Only 206 days until Christmas . . .

Wow it is June 1st already. I cannot believe it. Nearly half way through the year and time to start early Christmas shopping!

Yeah right! LOL

Well we've had a good weekend so far. We ran some errands yesterday. One of them was to Costco, and while we were in line, the lady in line in front of us fainted!! It was the weirdest thing. She kind of squatted near her cart, like she was looking for something underneath, and then she just sort of . . . slid onto her back. It was very graceful; it's not like she just fell over. It was the weirest thing. She just sort of slid down until she was on her back and she was OUT. The clerk ran over to see if she was all right and a manager came over. I told Bill to call 9-1-1 which he dialed, and just a few seconds after she passed out, she snapped right out of it. She said, "What happened?" and tried to stand up. The manager didn't want her to stand up but she did anyway, and she was instantly awake. She wasn't groggy or anything. It was really strange. It was like nothing had happened. She wanted to cancel 9-1-1 but the store insisted. I'm sure she was embarassed. We were outside by the time the ambulance and fire engine arrived; Bill took them back inside to where she was. When he came back out, Bill said she was standing in the checkout line like nothing had happened! But I tell you what, if you lose consciousness for no reason (unless she was hypoglycemic or something, which we don't know) it's a good idea to have the paramedics check you out. I mean, for goodness sake; what if she'd been driving and that happened?!? Yikes! It was the strangest thing -- one minute she was out; the next minute it was like nothing had happened.

When we got home from our errands, we went out to the pool. It wasn't very hot; maybe low-80s but we really wanted to go swimming. Unfortunately, the water was REALLY cold. We laid out in the sun for awhile; I got sunburned because the breeze was so nice that you never really felt hot. We did get in the pool for a bit and swam around but it was FREEZING. Hopefully by the time we get back from Chicago, there will have been enough warm days for the water to warm up. I love to swim. Our hotel in Chicago has a pool, but it's indoors. Bummer.

Bill is at the pool right now; I didn't want to go back out because of my sunburn, but he didn't get burned much yesterday. He has more of a base tan than I do, because he's gone out there and laid out more than I have.

I am sleepy; I think I'll take advantage of the quiet and take a nap. Even our noisy neighbors upstairs are quiet. They must be gone. LOL

Well I am acting ED next week, then one more week and then we head for Chicago! In just 12 more days, I will have 10 days off in a row (including weekends)!!! Yay!!! I'm definitely looking forward to that!!

One sad note -- my friend Alicia's mother passed away from a brain tumor yesterday. our thoughts and prayers go out to her and her family as they deal with this difficult loss.

Fridays Rock!

It's interesting how once the weather starts to heat up and summer is on its way, many of the blogs I follow slow down on postings. And it's funny how these strangers on the web become almost like someone I know, and I worry about them when they don't post for several days (or weeks even). But I can tell that lots more things are going on, because when they do post, its usually with some wonderful tale of the adventures they've had, accompanied by a bunch of pics. Even if the adventure is only a walk in the park. Fun!

The weather has been beautiful here lately. All week we've had temps in the 70s, and today I think it got up into the 80s. I'm hoping it will warm up to the mid-to-high 80s this weekend so we can go swimming! That was the only bummer about our four-day Memorial Day weekend was that the weather was so crappy! It was cold and cloudy and even rained a bit. We couldn't do many of the things we planned to do. But that's okay; it is still better than the 100 degree temps we had the week before that! Weird, wild stuff!

Speaking of weird, wild stuff, I sure do miss the old Johnny Carson Tonight Show. And now Jay Leno is leaving and Conan O'Brien is taking over?!? Ew! I don't particularly care for Conan O'Brien. Jay Leno has more class in his little finger than Conan does in his whole body. Not my cup of tea. But really? They don't give a flying frog about my opinion, because I never watch the show!! It's on way too late for me, and I don't like it enough to TiVo it. Unless Ross the Intern was on it, then I'd TiVo it. Sadly, when Jay Leno leaves, no more Ross the Intern segments, which were screamingly funny. There was one particular one with Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, that is absolutely hilarious.

Speaking of hilarious, I was sad to read that Harvey Korman passed away today. He was 81! Wowzers I didn't realize he was that old, but it makes sense. He was of my parent's generation and they are 78 and 79. I'm dating myself here, but I remember when Harvey Korman and Tim Conway performed together in skits on the Carol Burnett Show and I would laugh until I cried over some of their comedy. They did sight gags and physical comedy so incredibly well. Corny stuff by today's standards, but I still love watching clips. Especially the ones where Tim Conway was the old man . . . OMG!!

Well, our ED is out next week and I have been named acting-CEO while he is gone. However, he is going to be in SoCal doing trainings, and this time he is carrying a cell phone (if you knew our technology-challenged ED, then you'd know why this is so earth-shakingly monumental!) so we can get in touch with him in case of a dire emergency.

Bill and I are going out to dinner at Chili's tonight. I have a company credit card to use to make incidental purchases for my job, and one of the things it has is points for each dollar spent. I've been saving my points ever since I got this job 14 months ago, and I had enough points to trade redeem them for a $50 gift card. Yay!! I like free!! :-)

And the best thing of all, is that it's Friday evening!! I got off work at 3pm today, because I worked a couple of hours over my usual time this week. That was a great way to start the weekend. The nice thing was, that I actually got out of the office pretty close to 3pm!!! Seems like 90 percent of the time, something happens just as I am getting ready to head out the door early -- usually an injury. Ugh! But this time -- magic!!

No particular plans this week, just the usual. Hopefully it will be warm enough to get in some swimming!

Noisy Neighbors

Well, it's 10:30pm and this week from hell is over!! Unfortunately, my nice relaxing weekend isn't starting out too great. Our upstairs neighbors are having a party. OMG are they ever having a party!! The music is loud, they have girls over and they're chasing them around the apartment, running up and down the hallways. Geez. I went up there about half an hour ago and asked them to keep it down. Yeah. That really helped. LOL

We have an 11 pm curfew on music and noise, so I'm just sitting here watching a TiVo'd Law & Order SVU and blogging, waiting for 11pm. If they don't have the music down by 11pm, I can call and have the manager shut them down. If they get more than three noise complaints, they get kicked out. They're just kids in their early 20s and I remember what its like. I'm sure they hate living above a couple of old people but poor Bill likes to go to bed early. This is the main thing I hate about living in an apartment, is having someone live above you. The nice thing about a duplex, is that there's usually only one connecting wall. The nice thing about an apartment complex versus a duplex, is that we have things like a swimming pool, clubhouse and workout room.

*sigh*

Well I had my annual performance evaluation from Carl yesterday and it was really good! They still haven't gotten the records from accounting regarding how much the supplies cost from my friend's company versus how much they cost from the jerk that is causing me all this trouble. If it's significantly more, and I can't justify it, then I guess there's still a chance I'll be fired. Or at least severely reprimanded.

I went ahead and submitted my application for an HR job in Redding, and got a call back already! I have an interview scheduled for Tuesday. I figured I might as well cover my bases "just in case." The job doesn't pay much more than I make now, and it would mean relocating to Redding, which I don't like. But we'll see.

Looks like Jessica's wedding has been indefinitely postponed, so we now have $600 plane tickets to Cleveland we can't use. She's moving back to Kentucky to be with her boyfriend in two weeks, so she won't even be there. **sigh**. It's going to cost us $100 per ticket to do it, but we're going to go ahead and change our tickets to Chicago, and we decided to go a little later in the month. When I first checked pricing to Chicago from Reno or San Francisco, the tickets were only $175 each round trip, but we couldn't purchase them because we had to check with our bosses to see if we could change our vacation days, plus we had to check with Bill's sister to make sure everyone was going to be there during those days. We also decided to stay in a hotel, which just makes things easier on everyone. Jennie has enough to do and doesn't need to have houseguests for five days. And it gives us a little privacy while we're there. Win-win for everyone. It will be good to see Bill's dad, also, along with the sisters, their husbands, and niece and nephews.

But anyway, about the plane tickets. When I went online to change the tickets this afternoon, the price had gone up to $445 apiece!!!!!!! How does that happen?!?!? So weird. So I guess we'll just keep on checking until they get down to around $300 apiece, or cheaper if we can. We already are going to have to pay a $200 change fee; we don't want to have to pay extra airfare, too. Geez.

Mom and Dad are coming to visit tomorrow. They'll spend the night and then go home on Sunday afternoon. We're going to a spaghetti dinner and play that our clients are putting on from work. Since I'm still employed there -- at least for the time being!

Ahhhhhhhhhhh the music is off, and no more pounding feet upstairs. They must have gone out. Now I can go to sleep. I can't sleep with all that noise going on.

Have a great weekend, everyone!! I will have a nice one, although I truly won't be able to relax until this whole thing about the safety supplies is settled one way or the other at work.

Anyway . . . bye for now!!

Happy Spring!

Today is the first official day of spring! It actually arrived last night at like 10-something, but whatever. Today is the first FULL day of spring. Today was a nice day. It started out cloudy and then the sun came out. It warmed up to the mid to high 60s today. Supposed to be 80 this weekend! Woot! Might be fun to take a picnic to Table Mountain and see the wildflowers . . . except for the fact that there will probably be 8,290 other people with the same idea. ***sigh***

I've been lusting after a car that our neighbors have. I really like the way it looks. I have no idea what it feels like to drive or anything, but I really think it is sharp looking. Of course we have absolutely no intention of test driving it, or even going to look at it, because there is no way in hell we could purchase another vehicle. We are WAY too upside down in our current car loan, and it would be absolutely ridiculous of us to even try. But it's fun to lust after it. Besides, its a crossover vehicle (which I guess is a cross between an SUV and a station wagon?) and its sticker says the gas mileage is like 22 fwy., 15 city. Holy crap! At over $3.50 a gallon for gas? I don't think so. It's a Ford Edge, and of course has the Sync technology, which my geeky little heart adores. I do love gadgets!! But have you seen the Edge? Very sexy.

Here it is, although not in the color I'd like:


Anyway . . . our Avalon gets bad enough gas mileage; we don't need to trade it in on anything that gets worse!!

Today was our Staff Development Day, where we closed for business and all staff gathered at the local junior college campus for some training. The lunch was an awards luncheon, and I got my 10-year award -- a pen and pencil set. My boss said some really nice things about me -- yay! I really was relieved, because sometimes I get paranoid that they're going to lay me off. Hey, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean that they AREN'T after you. Right?!? LOL

Bill has been dealing with problems with FIL -- I say Bill has been dealing with, but really it's Jennie, since she's back there. He's trying to deal with it from a distance, and that is so hard. FIL wants to keep driving and its really not safe. FIL is FURIOUS. Ugh. God save me from ever getting old and cranky. Oh wait . . . I already am!!!

Speaking of cranky . . . we went out to lunch at Applebee's for a treat on Sunday, and it was crowded. One family was there kind of kitty-corner from where we were, but they had a small child -- looked like she was about 2 or so. Well, the child was cranky and getting tired of waiting for her food, apparently (for some reason, Applebee's service was really bad that day), so she started screeching. I don't mean constant screeching, or even fussing. About every minute or two she would let out this godawful screech -- it was so high pitched, I thought my ears were going to bleed! I swear I expected the glass in the windows to shatter. And not only would it startle you out of your skin, but it absolutely grated on your nerves. Well, my nerves anyway. Which apparently are overly sensitive, according to my husband. I do think I'm overly sensitive to noise; particularly to high pitched sounds. Some days, if I've been really bombarded with a lot of noise at work -- phones, people, conversations, etc. -- I really need to come home and have peace and quiet for awhile, or my nerves feel absolutely raw.

Anyway, I don't know how that family could stand to be so close to the source of that screech. Perhaps they're just used to it. But you know what? I've had young kids before, and they too have acted up in restaurants. And I took them outside until the food came, so that they wouldn't bother other diners. You know why? Because that is the polite thing to do. Apparently these people didn't know that. When the waitress came to take our order, she asked us what we would like. I looked at her, and said, "A pair of earplugs for the screeching child would be nice?" She just rolled her eyes. Some people have no couth. (the parents, not the waitress!).

So, okay I'm done. Tomorrow is Friday (YAY!) and I finally feel like I have a handle on my duties at work, so I won't have to go into work this weekend, like I thought I was going to have to (YAHOO!). So Bill and I are going to relax this weekend. And boy, could I use it. Seems like since we moved, it's been go go go all three weekends. Hopefully this one we can actually relax.

Have a good one!

Saturday evening

Well, it's another weekend! Last week seemed to go really fast for some reason. But that's a good thing! We haven't been doing anything too unusual -- just puttering.

We went to the Thursday Night Farmer's Market in downtown Chico last Thursday, because we wanted to get some fresh peaches before they go out of season. This is the perfect time of year for peaches and they are SO good at the farmer's market -- fresh and ripe from the trees! It makes my mouth water thinking about them. We picked up some delicious strawberries, too, and a couple of tomaotes. YUM!

One thing that ticked us off, though, was that Taco Bell and Jack in the Box, both of which are downtown right at the top edge of the Farmer's Market, both switched off their A/C, and it must have been 100 degrees that day! What's up with that?!? I asked Scott about it, since he usually goes to that, and he said they always do that. The only thing Bill and I could figure, is that on these hot evenings, people come into those restaurants to get cool and don't order anything to eat, so in order to avoid that, they turn off (or turn up) the air conditioning. Whew! We had planned to wander through the booths, and see what kinds of things people had, then stop in one of the cool, air conditioned fast food places and take a break, cool off, and eat some dinner, then pass back down through the market and pick up our produce on the way out. Well, fuggedabout it. Never again. They just lost all our business, both Thursday nights and always. I understand their point of view, but for paying customers, that is just wrong! Geesh.

Oh well, lesson learned. It was still fun, though. Next time I want to go a little later, when the sun is behind the buildings and might be a little cooler. Whew!

Last night (Friday night) we went to Blockbuster and rented the movie "The Shooter" with Mark Wahlburg. It was REALLY good. We enjoyed that a lot. Then this morning, I had to get up EARLY and take Scott to work. he had to be at work at 7:00 am, so I stepped out of the house just five minutes after waking up (my alarm didn't go off), bleary eyed. But I made it, and got him to work on time. Whew! Unfortunately, I have to do that again tomorrow morning! :-( Yuck. Oh well, at least he's working -- can't complain about that!!

Today was a busy day. After I got home from taking Scott to work, we both showered and then went out to breakfast at Kalico Kitchen. Then Bill came home and I went to my office to do some organizing. Ever since I got promoted and took over this office, I hit the ground running and just never did find the time to organize things. I'm juggling several projects right now, and being disorganized is making my life harder. The only way to really get things done, is to come in on the weekends when the phone isn't ringing, and you're not being constantly interrupted. I went in at 10:00am, and left there at 3:00, and while I'm not completely organized with my files, I got my office all organized and everything put away, and it looks a LOT better. I don't have a before picture, but I'll have to try and get an "after" picture. It is a big office, and it finally looks great! Hopefully I can trade that five hours for some comp time, maybe on Friday. Yahoo! That would be great. That, of course, is the one single downside of being on salary -- no overtime! But that's okay -- comp time works, too!

After I got home, we went swimming and laid out in the sun. It was a nice relaxing time. We were probably out there about an hour. Nice! Then we came inside, and Bill BBQ'd some burgers, and we ate them while watching TV. Bill was going to watch the Giants game (trying to see if Barry will hit the record-tying homer!) but we decided to read our books, instead. Well, Bill's reading -- I am blogging! I will read as soon as I'm through blogging. Bill's reading the most recent Bourne Identity book, which is out in the theater as a movie, "The Bourne Ultimatum". He wants to finish the book before he sees the movie, but I'm hoping to talk him into going while it's still in the theater. I LOVE going to movies. And this would be a really cool movie to see in the theater.

Here's a picture of Bill reading his book:


Tomorrow after I take Scott to work, I'll come back here and do laundry and some chores, since I didn't get anything done around here today. I hope to get in a nap and some relaxing time, too.

Bill's two sisters, Jennie and Nancy, are in Arizona with their dad, cleaning out the house and getting it ready to sell. Bill wished he could have gone with them, but going to Chicago for his mom's funeral wiped out all his vacation time. I think he has three hours left!! Oh well. That's a huge job; I hope they are getting some help! I'm just glad that Bill's dad is finally ready to sell the house. We'll have to call them next week and see how everything went down there. I think Jennie has already headed home because she has to work next week; their dad and Nancy are coming home on Tuesday, I think.

Wednesday is our third anniversary! Bill said he will take me out to dinner that night, but we haven't decided where we'll go yet. Maybe Applebee's, since that's where we had our first date! :-)

That's about all our news for now. Have a great rest of your weekend!