why I lost 5 pounds this week

I am stealing a minute to write a little something about my high speed week.

Last Friday I thought I was going to an event with G2 however I had my weekends mixed up and although there was an event they weren’t expecting me… I went anyway and it was pretty fun. It was just a day trip so Saturday I hibernated and just did some little housework things saving up my energy for the week to come.

Monday; Tent Day! Went to G2’s and the group cut out 3 spoke round tents. We got all the roof and walls cut out, the only thing we need to cut out is the little reinforcements etc and that needs to be done in the sewing phase. I snuck in a 2mi run before I went over there but that meant I went straight from work, to running, to cutting and finally home at 11.

Tuesday; I ‘won’ a class in negotiating in the cities. Our BossD signed himself up but then he could not go so he opened it to the group. There were three of us who wanted to go and I won and it was a decent class. I really did not learn anything radically new but I relearned a bunch of things that were good reminders. I also was in the right neighborhood to have lunch with Jenny so we met up and had a good hour at outback. I introduced her to the best thing on their menu, bacon cheesy fries, she is now a convert for life. We sat with another woman from the class and we ended up talking about Chinese toilets for far too much of lunch but it is now one of my missions in life to make sure no woman goes to china without knowing the facts about toilets there. After class I drove directly to meet with my stats group to finish our project. Both of them were late and they were both pretty distractible but we got the majority done. I think we all feel like we got the good part of the deal, I’m doing all the writing and they are doing the math, graphs, and analysis. I told them I was leaving at 8 no matter what so it gave some sort of structure but they are both really nice guys even if they can’t focus for more then 10 min. At 8:30 (I knew I would never actually leave at 8) I drove over to the local fight practice in the cities about 10 min away that Lars was at and hung out until 9. We all went out for dinner and it was a good time. I ordered this really odd special, buckwheat pancakes covered in blueberries, granola, peanuts, and honey. When it came out it was huge, they should put net weight on menus, but it was very tasty. We had to go pick up Lars’s car since he kinda carpooled down to practice but his car was parked in a very odd place to get to from where we were, worked out in the end but we didn’t get home until 11:30 so straight to bed again.

By the way… all this being gone means our house looks a bit disastrous….

Wednesday; I did not leave the house but I did feed the lawn and talked to mortgage people (we are buying Lars’s brother’s house) and then parked on the couch and did the stats project. By 9pm it was done and I think it is really good. It isn’t even due until next week but this way we can get his feedback and fix anything before really turning it in. I started working through my tivo shows but I got sucked into my e-mail and worked from 9-11 on getting my mail under control. I chatted with G2 about this weekend, the weekend I was actually supposed to go to the event, and actually went to bed reasonably on time.

Thursday; I rushed home to talk to the realtor for the brothers house, this man is a moron and is very very very slow but hopefully the transaction goes well. We are buying the house because his brother can’t and the owner wants to sell. My mom gave us good advice as to how to juggle money to make it work and I don’t know for sure yet but I think we might actually pay less per month then we do now plus have income from the rent. Only real bummer is the amount of closing costs we have to pay but it does work out to be the best way. Anyway, I hopped on the elliptical and only made it to just under a mile before I had to jump in the shower and run to class. Lars came home and delayed me by actually wanting to spend some time with me! I have had two busy weeks in a row and he misses me. I made it to class one min early and although I didn’t lean much I didn’t get too confused either. We only have one more class before the final so next week is all review. Hopefully I can digest the entire stats for dummies book I got in the next two weeks. As normal, I got home at 10 and we ate McDonalds and for some reason it really did not agree with me and I spent from 2 am to 4am visiting the bathroom. I kept thinking that I was glad this was happening at home, not at work, traveling, or especially in China.

Friday; I am now in the offsite office waiting for someone to get to a meeting with me. I need to leave pretty soon if he doesn’t have time so I can get to another meeting at the regular office. After work I need to quick pack for the event and get down to G2 and we hope to hit the road by 6ish. We are going to go to a cool club on Sat night and it is corset night so I think it will be really fun. Lars is coming too so he gets to escourt all the women going.

That in a rushed no detail format was my week. Sunday I need to clean so I don’t go crazy because the house has not really been picked up for almost two weeks….

Coffee for one

Last week a guy in my department retired. He was an ‘old timer’ and had worked on one of the products here since the beginning. Early in his career he was a test rider and messed up his back badly and the whole time I knew him he used a cane. Last year he was using a walker and got back surgery that helped him out but he is just such an active person held prisoner by his body. Every day I would bring him coffee when I got myself a cup and he was always appreciative and we would talk for a few min and then get on with the day. I planned his retirement party, originally it was just going to be our department of 8 going to lunch, and then other people wanted to come so I moved it to one of our large conference rooms. So many people responded that they wanted to come that I had to move it to our building communication room (the one every employee fits in at one time) and ordered lunch for 40. I counted 52 people there and it was a nice low key fun lunch party. Friday was his last day and we all said goodbye but it wasn’t until today when I went to get my coffee that I really acknowledged that he is really gone.

Boring busy week.

I am not doing anything out of the ordinary or all that special. Work is about the same but slightly less hectic today. I am succeeding in exercising 30-40 min on the elliptical at least 4 days a week and sometimes 5 and I’ve upped my difficulty to 6. I have projects in my head but nothing in the works yet and I’m getting underway for planning Lars’s birthday. Tonight is class, I only have a few more left and then I have a few weeks off and then another class. The most exciting thing that happened is that we got the canvas for tent making so Monday is cutting day and we will assembly like 3 tents hopefully to be complete by boarder skirmish.

I need to try and figure out my homework question ~

My cell phone still works! It was encased in mud and got rain and snowed on but it still turns on. I won an eBay auction for a new (used) pink Razor phone so when I get that I’ll switch over but it will be much easier now that I have my original chip to transfer. I got the phone for $100 and it comes with a bunch of accessories so I think I got a very good deal and in usual eBay fashion I almost got outbid in the last min but I refreshed every second until I won. I saw a book in the store about how to use eBay and it looked like it was about 200 pages long, I wonder if they mention how important the last 5 minutes of an auction are…

Yesterday, in our great weather, I gardened! Well, I went out side, pruned a lot of trees and shrubs and cleaned up the mess I made and I planted one package of lavender seeds. So far my entire garden consists of about 100 tulips in one flower bed so I need to work on my annual selections so I have more then 2 weeks of flowers. The previous owners didn’t garden other then planting random pine trees all over the laws (that I mowed over since they were mostly dieing and in the way) and the owners before that took all their plants with them and put rocks in every flower bed. I have plans on what to do with most of the beds but I have to remove a couple tons of small rocks as I go. The only flower bed I have no idea about is the one right across the front of the house because the two downstairs windows are only a couple of inches above the ground level. Should I plant in front of the windows and pretend they aren’t there? Or avoid them? So far I’ve left the rocks… I also planted kitchen herbs in two containers I had but they gave me way too many seeds so instead of the orderly picture the package suggested, mine will look a bit more natural and mixed together. I have two pretty containers that I think I’ll do cascading petunias in and maybe I’ll try for more containers because then I don’t have to worry about moving the rocks, at least for this year. Lars even spread grass seed in our back yard in the area that got wrecked while we were pouring the patio and he helped me clear the branches I cut. I’ll probably never have as good a garden as my Aunt but she has a big lead on me, but at least I have a good example. Our friend Timmy’s wife is a master gardener and once she moves here maybe she will help. Timmy said to watch out, if I give her free reign of the yard I will have no grass left in a year. I can’t wait to see her work on the blank slate of their new place.

So far this Monday is better then last Monday but I better get going if I’m going to keep ahead.

forgot a few things in my last monster post;

1. my cell phone got lost on my ATV ride so if I'm not answering/returning your call thats why. Call the house.

2. My cell was found on Friday! Yeah! I don't know if it works but atleast I can transfer the chip. I'm glad I'm friendly at work and told lots of people to keep an eye out for it.

3. It snowed here, in April. I know it is snowing or icing in other parts of the country but snow in April is not cool.

4. Today is very sunny and nice. I would say it is almost 70 degrees, I hope it lasts.

5. I planted about 100 chrocus bulbs, I have 6 blooming. I don't know if it was the snow or I got alot of duds but the 6 are pretty.

Blaaaaaaaaah

Days and days have passed since I have posted. I know, it is a pattern of mine but the last week has been incredibly stressful and full. There were high points but every good thing seemed to necessitate the sacrifice of something else. I think the week just conspired against me. I manically made lists, lists for every possible thing I needed to do and then I leave them around the house so I run across them all the time. I have a new habit of writing on the bathroom mirror with dry erase markers to make one last list while I am brushing my teeth, it is working out and sometimes Lars adds annotations that are usually really funny.

Work (like I’ve said ninety million times) has just gotten more busy. I have a new segment added onto my already bloated load but I’m keeping it together. I sorta have the attitude that at some point I’ll get a different position and whoever gets my job finally realizes that it isn’t as easy as I make it look. Usually I keep an even keel but during the week I just got frenzied having to run from meeting to meeting, checking in on dozens of projects and one of the new engineers I’m working with is disgruntled that he got changed to me (other guy got promoted and thus the dumping upon me began). I had a supplier visit this week that wanted to go on a ride. I wish I could do justice to describing a Chinese millionaire, owner of a huge company, going on his first ATV ride. He got lost, a lot, and that is really hard because the trails are really well marked. He just kept deciding to go off the trail on his own. I’m really glad a coworker went with me so he was the leader and I went last to keep everyone in line. They had a great time playing like kids in the mud and flying through the mini course we took them to, this experience will do great things for our companies relationships. I had a good time but work that I wasn’t doing was running through my head. That night the supplier took us to a Timberwolves game (basketball mom and dad) and the US rep working with us has connections to the management so we got a really nice box and 2 court side seats. We rotated through who was in the floor seats but they were so close to the action you could have touched them. Professional basketball isn’t really all that exciting, aside from being really good at it, it just isn’t that intense a sport. The experience was fun but I don’t think I’ll run out to get season tickets. Although that was a really fun thing, it sucked up an entire evening so I didn’t get anything else done.

I sound like a whiner, poor me and atv rides and basket ball games…. But they were both work but ultimately my choice. I stayed up late working on my garb for coronation and it paid off, I got tons of compliments. I am pretty sure that it was the fabric, trim and shape that was impressive – everyone likes tutor more, it is the real princess dress. They don’t take any more work then your average houpe or cote but they are more bang for the buck if done well (but anything done poorly looks lumpy, sack like or weird). I was finishing hand work in the car but by the time the event started it all went together well.

Coronation itself went very well. I think being an outside player is a lot easier. After I stepped down I felt really out of place at the event but I think that was my own doing and the couple who stepped down looked happy. G2 looked great, her King looked awesome too – it is a late period reign and the clothing was just spectacular. The day flowed well and there were a lot of people there to talk to. I’m looking forward to a good SCA season and it will be busy as staff but it will be fun.

Today I hope to exercise, clean the house some because I’ve completely ignored the kitchen all week, and maybe get some seeds planted. I know I have a list of things to do around here somewhere.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to all celebrating. I am at least celebrating the Hallmark side of the day, I am having 9 people over for Easter dinner so now I know why people have dining rooms.

I have not posted in a while, same reasons as before for work (that grows exponentially) but I've done some fun things the past few days.

I got roped into helping do an egg hunt at work. There were three of us who were going to put candy in 300 plastic eggs then hide them Wed night at work. Well the first guy dropped out early but volunteered to do the counting the next day. The other woman led me on until 11am the day we were supposed to be hiding the stuff and then she bailed too. Since I physically had the eggs and candy I just did it myself. Lars helped fill the eggs and I spent about 2 hours hiding eggs on ever desk and in every common area. The prize was a big Easter basket and I think the whole thing went over very well. Only a few people really went nuts looking for the eggs and I'm sure some people never noticed there was an egg on their desk. The bright side of doing this alone was that I got a ton of credit I was not expecting and I had a good time overall.

Thursday night I had another stats class, the teacher is getting slightly better since now knows we feel he is a bad teacher. I actually left having learned something and that was good.

Friday I had off! I had a very nice day sleeping in, working on my dress, and doing things around the house I had intended to do for a while. I also went grocery shopping with the millions and millions of others and that was not so fun. I think Easter tops Christmas for crazies in the store. I had pre-ordered a leg of lamb because to me that is Easter dinner but to the great state of MN it is not. I now believe that lamb is more Jewish then Catholic since I used to live in a very Jewish area and lamb was plentiful and not I don't and it is not... At least I know it is fresh. It is almost 10lb of lamb so I need to get it in the oven in a few hours.

Final topic, how did I end up doing dinner for 10 when I have 0 family in the state? Well, it is entirely my fault - First I invited 3 others, Jenny who I worked with and is a good friend and her Ex has her kid this holiday, Josh who's family is also all out east and he is also a very good friend, and Timmy who just moved to MN to work at the same company as Lars and his wife is still in Mi until the house sells. That would have made 5 for dinner, totally doable. Then we remembered our Friend Scott who is by himself (6), our neighbors who weren't planning to do anything (10), and Jenny called saying another friend from my old work was abandoned by his family, can he come too (11). I'm planning on 10 because Scott said he was not coming but I'm going to make sure there is enough food just in case. Seating is the real issue... my table seats 6, I'm adding another table in an L and hoping we all fit. Fortunately 2 of the 10 are kids. Speaking of that, I need to kid proof a bit. I'm not worried about cooking, the lamb will take 5.5 hours, the veggies just need steaming and people are bringing salad, potato's, bread and desserts. Jenny is also bringing 4 plates, glasses and 3 chairs meaning I only need to find one more chair. I think I'll have to take a picture of this when it is all done.

PS. Dad, Lars has caught the bug. He now needs an easter basket so I am off to put one together.

Weekend review

This weekend was far more productive then I would have thought. I had cleared the day figuring I really would not feel like moving around much and my eyes really surprised me. I think my procedure must have been easier on me that Lars’s was last year because he was not in great shape the next day. Lars really really wanted to go to an event this weekend so I got a ride from K to my followup and I felt so good that we went shopping for hours after. I got two pairs of shoes, one cute and practical and one so impractical I’ll probably only wear them twice but both were on sale. K also got shoes and was tickeled pink that they had shoes that fit her right, a constant problem in her life so we started off the shopping trip well. We didn’t go anywhere too different, but, shopping with her was way more fun then with Lars who is really very good but he does not want to go through every aisle and look at all the clearance stuff. I was fairly restrained but I did find two great garden containers for either the front porch or back deck, I need to decide, but they are really nice looking and were marked down to $13 each.

Sunday Lars and I went down into the city to pick up a craigs list purchase. We met at a Panara and since we were there we had lunch and it was nice to be out with just Lars for a change. On our way back we decided to check out a few furniture stores since the desks Lars is using are really looking bad. They have done their time, they are both 7 years old and were the first major furniture purchases we made together so I am a little sad to see them go but after 2 states and 4 moves and constant use they deserve retirement. We looked at Hom furniture first because that is where I saw the desk I liked best. I don’t know what it is about but Lars and I get completely ignored in furniture stores, this happened last year too when we got our couch. Anyway, we wandered around the entire show room looking for desks being abjectly ignored by all the sales people and we finally had to ask the customer service desk where they were because we didn’t want to keep wandering. It ended up being upstairs so we took a look, and after we were basically measuring the desks and comparing features finally a sales person arrived. He was the most downie bird sadsack of a sales man ever and it looked like we were putting him out to even talk to us. We left a little irritated and tried the next store down the road, a JC Penny furniture store – they actually didn’t have any desks but they referred us to Office Max a few doors over and we figured we could at least get new chairs. We found great chairs and we found a cool glass desk that we ended up buying on the spot because it wasn’t too expensive, it was the right size, and I think it will look good in the room. We got everything home but we have to find homes for the old desks before we move in the new one so it is just sitting in its boxes. For the price of one desk we only mostly liked at HOM, we got two good chairs and a desk so it was a productive day. I have plans for one of the desks, I want to move it into my fabric room to replace the folding table in there but if anyone wants the other it is free for the taking!

I did not get much sewing done, I’m at a point where I need advice so I’m going over to G2’s tonight for help and by the end of the last couple days my eyes have been tired. I am still very pleased with my eyesight and the only annoying part is the plastic shields I need to wear at night to make sure I don’t rub my eyes in my sleep because they need to be taped on and the glue from the tape refuses to get off my skin so I feel a little like a post-it note.