I've been taking it easy for the past few days - still not over my cold, but I'm feeling much better. On the down side, Alex is now sick, but I could have predicted that. It was a quiet weekend - Mom and I hit some garage sales on Saturday (I got a composter!), and we went to the movies on Sunday. The best news is that I finally have patio furniture! My mother had said she wanted to buy us a set, as a thank you for putting her up for the past couple of months. I saw what I wanted (at Target, no less!), but they were sold out, didn't know when they'd get more, blah blah blah. I love Target and the stuff they sell, but they're kinda crap on the whole customer service thing, and they're REALLY bad about stuff that goes clearance. I can't tell you how many times I've bought something that was on special or clearance and it has rung up at full price. If you're not paying attention, they won't catch it. Just last week, Joni and I each bought a copy of "Lost in Translation" on DVD that was on special for $10, but they came up as $14.99....and neither of us noticed until later on when we were home. I hate that. Anyway, we finally, finally got them to sell us the floor model of the patio furniture, since it seemed that the set just no longer existed anywhere among the 15 or so Targets around here....but I'm not complaining. I love the furniture, it fits perfectly on my deck, the chairs have spring frames and are kinda bouncy. I'm looking forward to many morning and evening meals being taken outside.

I'm still sick, and feeling too crappy to come up with anything original or interesting today, so I'll give you a quote that I came across and really liked....

"This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it." -- Abraham Lincoln, 1859

Although I'm still suffering mightily from this cold, I'm back at work today - it's just too hard to be gone for more than a day or so, stuff piles up and everyone decides that they just can't possibly function without me telling them where to go and when. One of them actually called me at home yesterday because they needed an account number to fill out a stupid form. Oh, excuse me if my illness is interfering with your paperwork.

My mother's house is coming along beautifully. I went over last night and helped with some of the painting in the laundry room. The kitchen is a buttery yellow, the living room is a lighter, warmer cream color, the laundry is a yellow called Goat's Beard (???), and then the upstairs guest room is a light moss green, the office/second guest room is a pale blue, and the master bedroom is a light rose color. It all looks amazing. We talked about putting together a before & after book for her to use as a calling card, if she wanted to start hiring herself out for home improvement consulting, etc. I'll post photos as soon as we're done with the work (later this week, early next).

Ugh. I have a cold. I am at work and I don't feel good. How am I supposed to focus on invoices, expense reports and NDAs when my head feels like it weighs 100lbs? I going to try to make it to lunchtime, and then may head home to sleep.

I did have a nice weekend, despite the onset of the killer cold. I worked in the garden, got to visit Tara and Kasey, saw a movie w/ Joni, played with the boys, went to a BBQ, walked with the dogs - sounds perfect, huh? I wish every weekend were as relaxing.

Friday. Vendredi. Viernes. Venerdi. Freitag. Aren't they lovely words?

I'm looking forward to a lazy weekend - no plans other than a matinee on Sunday (Harry Potter, here I come). I was supposed to be hosting a party for BCC volunteers tomorrow, but we decided to postpone until late summer/early fall, just before the program ramps up again. I might be doing a happy hour thing tonight at this new creole place, but not sure yet. I'm feeling pretty footloose right now - only 9 out of the 26 people in my department came to work today, making it a perfect day for me to quietly leave around 2:30pm....I think a manicure/pedicure afternoon are in order.

I know this pic might mess up the page (for those of you naughty netizens using Internet Exploder), but it was too good to pass up. Who knew I was channeling Audrey?


WORSHIP! Your inner Bombshell is the beautiful Audrey Hepburn. Like her you've been blessed with a "certain something" that no one could describe accurately. You are more reserved than other bombshells, and that shows in your gentle, graceful nature. You like doing things for other people and love volunteering for your favorite charity. Yours is a rare gift in this day and age. You don't need to show a lot of skin to be sexy, all you need is your eyes. To see Audrey at the top of her game, watch the movie "Breakfast atTiffanys".

Who is your inner bombshell?
brought to you by Quizilla

I got a new car! What a relief - they took the Exploder off my hands (and will pay the $5000 balance due!), and I got my Subaru. It's called the Outback Sport Wagon, although it's actually in their Impreza line. I didn't do the WRX for several reasons - it's a lot more money (about $7k more than what I paid), the gas mileage isn't as good as mine (I get 28 or 29 mpg, vs. low 20s with the WRX), and I couldn't find a silver one with a manual transmission...they're very popular right now. Also, because of my negative trade, I would have had to put down a small fortune for the WRX. So, last night after work, I took myself down to Mike Shaw Subaru in Westminster, and 4 hours later I drove home in my new car! Subaru has a promo running with 1.9% financing if you do under 60 months, too good a deal to pass up.

I can't believe it's June already! It's amazing how quickly spring flew by. Joey & Mare will be here for a visit at the end of the month, my grandparents are coming out in July, and my brother and his fiance will have moved out (probably Denver-area) by September. Mom should be moved into her new house by next weekend - everything is starting to speed up with her project over there. Hardwood floors and new fence are going in this week, then new appliances and painting next week.

Work continues to be the thing I have to get over every day, but I can handle it for a while longer...although I just had to sit here and have a 10 minute conversation with a man at work that I despise. He can't ever have a conversation with a woman without talking to her breasts, and he is the biggest brown-noser that ever lived. That's 10 minutes of my life that I can never get back.

On the plus side, things are getting more relaxed at home - not so much pressure of travel all the time. I'm sort of bummed for Alex that he's not going to do as many races as he thought, but also relieved that we don't have to spent every weekend on the road, and the beginning of each week recovering from it...today would be a good example. We had a track day in Omaha yesterday, so we left about 6:30 MT, got home about 2am. Since it was so late, I didn't set my alarm, and came in to work at 8:45 instead of my usual 7:15, which means I get paid for an hour and a half less today than usual. Being hourly sucks. Being at the mercy of your employer's idea of work hours sucks, too. I need to get cracking on the programming work, so I can get off this crazy ride...

Can I just say again how much I hate Windows? Why is it that every MS application has to periodically crash?? I walked in this morning to find that all the budget updates I made yesterday (about 3 hours worth of work) were not saved because Excel crashed when I tried to close out last night. Damn! I know there's no use complaining, because this company is unlikely to ever allow us to use anything else for budgeting...although there is someone at work who has convinced The Powers That Be that we should be testing Macs on the network....yeah, the IT department is thrilled about that! They're positively wringing their hands at the prospect of a machine on the network that functions properly without their assistance.

It's been storming here the past few days. The other night there was thunder and lightning that was so amazing - the house actually shook during one roll of thunder. The dogs and cats didn't seem particularly fazed by it, although Ruby doesn't like the lightning (one eye, flashing light, go figure).

The best thing I've read in a long time, by one of my favorite authors: Cold Turkey.

The debate that rages in my mind right now is about a new car - my poor Exploder is starting to scare me a little bit - electrical problems in a vehicle are never a good thing. Besides, Alex teases me mercilessly for having bought a Ford (Dean and Kim are now victims of this same abuse and can empathize). My criteria for a new car are: must get good gas mileage; must be affordable; must not be a Honda, Toyota, Hyundai or Kia; must maintain some semblance of resale value. I think I'm ready to get away from SUVs, and I like the idea of a hybrid (but that kind of knocks out the "affordable" requirement). I'm just about settled on the idea of a Subaru WRX Sport Wagon. It's all-wheel drive, roomy enough for me, the boy and the dog, and gets around 22 miles per gallon. It's a little more than I would prefer to spend, but it will hold it's value really well, especially in Boulder. Also, it's fairly small, and would be much more convenient to drive around town and find parking. Hmmm, I really like it in silver...

BABY BOY! Kasey Quinlan was born this morning - 10lbs, 2oz. Congrats to Tara & Kelly!

Still no sign of Baby G. I talked to Kelly last night, he said they'd been going since about 11am, but not much progress. The doctors were telling them it would likely be early this morning, but I haven't heard from him yet. I'm resisting the urge to call the hospital room and wake them all up just so I can find out whether it's a boy or a girl!

It's the last day of our annual food drive at work, and everyone suddenly wants to participate. I'm going to be weighing bags of food all morning! The company has already met it's goal of 15,000 pounds of food, but we do have a little inter-departmental competition going on, so the funds and food keep coming.

Hey - for those who've been trying to comment, I forgot to leave the permissions off. You should be able to now.

I thought that with school being over, I'd finally be able to relax and have some time to myself. Strangely, that hasn't happened yet. I'm still busy enough at work that I don't have time to work on any of the programming projects that I want to do (Alex set me up with some test stuff, the goal being that I can help him with his consulting workload). He's traveling this week for work, so I thought I'd have time to help my mom at her new house and even work on a surprise for him at home - but my friend Tara is having a baby today and another work friend is having her bridal shower. I want to be able to go see Tara and the baby, and I invited my friend Lucy to happy hour tomorrow....and it would be good to spend some time with my mother, I've been running around like a crazy person ever since she arrived.

Time to go back on a diet! Summer is coming and I feel like a slug. I'm working on my mom to talk to her new neighbor about Pilates classes, and the bike on a trainer in our basement has started calling my name again. I'm eating far better than I ever have before, salads and lots of protein and vegetables, so now it's just a matter of the regular exercise. BTW, I just want to say one thing to all of you skinny girls out there - stop buying all the Laughing Cow cheese! Geez, that stuff is more precious than gold. I just got back from two different stores, and they were both sold out. My friend Kim is exempt from that last comment, because I know how much she loves the cheese, but the rest of you need to stick to Cheez Whiz and nacho cheese spread - I need the Laughing Cow.

It's been a loooonnnnnng few days. We got back from Pikes Peak International Raceway last night - our day of racing was cut short after Alex crashed in his second heat race of the day. It's really too bad, he was having a great day, took second place in his first heat and was in the lead in the second. Thankfully, he's not hurt, but the bike has seen better days. It's going to be a bit expensive to fix, so he'll miss the next few races and will probably only compete in the endurance races after that.

On the work front:
- My boss is in a strange mood, I think he forgot to tell his wife that he's traveling again this week. She doesn't like that.
- The wife of one of my other coworkers passed away on Saturday. She was terminally ill, so everyone kind of knew it was coming, but didn't expect it this quickly. They were married for 30 years, and I can't imagine what he'll do without her.
- I really hated coming here today. Something has changed for me and I no longer want anything to do with this place. I can't even put my finger on what it is. I didn't sleep well last night and have felt strange since I woke up, so maybe that's a lot of it, but still...

There is a whole new look to the blog today - and I welcome all of your comments. I was tired of the old, but not yet ready to try my hand at creating something from scratch. Then I noticed that the "new" Blogger offers some new templates - so I took one that I liked and modified it to include all of the links and topics that I wanted. I hope you like it, too.

I've successfully moved both my phone and now Alex's to T-Mobile. It's such good coverage and much less $$ than we were paying with our old carrier, They-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Now our calls to each other are free, plus to my mother and my boss....and the total cost is about $30/month less...not to mention that the phones actually work at home now.

Renovations have started on my mom's new place, and she's been doing the Meet&Greet with some of her new neighbors. Turns out that not only will her next-door neighbor split the cost of a new fence, but his wife is a Pilates teacher - glory be, I can finally go back to Pilates!

Hmmm. Blogger changed the whole blog setup, so it looks a little funky to me today. I'll have to proofread more carefully, the navigation is not as friendly as it was before.

I'm still kind of stunned that I don't have to go to class anymore, that my afternoons and evenings are once again mine. I can have a BBQ in the middle of the week! I can go shopping, get a haircut, walk the dogs - any day! This new freedom feels pretty damn good, I must say. Thankfully, I have several months to enjoy it before school starts up again in the fall. I'll be ready to go back, I'm sure.

Grades should be posted for today - I don't really care, as long as I passed. I'm still working on ways to practice my Spanish through the summer so I don't forget EVERYTHING I learned this spring. Maybe Spanish-language supper clubs? Spanish-language film nights? Margarita parties where you are required to speak Spanish?? The possibilities are endless!

Oh my lord, it's Friday and I'm not on a plane or in a car or in another state. I can hardly believe it. My first weekend off in what feels like ages. Actually, today and tomorrow are somewhat busy, but nothing I can't handle. After work today, it's a haircut, then happy hour with my friend Michele, then dinner with Tara & Kelly (Tara being my friend, her husband Kelly is my realtor). Tomorrow I have a Mac class in the morning (how to use Appleworks), then run over to school and take my Spanish final, then down to Highlands Ranch to a graduation party for another friend who just finished his grad studies at CU.

My mom is really getting moving with the house stuff. She's met with some contractors and some fence people, and is starting to get some of the bids nailed down. She's also having to make lots of decisions about what is most important - painting the exterior over blowing out the ceilings, floors over beams in the ceiling, etc. Hopefully both the interior construction work and the fence will start early next week. Once they get the fence done and get some walls moved in the master bedroom, she'll be able to move in and live there while the work continues.

It's hot out! Cold beer is calling...

I don't care what anyone says about advances in technology - it's hard to check mail and update your blog when you're on the road, borrowing someone's computer, and using a dial-up connection. So here I am, almost 2 weeks since my last post. I've been in Brrrrainerd, MN watching motorcycle races, driving all over Minnesota to get back to the airport, chasing lots of dogs and cats around my house....oh, and we closed on my mom's house last week, so I've had a few things going on.

Now that the house closing and road trip are behind me, life will settle down a bit. Just a little bit. I still have a Spanish final this week, a Mac class and a graduation party this weekend, Mare's birthday and Mother's Day to celebrate, another house guest and race weekend next week - and Alex is away on business for 7 days out of the next 20. June looks like it might be more calm, but you never know.

Have to get caught up at work. More later.