If you missed my email, the anxiety from my last post was because of an interview.  I still haven’t heard anything back from that, but I didn’t expect to until late this week or next week.  I’m not sure how good my chances are, but I’ll be sure to let you know when I know something.

I’ve found a gym to replace the one near my house that closed.  There’s a YMCA near work that has a deal with employees.  It’s a little further away from the house, but it’s significantly cheaper.  And they do offer a Zumba class on Wednesdays at 5:30.  So I’m heading there after work on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the foreseeable future.  It’s not bad!  And I get home for the evening earlier since I’m going directly to the gym and then going home, instead of the other way around.

I’m going to a symposium for work.  I don’t know how I managed to score an invitation – no one has admitted nominating me.  But it’s in Orlando in a fancy, swanky hotel and all my expenses are paid and I get paid to be there and the talks are all about Lean and process improvement and I’m very excited about the whole thing.  Justin’s coming with me because he can stay in the hotel for free and only have to pay for his food and he’ll just bring the netbook and work from the hotel.  He doesn’t get to come to the fancy dinner at the end of the symposium, and that’s a bummer, but it’ll be wonderful to have him there.

From the symposium, we’ll drive up to Luke’s wedding.  We’ll actually spend Monday – Wednesday night at the symposium, Thursday night at a hotel on the road, Friday and Saturday night at a place near the wedding, and Sunday night at another hotel on the road.  We won’t stay in our own bed for a week!  But looking at the price of tickets (greater than $500) and the price of hotels and gas (less than $500), we decided to take the less expensive way, even through the drive will be really long.  It’s going to be interesting!  And the wedding is going to be awesome!

Meanwhile, I’m trying to keep up with tasks at work.  There are a lot of projects to complete in the next couple weeks and I expect them to stack up more than they’re already stacked.  It’s just the way things go.  “Oh?  You’re busy?  Let me give you more to do!”

But it’s not bad!  In the evenings, Justin and I might make dinner together and watch an episode of Pushing Daisies or Eureka, both excellent shows if you’re not familiar with them.  Or we’ll poke at our computers and relax.  His work stuff is going slower than we’d like, just because people are slower at responding to requests for information than we’d prefer.  But we’re still optimistic about how it’s going to work in the end.  Things might be tight right now, but life is still so much better than it was when he was working for the Awful Place.

So life is good!  Busy!  But we make time to relax and maintain our sanity.  Before money got tight, we bought a year-pass to a beach not far from here, and we might head up there this weekend.  It’s a great way to get away from it all for a while, and then I sleep for the rest of the afternoon because it’s exhausting!

It’s a great life!

My handsome and supportive husband actually walked me out to my car this morning.  If that’s not love, I don’t know what is!  He got up, helped me collect all my stuff, walked me out to my car, gave me a hug and a kiss, and stood there waving until I drove away.  And then he put the recycling out for the trash guys to collect.  I am a lucky, lucky girl, people!

I spent my morning trying to figure out what it was I was stressing out about before I left in June.  Lucky for me, I’m an efficient person and I left myself notes.  “Do this first!”  Unfortunately, I’m more efficient than the people who are preparing the data I’m now waiting to review.  It makes for a slow day, which, actually, would be a great way to get back into the work world.

Know what makes it less so?  Getting nerve-wracking news slightly before noon that I can’t talk about on here and I can’t stop thinking about.  News that’s going to take up most of my evening and keep me awake with anxiety and resolve itself either in part or in whole tomorrow afternoon.  (No, I’m not pregnant.  Stop it.)

I’ll write about it eventually, but for now I’m just going to be frustratingly oblique.  So why bother even mentioning it?  Because I can’t stop thinking about it!!

So nervous!  So anxious!  So . . . TOMORROW!  Gah!

Today was my last weekday of not working.   I’ve got the weekend and then I’m back at work.  I’ve been depressed about it all day.  It’s been a wonderfully relaxing vacation.  I still haven’t worked out how we’re paying all our bills at the end of the month . . . .   But we’ll make it.  Creatively, I’m sure.

Anyway, I’m all kinds of grumpy so I’m going to head off and make some carbohydrate-heavy dinner and then relax.  Because I can. 

Cheers!

A little flashback for a minute here:  Justin quit his job on June 23rd.  He handed in his resignation, effective immediately.  He said that he’d help wrap up a few projects, but that he was done.  Not working for them anymore.  Q-U-I-T-T-I-N-G.

He worked on projects for them a little bit for the next week and then we went out of town for a week.  And then he spent a little more time late last week working on things for them.  But the whole time, he’s been pushing that he’s done.  He’s not doing projects; he’s wrapping up stuff and he’s gone.  On, I think it was Friday, they brought him a hard-drive to put files onto so he could give them projects from his home computer and wrap up that stuff.  Monday, he had other work, and they knew about it, so he didn’t answer when they called.  Fourteen times.  When he did call them, he offered to get the drive back to them, but they didn’t want to come pick it up that day.

You can see where this is going, right?

People from his former employment (either the boss and a coworker or just the coworker, I’m not sure) pounded on our front door Wednesday morning for TWO HOURS.  That’s two full hours of knocking and pounding and yelling at the house, interspersed with moments of quiet when I’d sit there hoping that they’d finally gone away.  Oh, heck no, I didn’t open the door!  When people pound like that on my door, I’m not opening it up!  No, no.  I hid up in my bedroom, away from windows so they couldn’t see that I was home.  And tried to concentrate on other things than the people knocking stuff off the backside of the door because they were pounding so viciously.  People who stood outside in upper-80* weather in 85% humidity for TWO HOURS.  People who freaked me the heck out.

Also, people who are apparently a little stupid.

After 2 hours, the police showed up.  Inside my house, I was happily promising to bake cookies for the wonderful neighbor who’d had the sense to call the cops on the lady (because at that time I was sure it was just the one coworker—if the boss had been there, he’d already driven off in a huff) who was trying to break into our house by repeatedly banging on the front door.  (Why hadn’t I called the cops by then?  Good question . . . .)  Anyway, the heroic officer asked the woman for her ID, asked what was going on, and sent her away.

Sounds about right, right?

Here’s the funny part—the disgruntled ex-boss was the one who called the cops.  Yeah!  He called the local PD to come to our house to help figure out why I wasn’t answering the door!  So when the officer showed up, well, (1) the lady coworker was the only one still there because the boss left her to handle the mess and (2) the officer was not inclined to be helpful to the lady who’d been pounding on the door of what might be an empty house for 2 hours.  (Yes, I was still pretending to not be at home—don’t judge me, I was terrified!)  In fact, when the officer heard that she was trying to get back a hard-drive that she’d GIVEN to the homeowner who had offered to RETURN it, he laughed at her.  And then gave her a warning and told her to leave.

Justin sent a delightfully nasty email to his former employer and coworker later that afternoon telling them that the behavior was unacceptable and that he was done doing work for them.  Not still finishing stuff up.  DONE.  He wasn’t going to work for people who pounded on the door of his house and terrified his wife.  He would leave the hard-drive in our mailbox and they could either pick it up, or he’d destroy it.  And I’m not fully expressing the emotion that he put into his email, but he was angry.  He was Steamed with a capital S.  His protectiveness for me came out full-bore and he wrote that email like a paladin would have stormed into the dragon’s den to save the princess being held hostage.  He was really, really mad.

His coworker called crying and apologetic about the whole thing, saying that she only pounded on our door because the boss told her to do it.  To which Justin said that the Nazi’s couldn’t get away with that excuse, and neither could she.  If I had called the cops and if I had answered the door when the officer showed up, I could probably have pressed charges and then she would be the one in trouble because she was the only one still there.  I’d love to see how a judge would react if she stood up there and said, “My boss made me do it.”  That sort of thing doesn’t fly once you get over the age of, oh . . . 8 or so.

But she told Justin what had happened on her end of the story (which is how I know the cop laughed at her) and asked him to tell me that she was really sorry.  She came by this morning and collected the hard-drive (we were at the beach) and left a note on Justin’s car apologizing again (and again said she was “just doing what [she] was told”) and now we’re done.  Justin is forgoing payment for the work he did last week and we’re not having anything further to do with this company.  And people, it feels SO GOOD.

Well, after chatting a little bit, he said that he could “push out” my payment for a month.  I should just keep on coming in like normal, but they wouldn’t charge me in July for my membership.  I thought, “That sounds great!  What’s the catch?”  And I went home and told Justin about it and he said, “That’s great!  What’s the catch?”

Well, I found the catch, people.

I went to the gym tonight for the first time since the 28th — we’ve been out of town and busy doing other things, so I hadn’t been in until today.  I thought it was odd how many of the 30-minute parking slots were open, but I thought maybe the complex was getting more strict on parking times or something.  And then I got to the door and it was locked.  And the swipe thing for my card didn’t work.  And the whole building was really quiet.

And I thought, “Well, that’s weird.  What don’t I know?”  And I went home.  “All dressed up and nowhere to go!” I told Justin when I got home.  We were both baffled because we couldn’t think of a reason why the gym would be closed.  And why their website was missing when I looked it up online.  I finally found this written on their Facebook page from June 30:

Friday at 6pm is the official time that we’re closing for good. Thank you to all of our members that have supported us over the years. Good luck to everyone in achieving your fitness goals!

Well, I guess I won’t need to pay my membership for July!  What the heck?!  Seriously, there was no indication at all that they were closing down — they were still doing sign-ups for programs and promoting different classes and NOT ONE PERSON was saying anything about being closed.  Even when I was at the building tonight, there wasn’t a sign that the place was closed down for good.  If I hadn’t found it on their Facebook page, I would have gone back on Wednesday and wondered AGAIN what was going on!

So I’m bummed out and I’m frustrated.  Frustrated because they really did a crappy job with the PR on this one.  I mean, not even a sign on the front door?  “Sorry, we can’t pay rent.  Good luck finding another gym.”  It would have been nice guys.

But I’m bummed because now I’ve got nowhere to do Zumba.  And I’ll have to figure out if there’s somewhere to do yoga that’s not too expensive.  And I don’t have a reliable scale or a body-fat percentage thing so now it’s not going to be nearly as much fun to lose weight.  And gosh darn it, I enjoyed going to the gym!

This catch sucks.

Wednesday:

• Awake at 3:30 to drive to the airport in Charleston.  Drink 30 oz of coffee and get VERY WIRED.
• Fly from Charleston to Chicago.
• Fly from Chicago to Milwaukee.
• Sit in Milwaukee for a long time because our flight was delayed.
• Find a used bookstore in the airport.

Bookstore where?

Renaissance Books

• Fly to Minneapolis.
• Collect our rental car and call Nathan and Co.
• Meet Nathan & Co. and Erica & Ltd. at Erica’s house and have a fun-filled picnic dinner.
• Play with nieces and nephews and lots and lots of balls.  Play in the park.

Fun with plastic balls

• Eat s’mores with Erica.
• Go to bed after being awake for about 20 hours.

Thursday:

• Get up to go running with Erica and plod my way through 2.5 miles for the first time in many, many months.
• Ache for the next 2 days.
• Shower, dress, and drive away.
• Chat with Erica and pass things to Chloe until we get to Eau Claire.

Chloe, show me your teeth!

• Have a delightful lunch with Mom and Dad.
• Go to Goodwill to find shoes for Chloe and buy a hat and purse.
• Drive to Grandma’s house.

Grandma's house

• Have a delightful dinner with Grandma and Dee and stay up late chatting.

Friday:

• Get up and have a big breakfast with Grandma and Dee.
• Sit around chatting and working out genealogy and enjoying company.
• Shower.
• Take Chloe to the park and have fun running around.

Chloe on the playground

• Eat lunch.
• Go through my wedding book with Grandma, pointing out people she didn’t know.
• Say good-byes and drive away.

Group shot with Grandma and Dee

• Drive to Knoxville, IA.
• Get lost.
• Get un-lost.
• Hug Grandpa Doug and other people in the dark and not know who they are.
• Get settled into the camper trailer and meet Justin’s aunt, uncle, and cousin.
• Sleep on a mattress covered in plastic, with heads lower than our feet and get a sore throat.

Saturday:

• Get up and chat with people in the trailer while breakfasting and getting ready.
• Wander down to the pond and meet a couple more people.
• Wander down to the barn and say good morning to Grandpa Doug and Great-uncle Bob and a few other people.

Barnett's barn

• Wander down to the tent and meet Great-uncle Jerry and help him wipe down chairs for lunch.

Reunion tent

• Meet a couple more people.
• Run into town to grab some things from Walmart (a pillow, throat drops, hot dogs, a fan)
• Make it back to the farm in time to meet a whole bunch more people, grab a few sodas, and stand around chatting for a little bit before lunch.
• Have an unfortunate run-in with a gust of wind in a billowy top and face questions about whether I’m pregnant.  Quelch that rumor as quickly as possible.
• Eat lunch.
• Sit around chatting with people.
• Sneak off to take a nap.
• Wander around the property of a distant cousin who raises lilies and hostas.

Randy's hostas

Randy's flowers

Purple flowers

Stone stairs

Grass driveway

Lily

• Jump in the pond for a swim before dinner.
• Meet a couple more people while swimming.
• Go to dinner in a different outfit than at lunch.  No billowing.
• Meet even more people.
• Cheer for the talent show.

Grandpa Doug on harmonica

• Cook s’mores.
• Chat with people until dark.
• Watch the men clear up chairs and tables in preparation for inclement weather.
• Move trash bags to the side so they wouldn’t wash away.
• Walk back to the trailer in awe of all the lightning bugs.
• Die of heat while trying to sleep, even with the fan blowing, with a sore throat and feet higher than our heads and a loud plastic wrapper on the mattress.

Sunday:

• Wake up, breakfast, shower, dress.  Feel very groggy, head-stuffy, throat-achy.
• Go to the high school for lunch because of the expectation of rain.
• Cram 130+ people into the high school cafeteria.

Barnetts in the high school cafeteria

• Meet a few more people.
• Eat delicious lunch.
• Release a microphone to the masses.
• Hide in the bathroom for a little bit.
• Walk around the school with Justin a little bit.
• Leave messages on Gillian’s phone.
• Drive back to the farm.

Barnett rock

• Go sit at the barn out of the rain and talk with people.
• Walk back to the pond and watch Justin go swimming while I sit on the dock under an umbrella.
• Change into dry clothes.  Call Gillian.
• Chat with people for a little longer.
• Go see Gillian.
• Chat with Gillian and play with her children for a while.  Forget to take a picture.
• Leave so the kids can get to sleep.  Go out for dinner.
• Watch fireworks as we drive home.
• Go to sleep with sound of rain and cool air blowing.

Monday:

• Wake up, breakfast, shower, dress, pack.
• Throw everything into car.
• Wander up to the barn to chat with people.
• Wander around old homestead house and take pictures.

Git offa my lawn

Outside his childhood bedroom window

Outhouse

Wooden steps

Water wheel

The reason we made the trip

• Sit back down and chat some more.
• Finally say good-byes and drive off.
• Stop for lunch and move our luggage into the back seat.
• Repack everything so it fits into one suitcase while Justin drives.
• Meet Sara at Cheesecake Factory, but walk across the street to Barnes and Noble to work up an appetite.
• Catch up with Sara and wander around the store.
• Go back and have a delicious dinner.
• Wander around the mall a little bit before saying good-byes.

Tickle shot

• Drive to Erica’s house and keep her up late while we finish packing and getting ready.  She braids my hair.

Tuesday:

• Get up a little before 5:00 to pack up, put up the beds, and head to the airport.
• Arrive on time, return the car, check in, make it through security, and only sit a little while before boarding.
• Fly to Chicago.
• Get adopted by an 80-year old woman looking for help getting to her gate.
• Stay more calm about the shuttle bus to another concourse and the time crunch of our layover because of that angelic woman.
• Get to the gate just as they finish boarding and get right on the airplane.
• Fly to Charleston.
• Collect our luggage, find the car, and drive home.
• Pile everything inside the house.
• Shower and curl up to relax.
• Fall asleep and sleep for about 15 hours.

And as a bonus! Wednesday:

• Relax all morning.
• Go to our financial advisor appointment and start making good plans.
• Go to the grocery store.
• Get a flat tire leaving the grocery store.
• Watch Justin put on spare tire.
• Go home and unload the groceries and tidy the kitchen while Justin sorts the luggage into dirty laundry hampers.
• Eat a late lunch.
• Take the car to Tire Kingdom.
• Buy a new tire.
• Go home.
• Find out that Justin’s old boss and coworker had shown up AT THE HOUSE to ask why he hadn’t been answering his cell phone.
• Laugh delightedly that he no longer works there.
• Relax for the rest of the evening.

After dealing with inter-personal issues at his workplace for many, many months, he’s taken the plunge and is going to work for himself!  He went in this morning and told them that he was leaving and it has been an EXCITING and SCARY thing all at the same time.  We’re very excited about the opportunity for him to step out and open his own business.  And we’re also scared about the whole idea that there might not be anything underfoot when he steps out.  But we’re trusting that it’s going to work out!  We have plans!  Plus, Justin had a really great meeting this afternoon with a business who is going to use him as their contracted web designer (and pay him two times as much!).  And there are a few other balls that we’re trying to catch, too, but I’ll stay mum on those until we actually hear more from them.

Anyway!  I couldn’t write about it before, for obvious reasons, but now you know!  It’s kind of scary!  But Justin’s learned a lot in the two years and some that he’s been working there and we’re excited about seeing how well we can handle this on our own!

Pray for us!  We could really use it! 

I’m back on the diet again after taking about a month off to handle with stress and not logging while we had company in town.  But I’ve been logging again for 15 days now and my scale at home (that’s not terribly accurate) gave me a whole long line of 0’s on Saturday that made me very excited.  It’s gone back up a couple pounds, but that’s what happens when I sit down with a bag of M&Ms on one day and a big plate of Kung Pao chicken the next.  But I thoroughly intend for it to be back down again by Saturday.  I might not make it down the full 50 pounds before my doctor appointment at the beginning of September, but I’m going to be pretty darn close!

I don’t know exactly how much weight I’m going to end up losing in the end, but my goal right now is to get my body fat percentage down around 25%.  Wherever I land poundage-wise is where I’ll end up, but I want to get that percentage down there.  I started at 42.2%.  Right now I’m at 38.2%.  Once I get under 32%, I’ll no longer be considered “obese” and THAT will be a very happy day. 

The car thing is an end as far as I know.  I finally called the claims department on Friday to ask what the progress was on the file and they told me that they had denied the claim.  Wohoo!!  I mean, the woman didn’t have a leg to stand on but it’s still nice to have things work out the way that they’re SUPPOSED to work.  I didn’t hit her, I shouldn’t have to pay for it.  And I’m not!

As far as I’m concerned, the matter is now closed.  She can try to appeal the decision or take me to small claims court, but the insurance is going to back me up if she does that.  I’m going to assume that she’s not going to be quite that desperate and just stop thinking about the whole thing.  And now I can finally try to get the paint off my car, since I’ve been waiting until everything was resolved to try to work on that.  Before I was just being lazy.  But now I have more motivation to get it off.

There are things happening in the job front that I’m not comfortable talking about right now.  You know that feeling like if you talk about it, you might jinx the whole thing?  THAT.  But hopefully I’ll have news for you there in a while.

I am still going to be briefly unemployed while the whole place shuts down for a couple weeks, but I’m looking forward to the time away from work.  It’ll be nice.  I’m hoping to get a bunch of projects done around the house.  Because, you know, there’s nothing like a vacation to get some work done around the house.  What?  Relax?  I don’t have time to relax!

In more trivial news, I’ve developed an allergy to my face lotion.  I’ve been using it for a while and I’m about halfway through this bottle, but the last few times I tried to use it, I broke out in hives.  It wasn’t pleasant.  My only hypothesis is that there’s almond oil in the lotion.  Of my nut allergies, almonds were pretty low on the list of reactions, so I picked up a box of cranberry-pomegranate granola bars (with almonds) and was eating one of those a day.  And then I broke out in hives from my lotion.  So I’m not eating the bars any more and I’m using aloe vera to moisturize my face, since we didn’t have anything else in the house that would work.  Avoidance is effective and I’m doing just fine.  But it’s kind of a bummer because I was fond of that lotion.

And to end on a more UP tone, I have a trip coming up to visit several people and I’m SO EXCITED about it!  I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’m still just beyond thrilled to get to take this trip.  I didn’t expect to be able to spend time with my siblings and it’s going to be so much fun!  Lots of people know about it, too, because I can’t stop talking about it.  I’ve already started my packing list—I’ve been trying to figure out how to pack everything in a carry-on so we don’t have to check our luggage.

But mostly, I just think, “I get to see the kidlets!”  “I get to see my siblings!”  “I get to see Grandma!”  “I get to see the Barnetts!”  And try to figure out how I could fit seeing more people into the tiny amount of time that we’ll be in each place.  Like Sara!  And Gillian!  And Mom and Dad!!

But before that, I’ve got 3 projects that need to be completely finished up before the end of this week and 3 other documents that need to be released and mailed off for approval before next Tuesday, at the absolute latest.  I have a lot of work to finish up.

Look:

This is a cookie sheet!  It fits perfectly over the sink of our place.  I had it out because I made bread out of the over-ripe pears yesterday and when I washed the romaine it was so easy to just set it on there and let it dry for a bit while I went to cut cucumber.

It worked so well!  The water dripped right through and didn’t spill over the counter like it would normally with our cutting board.  And once I came back to cut the romaine, I just cut it on the cookie sheet, too.  The water kept running on through the mesh instead of all over my counter!

Plus, when I wanted to drop things into the sink, it was just a little ways to reach, and I could see everything that was underneath.  So when I dropped my knife that I’d used for the cucumber, I didn’t have to go groping around blindly–I could see exactly where it had gone.

Anyway, I thought it was a fantastic idea and I just had to share it.  I’ll have more to say soon.

Cheers!

And I am going to do a post about Grandma Mic (is that how to spell her name? I’ve never been clear on that) soon.  Things have just been crazy, making it hard for my creative side to think and write.

More news on that soon-ish.  But for right now, I’m going to play with code a little bit.

OH!  HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, DAD!!!  Love you lots!!