I haven’t felt like writing much lately.  I feel kinda bad about it because I know some of you come here every day to check if I’ve put up anything new.  But I just can’t get myself to write anything lately.  And it’s not that things are quiet — things are pretty busy, actually.  I have plenty of things that I could write about.  I just haven’t felt like I could open up the website and put anything down in words.

Are we done with winter yet?

Okay.  Update.  Randomness one paragraph at a time.  In no particular order.

Yesterday I accidentally burned my arm while doing my ironing.  I have a burn about 2 inches long on the outside of my right arm.  And when I went to bed, it was rubbing on the bedding, so I asked Justin to help me put an Ace wrap around it, covering the cotton swabs, covering the aloe, covering the burn.  (Don’t blame him for anything that comes after this — it was my stupid idea).  I woke up this morning and discovered I’d cut off circulation to my hand overnight. My hand was numb and tingling and swollen up so much I couldn’t make a fist and the knuckles on the back of my hands were little dimples.  It was possibly one of the freakiest things to wake up to see attached at the end of my arm.  I removed the wrap and started rubbing my hand and making fists to try to get the circulation going and by the time I got to work, it was considerably smaller.  Now, this evening, it’s back to normal size.  It’s not redder than my other hand anymore either.  But it is still a little tingling.  I went to talk with the nurse over lunch and she said there’s no permanent damage and it’ll right itself eventually.  But when we get to the store next, I’m buying gauze and medical tape and not wrapping my arm like that ever again.

Now that I’m working this job and I have more flexibility with my schedule, I’ve gone back to the four 9-hour days and 4-hours on Friday.  This means I get out of work at 4:30.  This means I can make it to the yoga classes held at the other building on Monday and Wednesday.  Which means I’m going to FREE yoga TWICE a week.  And it’s wonderful!  I missed yoga.  I find it interesting and humbling how much I remember about the poses and how much I’m not able to do them compared to when I was doing this more often and how I can do some poses without too much trouble but others are completely impossible for me right now.  Case in point:  Half Moon pose, modified so my hand is on a block instead of on the floor, I can do almost without falling over.  But Cow Face pose?  I can’t even get one leg over the other, not to mention trying to get my hands to grab one another.  Just getting seated to do that pose is impossible.  But I’m getting better and I’m getting stronger and I just have to give it time and keep working.  Plus, on days when I’m not doing yoga, Justin and I are trying to get out to go running, which will also help.

I’m irritated at my doctor and my pharmacist.  I called in early last week to refill two prescriptions.  One of them I got without much trouble.  The other one was out of refills and had to get called in by my doctor.  That was Tuesday.  They finally did that today.  And when I went to pick it up, the insurance won’t cover it until she calls in to explain why I’m taking it.  It’s for restless leg.  I’m taking it so I don’t kick Justin out of bed at night and cover his legs in bruises.  So I paid full price for 5 pills and I’m calling my doctor again tomorrow.  I actually went over to my doctor’s office on my lunch hour today to hand in paperwork to get my prescriptions moved to an online pharmacy, which will (I hope) make this whole thing much more streamlined.  I tried to get her to fill out that paperwork BEFORE CHRISTMAS but she didn’t get it done in the 10-day window that the paperwork required.  So I had to do it again, take it over, talk with the receptionist who told me that they could do it for the prescription that they renewed today (done before the current month’s pills are gone) but they’d like to wait until the other prescription is out of refills.  The whole thing is such a mess.  But at least we got Justin’s meds on the online thing and set up with automatic refills and hopefully won’t ever have to deal with him having to threaten malpractice to a doctor for not renewing his antidepressants.  That was not a fun day.

I have friends over every weekend now — we make dinner and watch Dr. Who.  It’s WONDERFUL.  The friends thing.  Dr. Who is good, too.  But mostly the friends thing.

We had a bunch of people at the house on Saturday a week ago.  Another game night when we open the house to whoever on the game group website would like to come over.  We had 8 people over, I think?  We played Apples to Apples and introduced 4 people to Munchkin for the first time.  It was a blast!

Things that are on my list of things to do at work tomorrow:

• Finish getting R—’s trip to Denver set up with the travel department
• Get the food set up for A—’s lunch presentation to the big-wigs
• Finish linking the cells in the Excel workbook with the source document
• Work the math out to figure out the hours spent per department on this project last week
• Follow up with several people regarding deadlines for projects due this week
• Figure out how to ship that box back to the supplier
• Get a hold of S— in finance and get the right account charged for that event
• Get the standardized template out to the guys for updates on their tasks
• And more…

Things on my list of things to do at home:

• Write thank you notes to Mom/Dad and Grandma.

But for now?  TIRED.  And going to bed.

My hands are already much less chapped than they were on Tuesday.  It’s amazing to me how quickly my hands react to the change in humidity.

I used my new coffee maker this morning.  It was awesome!  We picked up coffee and filters at the store yesterday afternoon.  It’s so easy!  I mean, not as easy as Erica’s spiffy Keurig machine, but still pretty easy.  I’ll try to take pictures or something tomorrow morning when I do it again so I can show you.

We’re pretty sure that what hit me on Monday wasn’t the flu, mostly by the fact that Justin hasn’t had any stomach troubles at all.  Generally, he’s going to catch whatever it is that I’ve got, if it’s contagious.  It’s surprising that I got sick first this time, actually, with this stupid cold.  But my immune system was already taking a hit, so that’s probably how that happened.

I’m already frustrated at being sick.  My nose is sore and flaking and my head hurts.  It’s annoying and I’m ready for it to be done already.  I have stuff I wanted to do in the handful of days between getting home from our trip and going back to work.  But “the best laid schemes of mice and men” and all that.

You know, I just looked up that reference.  Did you know it’s from a poem from 1785?  It’s nearly impossible to read about half of it (link) because of the changes in English, but it’s a man talking to a mouse scampering away from the nest he just plowed up in his field.  (Wikipedia has a translation here.)  I find that interesting.

Anyway, I hope you’re all doing well.  I think I’m going to try to drag our luggage upstairs and try to get some semblance of tidiness to this place.  Or find another anime to watch and drink more hot chocolate…  Decisions, decisions…

Mine consisted of the following highlights:  Watching Justin play BioShock 2, shattering the side of a glass decorative bowl, taking down the Halloween decorations, and watching several episodes of Terra Nova with Justin.

It was a quiet weekend, which was good because Justin’s knee is still bothering him.  He’s been icing it and taking Advil and it’s getting better.  But he’s not able to move around on it a lot yet.

And I had to work several hours of overtime on Friday, putting the whipped topping on the end of a stressful week, so I was perfectly happy to sit on my butt on Saturday, watching Justin play a creepy video game.  We did spend some time getting the house back in order, but then we sat back down again with pizza and watched the first couple episodes of Terra Nova.  It’s a fun show!  It sounded kinda corny to me, looking at the previews, but I’ve been delightfully proven wrong.

After church on Sunday we started cleaning up the Halloween decorations.  I put so much time and effort into cutting out the bats that I didn’t want to take them down right away – but it’s been more than a week and they needed to go.  While working on un-decorating, I accidentally broke the glass bowl that was sitting on the table – it’s one of those rounded ones that we used on the tables for our wedding.  We have a dozen more of them out in the closet, so I’m not heartbroken about it or anything.  But it scared the snot out of me!

I grabbed the edge of it, forgetting that it was full of sand and rocks and REALLY HEAVY, so when I tried to pull it, it gave a loud POP! and I ended up with a fistful of glass shards.  I was standing next to the dining room table, so I shook the glass from my hand onto the table and ran upstairs to wash my hand under water and see how badly I’d hurt myself.  Amazingly enough, I only had one tiny little cut just below the bottom joint of my index finger.  But my heart was racing so fast that the cut was bleeding profusely.  I got Justin to bandage me up because I was too shaken up to do it with one hand, and got him to pull the sliver that I found afterward, and then I just sat still for about 30 minutes until I was calm again.  I don’t know what it was, but it scared me a lot.  I break things all the time, but they don’t usually make me shake the way this thing did.

Justin, wonderful man that he is, cleaned up the glass for me, vacuuming the floor and the carpet and the tablecloth, so I didn’t have to worry about cutting myself during the clean-up.  I could have done it myself, but it works better this way – he gets to feel all defender protective of me and I get to feel protected.  What girl doesn’t like to feel protected now and then by a man wielding a vacuum cleaner?

What’s the phrase?  “No woman has ever shot a man while he was washing the dishes.”

I am SO EXCITED that my sister gave birth to her son yesterday!  I’m looking forward to lots more pictures of Josiah and eventually getting up there to smother him in kisses.  I don’t know when that’s going to happen, since our financial situation for the second half of the year isn’t looking optimistic, but when it happens, it’s going to be awesome.  Especially because it’ll mean smothering all the rest of my nieces and nephews in kisses, too.

We had a lot of fun over the weekend with our friends from out of town visiting.  It’s a pair of sisters, the boyfriend of one, and the two teenage sons of the other.  We had people ALL OVER in our house!  It was great!  We went down to Savannah one day and walked all over, stopping at the candy store on River Street and through the squares.  We had dinner at a Scottish pub and went on a terrible walking ghost tour that we skipped out of early.  By the time we left, everyone was exhausted, with sore feet, and irritated at the tour guide.  But dinner was excellent!

We took them to Hunting Island another day.  It was a beautiful day and we splashed in the waves some, sat in the shade and chatted some, and watched the boys with their boundless energy try again and again to catch a wave with the boogie boards.  The beach was strange, though, because the water was filled with floating wood debris that made it really uncomfortable.  The old foundations of buildings that had long washed away were exposed – the last time we came they were covered in sand.  I had no idea there was so much concrete buried on that beach!  The whole shoreline was changed.  Apparently a big storm came through a couple weeks ago, but I was astonished at how much it affected the island.

The rest of the time, we sat around chatting and playing cards and enjoying each other’s company.  We played a several hours long game of Munchkin, the boys played Halo, I taught the adults how to make bread in a breadmaker, one of the boys showed me some tips for the guitar, and the whole weekend was relaxed and fun and comfortable.  After they left yesterday, the house was too quiet.  I walked around looking at everything that’s not quite in the right places and the piles of bedding and Justin told me not to mope.  “But they’re gone!”  “No moping!”  “But I miss them!”

On the other hand, a couple of our other friends, who live in Beaufort right now, are moving closer to Bluffton.  They signed into an apartment over the weekend that’s 15 minutes or so from our place.  They’re moving at the end of August and that’s going to be awesome.  Okay, not the moving during a horribly hot time of year part because that’s going to suck.  But having them so much closer is going to seriously rock chickens.  Movie night!!

Meanwhile, have I mentioned that we’re not going to move?  We couldn’t find anything we liked in our price range.  So, that’ll hold off for another year, I guess.

My plans for this evening include cleaning our bedroom and the bathroom so they’re back the way they’re supposed to be, and maybe the kitchen because I’ll be in there making a loaf of banana bread anyway.  Maybe watching some television, or reading the book I’m supposed to finish before book club on Saturday.  Eating leftovers for dinner.  And going to bed at a decent hour.  It’s going to be exciting!

The smoke from the fires in Florida are so bad today that there’s a haze everywhere, even up as far north as our house in South Carolina.  At work in Georgia, I can smell the smoke even when I’m inside the building.  It took me a while to figure out that it wasn’t because the smoke smell was stuck in my hair, but that it was actually coming in through the ventilation.

And meanwhile, the people in Minot, ND, are looking at flooding eight feet higher than the record.  Eight feet more water than the last time they had major flooding?  That’s a LOT of extra water.

Where on earth is it going between there and the coast?  Can anyone explain that one to me?

In other news, I saw a great way to annoy people this morning:  Remind them that they need to attend a meeting, and then when the meeting starts, close and lock the door and turn away all people who show up to the meeting late.  While it’s a very good reminder that promptness is required, it’s really confusing to the people locked out and adds the burden of letting those people know what happened in the meeting to the people who were good enough to show up on time.  I have a hard time arguing with the fact that it’s an effective way to keep the meeting on track and inform people of what the leader thinks of tardiness.  But I’m not totally sure I agree with the tactic.

In other randomness, because I’m really just bouncing from one thought to another here, I realized that I have a strange fondness for documentaries on yoga.  I was checking out our Hulu Plus subscription last night and while I found a lot of interesting things that I would enjoy watching on there, I settled on watching a show about the yoga industry and how much money is in it and the controversies about that. (Should a yogi be interested in the money or is that against the very principles of yoga?  How about competitive yoga?  Is it an ancient tradition or is it a perversion of the practice?)

I’m not sure how I feel about a lot of those issues and my own yoga practice is in a sorry state.  I haven’t been to a yoga class in ages, since the gym closed down and I haven’t got the money to go to the yoga studio in town.  But I do enjoy yoga and I find it interesting to listen to the conversations about it.  It’s one of those things, like playing the guitar and speaking multiple languages, that I wish I could do well but haven’t found the patience to actually commit to doing.

I expect that I’ll be at work for at least part of the day tomorrow.  I have some projects that need to get caught up and there’s just not been enough time to do it.  Plus, being out sick on Tuesday didn’t help me much with the task load. On the up-side, after next week, I get a full week of vacation!

What that looks like is this:  Today I’ve had unsweetened applesauce, a Cobb salad, an apple, carrots, a sugar-free Peppermint Patty, and sunflower seeds.  For dinner we’re having Manwich, which I’ll put over squash.  And then I’ll have a sugar-free ice cream bar.  Yesterday’s dinner was a huge salad with a hard boiled egg, strawberry, sunflower seeds, and dressing.  But Monday’s dinner was pizza, boneless wings, and a bread stick, which I enjoyed completely – and was the reason why I ate mostly vegetables all Tuesday.

It’s a process.  Some days are easier than others.  But it’s working, as evidenced by the -15 pounds, and I can feel it when my body doesn’t like what I’ve been eating – mostly by the twitching in my legs when I’ve got too much sugar in my system.  It’s really annoying.

Anyway, we’re pretty sure we can get phone service in the house most of the time now, so feel free to call if you’d like.  That’s a really random transition, but it was the topic of the last couple posts here, so I figured I should follow up on that item, too.

In other news, it’s hot.  And the weather keeps saying that it’s going to rain.  Every day, the little icon for thundershowers shows up on my calendar.  But every day I go home on bone dry roads, leaving my umbrella in my office in case I need it tomorrow.  We need the rain.  The backyard is brown and crunchy.  Vines in a pot that I ignored have completely dried up and died.  I think even the bugs have given up on finding anything alive in our backyard.  Justin and I look out at it and say, “We should really water that,” but we don’t do it very often because it’s such a waste of water.  And besides, the weather says it’s going to rain tomorrow.  I’ll be sure to have my umbrella ready.

Justin and I went to the beach last Saturday afternoon and spent several hours enjoying that.  It’s a long process to initiate, so we have to enjoy it for several hours to make it worth it.  After all, there’s packing the car and making sure we have everything we need; there’s the 90 minute or so drive; there’s the pulling everything from the car, walking to a place on the beach, and setting everything up; and then there’s the thorough application of sunscreen.  In the end, our encampment involves 2 umbrellas, 2 lounge chairs, towels, sunscreen, a couple books, possibly some food, definitely something to drink, 2 boogie boards, and a wrap for me if/when I get cold.  And after we’ve enjoyed the beach, we have to take it all apart, walk it back to the car, drive all the way back home, unpack the car, and then shower all the sand out of our hair.  It takes time, so the time in between had better be worth all the trouble.

And it usually is.  Saturday was definitely no exception.  We got there as the tide was coming in, so we set up really far back on the sand so we wouldn’t have to worry about the water.  Because the tide was incoming, the waves were fantastic (for this part of the coast) and we spent a good amount of time splashing around in the water.  It takes a while for me to get over my anxiety of the water — I worry about getting out too far and not being able to make it back in and I worry about not being able to touch the bottom and I worry about getting attacked by jellyfish or other sea creatures.  But Justin is patient and eventually I relax and we have a blast.  Saturday, I got tired more quickly than he did (plus, I had to take a break after I get a lot of water up my nose) so I spent time in the shade while he kept on playing. Which is why he ended up with an impressive sunburn while I didn’t.

So we spent a chunk of time in the water and then a chunk of time on shore, reading in the shade of our umbrellas, and then more time in the water.  And the whole time, the tide was coming in.  The crowds started thinning out as there was less and less beach above water level.  And the people who were staying had to keep a close eye on their things to make sure that they didn’t lose anything to the waves.  Every now and then there’d be a cry of “Oh, no!” as someone’s towel got soaked by a far-reaching wave.  Justin eventually moved all our stuff to the grassy bank behind us — the sand where we were sitting runs up to a part of the beach that’s suddenly about 2 feet higher and covered in marsh grass.  So he put everything up on that so it’d be sure to stay dry.  And then we just sat there as the waves came closer and closer to our chairs and then under our chairs and then sunk the chairs in the sand several inches as the water washed past.  It was so cool!  And really relaxing.  And Justin packed up the car while I sat there enjoying it and then we dug my chair out of the sand and went home.  Where we covered his upper torso with lots and lots of aloe.

It was a great day!

But if you call, I’ve got voicemail set up now and hopefully it’ll let me know when I’ve missed a call by letting me know I’ve got voicemail.  So feel free to call!  And I’ll call you back when I figure out how.

In other news, I’ve got a snippet of a song stuck in my head and I need your help to figure it out. It’s just the lyrics for a tiny part of the song, but I can’t find it online.  It’s a song from when I was in high school, I think.  Maybe college.  I’m not sure.  But the only part of the song I can remember is this:

“Just trying to take a left, just trying to take a left, just trying to take a left! Why are you trying to take a left?”

Any ideas?  Please let me know; it’s driving me crazy.

Last night for dinner, we had honey mustard chicken.

• Take 2 breasts of chicken, salted and peppered to taste
• Mix together:
  • ¼ cup of honey
  • ¼ cup of spicy mustard
  • ½ teaspoon of paprika
  • ½ teaspoon of parsley
  • ½ teaspoon of basil
• Put the chicken in a small, lightly greased baking dish and spoon half the mixture over the chicken.
• Bake it at 350* for 30 minutes.
• Turn the chicken over and spoon the rest of the mix over that side.
• Bake it for another 15 minutes or so, until the juices run clear and you’re sure the chicken is done.

I ate it over spaghetti squash.  Next time I do this, I’ll remember that the squash will need to cook hotter and longer than the chicken because it was still a little crunchy when I took it out.

Yesterday the VP over my area had his monthly performance review meeting and I had to give a quick presentation on the 5S status in the area.  To give you an idea of how out of my depth I was in that company, let me quickly explain my organizational chart.  First there’s me.  I report to A. He reports to B.  B is the group head for my department.  B. reports up to C, who’s the director of several departments.  There are several level B guys under C.  C. is one of several directors who report up to D.  D. is one of several VPs who report up to the president of the company.  I’m pretty sure that broadly covers how we’re organized.  So yesterday, I gave a presentation to the level D. guy for my area.  I don’t do a lot of public speaking and especially not to people who get paid that much.  Hopefully I didn’t stumble around too much and I hope I answered all his questions adequately.  The director (level C) came over afterward and thanked me for doing my part at the meeting, which was really surprising.  He’s not a man who gives out positive feedback very often.  So that was nice.

I’ve been wearing makeup to work the last couple of days.  Yesterday, obviously, I had the important meeting.  But I read some articles that said studies show that women in business who wear makeup and skirts are more likely to be respected and advance in their careers than women who don’t.  Also, people who smile a lot are more likely to be trusted.  So, I already like to wear skirts more than pants, so I’m good there.  And I’m pretty good at smiling a lot.  So I’ve started wearing a little makeup, not because I feel like my face needs it but because it’s a tool to try to get more respect at work.  It’s taking some getting used to.  I’ve got to schedule more time into my prep time in the morning.

One of the things that’s really frustrating me at work right now is the amount of perceived self-importance.  I get really tired of dealing with people who think that they’re more important than anyone else around them or that their little piece of paper is more important than whatever else I’m working on right now.  I understand that I’m a small duck on the totem pole, but I’m really tired of hearing the squawking from the rest of the puffed up geese around here.

Justin and I have been playing a video game together that’s got a lot of “go out into the woods and find these items” or “go out into the woods and kill these birds” and stuff like that.  It’s a lot of fun!  My brain is a strange place, though.  Driving into work this morning, I saw a bird land on a wire and thought “What kind of bird is that?  Is that one I need for that quest?  Target the bird to see what kind of bird that is.  Tab.  Click.  Wait, I can’t actually do that!  Dang it!”

Happy birthday, Tim!  I know he doesn’t read my blog, but let him know that I remembered, Erica?  He probably doesn’t care, but I wish him a happy birthday anyway.

I tried my first pistachio on Tuesday.  It was yummy!  Very salty, even though the sodium count wasn’t too bad.  I had a handful of them and enjoyed them.  So I threw some in my lunch bag yesterday for snacking on during the day.  When I went to eat them, I got through 4 of them before my throat started itching and swelling up.  It’s so annoying.  I took a children’s strength allergy medication and felt fine a little while later.

On a slightly related note, if anyone knows where I can get Emerald’s Sweet and Salty Dark Chocolate and Peanut Butter mixed nuts for cheap, let me know.  I have a serious addiction to those nuts and, besides the addiction, they haven’t effected me poorly at all.

I’m also really enjoying sugar free Peppermint Patties.

If you don’t hear from me again for a couple days, we have plans with friends for most of the Memorial Day weekend.  I expect that our days will be filled and our evenings exhausted.  But I’ll try to post pictures later.

Yeah, it’s been a little crazy around here. 

Starting on the work-front, since I’m doing this on my lunch break, has been insane.  We finished two projects earlier this week and are hoping to finish another one this afternoon or tomorrow.  And besides that, I have three documents that I was supposed to have submitted on Monday in order to get into a 30-day window for it to be reviewed, and I’m still not done.  And they’re moving the date back a week, so I have even less time now to do it all.  PLUS, we’re moving from one side of the buidling to the other side and everybody packing and trying to figure out what can fit into the new area because it’s smaller than where we are now and what’s going to go where, and because there’s two groups of us in the area and such very little space, there’s been low-level fighting with the other group about who gets to use which space.

If I didn’t enjoy moving so much, this would be more challenging.  But I kinda like it, so it’s kinda fun.

I’ve been working super-late (7:00) for the last couple days to get things done and catch up on some time that I was out for a meeting Tuesday morning, so my evenings have been very short once I get home.  I’m trying very hard not to work tomorrow, but right now (just before 12:00), I’m not sure how that’s going to go.

I did manage to bring something home from work, apparently — there’s been a nasty cold/flu thing going around and although I haven’t had any effects from it (tea and water and hand sanitizer and yea!), I think it skipped right over me and into Justin, poor guy.  He hasn’t been feeling great the last couple days.

On the away-from-work stuff, we’re still waiting for the Admissions department from Justin’s school to process his letter and get that started.  There’s nothing we can do until they open it up so he can start school again, so we’re just stuck waiting.

This Saturday we have a couple people coming over to play cards and have cake with us — one of them has a birthday on the 22nd, so we’re sharing cake.

Um . . . what else has been going on….  Last Saturday we helped Habitat for Humanity in a place they’re working nearby.  It was mostly moving mulch around and making the properties look nicer.  But it was still hard work and good stuff to do.

Last Sunday I sang with the band at church and it was a lot of fun.  This Sunday is my birthday and I’m hoping for a pretty low-key day.  Order a pizza, watch a movie with Justin.

Anyway, yeah.  Most of my brain right now is stuck:  What else needs to get boxed up and labeled for the move?  Is there anything else I can plan ahead for in order to make this go more smoothly?  And what is up with the drawing for the monitors for my document?  Why can’t I find the drawing that shows me where the monitors go?  And the 50/60 Hz power?  What’s up with that?

So that’s that.  I really hope I don’t have to work tomorrow.  I’m probably going to be here again until 7:00 or so tonight.

It’s been a really loooooooooong week.

Cheers!