Hold on to Your Hats

I'm posting again.

Somehow, many months ago I got hooked on Gilmore Girls. In the early seasons the shows focused on Lorelai parenting a teenaged daughter. I have a teenaged daughter, I watched, got hooked.

Funny thing happened, Dan got hooked too. It's shown on the ABC Family channel every weekday at 5:00. On the Tuesday after labor day the series rolled around again to the beginning and now it's a thing, we get home from work and watch The Girls, then at 6:00, Friday Night Lights is on the same channel. Go Panthers. Dan will still flip to Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption during the commercials, but he always returns to the Girls. (FNL is a good show to get obsessed about, too.)

I've seen all the GG episodes at least once now, and still enjoy them. Dan asked me how we missed the show when it was first on and I said "Survivor." The Girls were on in the same time slot. I've read different, conflicting things about why they stopped after seven seasons and I may never know the real truth.

Anyway, after I went through the series, either on TV or on DVD, I felt a sense of loss, just as if I had been watching weekly since 2000. Silly me. Now where do I turn? A quick trip to IMDB told me Lauren Graham, the former Lorelai Gilmore, is now starring in Parenthood on NBC and I had just "missed" the premier season. However, thanks to the Internet, I was able to catch up this summer.

Parenthood is a show about a large dysfunctional family, Mom and Dad, with four grown children and their own families. What appealed to me about Parenthood, besides Lauren Graham, is one of the grandchildren, Max, is newly diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and watching a "perfect" TV family deal with the complexities this disorder is of interest. Another thing that is appealing is there are two teenage girls on the show, again, something of interest to me.

As a side note, it was interesting to me to notice how long it took Lauren Graham to morph from Lorelai Gilmore into Sarah Braverman.

Season two of Parenthood premiered Tuesday night at 10:00. I think Dan would like the show too, but he's only seen last season's finale, which didn't introduce the characters well or show why I like it. Dan liked the Gilmore Girls by osmosis so I'll just have to be patient while he warms up to my new obsession just like I warmed up to FNL. But then again, Kyle Chandler isn't difficult to warm up to, at all.



 

Oh, a Bunch of Random Stuff

Over the last several months Fern has been watching Gilmore Girls on the TV in the sewing room. She records it from the ABC Family channel every day. I started absorbing the show by osmosis when I was working on my quilts. Then the next thing I know, I'm hooked. I'm wondering how wise it is to learn parenting-a-teen-girl tips from Lorelai Gilmore.

My grandmother would have been 94 today, but died at 86. I still miss her. Happy Birthday, Grandma. It was hard for her to celebrate, however; she lost her son this same week in 1984 and then her husband in 1992, the same week.

Today, Census is having a quilt display to honor Women's History Month. I'll be displaying two quilts. I'm hoping I'll meet other quilters from the building and we can form a once-a-month lunchtime group.

My regular Bowie guild is having their annual quilt show this weekend and my quilt is almost ready, just need to put a label on the back.

I was the only person to show up for my group session last night at the personal trainer's gym so I had a private session at the group price. My arms were very rubbery afterward with all the different things he had me do.

The new dishwasher, a couple weeks old now, is doing fine, very quiet. The capacity is a bit more and the tines have a different arrangement than the old one, so I'm still trying to learn the best loading/running procedure. It's that sweet spot I'm looking for, don't want to run it too empty, but if I wait another day, I'll have more than enough to fill it.

I think I'll make a cup of tea.

Fixin' Stuff

Yesterday, if you hadn't heard, the Montgomery County traffic signal computer crashed. On the same day, the Metro (buses & subway system) communication computer crashed. I immediately thought it was sabotage, someone was up to something no good. Maybe I watch too much TV. Oh, speaking of which, have you been watching Flash Forward? It's on Thursdays at 8:00. And this morning Dan told me they have a character on 90210 with my maiden name. How cool is that? And this is a week after they had a character with my daughter's name. Neither computer problem affects me, but I hope they fix the computers soon. Well, maybe I don't, Mo. county folks are snooty enough, wouldn't dare live in PG county, well, HA, look who's laughing now.

Another thing fixed: I got the link in my sidebar working to my brother's new blog. He got the posting-by-email thing working too, so now he can take a picture with his blackberry and email it straight to his blog, which he did.

We had to delete another mouse this morning, I can't wait until we get their entry-way fixed, my handywoman is coming next week. Can't wait! I'm tired of these varmints helping themselves to shelter in my house. Yuck.

Too Much Top Chef?

I woke from a dream the other morning, but didn't remember much of it until later in the day when I was cooking in the kitchen. That's when I remembered Bryan Voltaggio was there, but not his brother Michael. Mike Isabella may have been there, too.

Bryan, Michael, and Mike are "cheftestants" on the current season of Top Chef and are from the DC area. I can't remember what the dream was about, nor any dream for that matter, I just tend remember people and/or places, and in this case I remember hanging out with Bryan, the better-looking Voltaggio brother, and having a very nice time.

Don't tell my husband.


 

Puzzling Randomness

The low-pressure-in-my-tires indicator light came on Tuesday on my way to work. I was ticked. I hate when dashboard lights come on. It was not paradise. It had only been 2000 miles since I had service done which I believe included a tire rotation, which means they should have checked the pressures in the process, but didn't. But then I recalled this happened last year when the nights got cooler, cold air==low air pressure. Monday night the low was in the 50's which explains the warning light on Tuesday. I added air and the light is off now.

My daughter bought a Lost puzzle at the Five-Below store over the weekend. She loves Lost. So do I, and I love puzzles too, but I wouldn't have bought a THOUSAND piece puzzle. She is not an experienced puzzle buyer, and didn't notice the picture on the box only shows a small part of the whole thing. Since then, she's declared she's no good at puzzles and now I'm the one glued to the table every night working on this darn thing, just one more piece, then I'll go to bed. I can see the TV from the puzzle table so at least I'm getting something done. Here's the current state of things:


Maybe I'll do a google search to find pictures of the completed puzzle so I know what the goal is.

Glee premiered on Fox last night. It's good, better than I thought it was going to be, hard not to sing along. Might have to add that to my DVR list. Good to watch while working on a puzzle.

Castle and Big Bang Theory should premier soon, I love those shows. More good things to watch while working on a puzzle.

There's stuff on the written on the back of each of the puzzles in glow-in-the-dark ink that fits all together. Maybe I'll need to find the other three puzzles .... maybe not.

The tree guy is coming tonight. They want to take down a bunch of trees in our backyard because they interfere with the power lines. They'll give us money to replace them with shorter varieties. Is it too late to get some crepe myrtles planted? I know it's not too late to plant trees, is it too late to find decent nursery stock?

I think I need a coke.

Weekend

My weekend went great until I stopped doing things on my to-do list.

Saturday I bought and installed blinds in my daughter's room. She has curtains in there already, but needed the blinds, too. I got 2" blinds in a coffee color; they look like elegant wood.

I bought new blinds for the hall bathroom, but didn't get them installed.

I wanted to get a timer for Kevin's room but couldn't find an adequate one at Target, either it was too fancy or took up too much space on the socket and you couldn't plug in anything else. Kevin will sometimes fall asleep with the light on, wake up later, and be up for hours. He doesn't know he's supposed to turn off the light and go back to sleep and not to wake up anyone else. I want a timer to turn off his light for him to try to curb this.

I wanted to get the patches sewn on the next Girl Scout vest I need to work on. It's a catch-up vest where the mom brought me two years worth of stuff to sew on and it won't fit. She bought a sash to sew around the bottom to add more space, but I can't get motivated to get it done.

I've started keeping a ledger of the vests I have to work on, when they arrive and when I'm done with them. I got a bunch, 10 or 12, to work on this summer and I would often forget which I've had the longest and which I should wait to do. The ledger is helping with that, but I still have a backlog of about five to get done. The nice thing is it's time for these moms to start renewing their plan so I've got a little bit of cash in my pocket.

I did get to play golf with Dan twice over the weekend, once Saturday evening and once Sunday morning also with Mark and CG. I didn't do too badly, my short game is getting better, but I still need to get some distance on my fairway shots.

Surfing

Have you ever been channel surfing and it always seems like the same thing is always on the same channel? Like TNT is really the "Law and Order" channel and BBCAmerica is really the "Gordon Ramsay" channel. What else? How would you rename the channels? Yeah, OK, there's always news on CNN, but that doesn't count.

Randomness

Eight days until the premier of Project Runway on the Lifetime channel. Wonder if my DVR will find it?

I'm collecting MyCokeRewards points, those codes on the inside of bottle tops and cartons. If you're not collecting them yourself but are a coke (or related product) drinker, email or text me your codes. I'd appreciate it. It's like collecting S&H green stamps, remember those?, except I don't have to paste them into booklets before cashing them in. I'm saving up for a shiny new mixer. No, wait, that was for the green stamps.

I've volunteered to bring in bagels to the office tomorrow so I had the secretary take everyone's order so I don't have to stand there in the morning trying to decide which ones to order.

I'm in need of a large table or clean floor so I can finally baste my mother's quilt. I can't find a 9 x 9 foot table. The tables in our conference rooms are 5' x 10' but there are too many people around and I'd need to drag in tables from another room to make it big enough and there are too many people around.

I'm still so far behind with girl scout badge sewing, probably about eight or ten vests in the queue. This summer has been full of activities and when I do have evenings at home, there is Top Chef Masters and Better Off Ted to watch.

The fabric shop where I bought my sewing machine is closing at the end of September. The repair guy there has a fabulous reputation, I'd like my machine to have its annual cleaning before he's gone. I called Monday about machine service. At that time, there was a line of 35 machines waiting for service, they would stop taking machines on Saturday. I asked if there was a waiting list so I can bring it in when it's my turn. No. Fabric is 40% off though, might need to visit the shop anyway.

School starts in a week and a half. Both kids will be out of the house by 7:30. Unless buses are missed. I'm not sure about the stress levels of getting two teenagers up and out at the same time. Which saint covers things like that? Probably St. Jude.

I learned about remote-controlled golf carts yesterday. I want one. Look here and here for examples. Of course I really don't need one, but wouldn't they be fun? But why stop there, I could go to the grocery and Fern could drive this to school. If I let her.

I think I need a snack. And maybe a coke.


 

The Eagle

I tear up when I hear all the "the eagle has landed" sound bites of history they've been playing on the radio today.

It was the afternoon of 21 July, 1969 for me, not the night of the 20th. My family was spending the weekend at a military-run beach resort at the north end of the island of Okinawa on the other side of the international dateline. There were no TVs in our cinder block rooms, just one black and white set in the rec center. I can still picture the institutional blue room with all the adults camped out on the sofas staring up at the small box on the wall. Us kids were all running in and out, playing ping pong, making noise, and parents calling, "Shush," and "Come watch this, it's important."

Where were you 40 years ago?


 

Weekend

It's crunch time at work.

My survey I've been working on is going to sponsor testing this week and external usability testing next week. That just means I have no time to blog.

OK, so I'm making time, which is why this'll be short. Sort of.

We went to the in-laws on Saturday to visit Dan's folks. When we got back yesterday, I started working on my 55 gallon fish tank.

The tank is set up in my bedroom along the rail that separated the sitting area with the sleeping area. I've always had algae problems in this tank for some reason, but never in the tank down in the family room. The difference? Dunno. Both are neglected. I don't vacuum the gravel nearly as often as I should, but I think the tank upstairs is in direct sunlight part of the morning.

I was so inspired walking in the Caribbean to get my tank clean and stocked again. We had seen a school of small fish so large it cast a gray shadow in the water. I walked into the school and just stood there watching thousands of these small fish swimming back and forth around me. I decided to stop procrastinating and get my tank back in shape. I wanted a school of fish.

So yesterday I siphoned all the water out (it was so green, I hadn't noticed there weren't fish actually swimming any more) and took out and washed the gravel. I cleaned out the filter box and bleached the plastic plants. I got the stand moved to the opposite wall and Dan helped me get the tank back into place. Now it's full and the water is cycling through. Looks good, but I think I'm going to set up the diatomic filter too just to make sure the water is sparkling clean.

Tetras are great schooling fish, so I want to buy a large school of them for my newly cleaned tank. I talked to the owner of the pet store here in town, he places orders on Mondays for Tuesday shipments. I should be able to get about 50 fish for a near wholesale price, and I'll order whatever small tetras are on his order sheet today, green or black neons would be pretty.



Despite the work I did get done, I could have gotten more accomplished. Every time I went downstairs for something I was sucked in to the TV. Dan had the travel channel on. It was running a marathon of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. If you like travel or food, or drinking, you'll like this show. Except for the fact it renders you immobile, you just have to keep watching. Tony travels to a different place each show and learns about true local cuisine and drink, not necessarily the food we Americans think of when we think of that country. Far too captivating. We finally turned off the TV at 10:00. Sheesh. I think the new season premiers tonight at 10:00 pm.


 

So, I get this email the other day:

Congratulations!

You're one of 250 people selected to host a Top Chef Masters Premiere B-Hive Party on Wednesday, June 10th!

Once you accept the host duties, you should receive your exclusive Top Chef Masters Premiere B-Hive Pack before the premiere.


Here's what you need to do to get ready for the big night:

• Accept Host Duties: In order to claim your prize you must review and accept the Top Chef Masters B-Hive Host Duties by no later than May 23.
• Recruit Your Foodie Friends: Invite at least 5 friends to come over to your place to watch the premiere of BRAVO'S newest competition reality show, Top Chef Masters, on Wednesday, June 10 @ 10/9c using our special online invitation, available May 27.
  
• Use Your Plastic: What's a party without snacks and drinks, especially since they're on us? To be a true tastemaker, treat your guests to Stacy's® Pita Chips included in the Top Chef Masters Premiere B-Hive Pack and use the $25 gift card for additional goodies.
  
• Set the Scene: You'll get a box full of exclusive items to help you make sure you and your friends are fully prepared for the kitchen competition, including Top Chef Masters T-shirts, chip bowl and drink pitcher, as well as napkins to clean up any messes.
  
• Pop Some Pics: During your B-Hive Party, take digital pictures of your foodie friends as they chow down, enjoy the Top Chef Masters swag and tune in to the premiere. Make sure your B-Hive Party really buzzes by sending texts to and chatting with your friends online during the show. Then on Thursday, June 11, upload your photos to the B-Hive area on Bravotv.com - You'll automatically be entered to win another $50 gift card.
  
• Enter the Exclusive B-Hive Sweeps: While you're there, you can also enter for your chance to win a guest appearance by Carla, one of the finalists from Top Chef: New York, at your finale B-Hive Party, since you're definitely going to want to keep the buzz going every week until the Top Chef Master has been named. Anyone can enter once per week until August 5th so tell your friends!

We're certain that you and your fellow food-lovers will have a fabulous time at your party and will be hooked on BRAVO'S newest competition reality show, Top Chef Masters! Be sure to tell everyone what you'll be watching on Wednesday, June 10 @ 10/9c so they can watch what happens, too!

Thanks!
Your friends at BRAVO

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So, I'm thinking: a) Hey! I won something! WooWhoo! b) If you already know where I live, come on over. However, you absolutely have to be out of the house the second it's over, it'll be past my bed time on a school night. c) But, 10pm is late, maybe I should have a fake viewing party ahead of time at a reasonable hour so I'll have pictures to upload and I don't eat all the chips by myself.

RSVP in the comments.

Weekend Round-Up

This weekend I finished 12 scout vests. I often use a glue stick to hold the patches down while I sew them. I learned this weekend there is a window during which I need to sew after I glue, too soon and they're not stuck enough and too long and the glue is completely dry and the patches peel right up. I went through 3 glue sticks on 9 of the vests. Good thing I buy in bulk.

It feels good to get the big backlog out, now I just have three to go, one of which is a monster. This girl has been in scouting for many years and brought me about 75 things to sew on. The front got done right away, everything has a specific place, it's neat and orderly. The back of the vests is for participation patches and they just go where ever they fit. So this monster vest, I've be stalling on finishing it for a long time. It just overwhelms me, trying to get 50 patches of all different shapes and sizes on the back so they all fit and there is room for more. I finally came up with a plan I'm happy with so I should be able to knock it out this week.

Last Wednesday I bought two bookcases from Ikea, one was to be for my sewing room and one was for the living room. I'm getting rid of my ironing board in the sewing room and replacing it with a bookcase (on its side) on casters with an ironing surface on top. My logic was (actually I got this from someone else) there is just dead space below an ironing board, so why not? Now I'll have more storage available.

The first shelf went together just fine. The larger one for the living room, not so easy. I love putting stuff together, have been assembling Ikea pieces for 20 years, I have never had this much trouble before. It just didn't fit together like it should, there were gaps everywhere where the shelves didn't seat properly. I tried to take it apart and start from the beginning and that's when the dowels broke off in the shelf and I couldn't drill the pieces out.

Saturday & Ikea. Yes, I am nuts, there is a bed waiting for me at St. E's, btw. Anyway, I had a plan. I went to customer service and pulled my number: 90, now serving: 61. I had a 29-person window. I went over to the warehouse to find another set of casters for the shelf unit in the sewing room (I originally bought two and they recommend three) and to pick out a box that fits in the shelf for fabric scraps. No casters, but found a clear box, and went to pay. I actually found a "short" line, paid, and made it back to customer service. Now serving: 85. Whew.

When it was my turn I explained the problem. Evidently, since the shelf was shipped in two separate boxes, it possibly came from two different suppliers, and even if the specs are the same, the actual pieces might not be exactly the same. I got a new shelf and shorter dowels. The clerk told me if I still had trouble, bring it all back and they'd give me a whole new unit, no problem. I got it to work.

Fern and I went to week two of our ceramics class Sunday. This week we used the wheel. I love the wheel but since it's been so long since I've thrown, my skills didn't appear until about half-way through the class. I got to make four pieces. The first got totally warped when I cut it away from the wheel to move it to the drying board. Blah! The rest I'm pleased with, especially since it's been so long since I've thrown any pieces.



Next Sunday will be our last class, we will decorate/glaze our pieces. Next Sunday is also the Valentine Invitational. The Bowie Ice Arena hosts the first ice skating competition of the season in our area and Fern has been getting ready for it. She's skating in five events. Luckily, they are all scheduled for after our ceramics class so neither of us has to miss anything.

Fern is scheduled to skate her freestyle program at 3:37, then events in solo compulsories, jump & spin team, interpretive, and production team at about 45 minute intervals after that. I don't remember which event is when, but I'll be there for the duration anyway. If you live in Bowie, you're welcome to stop by to watch her skate.

Her production team had a practice last night at 6:00. That's when they could get the ice time. Go figure. Anyway, the second The Boss tells us to step away from the guacamole I get a text: come get me. I put Bruce on pause and fetched The Girl.

Somewhere between the ceramics class and picking Kevin up from skiing I went to a nearby quilt shop. It's typical for quilt shops to have big sales Super Bowl weekend. I was in a fabric mood, so I went. I took with me a filled-up punch card which entitled me to $20 off my purchases.

After all my fabric was selected, cut and written up, I had a large stack, probably over $100 of pre-sale fabrics. (Thank goodness for sale prices!!!) I handed the clerk a spool of thread, my fabric and my punch card. It was so old she'd never seen one like it, they use a different style now. And, get this, she wasn't going to honor it because it was so old. Hey--
1) I paid for the card, probably a buck or two, not much but it wasn't free.
2) There was no expiration date on it.
3) They should honor it.
I told her forget it, I'll just take the thread, not the fabric. But the fabric has already been cut. I immediately got passed off to the owner of the shop. I told her the same thing. She let me use the punch card. Really, why was this ever an issue? sheesh.
 

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.
 

Rounding up November

Wow, I've got two weekends to round up. I'll try not to forget any of the good parts and summarize the boring bits.

In this Issue:

• Gadget Corner


• IEP Season


• He did What?


• Teen Drama


• Thanksgiving vs. Mendoza


• High Def Rain

Gadget Corner

A while back on John's blog he got a comment from a fellow trucker who runs. I checked out her blog and she had written about a GPS pedometer. Since I walk every morning I wanted one. I want to know how far I really walk and how fast. I was thinking the $150 model would suit me fine. When I didn't get one for my birthday I used the Costco coupon for $40 off the model they have and got the $300 model for $160. I'm loving it, it's a fun gadget. It draws a trail where I walk and beeps at me when I drop below a 15:20 mile, which happens a lot when the three of us talk too much in the mornings. I've logged over 27 miles so far and end up finishing the 3.06-mile loop in about 44 minutes. Not too bad.

IEP Season

For some reason they wanted to change Kevin's IEP schedule from spring to fall. So last Monday I went in and met with Kevin's team. It was actually the first time I'd met his current teacher because the one who started the school year quit. The meeting was lead by the head of the Special-Ed department and not the new teacher.

Most of the plan was the same as last year, but I didn't think they had enough math concepts covered so I had comparisons added (less than, greater than, before, after) as well as a component of measuring. I also inquired about shop class. Kevin loves to put things together and I think with some supervised instruction, he'd do well. I'd like him to transition from pictorial instructions to reading and comprehending written assembly instructions. My inquiry was a general question, Is it possible in the future Kevin could take shop class, maybe next year? He's now signed up for Tech-ed for next semester. Ohmigoodness, that scares me and thrills me at the same time. He'll be in the regular-ed boys every-other day. I'm sure I'll report how that goes.

He did what?

Kevin caught a cold last weekend and by Monday night his voice was gone. We kept him home from school on Tuesday. Kevin hardly ever gets sick, Tuesday was his first missed day of school in several years. But that's beside the point. We don't stock a lot of liquid cold medicine for him since he doesn't usually need it, and had nothing to give him for all his symptoms except gel-caps. Which he swallowed without ceremony. I was stunned, Dan was shocked. We were both happy with this new skill.

Teen Drama

Applications for First Choice High (FCH) were due on the 21st by 2:30 pm. The application packet consisted of the form, copies of the 7th grade final report card and the first quarter 8th grade card, and an optional essay. I'm not sure how the whole thing went down but I found part of the packet for Fern's neighborhood friend on our kitchen counter on Saturday the 22nd.

I asked Fern why Amanda's application was in our house. She starts flipping out. "Dad was supposed to turn that in, Amanda's gonna hate me, her mom's gonna be mad at her and she's gonna hate me.....," talking fast and anxious like only teen girls can do. We can't ask Dan, who turned in Fern's packet on Friday morning, didn't turn in Amanda's. He was on a road trip to La Grange, KY for a college roommate's surprise 50th birthday party in another college friend's car and his phone was in his car parked at that friend's house.

No one specifically said to Dan, "here is Amanda's application, will you turn it in too, please?" But Fern swears we said we'd take it and knew about it. I left for work early that day and knew nothing about special requests. I turned it in to the high school on the way to the IEP meeting.

As it turns out, the head of the special-ed is good friends with one of the chairs of FCH and emailed her my story when I was there for the IEP meeting the following Monday. (FCH, is a special application-only honors program within the local high school.) In the mean time, I called Amanda's mom to explain what happened on our end and where the application was. She wasn't mad at us or at Amanda. It was her responsibilty after all. Amanda's not mad at Fern, and Fern is not mad at us. The FCH chair called me and accepted the app late anyway. Now, if Amanda gets in and Fern doesn't, heads will roll, baby, heads will roll.

Thanksgiving vs. Mendoza.

I'm still above my Mendoza line and am not happy about it. I get so close, then go and do something stupid like have cake at a birthday party Saturday night. Grrr. I'll be doing the "on the ball" class at the gym at lunch and I'll be back to my water aerobics class tonight. There were no classes last week, which didn't help the cause any.

High Def Rain

Three weeks ago I negotiated a fabulous deal with DirecTV for high def service and picked an install date of yesterday, it was the first Sunday appointment they had. I hate taking off work to wait for someone to maybe show up in a 12-4 window. The guy showed up at 2:00. Except it was raining. And the tech wouldn't climb up on the roof in the rain for an hour and install a new 40lb dish. Grrr. I complained and got free Show Time for several months. They are supposed to be coming back today and Dan, the great guy that he is, is going home to meet them when they call so say they are on the way. I bet they forget to call. Scattered showers in the forecast for the afternoon, too.

Weekend Round-up

Whew!

We got back from "The Lodge" yesterday afternoon. Great Wolf Lodge is Kevin's most favorite place in the world. It's how we bribe him most days of the year. Even after we got home yesterday it was, "Do you want to go back to Great Wolf Lodge? Then go take your shower."

Since we've been so many times we get really nice rooms for very little. We got an upgrade to the Grizzly Suite (two separate bedrooms, two baths, one with whirlpool tub, living room with fireplace) this time (which normally goes for $450 per night, $699 on holidays) for $220. That included extra for an ultra-late checkout. Our keys quit working at 11:00 anyway. Grrr.

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Last night I spent a long time on the phone with DirecTV. We'd gotten a flyer from Verizon about Fios, phone, internet, TV for $99/month so I called them to get the break-down about HD service and what is available and how much. $70/month for HD TV service with DVR.

Then I called DirecTV and asked about upgrading our standard service to HD and told them what Fios would be. They were going to give me $20 off my bill/month for 6 months and a couple other perks to keep me as a customer. But then it wouldn't go through because the regular sales department isn't authorized to give more than $150 total in incentives.

Then I got passed on to the Disconnect department. Those folks are authorized to give a lot of incentives to keep folks from disconnecting service. Eighty-three minutes later, I'd been scheduled for HD installation with a free (Sales wanted $99) 200/50 hour HD-DVR (200 hours in standard def, or 50 hours in HD) and my monthly bill will be about the same or even less than it was before. There's also something about almost free on-demand programming, too, like $0.01 per show, if we have internet.

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Tonight is voting night for our challenge quilt at our guild meeting. I didn't finish mine so I won't be submitting it. The theme was "The Sea" and the fabrics did not talk to me at all. I finally came up with an idea but the execution was beyond my capabilities in the remaining time. Maybe I'll finish it anyway.

Meanwhile, my fabric reorganization challenge continues. There are still baskets of fabric everywhere. I'm starting to get lazy with where I "file" the newly folded fabric. Instead of putting it in the drawers with similar colors, I'm just putting the whole stack of folded pieces in one drawer. Argh, that's going to drive me crazy.

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Did I mention I played hooky from work on Monday to golf with Dan? I played OK, not great. The wind was chilly and I kept thinking about quitting. The highlight of the day was hitting it over the water on the third hole. It's very wide water and as a beginner I had never made it over. Monday I did.



The line just illustrates tee to green, I got there in four shots. Yay me! Photo courtesy of Google, thank you very much.

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Oh, and one last thing, I've gotten several comments in person about the size of the varmint I photographed last week. Many folks thought it looked too large to be a mouse. It was a mouse, believe me. Chalk it up to the perspective of a wide-angle lens on a phone camera.

By the way, the mouse count is four to date.
 

Oh, I'm Behind in Blogging, again

Yet another post to round up the goings-on at Anne's House.

In this issue:

• Recognizing the independent state of picnicdom


• Now you see it, now you don't


• Winner takes it all


• Westward Ho!

Recognizing the independent state of picnicdom

Usually, our office has its annual summer off-site "meeting" on the last Thursday of August. For the last several years I planned it so I planned it to be held at my pool club. Read about last year's disaster here.

In the last year our office merged and split with others so folks who were our direct co-workers are no longer. But we're still friendly with them so they were invited too.

This year I decided I didn't want to coordinate the dishes to bring and who has what dietary concerns so I just told people to bring their own meat for grilling and a dish to share, I didn't care what, and a shared common item, like forks or ice. Not that you'd actually share ice once it's brung, but you get the idea. We were all set for our picnic off-site meeting, but this year it rained on Thursday. I had reserved the gazebo at the pool. It has several picnic tables, which is fine for eating, or playing poker, but it's tight in there if there's nowhere else to go because of the rain. It would still work, but since it's raining, I didn't think a lot of swimming was going to happen.

I offered up my screen porch as an alternate location for this meeting, it's twice as big as the gazebo. I also have a grill and the convenience of home refrigeration. Our boss approved the change of venue for the meeting. I sent out the new location address and went home to get ready (clean). And bake brownies.

About a half hour before the meeting was to begin I get a call from the leader of the "others." She doesn't feel the new location is within the realm appropriate meeting locations and cannot justify her branch attending. Whatever. I was ticked, but also relieved. Now the attendees were only guys and I quit cleaning so hard.

Besides not having the full array of promised side dishes to share, it went pretty well. The kitchen got cleaned and there were brownies left over for the spouse and kids. Yes, there are still foot prints on the floor coming and going out to the grill.

Now you see it, now you don't

The sewing room and living room had been off-limits during the picnic meeting. Mostly because you couldn't see the carpet because of the vast collection of wall-to-wall erector set pieces, K'nex parts, legos, letters, and sewing paraphernalia. Saturday morning while the kids were sleeping in, Dan and I found the carpet again in the living room and I even vacuumed. Then I found the carpet in the sewing room.

With a clean floor I realized the $20 chair mat under the sewing machine was falling apart. When I bought it I had the choice of the cheap one or the higher end mat that was for deeper carpet. I went cheap. I went to the office store and bought another one, this one $60 and made to withstand a tank rolling on it. It was heavy, stiff, and awkward to get home, but it's now in place and I can tell a big difference between it and the old one.

Now that the floor was clean, Kevin had to dump his letters out in the living room. In the adjacent sewing room contrast between the clean floor and the congested work space was too great to ignore. So, I pushed it all on to the floor and lost sight of the carpet again. I spent a good part of Monday sorting and purging and finding the carpet again. I gave away about eight years of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine to my neighbor, L, who also quilts and now have fabric neatly stacked in that space. It's amazing to me how inspiring a clean work space is, I always want to sit down and sew when it's like that.

I got the backlog of Girl Scout vests cleared out so I was able to get my sewing machine ready to sew something besides badges. That is also inspiring.

Winner takes it all

I got a call from the radio station this morning. It seems I've won the 90210 prize pack. Last week they had a promotion promoting the new 90210 TV show which premiered last night. All I had to do was to text the word of the day to a special number. So, I got a call this morning telling me I'd won and please come to the station to pick it up. It contains a t-shirt and a $50 gift card, and I don't know what else. I watched the premier with Fern and Dan. She can have the shirt. The show is OK, I would have really liked to see more of the old characters, but that's just me. The new kids are cute and watchable. I'll give it three stars.

Westward Ho!

I think I get to go to Seattle at the end of the month for work. I'm excited.
 

Quick Poll

Does anyone else get teary-eyed when that Visa commercial comes on of Mary Lou doing the vault of her life for a perfect 10 and Bela carries her off at the end, or is that just me?

Lost Weekend

Kevin was up past 3:00 Saturday night.
And let us know about it.
Sheesh.

Sometime after 2:00 I promised him Five Guys after church if he'd just go to bed. Eventually he did.

I knew he'd take a nap when we got home from Five Guys which would then push his bed time back to some ungodly hour, again. I hate that.

Time for a preemptive strike. I camped out on my bed, where he like to take his naps, and attacked the backlog of laundry, matching socks and stacking underwear, while watching episodes of Lost on DVD. Every once in a while I'd hand him a stack of something to put away and he finally gave up on the nap idea and played computer games, instead.

I started at the beginning of season one of Lost since I hadn't seen it in a while. If you keep up with the show, you know we've learned things this season that blow "normal" TV out of the water. If the series hadn't done that already. So yesterday, I watched the first five or six episodes and I noticed that all those early comments, seemingly innocent at the time, have deeper meanings and are clues for the future. It's just like reading all the Harry Potter books over again after you've learned the end of the story and all those clues Harry and gang glossed over in the early years pop out at you like someone took a highlighter and marked up your books.

I started to head downstairs around dinner time but got shooed back up. I was served surf and turf dinner "in bed" and then I finally came downstairs for real to watch the Survivor finale at 8:00.

Kevin did have somewhat of a normal bed time, about 11:30, so the strategy worked for the most part. And, this is the bonus part, he won't (oughtn't) have that domino effect tonight and take a nap as soon as he gets home from after-care. He's off to high school in the fall and they have a start time of 7:30 which means he'll have to get up an hour earlier. Yikes. We'll have all summer to practice getting up early, right?

Another day, another rambling

No-one bit on yesterday's Ferris Bueller reference. Oh well.

The kids had a 2-hour delay this morning, I guess because parts of the county had sleet & freezing rain and the roads were bad. We just had a lot of rain at our house. I got another couple loads of towels in this morning while I was waiting for the buses. The laundry pile is slowly shrinking. I'm almost down to "maintenance" level.

Lost went back on the air last night after a 8 month hiatus. Having Lost back really puts a hamper (ha ha) on my laundry accomplishments. And other household duties as well.

I'm glad Lost is back, I really like the show. Fern didn't like it when it premiered in 2004, it was too bloody. But now she's into it. I have a coupon for 40% off DVD sets at Borders so I guess I should get season three so I'll have a whole set so she can catch up with the whole story. Which means I need to track down season I lent to AM.

I read somewhere they only had eight episodes written before the strike started so I'm not sure how that'll play into the plan they made last year to have three more seasons in the show's run. Will they make a shortened season box set or will they wait for a full 16-episode season? I ponder the silliest things.

The strike is messing up a lot of things, not just my TV watching. All the folks with jobs in the TV business are out of work still, the caterers and the camera operators, and the like. I'm thankful I have a good job.

And now, I leave you with a photo I snapped the other morning on the way to said job. A storm front was rolling through and the clouds were awesome. Too bad I couldn't park and set up a tripod for a better shot.

Time for Launch

I'm happy it's Friday.

Not because it's the end of a hard work week and I need a break. It has been a hard week, two of my big products are being released today. Yesterday at 4:30 we were still having trouble with some of the underlying software. That was after I found some other problems earlier yesterday. One of these two clients (a new one this year) hadn't tested his parts enough and had questions for my other (experienced) client, who in return asked me. So I had things to tweak at the last minute.

And this morning I was still making other adjustments that came to light when I got in to the office. I have now pushed everything, all corrected versions and clean data, out to the production system. (And, thus, taking a blog break.)

I've done this before, this is my third year for one of these products, it's not a big deal. Usually. But this year we've changed both the underlying software to a completely new version (kinda like a XP to Vista change, but I hate Microsoft so I don't like using that analogy, but it's the best I've got at the moment), and a new Blade web server, (from a Sun machine, if you care). So a simple deployment of this product this year is complicated by all the new variables — on my part as well as all my clients' parts. I hope it works.

I've got two more deployments next Friday, and five more a week or two later. In February I'll need to have another product ready for usability testing, and in March I'll be migrating one or two more products to the new system. If all the prep work has gone smoothly, they'll get migrated while I'm on spring break with the family on the Dalmatian Coast.

While I'm glad I've got these products released today and I've got a break before I need to make sure next week's releases are ready, and working, and tested for goodness sake, I'm happy it's Friday for a completely different reason:

Tonight Friday Night Lights is on. It has become one of my favorite TV shows, certainly my favorite drama. Yeah, it's a show about high school football in Texas, but not really. It's about people and relationships, parents and children, murder and drugs. The characters aren't the usual perfect Full House-esque sit-com people, they have real issues.

We interrupt this post to bring you this:
Speaking of real issues, my supervisor just came to tell me he couldn't get any of the PDF's to open. The ones that are supposed to be in production today. sheesh. I can. Let me figure this out.

All fixed, where was I? What was wrong?
Oh, the default pdf wasn't declared so anyone using a test account printing a pdf would get a failure message. It wouldn't have been a problem in production because the users have that defined.

Anyway, Friday Night Lights, great show. I like the way the parents interact with each other and with the kids, the coach and his team. The conversations seem real, the writing is good. I look forward to watching it every week (I'll ask Dan "Are the panthers playing tonight?" instead of asking if it's on) and I'm into it to the point of standing and cheering when "our Dillon Panthers" are running in for a touch-down as if I were at the game in person. But it's really not about football. Give it a try, Fridays at 9:00 on NBC.