Nighty Night

Whew! For the last couple of days...well since my last post on Sunday, I even forgot I had a blog. Work has been THAT busy!!! I work all day without taking a lunch and then come home late. Last night I got home and did some laundry (even put it away - Whoo hoo go ME!) and ran the dishwasher and had hoped to have some 'me' time but once I sat down to scrapbook I only managed to mat a couple of pictures and cut them out.

Today was another busy day although I did manage to take about an hour away from my desk but not to relax but to run to our main building for a meeting and a few minutes with my sister (who now works for my company - yeah)! I still managed to work .5 to 1 hour overtime today.

Since we were out of TP and that is an important item in this household, I stopped by The Red Circle Boutique (aka Target) on the way home. Instead of running in and buying the 3 items on my list that I needed, I made a detour through the dangerous sections (aka as clothes and shoes). I have a couple of pairs of shoes that are the wrong size and I had forgot to bring them with me to return. As I looked at the shoes I saw they had the pairs I wanted but only one pair in my size so of course I had to pick them up tonight. I just hope they take back the shoes I want to return as I took the tags off of them but never wore them. And since I bought shoes, I also bought socks. It has been forever since I bought socks and tonight I bought purty socks so I will be sylin'. Oh and the socks are so soft.....So over $100.00 later I drove home.

Once home since it was already past 8 o'clock, I warmed up some soup and watched a bit of T.V. I got online to update my blog template to make it a bit more seasony (is that a word?) and what should have only taken a few minutes ended up taking forever as I ended up with circles in front of all my links and I could not find what I had left open in my code. Well I can tell ya.....all my suffering? All because of a stupid missing semi-colon!!! ARGH! Man! Now I am EXHAUSTED!

I am going to bed. Good night!

Brrrrrr.....

Toady it is FREEZING!!! The wind is blowing and it is 50 degrees!! It is officially winter in my book. I actually got to wear a sweater today ~ a thick one! That is a big thing for me. I LOVE my sweaters.

I have lots to do today and as usual I have left them all to the last minute. I did manage to get out for a bit and wandered over to the scrapbook store where I got to use my coupon (buy $50 and get $15 off ~ Yeah like that was hard). The scrapbook store near me is running a special every week so I hope I don't go too crazy on the spending (Yeah considering I am the tightwad with money that will not be happening). After leaving the scrapping store I stopped by the grocery store for quarters. Good thing I remembered to pick some up as that is the whole reason I left the house today.

So now it is time for some laundry, some kitchen cleaning and making of some yummy potato cheese soup. Yep! It is officially winter in my book! Hmmm I wonder if it is time to change the ole blog template to my winter one.

Thanksgiving should be a soap opera

…but only when it is spent at my in-laws.

It is hard to believe another Thanksgiving has come and gone. It is not one that I would like to remember and I really missed not being with my family. I don't think my mother-in-law said more than two words to me on Thursday but of course, I was kind of hiding so she would not lash out at me. I have not grown up in a family where drama was the main course for a holiday and I can tell ya I do NOT like it!

We arrived at my in-laws and were greeted at the door by my father-in-law and one of my nieces. One could not know that soon the smiles would not be there (although all of us kind of expected something to happen). Now my in-laws have only been in this particular house for a couple of years. Before that, they lived in a much smaller place. The new house has a large kitchen that my MIL bragged about since they bought the house. Well the bragging has stopped. The complaints about the kitchen being too small started as soon as we got to the house.

It was nice to see my sister-in-law, brother-in-law and all of the girls. I finally got to meet my youngest niece (19 months after she was born) and can I tell ya…..she is cuter than I expected.

All in all, there were 10 of us for dinner and so the table was set outside where the weather was FANTASTIC! The actual meal was good and seemed to go quickly but it was nice to sit and chat for a bit. I also had a blast taking photos of the girls as they just love posing for photos.

Then dinner was over and the drama started. The rule in my mother-in-law's house is that nothing and I mean nothing can be done after dinner until ALL dishes are cleaned and put away. That means if you want to watch a movie, you can't. If you want dessert, you can't.

Since my MIL is the one that cooks the cleaning is my FIL's job. Since this newer house has a dishwasher you would think it would be easier for cleanup. Sadly, it is not. My FIL put in the first load and was going to wash the rest of the dishes (with my SIL's help) but my MIL would not have it. She kept saying at first that she needed to put the food away, complaining all the while that she would have to dirty utensils to do so and then complaining about not having enough room in the fridge for the left-overs (yeah I will talk about those later). My FIL and B actually LEFT to take the leftovers back to our place. The drive is about an hour round trip. While they were gone, my SIL again offered to do the dishes, which my MIL refused stating that there were no clean towels (don't know why as there was a closet full of them).

The older girls wanted dessert and the younger girls were hungry again about this time. It was about 2.5 hours after we had eaten. My SIL told the younger girls that they could have some yogurt outside. So the girls put on their shoes and go to the fridge to get the yogurt. My MIL tells N (the 3-year old) "NO yogurt. You cannot eat yet! You have to wait until later for dessert!" This then made the 3 year-old cry as it should. Then my MIL has the gall to say to my SIL "Well if you insist you can give them pie and ice cream" Which is not what they wanted. So my BIL goes to get the yogurt and my MIL stews and starts complaining that she has to do it all and no one helps her clean and at that time B comes back and I just give him the look and tell him "she's losing it."

So finally, HOURS after dinner, dessert was eaten and a movie watched. B and I then headed home where I was in the mood to make myself a nice turkey sandwich. But did I get to make a nice leftover turkey sandwich? NOPE. As you see…..although my MIL gave us leftovers such as a container of gravy, she gave us no TURKEY! B said he told her not to as we have a frozen one in the freezer but as I told him, how will I make a sandwich with a frozen turkey? And why the heck do we need leftover gravy if we have nothing to put it on????

Happy Thanksgiving

For those of you that celebrate Thanksgiving, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. For those of you that don't I wish you a happy Thursday!

Thanksgiving this year will be spent at my in-laws. I am missing my family already and the small gathering of 20-25 people that my mom says will be there (all family too!!!!). B's side of the family is quite small for my tastes. Just his parents, his brother and his brothers family. So we are looking at 10 people (four of which are children). I am excited and thankful that I will get to see my sister-in-law who I love dearly and my 4 nieces (one of which is over one year and I have not met yet). So I am prepared to take tons of girl pictures! I am just debating on if I want to just take my digital which has the smallest memory card EVER or just take my trusty film camera with all the film I still have. My SLR (film) camera takes the best pictures as I am still trying to figure out how to make my little digital take pictures that I like. I sure do miss my depth of field. For those of you that know that term.....I used that ALOT! Well I did anyways in my photography portfolio. Why? Cause I love it! I keep trying to take pictures using all the tricks I know but they just don't turn out the same with this digital so I am left with just snapshots. Don't get me wrong, snapshots are not bad but I really miss taking a photo that when I look at it I go 'WOW'!

Well this Thanksgiving post has really gone off on a tangent. Back to the subject of Thanksgiving.

Everyday I try to think of the things I am thankful for. They usually rush quickly thru my mind and I never actually thought of writing them down. Writing them down makes them permanent and quite personal.

I am thankful...

...for my family and that they are all still here with us
...for the friends that I have. (Most of them may be new but I already hold them dear to my heart)
...for my health
...for my job and the roof over my head
...for my life (for I never thought I would live past 16, 18 or even to my 30's)


Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Don't forget to wear comfy pants!

I see bling!

On Monday I got a surprise in my mailbox. I kind of expected the surprise to happen on Saturday but Monday made up for it. What was my surprise you ask? Well in my tiny mail box was a key. Whenever there is a key you just know there is something good. I took the key and opened the huge mail box reserved for packages. Inside was a huge envelope and 10 tiny envelopes. The huge envelope I was surprised to find contained a free skein of yarn that I kind of forgot I had sent away for. In the 10 tiny envelopes? My jewlery orders of course! I had already received one item a couple of days before and knew that the others should be arriving soon. I cannot believe all the jewlery I have been buying. I really love the rings I ordered but with me losing weight I am sad that I will not get to wear them for long. I also showed them to B who was actually very surprised at how nice the pieces were. So....so far he has no complaints with what I have purchased. If only he knew the dollar amount but hey I am not going to be the one to tell him. Sadly, last night there were no small brown envelopes in my tiny mail box. But today is one more mail day before the holiday so I am keeping my fingers crossed!

I am so happy that after today I will have a long 4-day weekend! Now I am just keeping my fingers crossed that today will not be so busy. I just want a nice relaxing day at work where I can order some more bling (2 so far today) and spend time at the Kindred Creations site (LOL!). If you scrapbook you may want to head over to that site. They have a wonderful layout gallery, the most friendly message board and lots of contest and challenges that I hope will kick my butt into gear and get me to get caught up on all these pages I need to complete.

I need a title, Darn it!

Each day at work I feel more like a grown up. Maybe because I am no longer at the bottom of the totem pole taking calls. I have moved into my new ‘office’ (cube) and I love it!!! I still have pretty much everything in boxes but I know I will eventually have everything unpacked. I find it hard as I have so much more room but I also have so much crap and I don’t know where to put everything. It is hard having lots of choices! Now that I actually have real desk space I can go and buy neat-o office thingies. I even have room for pictures! Yet another picture of me taken at the END of the day. This picture only shows very little of my new space. As soon as I unpack I will show it off.

It is now winter. Winter means nice clothes. Why? Well because all my winter clothes are nice clothes so I HAVE to dress up for work. It was also time to update the old hair color. Heck I was bored and needed something to do. I decided to go dark. As you can see it is also quite red (in certain light). I like it. I have not had my hair this color for awhile. And I like it even more now that I washed it again and my scalp is now the normal white and not red like in this picture. B was worried about it being so dark and not red (he likes the lighter red) but he did notice the red last night so I think all is good. Actually it is more of a burgandy/plum purple but hey guys don't really know colors. One of these days he will realize I dye my hair the colors that I like not what he likes. :-)

Okay here is my gripe for the day. I love my co-workers in my new group/department but there is one woman that just ticks me off. I don’t think I have written about my new group before as I wanted to get to know them first before passing any judgments. Well not anymore. This woman is a witch no matter how many chances I give her.

So let’s start at the beginning. When I first moved into my new group we were in a smaller room full of cubes. There were other departments in there and the majority of the people working in there were temps. This woman (at the time) was a temp. On the morning after my move someone sent an anonymous email to our group. Here is the email that was sent:

It has been requested to remind everyone to have consideration of others working in our small area:
Loud conversation whether it is with other team mates or even on the phone can be disruptive.
Using speaker phones to check audix or make calls can be distractive as well.
Laughter, however, enjoyable to hear, can break concentration and work flow.
Please assure you are being considerate to your neighbors.
Thanks

What the F!?!?!?! Laughter is not allowed? This email ticked off a lot of people as no one 'requested' any of this. I was ticked because….the day before it was sent I did some laughing. I like to laugh. Since when is laughing not allowed in the workplace? Well the woman did not admit to sending it but the managers all think she did. The managers were livid over this email.

So fast forward to just a few days later. I am sitting at my desk when a co-worker walks in for the day. We say hello and so did the other 2 co-workers next to him. He has not even clocked in for the day and was off the clock when this woman comes over and tells us all to get to work. EXCUSE ME??? I have worked for this company for 6 years and my own manager has never had to tell me to ‘get to work’ and now this TEMP has the nerve to do so? Well I spoke to someone about it and the other co-workers had also complained so this woman was taken in to speak to her manager. It appears that this woman would keep track of what everyone else was doing. If you got up from your desk she would write down the time and then time you when you were away. It did not matter if you were in a meeting or on lunch. She kept track of everyone’s time. This was not her job. She was a TEMP! She was told she ticked off a full-timer (ME) and to stop. She did not bother me again. The classic moment came when this particular manager came into the room and complained loudly that it was too quiet and proceeded to make A LOT of noise! Lots of laughing was done that afternoon.

Now fast forward to today. We are having a potluck in our group. (MAN! This group is always having potlucks). Well there were only two of us here this morning so I cleaned out an empty cube and placed the food in it. This was the only empty cube without computer equipment and I wiped down the tabletop. Well everyone was putting their food in this particular cube. Until this woman just had to have her own way and did not think it was good enough and cleaned out the cube next to hers and moved all the food into it. I don’t care about that but the comment she threw my way of ‘that cube you picked is not clean enough and does not have enough room’ is what threw me into a tizzy. What? There are only 8 of us and not everyone brought food. Argh! I guess I need to learn how to work with women. But man! There is only so much a person can take. Well that person being me and since I take everything so personally anyways, I can only take very little. :-)

I am so happy this week is a short week but I have so much to do before I can take time off for the holiday. Why is it when there is tons of work to do, I don’t feel like working at all? Maybe this headache I have may have something to do with it? Or maybe the idea of a 4-day weekend? Anyone in the same boat?

So sparkly I will be!

I think I have a problem. Do you notice that this picture has changed since the last time I posted it? Yeah.....definitely a problem. Why is it a problem? Because so far all of these items are just for me. I have not yet purchased any for Christmas presents like I want to. At least I will look darn purty with all my new jewelry. All of the items I have ordered (except for the one today) have shipped. I think I may need to beat B to the mailbox over the next few days. So in order to not be the only one with this problem, I will share the link to this new addiction with all of you. Just click the pretty banner below.

Disclaimer: I am NOT responsible for any new addictions you may encounter!!

LO: Oh Baby!

Well here it is! The first layout of the twins! I am so happy to have finally finished one (especially now that they are 17 months). These are the photos of their first day. Of course I did not use all the baby stuff that I had planned too and I have tons left over. I guess I will be doing tons of baby layouts soon to use up my stash. I really wish I could make these baby layouts as awesome as Happay Mommay's baby layouts of E. Stop by her blog and check them out and you will see what I mean.

Layout is 2 8.5 x 11 pages stitched together

Supplies used:

Yellow and green cardstock - Bazill
"Oh Baby" stickers - Pebbles "Snip-its"
Making Memories Rub-ons

Thanks for looking.

5 days later

Thanks to a great friend of mine, B and I were given passes to see the sneak preview of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (Of course I feel she is a great friend even if she did not give us the passes). It was a 10am show and we got there about an hour before. Even though the line was long there were some empty seats in the theatre (up front). B and I lucked out as I was asking a poor young girl how many seats she was saving (I don’t agree with saving a whole row or a ton of seats for someone who does not get there on time) and the woman in the next row asked me how many seats I needed. She moved down one so B and I could sit together and up in the risers and not in the front of the theatre. All the best seats (2 rows in the middle) were saved for the reviewing press which only about 5 showed up! There were quite a few people there without passes that bullied their way in as well.

As for the show….it was okay. B is not a big Harry Potter fan but managed to stay awake during this one (it took him 3 tries to see the first one). This one was very dark and I would think scary for the younger kids in the audience. Lots of scary images and even death. That Harry Potter sure is growing up!

I have found a new addiction and I find it really weird as I am so stingy when it comes to buying jewelry and have spent hours or even days thinking about an item before making the purchase. On the site that is causing this addiction, I only have 15 minutes (sometimes less) to make a decision. All items are free and I only pay $5.99 for shipping. I have to be careful about the earrings as I do have an allergy to nickel but that has not stopped me from ordering a few pendants. In fact I decided today that I think I know what I will be buying my family (at least the females) for Christmas. So if you read this blog and you know you will be getting a gift from me – please forget what I wrote above!!! So far, I have only purchased a couple of pendants – but right now I just bought this ring!!! I don’t even know what size ring I wear but I bought this one anyways. I don’t know why I bought a ring. I sure do hope it fits~!!!!! I am thinking I can wear it on my middle finger as that is my fattest one. LOL! There is a pair of earrings that I really want to purchase but according to the schedule, they will not be available for sale until 17 hours from now. I guess I need to get up early tomorrow. My only fear is finding something as a gift but really liking it for myself.

bleh...

I have been miserable lately. There is something going around this office that is making it so hard to concentrate. It is a sinus thing and all I know is that I get to work and my eyes start watering – Non stop, especially my right eye (to heck with eye makeup!). I had planned to stay home today but B ticked me off so off to work I went (how dare I get sick on his day off). Then B did not put gas in the devil car, so I had to have him drive with me to work this morning. It is a long story but the short version is that he REALLY ticked me off today!! Coming into work is the only thing that kept me in a reasonably good mood today. So do I get an 'A' for effort today?

So since I have been pretty out of it all day, I decided today was a Mission U.K. sort of day. See even my post is all drivel today. Kind of boring but hey at least it is a post.

Oops! I have just realized that I really need to get cracking on some of these requests (only 1 hour to go - well less now that I got this posted) so the time has come to play my “I NEED TO WAKEUP” iTunes play list! HEY! Now don’t laugh at my selections. They work for me and that is all that matters. Now of course I do end up being a source of entertainment to my co-workers as sometimes I really get grooving!

Do you Myspace?

Do I need to?

Upside down

When I used to sit out on the main floor I was usually was the one to instigate a few pranks. Big pranks. The kind of pranks where people stop, stare and take photos. It really helped that I sat next to a couple of guys that would brainstorm prank ideas with me and then do them. Of course they usually bore the brunt of those pranks. I was not the only one to play pranks on co-workers but I started getting blamed for all pranks no matter how big or small or whoever did it them.

Now I am in an office that has its own prankster. He is not into the big pranks but the little pranks (can you tell I like to say pranks?). The ones you really don’t notice until after you have been looking at it for awhile. I came into work yesterday to find that my cube had been turned upside down (well what he could get to). I did notice that the paper with my name was upside down (see pic over there to the right) but he has done that before (I caught him doing that and filling my office with post-its) so I thought nothing of it. In fact I thought maybe I had not fixed it from before. It was not until I sat here a bit (well someone pointed it out to me actually – yes I am that dense I guess – LOL!) that all my photos, frames, water bottle, soda cans, wet ones, white boards etc were upside down. I think I will keep it this way as I am sure it will bug him and I will come in one day and find everything right side up. But rest assured, my mind is already thinking of payback!

Please forgive me for my not so glamorous photo. It was taken at the end of a very long day.

VTO (voluntary time off) ~ it is a state of mind that I don’t plan to move out of anytime soon.

*** Oh and on a side note. And this is directed to those of you that I will be cropping with this weekend and you know who you are. Please be aware that pictures will be taken. Oh yes there will be pictures! You have been warned! ***