KirstenL4W

No? Well I must have been too busy to pay attention to my blog.

I’ll try my hardest to have my annual Christmas post up by Thursday. For now, there’s way too much to do.

My mind is everywhere, so you get bullets today.

• Work has been nuts. I don’t get too much into work on the blog, but um, yeah, certain pieces of office machinery need to work if I am to do my job. Especially when my job’s entire existence revolves around said machinery. IT fixed it today, so hopefully the rest of the week will be better. But I think it’s one of those weeks. You know those weeks when everyone is super stressed? Yeah, one of those weeks.
• I’ve been blogsurfing a lot lately. I added a bunch of house pr0n blogs to my reader. One of these years I’ll update my blogroll so you can all see what I’m reading these days.
• Speaking of reading, I’m reading the book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West right now. I finished up another book (post coming soon about that one), and was looking for some bedtime reading that was mildly challenging, so typical chick lit was out. I can tear through a chick lit book in a couple of hours, and for bedtime reading I want something that will take a few weeks. So back to the book. It’s interesting, but so far I don’t think I’ll read any other books in the series. I might go back and re-read the entire Oz series, which I read in 6th grade. I was such a voracious reader back then. But one day I was introduced to the Great Wide Interwebs and my book intake was drastically reduced. I’m trying to change that, even if the only reading I do is at bedtime.
• Motivation. I haz none. I don’t feel like cleaning the house, even though there are chores that I know need doing, and it bugs me that I’d rather be lazy than clean. I haven’t been eating healthy lately either, and I kinda don’t care right now. I don’t even feel like cooking. That’s probably the worst one - cooking. Cleaning, I might be able to get up enough motivation to do that on the weekends. Maybe. But cooking, that I just don’t want to do. At all. Not because it’s freaking hot outside. I just don’t want to think about what to eat. I especially hate shopping, because I buy a few things for meals then I don’t feel like making the meals out of them. Having a hard time with that. I might get motivated for a meal here and there, but it never sticks around for long. The motivation, that is.
• I started cleaning my desk this past weekend. I spent a good deal of Friday on it. I emptied the box that was under my desk, filed some piles, and lost steam. I still have piles, or rather, one pile, on my desk. It doesn’t really look like I’ve done much to my desk at all, except that the box has been replaced with a pretty aqua-colored file cart. I’m at a loss as to what to do with the rest of the stuff. I’m sure that if I was well-rested and tried to tackle the rest of this stuff, I might be able to get through most of it. But organizing my stuff is another thing that I’ve been utterly unmotivated to deal with lately. I want to be organized. I just don’t want to do the work it takes to get there. I need to do something to find my motivation.
• My cousin made me laugh. Apparently he injured himself over the holiday weekend. It involves fireworks, but it’s not like you think. This was more like a Jackass stunt - the sort of thing that Bam would do to his parents. Except my cousin did it to his friend. And half the town. The injury happened during the resulting mayhem, and is the most popular post on his Facebook page. He’s still laughing about it, even though it hasn’t healed yet. Love ya, E!

That’s all I got for now.

I’ve been a busy bee lately. I’ll be spending an obscene amount of time at work this week, but at least I will have Friday off due to the holiday. Because of the busy week coming up, I’ll be making a list of quick, easy to prepare meals for the week and doing my shopping today. I usually grocery shop on Mondays after work, but since I’m working something like 10 hours tomorrow, I’ll be too brain dead to think about cooking. Today I will be getting everything ready for Mister to throw some pea soup into the crock pot so that we can have a healthy and delicious meal ready when I come home. Tuesday we’re going to see Penn & Teller. We were supposed to go last week, but Mister wasn’t feeling very well so I was able to change the tickets. Thursday is another long day for me at work - I’ll either cook something in advance or think up something that only takes 5 minutes to make (panini sandwiches, maybe?)

I’ve been looking for the right things to organize my desk at home. In true Gemini fashion, my desk at work is super organized, but my desk at home is super messy. Mister and I bought new desks when we bought the house, and I like them ok (kinda not my style) but they don’t have any drawers to put Stuff in. I bought some small drawer units to go on top of my desk, but they only fit small things in them. Last week when we were out shopping for a new chair for Mister, I saw a really pretty aqua file cart - it has one file drawer and one smaller drawer. And it’s aqua - my favorite color. Well, the display model was the last one they had at the store, and we were informed that we couldn’t have the floor model, and that they were on backorder and the store was not allowed to order any more. Boo. Yesterday when I was out shopping I stopped by a different branch of this store, and they had my file cart. They also sold me the floor model since they knew it was the last one and they weren’t getting any more in. And they told me that the other store sucks. I’ll be working on the desk mostly next weekend, when I have a 3 day weekend, and I’ll post before and after pics when I’m done.

I weighed in at WW the other day. I’m starting to get fed up with it. I don’t even really know why I signed up for it again. I HATE tracking points - hate it. So I don’t. But I also know where my comfort zone is, and even though I don’t write that crap down, I have a pretty good idea of where I’m at for the day points-wise. But my weight was up for the week. I’m almost ready to stop going. I didn’t get so heavy because of what I eat. I got this way because I took Paxil - my weight started going up very fast when I was on it, and it stopped going up when I stopped taking it. That’s it. So why am I focusing on what I eat to make me lose the weight? It’s not working. It’s not going to work. I cook at home and try to eat as many unprocessed foods as possible. I eat far more fruits and veggies than I used to, and far less junk. I don’t eat to where I’m full; I eat to where I’ve had enough. The magnesium supplement I take has pretty much killed my cravings for sweets. So how is tracking points and shit supposed to help me? It won’t. If it was going to, the changes that I’ve been making over the past year or so would have done more, but I’ve only lost about 5-7lbs through those changes alone. I need to try something else. Yes, exercise. I keep intending to do that more, because I know it will produce results, but by the time I get home from work I am so done for the day that it’s all I can do to cook dinner, and the only reason I do that is because I’m hungry. I’m just tired of the anal-retentive approach to what I’m eating that WW takes because it’s really not helping me.

Ok, enough of the rant. I think I’ll go make some eggs for breakfast and get on with my day.

• This was a better week than last week.  I got a couple big piles of paper off my desk, though there will be more on Monday.  There’s always more paper when you work in finance.
• A new receiver came in the mail today.  My uncle sent it because he prefers his old analog, and because ours (which is way high up on top of the armoire) doesn’t have the remote any more.  This helps him clean out and gives us a remote control option to adjusting the volume when we watch movies.
• I also got the latest Wireless catalog today.  They always have such clever gifts in there, including the infamous leg lamp just in case you’re looking for that perfect gift major award to give someone.
• November is nearly half over, and I’m still NaBloPoMo-ing.
• I think I’m going to play Bejeweled for a bit before turning in for the night.  I’ve been very tired this week.

Here it is, Sunday night.  My weekend was, just like last weekend, uneventful.  Mister and I hung out in the home office again, though today we did venture out to do a bit of shopping.  We bought a treadmill!  We’ve been talking about it for awhile, and we think this will fit our fitness needs and desires quite well.  I already walked about 10 minutes on it tonite, just to test it out.  Since it’s in the living room, it will give me a good excuse to watch HGTV, and if I have something interesting to watch then it should keep me on the treadmill longer.  So we’ll see how that goes, but I’m hopeful that it will get us up off our butts more often.

Other than the treadmill, the rest of the weekend was uninspiring, and tomorrow’s Monday, oh joy, and another week begins.

It’s the weekend, finally!  This was one of the longest weeks I can remember.  I don’t usually talk about work here, because when you work for a large company like I do, they tend to frown on that sort of thing.  But this week we had some layoffs.  One of the people laid off was the guy I work with, so it shook our group up quite a bit.  That threw the rest of the week off for us, and let’s just say that I am really, really glad I get two days off.  Also, Mister has been really sick this week but seems to feel better when I’m home, so being home all weekend should help him feel a lot better.

Since Mister has been sick, we don’t have any plans for this weekend (other than the usual chores), so I am going to try and do a bit of blogroll housecleaning.  I looked at my blogroll and wow, there’s a lot on there that I haven’t read in a long, long time.  I wonder if there’s a way to combine the Blogrolling service with a feed reader like Google Reader.  That would make it so much easier to do the maintenance, since I visit my reader multiple times per day but hardly ever visit Blogrolling.

Speaking of the Blogroll, I added two more today.  Anglofille is an American girl living in one of my favorite cities in the world - London!  She’s studying for her PhD and making me really want to go to London again as she writes about her life there.  Rio Gringa is an American who lives in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.  She is also an excellent writer and has a lot of resources for learning about Brazil and Brazilian culture.  Both gals have great blogs and contribute towards satisfying the wanderlust and thirst for other cultures that I have (either that or making it worse, who knows, but go visit them).  If you’re not on my blogroll but you are a regular reader, let me know and I’ll check your blog out.

I might venture out this weekend to go to the office supply store.  It seems that I need a new wrist rest for my keyboard.  I have one of those “gel” ones with a fabric covering, and due to my tendency to rest my chin in my hand while my elbow is on the wrist rest, the seam seems to have burst, and the sticky, snot like gel is oozing out when I put too much pressure on it.  Maybe I can lure Mister to Fry’s Electronics!  Oh, and happy things: I got a postcard from Uncle N Period today.  He just got back from a trip to Egypt for culture and Eritrea to ride the trains.  I like getting postcards from far-off lands, and nearly all the postcards I have from those places are from Uncle N Period and Aunt Bird.  Smiles in the mail!  And no, Uncle N Period, you can’t have the stamp.  It’s too pretty so I’m keeping it.  I hope you got some for yourself while you were there!

Back to the topics of  Mister and office, we have a Sirius satellite radio in our home office.  Mister usually likes his 80s music, but I’m more of an acoustic person, so lately Mister has been changing the station to CoffeeHouse 30 for me.  He’s so incredibly sweet, because in general he hates that kind of music, and wants to react to it like John Belushi’s character in Animal House does.  But he knows I like it and it relaxes me, so he puts it on in the evenings for me.  I really love that man!

So that’s it for Friday - bad week, it’s the weekend now, blogroll housekeeping, smiles by mail, and music I like with the man I love.  Here’s to the weekend!

Unless there’s a lot we want to get done or we actually go out of town, weekends for Mister and myself tend to be a bit lazy.  Yesterday we sat around the home office doing whatever it is we do on our computers until we decided to go out and eat dinner.  After that we came home and watched a movie.  Absolutely nothing else got accomplished.  Today was more of the same, except I tackled a bit of housework as well.  I have a tendency to keep up with it until later in the week, when I start getting lazy and leave it all until Sunday.  So I cleaned up the kitchen, did the dishes, and cleaned off the coffee table, which was covered in wax from the candles we burned while we were watching a movie the other night.

Mister and I have started talking about Thanksgiving.  While I like spending time with my family during the holidays, I really, really don’t like to travel at that time, especially considering that growing up, we traveled a half mile to Gram’s house.  Not far at all.  Mister and I started talking about having dinner here at home and maybe inviting a couple of friends over.  We don’t have the table space or seating for more than that, so a small holiday it is.  This will be the first time ever that I cook such a big dinner.  There will be lots to do, even for such a small crowd.  Maybe I should pick up a copy of one of those magazines that women always get to help them plan the holidays.  I’m probably already behind schedule!

Now that I’ve done my blog post for the day, I think I might tackle a bit of filing.  I hate filing, but it’s got to get done.  And hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a much more inspiring post.

I signed up for NaBloPoMo.  My blogging has been lacking lately, averaging one post for every 7-10 days, so I think this is just the thing to kick-start me into blogging more regularly. Going through my reader this morning, I see that a lot of people have signed up for it, so reading everyone else’s daily posts should help to keep me motivated.

In other news, I went and voted yesterday. One of the early voting sites is the mall. The number of cars in the parking lot told me it would be crowded, but I wasn’t expecting what I saw inside. The line was long, but one of the volunteers told me it was only a 20 minute wait. Considering how long the line was, it moved very quickly. I was able to cast my vote and hightail it out of there.

The part I wasn’t expecting was the people who weren’t there to vote. Things one tends not to pay attention to when one does not have or intend to have children. The rest of the mall was completely mobbed with children in costumes and their parents. Yup, it was trick or treating time at the mall. It did occur to me that, especially in a town like Vegas, the mall would be a much safer place to bring the kids. Personally, I’m not a fan of handing out candy on Halloween. First of all, it’s a hypocritical holiday. All year long kids are taught to not take candy from strangers. Then on one night a year, we dress them up and tell them to knock on as many doors as possible to get candy. I grew up in a place where we knew most of our neighbors, so there weren’t many strangers where we went begging for candy. Second, I don’t like seeing infants dressed up (well, actually I do - they’re adorable!) and giving candy to their parents, who will eat it because the child is not yet on solid food. On the other end of the age spectrum, I also don’t like giving candy to teenagers who don’t even bother to put on a costume. So at the mall were all the kids that I don’t mind giving candy to - the 3-13 year old age group that enjoy the holiday for all the fun it can produce for them. The ones that enjoy putting thought into their costume and are so excited that they want to wear it every day. It was fun watching them go by, and nice knowing that they weren’t going to get any poisoned candy or razorblades in apples from any of the stores at the mall.

I’ve finally been reading all the Harry Potter books. I didn’t at first because I thought they were more for children (since they are sold in the children’s section at the bookstore), then as they gained popularity I didn’t because I didn’t want to wait in line for hours for the latest release. I didn’t even watch the movies until I met Mister. With him, I’ve watched all 5 movies, and he encouraged me to read the books, which I have to admit are great. I’ve just started book 6, which is the first book I’ve read before seeing the movie. I will admit that I cheated and read the plot summaries, but it doesn’t take anything away from me because I know that there’s so much more to that in the books. Last night we stayed in and watched Order of the Phoenix since I just finished that book, and saw how much of the book that wasn’t in the movie, and how much the movie oversimplified for the sake of time. Despite that, I’m looking forward to the rest of the movies.

So there you have it - my first of 30 daily posts (perhaps more). If any of my readers are participating, let me know so I can follow your progress as well!

I keep trying to tell myself that.  Yesterday was a day that made me regret my decision to go to work.  I should have stayed home in bed.  But I was responsible, and ended up at my wit’s end.

While Mister was away I got to work on some of my ambitious plans.  We never seem to do all the things that need doing when we’re both home, so I thought I’d use the time alone to keep busy and be productive.  I decided to organize the garage.  This is the same 2-car garage that became a dumping ground for all our stuff when we moved in.  It held many, many boxes that still needed to be unpacked, along with lots of other stuff like man-toys (aka tools) instead of the 2 cars it was designed to hold.  My goal was to get at least 1 car in there.

I started by picking up the tools.  A few weeks back, Mister was working on his truck and there were tools everywhere.  It’s not his fault, really.  We just lack the adequate storage units for these things.  I did the best I could, and though most of them ended up in a box labeled “Misc Tools” I gained a decent amount of floor space.  The next task was to move the boxes yet to be unpacked in the house.  At first I thought I’d put them in their appropriate rooms, but then I realized that there was still sorting to be done once these boxes were opened, so I put them in a staging area in the living room.  This cleared out a LOT of space in the garage.

Then I moved nearly everything to one side of the garage.  I reorganized as I went, so as to keep like items together.  I also found a cubby thing that goes on top of a short cabinet that we already use as storage in the garage, so I put that together and put some tools and other things in there.  Then, sometime around 7pm, my body came to a screeching halt.  I was done, and I couldn’t work any longer.  I took a shower, ran out for a bite to eat, and came home, planting my ass on the sofa.

On Sunday, I went out to run some errands and do some grocery shopping in preparation for Mister’s return later that evening.  When I got home, I put together a few salads for easy side dishes during the week and set about unpacking the boxes.  I got through quite a few of them, and was able to put aside some things for donation.  The work seemed to go a lot slower than the garage work did, but again, I got quite a bit done.  My body ached from all the physical labor over the weekend.  I sat down to rest, eagerly awaiting the time when I could go to the airport and pick up Mister, who I missed terribly.  His flight came in at 10:30, so we didn’t get home until late, which for me was a bit too late since I get up at 5am for work.  I decided that I’d make a decision on work when my alarm went off Monday.

My alarm went off on schedule Monday morning.  I didn’t have any trouble waking up, but getting out of bed was another matter entirely.  I hurt.  Every muscle between my knees and my neck was aching, and there was also the strong lure of spending time with Mister since he had just come home (remember, he left on business the day after I got home from my Grandma’s funeral).  I decided that I’d stay home from work.  I went into our home office, turned on the computer, and started composing the email.  As I started putting in names of people to send to, I had second thoughts.  There are 4 of us on the A/P team, not including the team lead.  One is on vacation until Wednesday.  One is overseas on a business trip.  If I called out, that would leave just 1 very hard worker there to do it all.  I like the people I work with too much to do that to them.  Also, the thought crossed my mind that I would be very tempted to tackle more boxes if I stayed home, and my body just couldn’t handle it.  I canceled the email and got ready for work.  At least there I could sit my butt down and rest my body.

I spent a large portion of my day fixing problems.  Not big problems, but problems I shouldn’t have at all, and rarely, if ever, have.  It took an inordinate amount of time to do this.  A phone call from Mister, who was frustrated with his GPS leading him on a wild goose chase in the wrong direction, had me teetering on the edge of my breaking point.  I was stressed enough from work, and though I love hearing his voice, his situation simply send me to the precipice of my breaking point.  I fought back tears as I finished up my last hour of work and headed to my doctor’s office to fix another issue.

Over a month ago my doctor had changed my acid reflux medicine to the purple pill, which is working much, much better.  They seem intent on clearing out the sample closet, so I ended up with over a month’s worth of samples.  I also had a script for it, which I dropped off at the pharmacy so that I wouldn’t lose it.  Since I wasn’t picking it up right away, the pharmacy put it on hold.  I ran out of sample meds over the weekend, and on Sunday when I tried to get it filled they informed me that they’d need the doctor to authorize it, which meant waiting until Monday.  Sometime during my Monday I called the doctor’s office, and the front office lady with no people skills informed me that the doctor signs those after 5pm.  That is the dumbest thing I heard, especially for requests that come in over the weekend!  I thanked the woman for allowing my stomach to continue burning and hung up.  When I got the the doctor’s office after work, the medical assistant, who is way cool and has enough personality for 2 people, looked through the pile of pharmacy requests and didn’t see one for me.  Ok, no problem.  I called the pharmacy and they faxed it over again while I waited at the doctor’s office to be sure it arrived.  It did, and it went into the pile to be signed.  The med asst also gave me 3 more weeks of samples (awesome!) and I got in the car to go home.

I tried to call Mister but he didn’t answer the phone.  No biggie, I just assumed he was on another call for work or something.  Then he called me back, and though I could hear him just fine, he couldn’t hear me no matter how loud I was yelling.  We called each other a few times with the same results, and I was ready to throw my cell phone out the window.  That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  I burst into tears and just couldn’t get home fast enough.  Mister called on his work phone, which wasn’t having any problems, and started to calm me down.  When I got home and into the house I started feeling better, but it wasn’t until Mister came home that I really started to calm down. 

With the door locked on the outside world, I finally was able to stop crying, though Mister made me cry again when he gave me a really sweet gift to make me feel better.  We spent the rest of the evening watching Top Gear and then we put on a movie, and by the time I went to bed I was much calmer and relaxed.  I don’t know what it is about little things that make a day completely unbearable, but thank goodness I have Mister to make me feel better.  Today, so far, is better, and after work I’m getting my haircut at my wonderful salon that has massage chairs at the sinks.  Woohoo! 

Today I go back to work after a 4-day weekend.  Yep, I got 4 days in a row off - a mini vacation!  Friday was supposed to be a regular workday, but our VP decided to close the department so yay! an extra day off.  Mister had work in Phoenix, so we drove down there Thursday night.  Did anyone hear about the big storms that came through?  We saw the lightening from it all the way in Kingman and got to watch the awesome lightening show all the way down.  By the time we got to Phoenix, there were some road closures and power outages, but we made it to our hotel just fine.  Friday Mister worked, and Saturday we took a scenic route back to Vegas, getting home around 6:30pm.

Then Sunday.  We both woke up sweating our butts off, and Mister made the grim discovery that our air conditioning went out.  On a holiday weekend.  This is not fun.  We went out to run some errands and came home to it being… still out.  We just bought a new home in April, and everything is supposed to have a 1-year warranty, so we called the service company, who came out within a couple hours and fixed it for free, since it was under warranty.  Apparently when developers throw these houses together they do it fairly cheaply, so the a/c guy put in filters that weren’t there to begin with, and replaced some tube with a better quality one.  Now Mister swears that it is running more efficiently than before.  We’ll see what the power bill looks like - the true test of how well the a/c works.

Yesterday was more out and about to run some errands.  The few things we wanted to get weren’t in stock at the stores we looked at, so we decided to give up and go home.  Some days, when you need to get things, you just strike out, so we said to heck with the grocery shopping and had ice cream for dinner.

Now I’m sitting here, as is my normal weekday routine, catching up on a few things online as I wake up.  I’ll be off to work in a bit and back to the daily grind fun.