounced like crazy down the runway to the point that I wasn’t sure it was going to hold together.

I came close to breaking Ron’s hand, I was holding on so tightly, but once we got a little altitude, this was the most gorgeous flight I’ve ever been on. We followed the coast line of the Pacific Ocean the 60 miles or so to the north. Just seeing the view from the plane was worth the price of the ticket. It was such a shame that the flight only lasted a total of 15 minutes. I’m telling you, it was breathtaking. The only bad side to this leg of the trip is that our luggage didn’t make it across the airport as quickly as we did. Our bags, we were told, did not make this flight but would be on the next flight, about four hours later.

Brother Philip was nice enough to pick us up at the airport and with no luggage to be had at the moment, we just left and met up with Cathie for dinner. We had a great leisurely dinner with Cathie filled with lots of laughs and lots of memories.

Philip was gracious enough to offer to pick our bags up at the airport when the later flight came in. Luckily, we had the foresight to pack an emergency carry on bag with extra underwear and a clean shirt. All we needed to stop for on the way to the house was a new toothbrush. Philip hung on to our bags and we were reunited on Sunday with our bags.

It was a great day today. I forgot to take my camera with me today, but luckily, Philip was not as scatter brained as I was. I used his camera to take a bunch of pictures and hopefully, once I get them from him I will be posting some of them here.

Keep watching for our California fun filled vacation.

For all of you in snowy Ohio and Pennsylvania, the weather here was absolutely perfect today. Mid seventies with the sun shining! Aah. This is the life!

Travel Story

I have a story from a couple of Fridays ago and coming home from Chicago.

Our flight out of Chicago is scheduled for just after 4:00 in the afternoon. Since we leave so early, we usually don’t stop working for a “lunch” break and end up stopping for some kind of fast food on our way to the airport.

Last Friday, someone got a wild hair and decided that Wendy’s wasn’t good enough for him this Friday and wanted something different. We pulled into the plaza that Wendy’s was in, and he looked around and saw what he thought was a Chinese restaurant in the plaza and said let’s go there. Well, I’m here to tell you, Korean food is nothing like Chinese food!

It started with the fact that the three of us were the only non-Oriental looking people in the place as well as the only three that spoke any English. Being in an adventurous mood, we decided to stay anyway.

The menus again were only subtitled in English, and this time I had my reading glasses on me. I picked something that said beef with various vegetables. How can that be a bad thing? I should have been able to eat that. One of the guys ended up ordering the same thing and one of the guys again just pointed at something.

The server brought us each out two water glasses, one of which was filled with ice water and the other was filled with a warm amber colored (ok, it looked like pee!) liquid. The water was mighty tasty. No, I didn’t taste the other.

Lunch was served and this is where the confusion really began. I’m sure it was good food to anyone that knows anything about Korean food. But, being a hick from the United States, I didn’t have a clue what the hell was served, and neither did anyone else at our table.

First, I had my bowl of food. What I think was the beef in this dish we were guessing was actually pickled beef and it was cold. The veggies (not swearing to that) were julienned and absolutely nothing was recognizable. There was white stuff, yellow stuff, brown stuff, red stuff. As I usually do better tasting new things when I don’t know what they are, I tried them all. Yuck is the most family friendly word I can come up with now.

Aside from my big bowl of food, it came with a smaller bowl, of soup looking stuff. I recognized a few mushrooms in there as well as two little pieces of tofu. I ate the mushrooms and tofu. It was my suggestion that this soup mixture should maybe go into the big bowl as the stuff in the big bowl was kinda dry, even with the gummy rice. So we did that.

Also on our table, the server laid down six small bowls in the middle of the table that had absolutely nothing recognizable on any of them! Well, one bowl sort of looked like a really small piece of lasagna, but from what I heard from one person that was brave enough to try it, it was nothing like lasagna. I don’t have a clue! We tried to ask the server what to do with these bowls, but she just looked at us and smiled and backed away.

Needless to say, two of our lunches went uneaten. It’s not just that I couldn’t recognize anything, but it all really tasted bad! VERY bad! Sort of like poop on a platter. It was so bad, it made the McDonald’s I bought at the airport taste good. You know if anything makes McDonald’s taste good, it has to be bad in comparison!

Needed: Rebound Testers

One present I received as a youngster for Christmas was a game called Rebound. It’s a simple game, using a few ball bearings with bumpers on them, plus a plastic board consisting of two side by side lanes with two angled rubber bands at the top of the lanes. The object of this game is to shoot your ball bearing up one lane, off one rubber band, off the second rubber band, down the second lane to lined scoring areas - sort of like shuffleboard scoring. You shoot too hard and your ball bearing zooms right off of the second lane, no score.

It was a cool game, but the best memory of this game is the back story that goes with it. Brothers Michael and Jim put my game together that year before Christmas to “test” it out before I got it, to make sure it worked. A couple of evenings, the boys were in the attic playing with my game and all we could hear in the kitchen is that dang ball bearing zooming up and down the plastic lanes. My parents probably knew exactly what was going on upstairs, but I didn’t. And, they wouldn’t let me upstairs to look, so it was driving me crazy! Come Christmas Eve, I get my game, Jim knows how to play it really well as he’s been practicing, and kicks my ass on every round. So not fair! The joke that year was that my game even came pre-tested!

Saturday, Ron and I were doing some Christmas shopping for the little kids in his family. And what did I see on the shelf? Rebound! Yeah, I talked him right into buying it for one of the kids. I was hoping to “test” the game Sunday evening but unfortunately, time got away from me. Don’t be surprised by the time that gift is presented at the Christmas party that it’s not a fully tested version of Rebound.

Se Habla Espanol?

Talking about food, Wednesday night, it was not my turn to pick a restaurant for dinner. Because if it had been my turn, my choice would not have been the Spanish restaurant we ended up at for dinner.

One of my problems is that my eyes have really turned to crap. I think it’s time for me to finally talk to the eye doctor about that dreaded “B” word. (That’s bifocals to any younguns reading this.) I have reading glasses that I have to wear at work when I have my contacts in because I can’t read our data books without them. I could blame it on the 2400 pages of fine print per book, with anywhere from 6 to 20 books per audit that are analyzed line per line. That’s a lot of reading of fine print. The fact that I used to be able to do it with no trouble shouldn’t scare me in the least.

But, back to my dinner.

The restaurant was dimly lit (yes, still making excuses for myself.) and the menu was all in Spanish. There were very few words I could understand. There seemed to be English subtitles to the menu, but between the lighting and my bad eyes, I couldn’t read a damn thing. For once, I was grateful I took two years of high school Spanish way back in the stone ages. I saw an entry called Pasta Con Pollo. Yep, that high school Spanish kicked in and I ordered it. The Pasta with Chicken was passable for supper and it was loads better than the snails on toast points that someone at my table ended up with for dinner. That will teach him to just point and not ask the waiter.

That's Just Good Food

I may hate my job and I may really dislike the people I have to travel with, but once in awhile something good has to happen. It wasn’t much, but this week, I have to look for my silver linings wherever I can find them.

One of the things I miss about Houston was some of the restaurants - in particular, Pappadeaux. This is my absolute favorite restaurant in the world. Of course it ain’t cheap, but if you ever run across one, open up the wallet a little and enjoy.

In the fours years I’ve done this audit, I didn’t know Pappadeaux was in Chicago. I always assumed it was a southern thing. Well, Tuesday night we all went to Pappadeaux for dinner. This is the restaurant that started my love of crawfish.

I couldn’t talk the guys into my favorite appetizer of crawfish and shrimp fondeaux. This stuff is the absolute bomb! I gave in though and we ended up ordering the fried alligator as an appetizer. Now, I’m not usually very out of the box when it comes to eating, but if they were willing to try alligator, I had to at least get one bite in my mouth to say I’ve tried it. Surprise, surprise, I liked it! I didn’t care for the spicy cocktail sauce that came with it as it was too spicy for my tastes, but the fried alligator was actually very good. And, yes, it tasted like chicken.

This was followed with my main course of the crawfish platter! Ok, I always order the crawfish platter when at Pappadeaux. I can’t help myself. I thought I’d try something different, but it may be another six years until I can get to another Pappadeaux, so I thought I had better get my crawfish fix while I can.

Picture this: a huge plate full of crawfish etouffee, some dirty rice and a pile of fried crawfish. Holy cow. I honestly did my best to finish my dinner, but I couldn’t get through it all. My taste buds were so happy, even my toes were tapping under the table while I was eating. The etouffee was a bit on the spicy side so my nose was running too, but I guess you didn’t need to know that part. Why oh why can’t I cook like that?

I paid the price for this great meal though. Like I said, I ate too much. And, we ate late. It was after 9:00 last night when we got back to the hotel and all I wanted to do was to crawl into bed and sleep. With a belly full, that wasn’t going to happen. So, I walked up and down my room, just trying to get the digestion process going. I thought that whoever was below me might not appreciate all of the walking, so I took my show on the road. I went into the hallway and walked up and down the hallway. Then, I went down to the lobby and walked around the lobby. Finally, about 11:30 pm I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer so I had to get to bed. I wasn’t happy with myself when my alarm went off at 5:00 am.

It was worth it though. I had my crawfish fix and while I could have wished for better company to eat with, there was absolutely no complaints about the food or the service. And, I even got to try alligator!

No One Can Hear Me Now

Talk about dumbass moves.

Last Friday, when I was checking out of the hotel, I did not do a stellar job grabbing my stuff before leaving. I usually am pretty systematic about going through the room making sure I have everything. I remember taking a second look in the bathroom but it seems I missed a second glance at the work desk in the room.

Unfortunately, I didn’t remember that until I was back on the audit site after check out when I realized that I didn’t pick up either of my cell phone chargers. My personal cell phone, a Motorola Razor is a piece of crap that drops calls at my house with such consistency that you wouldn’t believe it. That coupled with the fact that the battery can go from full to zero in a day really makes it a piece of crap phone. This phone I was at least able to charge a little bit in the car on Sunday while Ron and I ran some errands (aka Christmas shopping). However, my work phone was soon to be dead in the water.

As soon as I realized what I did, I called the hotel, told them that I had just checked out from Room 913 and left two phone chargers on my desk. I asked that they hold them until Monday as I was due back in town. She assured me that she would inform housekeeping about my blunder and they would hold the phones at the front desk.

Not trusting other people, I called the hotel again Sunday evening to verify they did indeed have my phone chargers. I was left on hold for a long time, even hung up on. I still called back and waited again until the girl came back on the phone and assured me that the phone chargers were indeed at the front desk and I only had to ask for them when I checked in on Monday. Yeah, I really should have made her repeat her name as I didn’t catch it the two times I called.

Believe it or not, I checked in Monday night, when through this story of being assured my chargers would be there on Friday and again on Sunday being told they were there, and yet, when I got there, no phone chargers. Now I’m wondering if their employees are trained to lie to customers on the phone just to get them off of the phone, or if that just an isolated incident. Yes, I know, it was MY mistake for leaving the chargers there, but I tried to do the prudent thing and inform the hotel before my room even got cleaned and try to verify on Sunday before I got there. Yeah, this was an expensive lesson learned in not taking my time on Fridays and checking out too quickly. I of all people should know better.

Since I was still pissed at myself last night, and not able to concentrate so well, Ron was nice enough to order me two phone chargers last night which hopefully should be at home when I get there on Friday. The only up side to this is that my boss and I both have the exact same work phone. Lucky for me, he had his phone charger on him Tuesday morning. My work phone will be fully charged for the week, but my personal phone is dead.

So, here is where the story was supposed to end. However, this morning at 6:00 am before we left for work, I spoke to another desk clerk, Analiza. She was a lot more capable than the rest. I told her my story, she said that the housekeeping manager starts at 6:30 am and she would talk to the housekeeping manager about it. I got back to the hotel tonight just after 9:00 pm and on my desk were my chargers!!! Analiza also left me a message on the room phone at 6:45 am stating that they have found the chargers and they would leave them in my room for me. Oh happy day.

I went back downstairs to see if a manager was in the building. I spoke with him and told him my story and wanted to give a pat on the back to Analiza. I said she, unlike the rest, went above and beyond and actually got results. I wanted to thank her for that. So, hopefully, her boss will make sure she realizes how much I appreciated all of her help.

I'm almost afraid to see what Wednesday will bring. It's been a heck of a week.

That Almost Ruined Our Dinner

When I have to fly out for work, Ron has been nice enough to give me door to door service to and from the airport. That is a tremendous help as I don’t have to walk the ten miles from the parking lot to the terminal and back. As an added bonus, we usually stop to get dinner on our way home from the airport on Friday nights.

Last Friday, my plane came in about 7:00 pm. By now, both of us are hungry but are still having that never ending argument “I don’t know, where do YOU want to go?” Finally, I made an executive decision to go to Applebee’s. I know that’s not one of Ron’s favorite places to go but I happen to love it here. I should learn to never choose Applebee’s again when Ron is with me. Something invariably happens and it’s never good.

This time, Ron and I both ordered steaks. They are Applebee’s featured special at the moment. I went for medium and Ron chose medium rare. When our steaks arrived, mine was cooked as ordered, but poor Ron’s was way over done. It leaned a lot closer to medium well than medium rare. He did send his steak back to be done again and the poor guy waited. I guess I’m not a good girlfriend, as I ate my steak in front of me while he watched. Until . . .

The sounds of regurgitation were coming from the table across the aisle and one more back behind Ron. Come to find out, when the girl across the aisle started to cut into her steak and saw all of the blood, she lost it, and I mean that literally. Her boyfriend was a stand up guy and immediately got up to shield her as best he could from the rest of the restaurant while keeping a comforting hand on her shoulder and telling her to catch her breath. All well and good for her, but it did nothing for our appetites watching her throw up over her dinner. Or actually on her dinner. Blech.

After a couple of trips to the ladies room, she finally got herself under control. During one of those trips, when the waitress went to their table to see what was wrong, luckily the heaving girl was in the bathroom. Her date showed the server just how bloody that steak was, and that looking at it made his date sick. Like I said, it didn’t do much for me, either.

In the end, I think what happened is that she ended up with Ron’s steak and he had the one intended for her. Either way, if I was that squeamish about blood, I don’t think I’d be ordering steak any time soon. At least they comped Ron’s meal. Maybe I should have thrown up too and we could have had an entire dinner on the house.

And on the table.

And on the carpet.

Yes, I'm Old! But Not THAT Old!

Let’s talk about perspective.

Thursday afternoon on the audit site, I was talking to two employees. One of the employees has only been with my client a few months. The other employee we have joked with previously that she had been there so long that they built the building up around her.

I asked her just how many years she has been there. She said she started here in 1980. Giving away the fact that I’m no spring chicken, I said that geez, I was still in high school in 1980! I thought that was funny until the new employee said “wow! I wasn’t even BORN yet”.

Yeah, this almost made the “That’s Just Wrong” book.

Scrape Some For Me

Chicago weather has not been good this week. Yeah, this is the perfect place to visit in December!

On Wednesday, we had about eight inches of snow by where we are. It was cold and blustery and slippery and just plain miserable all day long. I wasn’t smart enough to pack some snow boots and I found out that my left shoe has a hole in it. One day my left toes will thaw out.

We have the problem again of too many auditors for one car. It’s not that four of us don’t fit into a car, but find a car that will fit luggage and lap top bags for four people. Enterprise never seems to have the “right” sized vehicle in stock so once again we’re in a bus. Well, Ford Expedition actually, but it might as well be a bus! I don’t care so much this year though, since I’m not the one that has to park it. My boss is here, so he has to do all of the driving.

This vehicle is so big, it has its own atmosphere inside, or so it seems. Like I said, Wednesday we had eight inches of snow and cold and blustery. We left the audit site, went to dinner and then drove the three miles to the hotel where we hunkered down for the night.

Thursday morning, according to the news, it was eight degrees outside. I don’t care where you are, when it registers only single digits, it is cold. We all jumped up into the Expedition shivering. We got the heat blowing awhile and the driver got out to scrape the ice off of the windows. Then we realized that there was more ice on the inside of the windows than the outside. In all my years of growing up in snow country, I’ve never had to scrape the entire inside part of the windows along with the outside of the windows.

Yeah, that’s cold.

That's Just Wrong, Page 12

There was another tragedy on Wednesday; a mall shooting in Omaha Nebraska. Nine are dead, including the gunman.

I have always had issues with news agencies sticking cameras in grieving family’s faces asking them how they feel about losing their loved ones. Report the news. Don’t show me a grieving mother who is not ready to come to terms with the fact that her child has died a horrible and unnatural death. Just report the news.

Wednesday night, I was flipping through channels at the hotel and came across news anchor Anderson Cooper talking about the shooting at the Omaha mall. This was the first I had heard about it. Anderson Cooper was interviewing a woman that was in the mall when the shooting started and was hiding in a clothes rack with her Mom as they waited for help to arrive.

Anderson actually asked her: “So tell me, with all of the mall shootings that have happened this year, how did it feel to actually be there instead of watching it on television?”

Um, hello? What do you think, Coop? I say we staple him to a paper target at a firing range during their busiest hour and ask HIM how he feels being there live instead of watching it in a movie.

That was just wrong.

I Am Feeling The Love

Aside from Mr. Newsman and my boss, I guess not everyone dislikes me.

I sure did get me some love here at the audit in Chicago. We do this audit every year, and this is the fourth year in a row I’ve been here. The staff loves me here! And I don’t think it ALL has to do with the fact that I buy them donuts every Friday that I’m here!

The four of us auditors pulled up on site Monday morning about 10:00 a.m. Walking in the door was like a homecoming for me. Half of the staff got in line to hug me as I came through the department. The rest of the auditors got nods hello, but no hugs. That earned me a few comments from the other auditors along the lines of WTF.

The best part though, came at lunch. We went to a Greek diner for lunch that I’ve been to many times on my previous trips to Chicago. As soon as we all walked in, the one waitress ran right up to me and hugged me and said she was happy to see I made it back into town and came to the restaurant again! Yeah, being a good tipper helps too.

The guys better watch out. I have friends in town! Who’d have thought?

I Have No Tact

Or, so I have been told.

Friday I was having an attitude day. You know, one of those days when almost anything can bother you? There I was, blowing off a little steam with a favorite website while at work. Thanks go to my nephew, Michael, for that one. Like I need help goofing off! But, I digress.

I followed a link on Fark to an article. You know, one of those Christmas/dead soldier stories. It could have been a good sappy story for the holiday, but all I could see were two typos. Considering this article came from a "News" agency, KUTV out of Utah, I thought it was horrific that the typos were there. And, not one typo but two typos. It's not a blog from a nobody, it's not an e-mail or a letter from friend to friend, it's a news report. Call me stupid, but I think that they should be typo-free.

Did I mention that I was having a snarky day? The guy had his e-mail address as part of his article, so I took advantage of it. Here is my e-mail to him, in its entirety less our names:

Mr. XXX:
After reading your article, only one thing remains in my mind. You really need to hire a proof reader.

I thought I was being as nice as I could be, letting him know that he screwed up without telling him in a way that I really wanted to use! Here was his response, again in its entirety, less our names:

Ms. YYY
Thank you for the message and for pointing out the two grammatical errors contained within the copy.
Next time, however, I hope you will use more tact with your criticism.
XXX, KUTV.com

I was going to link his article to this blog, but I just went and reread his article and he FIXED the typos. There went my fun. Since he said I was tactless, I am not giving him any publicity here.

As a side note, anyone that knows me, knows my e-mail to him WAS tactful. He should have seen the first five drafts of the e-mail. Good thing I proof read before I hit the send button, not only for typos but for decorum as well. Yeah, buddy. This was the cleaned up version.