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 |  Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket? |
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Fair Warning: I've upped the rating on this blog. It is now set at GC. |
| Here's a fun new way to piss away a slow day at work . . . http://www.elfyourself.com/ We have an employee directory with photos of all the staff. I raided the directory, for pictures, and turned my co-workers into dancing elves. It was great fun, but don't take my word for it.  For those of you are muttering now about Humbug, well, they have a site for you too. http://www.scroogeyourself.com/ Today at work we had our official "Holiday Training." You see, we can not partake in something as frivolous as a party. Not us! Parties are for folks who do not draw their salaries out of the tax payers pockets. Our agencies has a "Holiday Training" as a thinly veiled attempt to party during work hours. Of course, the topic of the training was stress management, and what better way to relieve stress than to enjoy a buffet luncheon and holiday gift exchange. Yeah, very thinly veiled.  Long story short, I laughed and talked myself hoarse this afternoon. I was amongst friends and we were having a good time. None of us participated in the seasonal exchange of Starbuck's travel mugs, but we still had a great time. I just wish I could remember what we were laughing about. |
| I need to unload today. Please bear with me. Yesterday my husband got a call about a job. The position is for a licensed Psychologist, and as we all know, Tony is not yet licensed. Well, the nice folks told him that they were actively recruiting now and odds were good that they would still be actively recruiting in March. They asked him to please call when he became officially licensed. They gave him a salary range and it exceeded my expectations. Here’s the thing. The job is only 30 minutes away. It would allow us to stay put. I know, I know . . . you thought I wanted to move. Well, I still kind of do, BUT . . . I am above all else, a realist. My job has been my anchor, economically and socially for 10 years. My husband is the love of my life, but historically, he’s not been a good bet. He has problems with steady employment. I would hate like hell to pull up anchor, and move my family for a job that might not work out for him. Landing a lucrative job without the necessity of a move is a win-win. I would be thrilled. I’d keep working until he settled in, or didn’t. If he settled in, I could possibly drop to part time and go back to school. Or I could quit and go back full time, but let’s not talk crazy here. I’m a tortoise. Slow and steady wins the race, right? Alright, now imagine this. I’m excited at the prospect. Let’s face it. That’s all it is at this point, but it is the first local prospective he’s had. So I’m excited, but him? . . . Not so much. You see, the job is working for a managed care behavioral health company. One of the prerequisites for the job involves growing horns and a long pointy tail or some such thing. He considers it a step away from the career path he envisions. I was livid this morning. All for nothing I realize as none of this has materialized yet, but I was livid nonetheless. I put him through school and supported he and the kids for 8 years and now he is going to hold out for fulfillment. Fuck that! What he needs to fulfill is his responsibility to his family!  Okay, enough of that. I think it is out of my system. |
| Ordinarily, I don't have much of a sense of humor on a Monday morning. Normally I’m not ready to start seeing the humor in things until at least noon. Today is the exception. I don't know why, but I'm enjoying it. Here are a few of the things heard around the office this morning that had me laughing… 1. The mental health conference room is now holding the crisis team meeting. Our conference rooms are highly advanced. They hold meetings all by themselves and all we need to do is show up. 2, “Look a penny! See a penny pick it up . . . BANG! . . . OW!” Warning, if the penny is under a table, you have to watch out for your head. And lastly . . . 3.We need to figure out a way to take fullest advantage of our interns. Yeah, but isn’t that what got Clinton in so much trouble?” Alright, enough of that. I have work to do.  Hope you all find something that makes you laugh, or at least smile, today. |
| My usual Sunday errands were all curtailed due to the weather. We had a wintery mix falling today. Somewhere between 4-6 inches of snow topped with sleet, freezing rain, and one of my personal favorites, freezing drizzle. It is expected to warm up tonight and switch over to rain. I hope that by tomorrow the roads will be passable, but I won't be surprised if schools are delayed. So, there were no trips out today, and I'm woefully lacking in groceries. That was unfortunate, because the falling snow put me in the mind to bake something. Honestly, I think I was just avoiding the novel. I raced through the big scene to get my 50,000 words down, and now I'm trying to rework it and finish my story. Whatever the reason, I wanted to bake. I did a quick inventory of the supplies on hand, and decided there must be something I could make with all the bakers chocolate. I don't know why there was so much of it. I've honestly never used it for anything! All I can think is that my husband bought it. Anyway, I make brownies from scratch. I haven't made brownies from scratch ever in my adult life. In fact, I never could understand why anyone would make brownies from scratch when the mixes are so wonderful and easy. Well, I get it now. LOL! Yup, these brownies looked, smelled and tasted better than any I've ever made. The smell of warm gooey melted chocolate certainly chased away the bleakness of the heavy gray sky and sounds of the children negotiating the out the spoon licking managing to drown out the pelting of sleet against the window. Sometimes it's nice to be snowed in for a day. Quick and Easy Fudgey Brownies 4 oz. Unsweetened bakers chocolate broken into pieces (Yeah right? Try breaking it!) 3/4 Cup Butter or margarine 2 cups sugar 3 eggs 1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract 1 cup all purpose flour 1 cup chopped nuts (optional) First, I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. I had to use a knife to break up the chocolate. I put the chocolate and the margarine in a pyrex liquid measure and microwaved for about 2 minutes until they were nice and smooth and melted. While that was happening I had my daughter measure out two cups of sugar. I stirred the melted chocolate into the sugar. Added the 3 eggs and the vanilla. Once that was mixed. I had my daughter measure out a cup of flour and mix it in while I greased the pan. No nuts for us. I used a 9x11 pan, and it made for very thin brownies. They'd have been better in a 9x9 square pan. The direction told me to bake for 30 to 35 minutes. I set the timer for 30, but they were done in 23. Definitely worth the trouble! |
| This evening is a second Thanksgiving for my family. We celebrated Thanksgiving with my in-laws this year, and my brother spent the holiday with his in-laws as well. So tonight, we are all going to have a turkey feast at my Mom's. It is really a clever scheme on Mom's part to get us all over to the house to help with the decorating. We just finished decorating the tree. The kids always have fun with that, but the intensity of the fun is a bit uh. . . intense! My son likes the job of handing me the ornaments to hang on the tree. He manages to do this at 3 second intervals. I take the ornament, and in the time it takes me to turn back to the tree, he is there with the next one. "Where do you think this should go Mommy? Do you want to know where I think it should go? I think it should go right in the front." He thinks everything should go right in the front, but for years I've been telling kids that Santa won't bring them presents if the back of the tree isn't decorated too. Since our Christmas is in front of the window, the back of the tree is ideal for displaying the ornaments my children have made over the years. "This way Santa will see them through the window and he'll remember which kids live here." Tomorrow they are calling for snow again. I figure it will be a good day to do the tree decorating thing all over again at my house. Sorry all you humbugger out there, but I love Christmas! Oh yeah, I'm also going to sign up for NaNoFiMo, National Novel Finishing Month. I've got to get through the rest of my novel before I lose all my momentum. |
| Stop me if you've heard this one... There are two men, Bob and Roy, and every year they hire an Alaskan bush pilot to fly them off to their lake side hunting cabin so they can hunt Moose for a weekend. The pilot lands on the lake, and drops the two men off, and, at the end of the weekend the pilot comes back to pick them up. As in years past, both men managed to get a moose, but the pilot tells them that he will only be able to fly out with one moose. Bob explains patiently to the pilot, "we do this every year, and we've always taken both moose out with us." The pilot isn't convinced. "It's just too much weight. With the three of us and all your equipment, we'll never make it out with both of them." "Oh come on," Roy says. "The pilot last year was willing to try it!" The pilot looked doubtful at the lake. "It isn't that big of a lake. It doesn't give me a lot of room to get up and over the trees." "Last year our pilot took his plane clear to the inlet down there to get himself more space," Bob offered. "Alright," the pilot said. "I'll do it." They taxied down the lake to the furthest edge and the pilot pushed his plane to its absolute limit. Still, it didn't clear the trees. The plane crashed spectacularly into the woods. Bob crawled from the wreckage and shouted to his friend. "Roy! Where are you Roy?" Roy was waving his arms in jubilation. "I'm over here! Looks like we made it about 100 yards further that last year!" So what is the point of this? Can you guess? This is what I do. The joke is a brilliant analogy. I make the same mistakes over and over again. Maybe I'm a slow learner. I just keep doing the same stupid things while hoping for the best. Maybe it isn't stupidity. Maybe it is my unbriddled optimism. This time, it might work. Yep, optimism. That must be it. Couldn't possibly be stupidty. |
| Crotoniidae are tiny little soil mites that have reproduced asexually for what is estimated to be hundreds of millions of years. These little guys are no bigger than the head of a pin, and they've had a longer dry spell than Death Valley. Now, through some weird little quirk of nature, the itty bitty mites are getting busy. In a discovery that flies in the face of "use it, or lose it," scientists have found that somewhere along the line the species has re-evolved sexual reproduction. Granted, it is a little bit icky since all the mites are essentially clones, but no doubt it is also revolutionary. So you see, there is always hope . . . even when sex seems like just a distant memory. |
| With an official verified word count of 50,263 words, I'm an official NaNoWriMo winner!! I printed out the official certificate and everything! I'm very excited, but I also happen to be at THE pivotal point in my story, so I'm going to be brief and get back to writing. I just have to share my moment of sheer terror. When I copied my tome and pasted it into the official word count verifier, I watched and waited while things processed. When it was done, it told me my official word count was 1169 words. Holy Shit! Houston we have a problem. I tried it again, making sure I hit select all. I pasted a second time and got the same freakin' number. At this point I was thinking that galinago might have figured out some way to play the world's meanest prank on me. (I've never trusted lawyers )I went into my novel for a third time, and this time I didn't use the select all. I manually highlighted and scrolled through all the text. I copied and pasted one more time and waited again. Imagine my joy when the "YOU WON!" screen came up. |
| I received an email at work yesterday about a new Google feature. Try it out. Go to Google and enter a US residential phone number using a standard (123) 456-7890 format and search. I did this and my name and address popped up. Yep, reverse phone book. Right next to the listing of my name and address was a map hyperlink. Click on that and Presto! . . . a map to your front door. Scary shit if you ask me. Fortunately you can block access. I did that immediately, but it takes 48 hours to process. Now logically, I realize that anyone can look up my name, number and address in the phone book and then pull directions out of Google, or map quest or anywhere else. Hell, they could go to Google earth and look to see if I still have a trampoline in my back yard. The point, assuming I have one, is that I don’t want to make it any easier than it already is to invade my privacy. In other news... I just about snapped last night. I couldn’t write a damn thing. I researched digital cameras, reviewed Amazon wish lists, emailed my brother for some technical assistance about my daughter’s computer. It was a brilliant stall, but the panic was building. I kept glancing at the calendar. The days are slipping away. I was at 44K and I wasn’t budging from that spot. The greater the panic, the blanker the mind. Finally I snapped out of my stupor at about 11PM. Now it was time to get serious! Damn it! I didn’t come this far just to shoot myself in the foot. I started to write. I bitched and whined a lot, but I hit 45K. I was ready to call it a night. It was well after midnight, and my eyes were glazing over. I reached for my secret weapon. Diet Coke. Yep, it worked. Sleep deprivation and Diet Coke got me through college, and they weren’t about to fail me now. In truth, my brain spins more creatively when it is pushed in this manner (though people who’ve actually attempted to read my NaNo effort may disagree), and I needed every bit of creativity I could suck out of that shiny silver can. Besides, the holiday themed cans are a nice reminder that November is slipping away. I made it to 45.5 K and my brain screamed uncle. “NO!” I shouted back heedless of the children nestled all snug in their beds. I wasn’t going to stop until I got to 46K. If I could do that, then I could make it to the end. Just after 2 AM I ran the word count again. 46,001. I crawled into bed with the caffeine and adrenaline still charging through my system. Four and a half hours later, the alarm went off.  If I can just get in another 2 nights like that, I’ll have this thing in the bag. |
| Well this sucks! I'm the first one up this morning. Everyone else is still cozy in bed and I wish I was too. I should be, but out of courtesy to my husband I rolled out of bed on the first alarm instead of going through my usual shtick of hitting the snooze button for a half hour to wring every possible last ounce of sleep from the night before conceding to the new day. The kids are still off school. Since it is the first day of deer season here, it is somewhat of a holiday. Schools are closed, the boss won't be at work, and don't even kid yourself about being able to get your car services, your trees trimmed, or your furnace cleaned. Anyway, the point is that I'm the only one who has to get up and do anything today, and I'm not a morning person. Being the first one up means that I'm the one who discovered our the cat puked during the night. Sure, I could pretend I didn't find it, but no one ever believes me. On the bright side, being the first one up means the television is still off. And of course, the other good thing about being up early is that it gives me a chance to blog. I've been neglecting this terribly, but it is pretty easy to fall out of the habit of blogging, especially when my head is full of NaNo. Yep, I'm in the home stretch now. I'm at 44,114 words. I wanted to be at 45K, but the sex slowed me down. My main characters finally had their moment when all the sexual tension was about to ignite into a passionate encounter, but at my house, it was in the middle of the afternoon, and I had kids walking in and out around me as I typed. "Mom can we go to the mall?" "Mommy, can I have a cookie?" "Mommy, is it lunchtime yet." GRRRRR! So my big sex scene that might have gotten me another 1,000 words of juicy goodness was reduced to just five. "And then they had sex." Moving right along then. I miss you all, but look at the image Voxxylady  sent! It really says it all. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** PS. My husband just woke up, so at least I won't have to walk the dog! |
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