Spring Break

Ten-Day cruise aboard the Celebrity Millenium

The day before: applied for and obtained passports for the kids. Whew. That was close.

Departure from Bowie: four adult-sized people, four large suitcases holding clothes for at least 12 days, and four carry-ons in a Honda Fit. Should have taken a picture so we knew how everything would fit for the return.

Checked into the Best Western-Newark Airport at 10:30 with a 04:00 wake-up call for a 06:00 flight to Atlanta, connecting on to San Juan.

Check-in at the cruise terminal went fairly smoothly, had to fill out a health questionnaire: have we been sick? No, except for the major allergy attack that came on the day before, I was sneezing and had a runny nose like there's no tomorrow. Sheesh.

The ship is nice, quiet. Not in-your-face like Carnival tends to be. The general layout is very similar between the two, however. The typical demographic of Celebrity passengers is 55-75. This sailing skewed a lot younger because of spring break.

Luggage: finally delivered to our staterooms right before dinner, about five hours after boarding. What took so long? I start to worry it is still sitting on the dock somewhere.

Dinner: late seating, I asked for a table for four when we booked, they put us at a table for ten. Except there were only three seats left. Goldilocks was already at our table. sheesh. A table for ten, really? I really don't like to make other people endure Kevin's quirkiness, we like to eat alone. They are very apologetic and seat us upstairs for the night.

Tortola: not the island filled with pirates one might expect, especially those who are Johnny Depp fans. A smidge of sunburn where I missed with the sunscreen. Decent beach.

Sint Maarten: Narrow beach, more sunscreen. Didn't go to the French sided. Fern and I collect our free charms in all the ports as we did on the cruise a year ago Christmas. I've amassed quite a collection now.

St. Lucia: shore excursion to the Piton Falls. Who would have thought the roads were that tight, windy, and steep? Dramamine, please. We finally get a permanent dinner table assignment. We had open seating the first three nights because of the initial mix-up. Open seating is a disaster. Service is much better in the regular dining room. Much. They don't forget the silverware there.

Do you wave at strangers? Do you wave at the passengers on the other ships in the harbor when one ship is departing? Do you wave until they wave back which only encourages more of your fellow passengers to wave at them which encourages more of their fellow passengers to wave back at us?

Barbados: Dan and Fern take a zipline excursion while Kevin and I go to a beach. Met a lovely couple from the ship and asked the wife help me with the lotion on my back since Dan wasn't around. They both golf.

It's about 160 steps from Deck 2 where our staterooms are to Deck 10 where the breakfast and lunch buffets are. Kevin takes them up. I take them down. I can make it up to Deck 7 before getting on the elevator. Whew.

Grenada, the Spice Island: Catamaran snorkel/beach excursion and a sunburned back today. The spices are better in Guadalupe, by the way, but that was 15 years ago.

Day at sea: reading and sunning.

Curaçao: We rent a car. I drop Dan and the husband from the couple I met in Barbados off at the golf course and I take the wife and the kids to find a beach and to Jaanchie's restaurant for lunch. That's the place Dan and I went to for dinner a couple of times when we visited Curaçao three years before. Lunch is good but the service is way slow and we are late getting back to pick up the boys at the golf course. They seemed to have fun.

Aruba: We taxi to Eagle beach. Best beach by far, very wide with smooth, soft sand.

Down-face dog on the beach is relaxing, a nice stretch, until my foundation is washed away.

After the beach, I do some personal shopping and also collect our charms.

The new one is a bit bigger than the old one. When it's not sticking to my skin because of humidity or sweat, it hangs down loose on my metacarpal joint. Do I take another link out?

Another day at sea, more reading and sunning.

Back in San Juan: we take the El Yunqué rainforest tour, only because we have all day to kill, our flight home doesn't leave until 5:00.

Our flight to Miami is oversold. A flight to Baltimore is at the next gate. I offer three of our seats on our flight for seats on the BWI flight. (Our connection doesn't get in to Newark until 00:20, then there's the drive home and school the next day. This is the part of the vacation I wasn't looking forward to.) There are only two seats available on the BWI flight so I send Dan and Fern that way, Kevin and I continue on as originally planned. He's a little distraught about not having Daddy with him, but he settles down soon enough.

We depart San Juan for Miami over an hour late and just make it on to our next flight. (Dan and Fern arrive in Baltimore at the same time Kevin and I land in Miami. They get home and sleep in their own beds.) We make it to Newark, but our checked luggage doesn't. There are four groups of folks in the same boat, from the same boat, with no luggage. I file the missing bags report. Guess I didn't need that map to reload the suitcases in the car after all.

Kevin and I with our carry-ons get the car out of hock at SkyPark. $180 to park, free with the Best Western stay and fly deal. I hit the road, south on the turnpike to Exit 7, and spend what's left of the night at the Hampton. They gave me toothbrushes and toothpaste for me and the boy and deodorant for myself. I like Hampton Inn.

Home: at about 11:30, Kevin off to school. I try to drop him off directly but he won't go, he has to have his backpack.

The automated baggage system has no information about my suitcases. Then late in the afternoon, one bag has been found. I wonder if it's the one filled with dirty clothes?

Kevin's body clock is messed up. He heads to bed at 03:30 but is very distraught about not having his own toothbrush or flosser. It takes a while to calm him down.

O'dark:15 this morning my cell rings: "I have your suitcases, I'm in front of your house, sorry I'm late."

Sheesh.

Lesson learned: If airfare out of Newark is included in your cruise ticket and DC is $400 extra, go with DC.

Good Luck or Bad Luck?

So, on Tuesday at lunch time, I visited Sally's blog. She had a link to another site called Inspire Me Now, a collection of links to really cool products and images. One of the links on that site crashed my browser and about a half-hour later, my computer had a virus.

This virus killed all my applications except for Firefox. I couldn't do any work except read my mail through the web portal. The guys at the help desk tried to run their virus killer to save my machine and even it was affected. The only thing left was to erase the hard drive and start all over. I gathered all my documents I wanted to save into a folder.

Wednesday, I found my work ID. It was where it was supposed to be, in the storage tray in the car, just stuffed down really far so I didn't see it the first four times I looked.

The help desk guy, a guy with some kind of sinus problems, saved my documents to the network and re-imaged my drive, or whatever the technical term is. Wednesday afternoon I had nothing. I did have my messy desk I could clean, my cell phone for a game of solitaire, but I was growing tired of that, and I had a purse I could clean out. So, I did that while Mr. Sniffy Snort brought my PC back to life.

I found an envelope of money I'd forgotten I had. Nice. I found health care receipt I could send in for about $400+ in claims for 2009 before I lose them. I also found another SD card reader. Good haul, I'd say.

I saw my massage therapist in the afternoon and relayed all the happenings. She suggested I buy a lottery ticket, so I did. Fingers crossed.

This morning, I disinfected Mr. Sniffy Snort's germs from my keyboard and mouse. My PC is almost back to life, still need to get him to install some more work applications, but he'll do that remotely.

Hopefully, I'll be back to normal soon. I'm so tired of loading and rebooting and passwords. Yuck.


 

Again, Really?

I getting a more than a little tired of the anonymous spam comment posts.

I've deleted three spams from the last blog post over the past couple days. sheesh.

The latest spam came from: ABTS-KK-Dynamic-004.109.167.122.airtelbroadband.in Karnataka, Bangalore, India

Go away already.

The weird thing is I only see one "deleted comment" and not three. Oh well.


 

Life in the Age of Technology

I found myself asking my husband to delete the mouse in the mousetrap over the weekend.


 

The Good News

Well, the good news is: I got a load of underwear done before the washer died.


 

FaceBook

Yeah. I went there.

If you know my real name, you can find me.

There's stuff I don't get yet, like how some folks have stuff all over their page and I just don't see how's it's done. It's cool, though, people are friending me, is that a verb now "friending," I don't remember requesting. I even found my flute teacher from when I was in junior high.

Weekend Round-Up

We had a busy weekend

Kevin participated in the Maryland State Special Olympics Basketball event on Saturday morning.

Fern had her usual Saturday morning skating lessons and production team practice. The last one before the competition Saturday night. She had slept over at a friend's house so I had to taxi her from there to the rink.

We got a notice of suspension of the registration of the corolla because we didn't report back to the MVA we'd gotten the windshield fixed. The suspension was effective on Monday. I had to get the car inspected, the forms signed and delivered. I was hoping the state police barracks in Forestville was one of the places where I could turn in the form. It wasn't. The barracks, however, were a couple blocks from the Special Olympics site so I was able to hang out with Dan and Kevin for a while.

Fern arranged to hang out with her friend after skating so I didn't have to pick her up.

I got a call from Mom. She and Dad would be coming to the quilt show but their GPS didn't understand the destination and they'd call me for the final directions. Two hours later I still hadn't heard from them and I was getting worried.

I hung out at the quilt show in a building with bad cell reception hoping my parents were alright. I'd already called them six or eight times with no answer. Finally my pocket buzzed, their call got through and they were in town. I went to get them so they could follow me to the show.

Mom loved the quilts, she loved the two of mine, liked the pebble quilting on the piece I made for my cousin and her new husband. Dad liked the quilt I made for him, but told him he couldn't have then. We left the show and my parents came home with me even though it wasn't prepared for company. There weren't too many dishes on the counter.

I showed Mom the finished top I've made for her. She loved it. I'm so glad. She even asked for a scrap of fabric so she could redecorate the room around the quilt. Now I just have to finish it, huh?

When they left, we left too for the Skate Annapolis competition. Fern had a 7:00 pm call time for 8:00 perform time. They were running late so we didn't get out of there until after 9:00.

We stopped at 49 West for desserts on the way home.

Sunday I didn't get up early to walk. I woke up at 9:10. Fern had a 9:00 call time for a 9:55 solo compulsory event. Kevin was asleep next to me. Where was Dan? Where was Fern? Dan had taken her to Annapolis on time, I missed early church but Kevin and I went to late church. Dan and Fern were back when we got back.

At 1:15 Kevin and I left for his Special Olympic swim team practice and Dan and Fern left for Annapolis again. She had to be back for her freestyle program event. Kevin much rather swim than be cooped up in a cold ice arena, so I missed Fern skate again.

While Kevin was swimming I got a storm at sea quilt basted. I'm trying out wool batting for the first time. It's a lot fluffier than the cotton I usually use. It'll be certainly different for me to work with.

He took an enormously long time to get dressed afterward and come up to the lobby. I was starting to get worried. Evidently, he took a shower and probably played for a while. A long while.

We then went to Costco for the ever important bar soap and toilet paper. You know they didn't have any deodorant soap? Just beauty stuff. Sheesh. I got milk and light bulbs, too. I don't tend to get anything "fun" when I shop alone. Dan is always disappointed when I stick to the list.

The quilt show closed at 4:00. They usually take down the quilts, clean up the standards and are waiting anxiously for the last person to pick up their pieces by 6:00. Some years they even start calling if you're not there by 5:45. Kevin and I arrived at 5:53. They weren't done cleaning up yet. Kevin used to attend the school where we have the show, so he made himself right at home. So much so, that when I finally got my quilts, I couldn't find him right away.

When we got home, Dan and Fern were already there. We ordered pizza for dinner. PapaJohn's is having a .25 special, buy a large three-topping pizza and get a medium for 25 cents. Except for two weeks in a row now, they've been out of the medium doughs. Sheesh.

Results

Kevin got a gold medal in basketball.
Fern got two silver medals for compulsories and program and her team got a gold for the group event. (See picture below.)
I got the inspection forms mailed to the MVA.
And no speeding tickets were actually issued.
 

Why

can't my kid turn in her homework?

Rx for Apathy?

I have a major case of the "apathy"s.

The gym here at work had its annual "maintain-don't gain" campaign from before Thanksgiving to after New Years. You got points for exercise and not gaining weight. I came in third of all the participants, thanks mostly to my daily 3-mile walks and the bi-weekly water aerobics classes. The week after the program close, I gained almost five pounds which puts me way over my Mendoza line. sheesh.

I want to care, but I am having a real hard time about it. I am finding it very hard to get up and do my three miles when no one is waiting for me. I am finding going to my water aerobic class is becoming a chore. I'm finding it very easy to have a coke with a meal instead of something lower-cal, like water. I don't get anywhere near my "eight glasses a day." sheesh. AM said to me the other day something like, at our age, you have to be constantly trying to lose weight just to maintain, other wise, it's too easy to gain. I agree with her.

My major project at work went into production last week. I'm having a hard time getting into anything else, like our new project. Our division went through a reorganization several months ago. I will be doing the same work but got a new assistant division chief, a new branch chief, and now don't have a section chief. Most folks will get relocated somewhere on our floor. The union had to approve the moving plan, and now next week we "get" to move to our new locations. Turns out, I'm moving over just one pod, to the next cluster of cubes. I'll still have a window, yay, but I still have to pack and move. I hate that. sheesh.

I was all ready to blame my apathy on SAD but the days are getting longer and it's still light out when I drive home so I think SAD doesn't apply.

Rarely does something on TV apply to me, or do I pay attention to the "message," but one of the themes this week on House was being in a rut vs. being happy.

Am I happy? I think so.
Am I in a rut. I think so.
Well then, am I really happy? Maybe not.

What ruts am I in?
How do I climb out?
What do I have to look forward to?

I'll have ponder these questions.
 

Lost Weekend

He's a faker! OMG! He's such a faker! He's not even from Iraq.
No, Honey, he's an actor.
He's a faker!
He's an ac-tor.
Faker!
Actor.

The Girl is yelling at the TV. Or maybe me. I am watching the bonus features DVD for Lost Season 2 and she joins me part-way through. Naveen Andrews is talking on the screen about the show with a pristine British accent although he plays the Iraqi Republican Guard survivor on Lost. Also from London is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje who plays a Nigerian crimelord-turned-priest. Later, Daniel Dae Kim, who speaks no English on the show, only Korean, speaks accent-free English in the bonus features. It's all quite jarring, especially if you've bought into all these characters, hearing then talk in their native tounge. The Girl is outraged. These people are fakers! No, they're actors. She storms out.

The Lost season 5 premier is January 21 so we've been watching the past seasons pretty much non-stop the past two weekends. She says her homework is finished... I even bought Season 4 yesterday, which The Girl had to break into right away even thought we hadn't even finished watching Season 3. She's so into it now, when the show premiered in 2004, it was too much for her, too gory, too adult. Now she's giddy, it'll be the best thing about next week.

Outwitting the Outwitter

I like chocolate milk. I have a hard time drinking it plain. I'll make a glass for myself and after I've finished my first gulp the glass disappears. My son also likes chocolate milk and believes any glass of milk in the house is meant for him. He'll finish any glass I've made for myself, he'll even take it right out of my hands mid-sip.

So I make two glasses and drink from of one of them. He takes it away. I pick up the other and start drinking it. Score one point for Mom.

He takes the new glass away from me and pours the remaining milk into his other glass.

Sheesh.
 

Bated Breath

I know you are waiting for the post, complete with pictures and vivid descriptions of tropical places from the cruise. You'll have to wait a bit longer. We took the laptop with us (even though we didn't spring for internet service ($.75/minute!)) on the ship, so I worked on a travel log and it's not ready to post yet. I still have yet to download pictures. The Girl tends to hog the laptop when she can so I'll need to commandeer it tonight to finish my post.

But, first, back to paying work and the stuff I have to finish like yesterday!

Shopping With Kevin

I took Kevin shopping for jeans the other day. He's in another growth spurt and is showing a lot of ankle again so I set out to cover them up.

The boy is rapidly approaching six feet tall, he's probably just a half inch shy now, and he weighs 110 pounds. Picture a light pole looming over everybody nearby, a light pole with a lot of sock glaring between the jeans and the high-top sneakers, that is. I headed to Sears so see what they had. In the Boys' department he's about a size 12 in the waist and a 20 in length. In the Men's department he's about a 25x32. However, the smallest waist available is 28". Sheesh.

I gave him a pair of regular fit 28x32 Lee's and took him to the men's fitting room. Three times I explained about going in the room, putting on the new pants, and coming back out to show me. I was apprehensive but hopeful. I waited outside the door for what seemed like forever, and eventually he came out wearing jeans that were finally long enough, but sereral inches too big at the waist and very baggy in the butt. They didn't droop too much as to violate the dress code at school so I decided to buy them. I found four pairs of 28x32 pants, each a different color and asked him to pick out two. I asked him if he wanted a belt. "NO!"

The next day I did some searching on the 'net for skinnier jeans. I found a place that'll make them for you for $135 but the smallest waist on their pull-down list was 28". Sheesh. Not that I would actually spring for $135 jeans for my baby, but why brag about custom-fit jeans if you're not going to make them small enough for your average bean pole?

And before you even ask, No, I'm not going to make jeans for him myself!

 

Weekend Stuff, Oh, and a Rant

Brrrrr. It was cold this morning, 34°! I had to pull out my gloves and hat for my walk.

Fern got me to take her and two friends to the movie on Friday night; we saw The Secret Life of Bees. She wanted to see it because it had Dakota Fanning in it, the other characters were played by Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, and Alicia Keys. Given the demographic of the actors, the demographic of the audience was about the same. I didn't want to believe the stereotype that black audiences talk back to the movie, but they do. Oh well, the movie was still good, I enjoyed it. Nobody told me I was going to need to take tissues with me.

I went through my stash to find a fabric for the back of the wedding quilt I'm working on for my cousin. I have fabric stashed away in lots of different bins with no real method of organization. I always have to pull it all out to find what I want, and make a real mess in the process. That would be on top of the mess that already exists. Sheesh. So I decided it was time to sort the stash with some meaningful system: by color.

I need large vessels to put the fabric in as I pull it out. I need something large, cheap, but sturdy. I looked in the dollar store and the largest things I could find were baskets the size of mixing bowls and gift bags. Not gonna work. Then I took a field trip to the mega dollar store and scored a dozen small laundry baskets. I got most of my fabric sorted and found my biggest pile was of greens, followed by blues, and a pile a pieces that clearly have more than one dominate color and I don't know what basket to put them in.

Now I've got to figure out how to store the fabric so I can find what I'm looking for when I'm looking for it. But first I have to fold all these pieces into same-sized bundles. That's going to take forever. I actually have a smaller stash than lots of my quilting friends, but still, it'll take forever to fold up neatly.

I got the greens and purples folded and put back into their baskets, then changed gears. I got the wedding quilt basted and started quilting it. The pattern I picked will take a while to execute, but it should look good when it's finished.

Last night Dan and I went to the Rams Head to see Rodney Crowell. It was a good show, I didn't know his music ahead of time but enjoyed myself, nonetheless. He played for a long time so we got home later than expected and both kids were still up. Oh well. Kevin had given himself a nap after church so he was very much awake at 11:30 and I have no idea when he actually went to bed. He did make the bus this morning, though. That's the important thing, right?

I just spent far too long on the phone with the high school. Our high school is the largest in the state and until when and where they decide to build another school, our 9th graders have classes at The Annex, 10th 11th, and 12th grades are at the main building, along with all the special-ed kids. It's the only school in the district with a split campus.

Well, it seems the lunch accounts systems are separate for the two buildings. Kevin is classified as a 9th grader so his lunch account is at the annex even though he eats at the main building. Which means he has not been able to use the automated account system yet; we have to keep sending in money instead of a check, and I don't want to send in anything bigger than a $20. Dan got fed up with it and started asking who we (I) call to get this fixed.

It took calls on three different days to get a real person to answer the phone. Still, the person I spoke with passed me on to someone else and that person said she wasn't the correct person. Somebody in the registrar's office will have to set the mobility flag so the lunch system will work. Kevin isn't the only one in this boat, why do I have to call? Why can't they just do it for all the special-ed 9th graders? Why does system have to be split? Why doesn't the school district care and fix the system? Oh that one's easy. It only involves one school.

And, for what it's worth, this post might hold the record for the number of labels I tacked on to any given post.
 

Day 1: Going for Gold at Anne's House

Seventy-five percent of the Anneshousehold were starting new classes yesterday. Fern was to start gymnastics, Dan was to start his 05:00 fitness boot camp class, and I was supposed to start two new programs.

The gym here at work has a partner program where they match you up with someone with your same goals and schedule. I'd been matched up with "Donna" a couple weeks ago but because of vacations, etc., yesterday was the first day we were to get together, meet, and go the the "On the Ball" class at 12:40 to 1:25.

I woke up at 6:00 for my three-mile walk, a couple pounds over the Mendoza line (again, sheesh!), and realized Dan was still in bed. He totally missed his first day of class.

At 12:30 I headed down to the gym for the ball class. I dislike gym aerobic classes for the most part because of my clumsiness and if I'm not there from the class conception, I have that lost feeling when everyone else knows the language of the class and I don't. I put on my gym clothes and my brave face and headed to the exercise room. The instructor is also the guy doing the partner matching so I introduced myself. Donna was a no-show. Grrrrr.

The ball class was good, challenging workout without being too advanced. The instructor said I did well. I'll go back next week.

After work I got ready to take Fern to her gymnastics class. It is scheduled to be an hour, 7:15-8:15. As luck would have it, there is a deep water aerobics class scheduled at the same time on the other side of the building. I signed up for it so I didn't have an idle hour.

After Fern reported for her class I headed to the locker room to change into my swim suit. My class was supposed to be 7:30-8:15. We didn't even get into the water until 8:00. Sheesh.

Well, it's understandable really, the instructor went over all the administration stuff first. She'll provide float belts and barbells for two weeks and expects us to bring our own after that. We can order a set from her for $40. I looked on eBay this morning and was surprised that $40 is reasonable.

I got my belt on and got in the water. The assistant instructor gave us warm-ups to do while everyone else got fitted. That's when I noticed how many of my classmates were clinging to the wall of the 13.5' deep pool. With float belts on. You signed up for a class called Deep Water Aerobics and you're afraid of deep water, what were you thinking?

Anyway, I was plenty sore when I woke up today. The water class was good too. I'm glad I'm taking it. It was nice chatting with the other women and it will be interesting to observe my classmates' comfort levels grow over the next weeks.

When Fern was finished with her class she sat in the natatorium and waited for me. She babbled happily on about her class while I got dressed and complained her back hurt. She tried a back bend into a bridge even though she hadn't done one for years. Silly girl.

On the way home we stopped at Chick-fil-A for fries and a coke.
 
 

The Rest of the Story(s)

Last year I was comfortably below my Mendoza line, that weight I never want to go over. Clothes were fitting well; life was good. Winter came and as usual, I struggled with keeping the annual hibernation weight off. Then it took a while to get the spring break in Europe weight off. Finally I got below the line, but not as far below as I was last year, but I was holding steady. Life was OK. Then I went to Vegas and came back many pounds over the line, and not just a smidge, either. It took me a month to get stay back below.

Monday morning: I'm way over again. Too much food at the cook-out I guess. I hate that. Even the watchband won't stay clipped, I'm up so much.

---

I'm still not sleeping well, I tossed and turned until after 1:00 last night, then I got up and roamed the house for a while. I vacuumed the carpet in the sewing room and laid out my triangle quilt on the floor and studied the borders, auditioning different possibilities. I realized I don't like the inner-most border, it's too wide. So much for using the Fibonacci number sequence for border widths. Blah. I'll start taking off the borders tonight or tomorrow and re-work them. Maybe this time it'll work for me better. Here are two possibilities, a thin cream border before the green stripe and a thin dark red strip in the middle of the green:

---

When Fern went away to camp a couple weeks ago, her roommate, whom she had last year too, gave her a Stonehenge tote bag. Two days later she took it to the Orioles game with her, in it was her book and camera and other odds and ends. The following two weeks the bag was lost, she couldn't find it anywhere. I kept offering to call Orioles' guest relations office to see if they found it and she kept telling me she read the book on the way back from the game and didn't leave the bag there. But yet, the bag was still MIA.

Then I remembered she went to the church that night to help with vacation bible school. Sure enough, the bag was left at church and it was recovered a couple days later.

My parents sent Fern a tote bag for her birthday. She took it with her on our trip over the weekend. In it was some movies she watched on the laptop and her book. Monday night we start to gather the movies to return to Blockbuster. She can't find them. Where are they? In the tote bag. Where is it? I don't know. Did you leave it at Michelle's? I didn't take it there. Did you leave it in Damascus at the cookout? Maybe.

I call our friends and they have the bag. Tonight after work I'll drive up to meet them half-way to retrieve the bag. Aye-yi-yi.

In the mean time, The Girl has left the family Nintendo DS with the Guitar Hero cartridge at a neighbor's house. When she went over to collect the DS she brought home yet another forgotten tote bag.

---

Kevin continues to have wacky sleep patterns. He was awake at 4:30 yesterday morning. I'm not sure if he'd been awake all night long or just woke up in the middle of the night. We managed to keep him awake until after 8:00 last night, but then he fell asleep in our bed. At 5'10" he's too big to move while he sleeps so I had to wake him. I pulled the blanket off him and he woke right up and tried to pull it back. I told him I was changing the sheets and he had to go to his room. It worked. I am a mean mommy.

Fern was slow in waking for skating camp on Monday and Tuesday this week so I told her she had to be in her room lights out at 11:00. At 11:00 I tapped on her door and told her to turn off the light. I moved away from the door so the floor creaked a bit and stood there quietly. Thirty seconds or so later the light came back on. She was genuinely surprised when I pushed the door open and told her to turn off the light. I am a very mean mommy.

ISO: Competency

For some reason when I bought my car, they forgot to install the clips that hold the floor mats in place so they don't scoot up under the pedals. And they didn't so they do. Anyway, I went to the dealership (trip #1) to get them installed and they didn't have any clips in stock so they ordered some for me. You think they'd be in the same package as the floor mats themselves, don't they kinda go together?

I get a postcard in the mail telling me my parts are in and to call for an appointment for installation. I do and the chick who needs to help me isn't available and I leave a message for her to call me. When she calls me I tell her the story and make the appointment for last night at 7:00.

So, last night at 7:00 I arrive at the dealership (trip #2) for my installation appointment. My service adviser chick is not there but someone else helps me. I've be told it's a very quick process, ten minutes, 15, tops. At 7:45 I start getting antsy and wondering where my car is. And hungry. Thinking it would only take 15 minutes, I left home without having eaten dinner. Silly me. The service adviser on duty tells me there are no service techs on duty who know how to install the clips and one guy has downloaded the instructions and is reading them. You're kidding me, right?

Why the heck did the chick give me an appointment for 7:00 if no one would be around to do the work efficiently? I finally got my car back at about 8:20. This particular dealership has a free car wash and vacuum for Honda owners to use. They had already washed the car for me so I wanted to vacuum it out. While I'm sucking out kid debris the first thing I notice is no clips were installed for the floor mat in the back seat. Second thing I notice is one of the front clips wasn't installed properly and comes out of the socket when I lifted the mat to vacuum under it. What is wrong with these people? Dinner was cold when I got home at 8:45. Sheesh.

I called the service manager this morning to complain but he was in a meeting and hasn't returned my call yet. Eventually I'll need to make trip #3 to get the rest of the clips installed. I should be compensated for this. Greatly.

Because I got home so late I really didn't get much more done on the quilt I wrote about yesterday. Argh!

 

In Progress

Here is the "triangle quilt" I've been working on. I had gotten all the pieces together last week and now I'm starting to work on the borders. I needed to know how big to make the quilt so I can plan the borders, right?

So I call my mom since the quilt is for her, "Do you want it for the wall or for a snuggle quilt for the couch?" I want it for my bed. "Which bed," I ask even though at this point I already know she wants it for her king-sized bed. A king bed is about 80" x 80". This top is 46" x 65". That means it has to grow a lot to be for a king bed. 15" in one direction and 34" in the other. Sheesh. But she tells me it's OK if it just sits on top and not drape down the sides.

For almost a week I struggle with how to put on the borders to make it big enough. I study pictures in quilting books of completed quilts to determine what is pleasing to me and to get ideas of possibilities. I wanted the borders to look good and not like I'd just stuck them on as an after thought. I considered the golden ratio for sizing my border widths as well as using Fibonacci numbers so I have a visually pleasing arrangement. I also considered making them wider on the short side and narrower on the longer side so it ends up more square.

I finally decided to make four borders of 1", 2", 3" and 5" for a total of 11" on each side making the finished quilt top 68" x 87". Not too bad, not square, but, hey, it's a gift, right? It'll drape over the sides a little and tuck under the pillows nicely.

Last night I sewed together the strips for the two inner-most borders then sewed it on the first side and making a major fatal mistake in the process. The triangles are stretchy and when I sewed the border strips on to fit they didn't lay flat. Not good. Not good at all. I took off the border and tried again, this time measuring it and not letting it stretch. This time it's not wavy. Yay. Tonight I'll add the strips to the other three sides and cut the strips for the third and fourth borders.

 

Holy Cow! Were the Planets Aligned?

I thought they were this morning but then I was proven wrong.

Before I left the house this morning Little Voice told me to go upstairs, get a pair of socks and check yesterday's pants pockets. You know Little Voice, don't you? That little voice in your head that reminds you of things or tells you which aisle to drive down for the best parking space... Sometimes I listen, sometimes I ignore Little Voice. Little Voice is usually right, too. This morning I go upstairs, get my socks, get in the car and drive to work.

I live a block away from a big intersection and the light is never green for me to go straight through. Never. OK, maybe once in about 50 or 60 days. But that's close to never. To get to the beltway, I can go straight through the intersection and a mile or so later, past several mistimed lights, I get to Rt 50, which can be iffy during the morning commute; or I can turn right, don't have to wait for the green and take Rt 450 to the beltway. The lights are timed pretty well in the mornings so even though it's not highway, it's a consistent route.

I turn out of my neighborhood and the light is green (what?!) so I make the decision to got straight and chance it on Rt. 50. And wow, the lights are shining my way. And 50 is moving. I haven't had to stop once, which means I've had no breaks to put on my socks. The planets are aligned, I'm flying to work. (Except the "hill" on 50 where people collectively cannot maintain speed up a hill. I hate that.) Even the beltway is great as usual.

Great until right after the last bail-out exit on the beltway (the exit I take on the rare occasion there is a back-up), traffic comes to a screeching halt. I reach for my phone to get the traffic map, hmm, can't reach it, must be at the bottom of my bag. My exit is jammed, both ramps. I could take either one, but not today, two right lanes are blocked with folks trying to take the exit ramps. I go on to the next exit to take the back way to the office, but that ramp is full, too. Yikes. I stay there and stick it out and pull on my socks. I have time now to look for my phone and call the traffic line to tell them because this was not announced and I like to share info like that. My phone is not there. Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?

It's in the pocket of yesterday's pants. Sheesh.

Friday Fun

I re-ran the readability gadget on my blog and got a high school level. So I stuck that little resulting sign over in the sidebar.

An exit before I was to get off the beltway this morning, a pair of cop cars got on. The traffic slowed from usual cruising speed of 70 or so to 61 or so. I hate that. Then one of the cop cars crossed all four lanes and pulled in behind me and I gracefully moved over to the next slower lane with all appropriate lane change indicators blinking. Since my exit was coming up, I just kept moving over and kept checking my mirrors. Usually the cops around here just speed up to 70+ (on a 55 mph road) and buzz by everyone. These two cars were still hanging back. I was still checking my mirrors. Then the lights came on. Uh-oh.

I got into work and spent one hour and fifty-two minutes on the phone with the help desk. I'm having printing issues. A banner page with our user ID on it is printed out with every document through our network. It wastes paper but it's helpful knowing whose printout belongs to whom. When I print something, one copy of something, everything works fine. When I specify to print out multiple copies of my document, only one copy prints. If I submit the job many times to get many copies, I get many banner pages. I hate that. It started happening when I got the new CPU back in February. When you're on the phone with the help desk, they remote to you so you don't have control of your machine, can't read blogs email while you're waiting for resolution. Nothing, but jump up to check how many copies printed with this setting or that. Not fun at all. I know, who said work was supposed to be fun, right? Nothing was resolved, the help ticket is still open and someone should be calling me. More fun.

And it's not even lunch time yet.

Expletive Deleted

Oops.

I'm taking a work break to blog. I just wiped out two files. Zero bytes of data left. Empty. I need those files. I was in the midst of writing a program to compare them and write out the different passwords contained in them. Now I can't write because, there's nothing there to check. Sheesh. Dernit.

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It's official, I'm moving to the next cubicle over, the one with a window. I've made about thirty trips so far between my new home and my old one carrying stuff. I actually took out the top desk drawer and swapped it out so I didn't have to move pen by pen. The bookshelves were easy, as was the file drawer. The remaining debris and detritus. Another story completely. It's the little stuff that accumulates that totally bogs me down, I get so incapacitated by having to deal with it all. Oh, that's where that is! Do I need this anymore? recycle. recycle. I'm gonna need this. And this too. And that.

I've written to the disability office to get the lights fixed over the new desk. (For the whole story, click here and here and here.) I have no idea how long it'll take to have the work done, so I'm not in a real hurry to get everything moved. The next call will be to the help desk to get the computer and phone moved. But not until the lights are gone.

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Being a programmer, I don't get to travel much for my job, but I won the business trip "lottery" and am going to San Francisco next week. (I could have been assigned to Albany....) That is, if all the travel orders get approved ASAP. I'm excited about it to some degree. It's hard not to, trips for me are so few and far between. I'm sure if I had to travel a lot I'd hate it. Does anyone know anything about the Alcatraz Inn? My secretary booked me a room with a bay view, should be lovely!

Bucket List

Do you have a bucket list? I don't have one per se, just a vague wish-list of travel destinations. Austrailia, Greece, Scandinavia. I have no desire to bungee off a bridge or surf Maui.

Thinking about speech class and Mrs. Boyd the other day got me to thinking about my knot of friends from that class. The four of us, Jim, Ron, J and I would hang out together, go off campus for lunch and talk endlessly about who knows what. J was my best friend from back then. I met her in my English Composition class (ENG 206) and we got along like peanut butter and jelly. Our instructor was A. Perry Whitmore, our silly school-girl emphasis on "A" always made us giggle. Like all college students I've ever known, we were full of inside jokes and would finish each other's sentences. We also shared a love for Dixon Ticonderoga 1388 #2 pencils, the best pencils ever, and a love for horses. For PE credits we took a horseback riding class, and ended up volunteering at the farm on weekends for riding groups. Oh, what fun times.

I left Urbana after two years and transferred to VCU. She stayed and graduated from there with a degree in graphic design (I think), then woke up one day ten years later and wanted to be a dentist. She got into OSU and now she has a dental practice in Kettering, Ohio.

We've kept in touch on an off over the years, not nearly as well as intended. Anyway, since I'd been thinking about her and speech class I called her on my way to work yesterday. No answer at her office (closed on Fridays) so I tried her cell. When she answered, I told her why I called, that I was thinking about her and school. Funny thing was, she has also recently been thinking about our speech instructor as well as thinking about me. We swapped memories for a few minutes and I said we needed to see each other more often.

Then she told me her news: stage 3 breast cancer was discovered in January. It might have spread into her hips which makes it stage 4. Sheesh. My neighbor, L, is recovering fantastically from her mastectomy done last fall. I can only hope and pray J's recovery is that successful. If the cancer has gotten into her hip, she'll start on her bucket list.

I tried to stay positve during the phone call, but my eyes wouldn't stop leaking after I hung up, hoped they weren't too red when I got to the office.