Weekend

Mood: have a cold
Weather: cold again! Not fair!


We got Bev no problem and we are having a fun girl day. Lars left at 6am to go to an event and will be home pretty late. So far Bev and I had a great breakfast, went to the gardens/zoo, ate lunch, and checked out a few thrift stores. We have a few things to do this afternoon/night but we both needed a rest (stayed up til 1am). I also have a cold that only really hits me when I try to sleep so it is just an annoyance. I'll attempt to write later but probably won't get to it til Tuesday as we are in our new building on Monday and I'll be unpacking and busy.

Your Standard Wednesday

Mood: ready for lunch
Weather: cooled down some, back in the 60's

Yesterday Lars and I went out to dinner at Adventures and ended up sitting next to a ton of people from work. I didn't know any of them but they were wearing company T-shirts and I spent half the meal trying to not be noticed just in case someone did know me. In anycase, it was a very nice night out just the two of us. When I got home I intended to clean but that didn't happen (we did the dishes but that doesn't really count). Today I MUST start cleaning so Bev sees a nice house. The house isn't really all that messy but it is just three times the size of the apt so a general vacuum, bathroom clean, dust, tidy takes 3 days. I am very glad we have a half day on Friday so I can do the final clean before Bevie gets in late that night.

Thursday we are having dinner with my new supervisor, he seems lonely having moved from Wisconsin just for the job and not having any family. He is a laid back guy and it should be fun.

I just finished a book 'I love you like a tomato' and it was oddly good. It is the story of an Italian Mom and her two kids who emigrate to MN after WWII to meet the husband (American soldier) and the family totally rejects them and the son is dead so they are on their own. The daughter is the main character and it is a good look at emigrant life in the era. The only thing I don't like is the abrupt end. They just stop telling the story. I think there is a sequel but I'm not sure.

Prank caller

Forgot to mention that someone called me at 3:45am on my cell phone. Lars heard it and woke me up and I wanted to ignore it but then I'm thinking of all the people that I know that have my cell number that must have a very very good reason to call at 3:45am so I got up. Nope, it was some wrong number who had the audacity to act mad when I called at 4am. I kept myself awake for a while plotting revenge and figured that I should just let it go. Then She AGAIN called at 7am so I called her back at 7:45 and yelled at her and in the end she finally said she was sorry but it took awhile.

bussiness

Mood: pretty good
Weather: very nice now but big storm this morning

So, it has been a few days. I totally mean to blog over the weekend but I think the fueng shehi is off in the computer room because I don't like spending alot of time down there. Anyway, I had a very exciting Friday. I sit very close to the super secret area of the motorcycle development portion of the company but it is basically a shop and not very interesting (to me at least). Anyway, our company just finished building a research and development facility and we are all moving there and on Friday the guys had to have the shop 100% broken down and ready to move - they have been working on this for over 3 weeks - and around 11 I started smelling bleach. I figured they were cleaning and I was being wimpy. Then my eyes started to burn and people a few rows away started to notice. Long story short, they mixed drano and bleach and were gassing us all - good thing we had windows open anyway. So we were evacuated at noon (only 1 hour of loosing brain cells)and I worked from home then did house stuff.

On Sat we went to a nice local event, only 25 min away. It rained all day and Lars and all the guys still fought outside but they had lots of fun. I chilled with Karen and a bunch of SCA people and had a nice social day.

Sunday we took a trip to a friends house to help us redo some garb of Lars' because he lifts too many weights.

The 'highlight' of the weekend was dog sitting for our neighbors. Their 2 goldens are actually well behaved but one of them has a bad dermititus (getting shots already dad). They are attention hungry and freeked out the cats and made lots of muddy foot prints all over. We had to keep them in the yard most of the time because the cat hid in the crawl space but all in all it was ok.

Yesterday I had an orientation in the new building and it is very cool but I wasted most of the day touring so I didn't even read a blog much less write in one! When I got home I went about scrubbing the floor and windows to remove all traces of dog. This Friday my friend from home is visiting so I need to clean a bit more... Anyway, thats the highlights.

Other duties as assigned

That phrase is always an office joke because it is tacked onto everyone's job description as a catch all - more or less meaning that anything might end up being part of your job. Most of the time it is stupid stuff like organizing lunch for the group or running out to get something. Today my extra duty deserves a gold star. A supplier had an issue with production and didn't ship parts so we ransacked the lead engineers desk and found 6, then we looked through the trash (metal scrap) to see if there were any salvageable ones. We ended up not finding any more but I'm amazed we found 6.

I wrote yesterday but blogger ate it

Mood:morning
Weather:nice spring day

I really did write a post about the cool silent auction we had at work. I won two things; one was a great deal the other was sorta silly but fun and all for the low price of $10 total. Today I forgot my lunch so I'll have to go out and I won't have alot of time to read/blog. Quick update on my dance class, something actually clicked yesterday and I was doing pretty well - the 7 year olds are not all better then me!

April Showers

Mood: Ok
Weather: gray and raining

A few weeks ago we were invited to a trip to FL with a friends company and we were all ready to go. Then we actually looked at the calendar and saw that we had committed to an event this weekend already for a very good friend. So no FL. I didn't really mind until today when it is gray and yuck out. To top it off, the woman I sit next to is going to FL tomorrow :) I sure hope we get some May flowers out of this.

Inside weather

Mood: very sleepy
Weather:outside fine, inside freezer


Silly me, I'm dressed for the season! I neglected to average in the fact that some people think it should be 60 degrees so I'm wearing my coat at my desk. Ironically, I don't need my coat outside, I just haven't transferred keys and cell phone to a pocketbook yet.

Worst hotel, best rest stop

Mood: good
Weather: awesome spring weather

Lars and I headed out to Minot on Friday night and made the 8 hour trip in 7.5 and that includes getting gas and drive threw dinner. So we arrived at an apparently nice hotel at 2am. Here is the rundown of what is in a 'Vegas of the Midwest' upgraded hotel room; 2 king size beds - not a bad start, but there really isn't enough room for 2 twins so the king size beds were 8 inches from each wall with a 2 foot space inbetween the two. To make it more claustrophobic, there was a huge wardrobe thing that dominated the wall at the end of the beds, it had no purpose because the places designed to hold clothing did not have hangers. Our room wasn't vacuumed but I don't blame the maid, I don't' think there was enough room to run a vacuum. To make the room look bigger, the wall (floor to ceiling) was mirrored. Next highlight; the toilet had 'issues' good thing it was only an overnight. The cherry of the evening was the constant broken pump sound that went on allll night and kept me simi awake half because it was loud, half because I was mad. Next morning upon check out the girl blew me off completely - still a little mad, but the rest of the event made up for it.

The SCA is an odd thing, sometimes events are dull and people ignore you and sometimes they are too much and you can't get to talk to everyone you want to. This one was perfect sized, I saw lots of people I know and like and got a chance to hang out with them. Lars won the tournment so we stayed for the feast and had an awesome day but since you could not pay me to stay another night there we hit the road. We got as far as Fargo and god bless motel six or hotel eight, don't remember what one we stayed at but it was so nice - neat, clean, quiet - what a place to sleep needs to be.

I grew up going to lots of events so I have seen almost every rest stop on the east coast and inland to the Ohio border and now I'm touring the Midwest with Lars' unwonder bladder so we see plenty here. I have to give major compliments to the this rest stop, I can't remember the name but it is about 50 miles into MN on route 94. It is a small facility but super clean, very nice looking and it has three lakes around it with a bunch of picnic tables and flower beds. It is more like a park then a rest stop. Anyway, it is a new benchmark.

This week so far is quiet - next weekend is another SCA event and the weekend after my friend from home is visiting so hopefully I can get the guest room a bit nicer.

Very social week

Mood: good
Weather: super nice, 70's and sunny

I should just say I'll do weekly updates~ I just have not had anytime over the past week to even read other blogs so this lunch time I am catching up. Since the tree incident;

1. We got a new roof, we choose a dark color with blue tones to it so it looks very nice on the light blue house. They were very quick, Lars said that he was woken up by feet, hammering, and yelling in a foreign language. They were 100% done with the roof by 6 pm. The next day our gutters were removed but we don't have those up yet... Probably Monday, that must take more skilled labor then the crew of Mexicans.

2. Tuesday we had our realtor, who is also a friend, over for dinner and she loved what we have done so far and we had fun catching up and playing games. We didn't end up going in the hot tub (finally with PERFECT pH etc) because Lars pulled a hamstring and was on cold compress only but we will do it next time.

3. Wednesday I ended up going to the SCA meeting to drop off stuff for Lars thus missing my dance class - they kids will be ahead of me again. I also got a scroll assignment so I rushed home to start that (due this weekend) - nothing like no notice on a piece of art. I did the calligraphy first this time and it looks pretty good, having a new pen really helps.

4. Thursday we were invited to 3 different things and ended up going to a work friends of Lars' who we have been trying to get together with for about a month. I missed a pampered chief party and a Tastefully Simple party, ironic how they fell all on the same night.

5. Tonight we are driving to Minot for an event so I had to pack at 11 last night and I think I'll be finishing my scroll Sat morning because we are leaving as soon as I get home.

Work, on top of all those other activities, has been extra busy and I've worked through lunch a few times this week in order to leave ontime! Next week nothing planned other then an event on the weekend so I can maybe have time to clean the house and exercise on my preferred schedule again... Maybe even call my parents who I haven't spoken to in over a week.

Fun to be busy :)

Me V Tree - guess who won

Mood: fine
Weather: Very Fine

Not to keep the parents or friends who know me and probably figure the 'me v tree' title is a lead in to a car accident story, both cars are fine and the war was fought in the back yard and I WON.

Today was the first really sunny nice 65-70 degree day all year and I have a bunch of raspberry bush babies to plant to I went outside to dig a hole for them. Our yard is pretty big but is reminiscent of a large ditch. Both sides of the yard are level with the second-to-top story of the house and the center of the yard is level with two levels down. You could kindly call it amphitheater like but it does cut back the possible places to plant raspberry bushes. Another feature of the yard is the stream running 8 feet from the end of the property line and that makes the low part of the yard at that end on the wet side. Raspberry bushes love water so in my mind the perfect place for these baby bushes were at the bottom of the ravine at the back of the yard about 6 feet from the fence so 1. They aren't in shade from the trees and 2. Once they have tons of raspberries on them one can navigate all the way around. Shovel in hand I go out to the yard and there in the spot I already had my bushes was a stupid little pine tree. The people who live here before had a love for pine trees, they are randomly placed all over but this one was in the exact place my bushes were going. One might rationally think 'big yard, lets put the bushes somewhere else' but there honestly isn't another level yet sunny yet swampy spot in the yard so I started digging around the tree. A side note about digging 12 feet from a stream, the ground is very very very wet and digging in mud is not fun or neat. Anyway I did what the garden by the yard guy does, I cut a circle all around making a nice root ball, then I dug a new home for the tree, then I tried to get it out of the hole. Here is when the fight started, the tree would not move, I dug more, still won't move, my foot gets stuck in a mud hole and the tree won't move. I pull really hard on the tree (I'm bigger then it) and it only rocks to the side. I get mad at the tree and finally find the taproot, it is very deep and apparently thicker and longer then the above ground portion of the tree. So I had no choice but to hack through the root as it would not give in gracefully. I eventually got the pine tree across the yard into it's new hole and I told it if it wants to stay alive it will grow where I put it. I then planted my nice little raspberry bushes. I have a feeling the root may seek revenge by growing up into a new tree in the middle of the raspberries but that might take years. So, I beat the tree but it did take hours plus a lot of muddy clothing and a few scratches.