This morning, I had to drag myself out of bed for a 9:00 dentist appointment, which I was late to because I set my alarm to ring at 9:30 instead of 8:30, so I woke up at 9:00 and ran out of the house.  I didn’t even brush my teeth!

And then we had a chiropractor appointment at 2:00 where I got to tell about falling down the stairs and get all the kinks twisted out of my neck.  So many kinks!!

Other than that, and picking up a bunch of stuff from the grocery store, we’ve been incredibly lazy.  Our luggage is still on the floor of the dining room — sprawling open because I dug through there to find my glasses at 9:00 and then pawed through there again to find my new tea infuser this afternoon.

I’m feeling miserable.  My tailbone is still kind of sore, especially after all that sitting on hard airplane seats.  But mostly my nose won’t stop dripping and I’m sneezing.  I keep getting chilled and my sinuses are raw.  It’s probably just a cold, but it’s not any fun at all.

Between the tailbone, the cold, the bruise I got from running into an armrest on the airplane, and the mild case of food poisoning I dealt with on Monday that’s still lingering a little bit, I’m just a mess.

I’m assuming that was food poisoning, anyway.  It lasted all Monday afternoon and evening, but I’m feeling mostly better now.  I got a little green in the grocery store for a while this afternoon, but I haven’t been having the stomach cramps since yesterday.  (Tim, Erica, Luke, and Krista, did any of you also eat the stuffed mushrooms at the Chinese buffet?  I’m trying to pin down what it might have been…)

I miss you all.  It was wonderful getting to see everybody!  And I am happy to be sleeping in my own bed and lounging on my own couch watching TV.  But I’ll be honest:  I almost started to cry several times between Sunday and yesterday evening, saying good-bye to everybody.  It sounds like everyone made it safely back to their destinations, even though several of us are still sick.  And I know we’re all ready to get back into our own routines and prepare for everything that 2012 is going to bring.  It’s going to be an exciting year!  And I can’t wait to see you all again in November!

I love you all!

Justin and I are lounging around in our pajamas, eating breakfast, and relaxing a little this morning.  Our church had a big service last night and no service this morning — most of the ministry staff travels to spend the holiday with family and they encourage the rest of us to do the same:  spend time with loved ones and enjoy!

We’re having people over this afternoon, and I’ll have to get up and shower here in a little bit and make sure that the house is presentable and there are enough clean plates for everybody to use later on.

I’m not sure if I’ll have a chance to call later this afternoon, especially with guests in the house, but I wish you all the merriest of Christmases and I hope you’re having a fantastic day and I can’t wait to see you all soon!  (I texted as many of you as my phone would let me earlier and then realized that some of you were probably in church already — SORRY!)

God bless you all and be well!  I LOVE YOU!

There was a brief interlude toward the beginning of my cleaning quest when my fantastic husband took our Miele vacuum apart to figure out why it wasn’t working.  Turns out the problem could have been fixed by replacing a $100 part OR by putting in a $1.50 rubber washer.  Guess which one we did?  Woo!  $1.50 fix!  And nobody lost an eye to the crazy spring in the cord reel mechanism!  WIN!

So Justin fixed our vacuum and I went absolutely to town on the cleaning.  I dusted, I mopped, I finally got the bedding off the sofa bed that’s been on there for months and months, I dragged all the random stuff that’s been piling up at the bottom of the stairs piled up in my office where I can figure out what to do with it all, I finally strung the Christmas light up the banister of the stairway, and, happy day, I vacuumed!  The vacuum has been broken since before we got our Christmas tree.  This place has been in serious need of cleaning.

I finally stopped when it just wasn’t as much fun anymore, which was maybe 4 or 5 hours of cleaning?  I’m not sure.  But the living room, dining room, kitchen, stairway, and bedroom are looking awesome!  And tomorrow I’ll tackle my office and laundry and getting stuff back up into the attic and maybe pull some of the leaves out of the bushes in the front yard.  I’m not totally sure yet.  I still can’t find the stupid key to the storage closet outside, so I can’t get to the rakes or big trash bags.  And we have been looking all over the place for that dang key!  It’s getting seriously annoying.

Justin thought I was a little crazy because I wanted to clean and I didn’t mind that he wasn’t doing any cleaning to help.  He did help (awesomely) fixing the vacuum and helping take care of the light/fan fixture in the living room.  And tomorrow he’s going to help with laundry and he’ll clean the bathrooms (I hate cleaning bathrooms) and getting stuff into the attic.  But it felt SO GOOD getting the house clean again!  It’s like all this static noise is gone and I can think about other things.  I don’t look in the living room and see how much the end table needs dusting and that there’s bedding on the bed and all the pine needles on the floor.  Instead, I’m thinking about all the mess in my office right now, and how there’s paperwork that needs to get addressed and boxes that need to go into the attic and handwash clothes that need to get washed.  I’ve reduced the mess that I need to think about down to just a handful of places and that’s such an enormous relief I don’t think I can explain it.

After tomorrow, the mess should be small enough that I won’t have any of that static at all and I’ll be able to focus on other things — like getting ready to see everybody over the holiday!

Our neighbors are having a party tonight — I can hear loud bass music pulsing through the walls and people chatting outside.  Justin just went to the grocery store to buy a frozen pizza for dinner.  I’m sitting on the recliner in his office typing this in my pajamas, freshly showered after all that cleaning.

It’s been a wonderful day and I’m looking forward to a continuation of the wonderful for the next two weeks!!

Anyway, I’ve been in a terrible mood and things haven’t been going great, so I’ve been keeping my complained grumbling to (mostly) myself (and Justin and my friends Becky and Julie) and not airing out here.

But!  I’m heading into a busy weekend, so I figured I’d do the typical quick dump of information so you can know what’s going on.

Recap first:
Thanksgiving was great!  6 people for dinner, 8 people around our table, card games, fire in the backyard, pie, chatting with friends, it was AWESOME.

It took us three days to clean up after that – Friday, I didn’t get out of pajamas.

Monday morning, I ran something over in the dark with my car (I’m blaming the guy in the truck with his headlights right in my back window) and got a flat tire.  A gentleman stopped to put on the spare for me, and Justin and I took the car to the shop, where we got 2 new tires, the alignment fixed, and the fuel system cleaned out.  And I stayed home the rest of the day, which was GOOD.  The car is running much better now and I needed the extra day off after all that mess.

Wednesday and Thursday this week I worked 11 hour days to get an extra hour of work done for the department trying to sweep me away from my current department.

Yesterday, the job descriptions for the jobs competing for my attention went up for applications, so over the weekend, I have to apply for one and write a resignation letter for the other – sort of assuming that I’m going to get the one that I apply for since they’re both, apparently, desperate for my attention.

Today I’m working to make up for the hours I missed on Monday and I have A LOT of work to get done.

New stuff!
Today after work, Justin and I are going to a Christmas party/game night at a friends house in Beaufort.  This time, I’m not going to leave our house keys in Beaufort.

Tomorrow, we’re going to get a Christmas tree from the same tree farm we’ve been going to for the last 4 years or so and we’re taking our friends Becky and Julie.  Our friend Elizabeth is meeting us at our house after she gets of work at 5:00 to help us decorate it.  Julie’s making cookies.  Justin and I are making dinner.

Sunday, we’ve got church, an online game with friends in the afternoon, and then we’re probably taking Elizabeth out to IHOP for one last hurrah before she moves away.  She’s been looking for a job closer to her family since we met her a year ago and she finally got it.

And then I’m back into my work week.

I hope you’re all having a fantastic day!  We’ve got the turkey in the oven here, the cranberry dressing chilling in the fridge, rolls rising on the stove, and all the rest of what we’ll need sitting out and waiting for the time when we’ll start putting it all together.  We’ve got somewhere around 5 or 6 people on the way over sometime in the afternoon to share dinner with us.  It’s an “Orphan Party!”  All our local friends who have family too far away to go visit for the holiday were invited over to spend the day.  There’s going to be card games and lots of food and it’s going to be a fantastic day!  I’ve got hot cider simmering in the crock pot and cheese and crackers for munching between now and dinner.

I’m excited!  It’ll make up in a big way for Monday and Tuesday of this week — I had to work through a migraine on Monday and  the remnants of that headache on Tuesday.  Not sure what it was that set off my headache, but it HURT, even though I took a ton of meds for it.  And I couldn’t go home because there was just SO much to get done!  And even more to get done on Tuesday.  It was Not Fun.  So when we finished everything late Tuesday, I asked if it was really going to be necessary for me to work on Wednesday, and since my boss said “no,” I stayed home yesterday — slept in, went to the chiropractor’s, picked up a few things from the store, made a cheesecake, and started getting ready for today.  It would have been nasty to work yesterday and then have to do all of that today instead.  So I’m really thankful for the day off yesterday.  :)

And I’m thankful for the free turkey our friend got from work that she gave to us to use for the meal today.

I’m thankful for my wonderful husband who compliments me so well — I make a mess putting the turkey together and he cleans up the mess!

I’m thankful for all our friends who are going to come over today.

I’m thankful for the job options that I’ve been given, even though they’re giving me headaches.

And I’m thankful for all of you!  I love you!!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Happy today birthday, Justin!

This is why I have to concentrate really hard when people ask me when Justin’s birthday is.  I have to remember it’s not the November date that first comes to mind — it’s one later.  I think I’ve gone over that before.

Today was a really weird day.  I went to work, got a bunch of stuff accomplished as quickly as possible, and then from 9 o’clock until 5:15ish, I worked in another building for another department, learning the ropes from the woman who’s last day at that department was today.  The way it’s playing out, as far as the guy in charge over there would like it to work, is I’ll work 1/2 over there and 1/2 at my current department.  And if/when I take the job there, I’ll keep on working 1/2 and 1/2 until either my current job is filled or a certain length of time has passed.  That way he gets me before I’m hired and my current department gets me after I’m hired and it’s a win-win for both departments.  I might go a little crazy.  And I’m probably going to get a bunch of overtime.  And it’s going to be a VERY strange couple months.

It was fun, though!  The work is definitely stuff I’ll be able to do, and do it faster and better than the lady who was doing it right now.  Mostly just because I’m better at Excel than she is and because I’m WAY more organized.  And the organizing thing is why I’m being pulled into the department because they desperately need someone to get that group of people organized.  I mean, seriously?  Not familiar with lean concepts?  5S?  YOU WILL BE!!!

Probably the most bizarre thing is that the guy who I work with, the guy in charge of my “pod” — his wife is over in this other department and I didn’t know that.  And he didn’t say so when I told him this morning that I was heading over to spend the day with the woman on her way out.  So I got over there and was being introduced as the person helping fill in as possible until the position is filled (we’re not saying that I’m filling it because we want to keep that quiet for now) and she looks at me and says “Kylene?  Like my husband’s Kylene?!  Oh, he’s going to come home crying tonight.”  And she kept giving me sad looks all day long.

He wasn’t at his desk by the time I got back.  And then I worked another hour at my other department getting some things done that had stacked up while I was out.

I have no idea what the rest of my current department thought about me being away all day.  I’m not sure how this is all going to work out, with me working for two different departments.  I should call Dad and ask how he managed it, but I think he managed it by working 80 hours a week and I DON’T want to do that.  I’m excited because I’m not working tomorrow, so I’ve only worked 90 minutes of overtime this week.

Tomorrow Justin and I are celebrating his birthday by going on a date on Hilton Head Island and his birthday present should come by post sometime during the day and the rest of his day will be spend playing Skyrim and I will probably spend watching him play Skyrim.  Pretty, pretty Skyrim.

Anyway.  I’m beat.  It was a crazy day.  I’m going to curl up with my fluffy bathrobe and watch some TV for a while.

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.”

Okay, since last week, my back has gotten a lot better.  Of course, Justin’s back has been killing him in a completely different way, but he’s been sitting on the  heat pack.  We’ll go back to the chiropractor’s office again tomorrow.

Work has been nuts, but it’s only going to get worse as we go through November.  And more on that later, probably.

I did not, however, work on Friday because we had a party here that evening and Justin and I spent the day getting ready.  I’ll do some pictures at the end.  A bunch of geeks we know get together every month or so to play card games.  We switch between who hosts, but it was our turn this time, and it was a whole lotta fun!  I cut a ton of bats out and hung them from the ceiling.  Justin wanted to dress up as Count van Count from Sesame Street, so I dressed up as Countess von Backwards (I’m not making her up) complete with the purple skin and all.  Can I say?  That was a lot more trouble than it was worth.

Anyway, we had Indiana Jones and a cowgirl, a Valkyrie and a dead Norse warrior, a couple renaissance girls, a hippie, an Arabian prince, and a guy who said he was Jimmy Buffett but who just decided last minute to come to the party.  And we had lots of food, played Gloom, roasted marshmallows and told stories over the fire, and had, all in all, a really fantastic time.

Meaning, after all that, on Saturday Justin and I were completely zonked and didn’t get out of pajamas all day.  We showered and put on clean pajamas.  I spent the whole day reading a library book that was due.  And that was it.  We didn’t even get around to cleaning until after church on Sunday.  And then we had friends over again on Sunday (sort of a recurring event) and we played a game of Munchkin with them.

So much of last week was spent getting ready for the party.  I spent a lot of time cutting out bats and getting the house ready.  It was definitely worth it because a lot of people, even kids trick-or-treating tonight, commented on how great the house looks.  But it’s a relief to not be working on that today.

Anyway, stepping back to talk about work for just a minute, we’ve got six or seven projects in the works for November, so it’s going to be crazy busy.  And add to that, a job offer was dropped on my lap today and if I say “yes” the guy offering it would want me to start transitioning over to it as soon as possible — like next week.  It’s an other department at work and it *sounds* really exciting, but I haven’t decided yet.  And the guy offering it asked me to not talk about it, but I think he meant not talk about it AT WORK and I’m pretty darn sure none of my coworkers read this.  (And if they do, they haven’t said anything yet, and I don’t expect them to start now.)  I have to let him know by the end of the week, so you’ll all know as soon as I decide, too.

And now pictures from the party!

Justin as Count van Count from Sesame Street

The Count and Countess -- SO MUCH PURPLE

A view of the dining room decorations

A creepy sofa table vignette

The skull seemed like a necessary element

Ghosts hung out by the dining room light

Bats hung out in the entryway and hall

There were mice along the floorboards

Our late-Norseman

Friends enjoying a game of Gloom

More of our friends

Of course, this means that when I was outside on Saturday, the temperature was so wonderful I didn’t even think to put on sunscreen and got a toasting across my face.  And it also means that I’m driving to work in the dark, wearing a sweater or jacket in from the car, and then carrying that sweater out to the car over my arm when I leave work in the warmth of the afternoon.

It’s wonderful!  Granted, I miss the north.  I miss the colors of the leaves and the fact that you’ve all been wearing sweaters and enjoying this kind of cool weather for about a month by now.  I finally went and got soup at the store yesterday because it’s finally getting cool enough that I can really enjoy hot soup.  And people made fun of my arm warmers because they’re jealous.  Obviously.  I mean, my arm warmers are pink! And fluffy!  And, most importantly, keep my arms warm!

I’ve been opening the window on my side of the bedroom when I go to bed to let in the cool air at night.  It gets warm again during the day, but at night, that cool breeze is delightful.  Unfortunately, my allergies have been acting up since the weather changed, but hopefully it’ll pass soon.  Or, you know, I’ll refill my very expensive allergy pills.  But I’d rather not.

The change of the weather also means that we’re heading into a very busy couple months.  October started out with Family Day at my workplace.  It’s great for families with children who can go play on the moon walk rides and be entertained by the midway games and have the patience to stand in line for a burlap bag and slide down a big slide.  Justin and I stood in line for the Ferris wheel for more than an hour (toasting my face), got some cotton candy, and then went to eat at a local Mexican restaurant.

This coming Saturday we’re helping at the Habitat for Humanity building project doing yardwork.  The Saturday after that is book club, and since it’s the 1-year anniversary of the club, we’ll probably be hosting a movie party at our house.  The week of the 16th is the local Seafood and Arts festival.  And the Friday after that, the last Friday of the month, we’re having a game night party at our house with a bunch of our local geeky friends.

And that’s just October!   November and December are going to be even more busy, I’m sure.  But I don’t mind that much, so far.  I’m looking forward to spending time with my friends and enjoying this fantastically cool weather.  I hope you’re all doing the same!

So!  You get before and after photos.  (Ignore that I haven’t lost any weight and . . . do I always have those bags under my eyes?)

Front view: before the haircut

Back view: before the haircut

Front view: after the haircut

Back view: after the haircut

It’s kinda hard to tell, but she took off about 4 inches at the longest part, and obviously  much more than that along the front.  It’s not showing it great, but there’s feathering along the front from starting under my chin down the length of the front, and then there’s a long layer in the back.  I love it!  I love the feathering in the front and that the ends are nice and smooth.  And it all still pulls back into a ponytail, though I’m sure I’m going to find some hairstyles that I’m used to doing that will suddenly have nice framing locks hanging loose.

And Justin’s haircut was the same one he normally gets — just cutting off all the long bits so it’s not so fluffy anymore.  :)  We’re both very excited about our cuts!