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Pictures From Vegas
Trip wrap up to follow soon…but here are the pics from Vegas.
Maine Trip Report Part Three
Yesterday turned out to be my not do much of anything day. I went to the gym and got my Coolatta of course. I came home and fed the mom and myself and then while mom was napping I headed out to the Turnpike mall to check out the Made in Maine shop(I think I have the name slightly wrong though) to get some gifts for the kiddies back home. I dropped a cool 100.00 there but I think I got enough for everyone and it saves me from getting the cheesy generic gifts last minute at the airport that cost and arm and a leg. I got quite a few tee shirts for Rob because they had some really cute ones with Maine sayings on them that he will get a kick out of I think. Oh and two hats for him.
I also hit up TJ Max because last year I got this really cute pair of platform Mary Janes that I get compliments on all the time but they didn’t have anything that interested me.
On the way home I stopped at Rite Aid to get some Tampons and stuff to treat the blister that I managed to get while running the day before and found another tee shirt for Rob. 🙂
Back home I was hit hard by cramps so I took some advil and later mom ran to Pizza Hut for a quick dinner of breadsticks. I watched a couple episodes of LOST and went to bed.
The power went off this morning around five. I know this because the fan that I run at night on me shut off and that was followed by a rather loud popping sound outside. It wasn’t raining so I’m guessing we blew a transformer or something up the road. I fell back asleep and when I woke up the power was back on so I’m not sure how long it was out. I only know that I overslept and it was already noon. I called the nail place that got good reviews on Yahoo and asked if they had any appointments open today, they did so I showered and boogied on down there.
The first thing she said when she looked at my nails was: “Where did you get these done??”
I had been afraid of that. See, I got acrylics for the very first time two weeks ago at a place just a mile from my house. I had never had them before so I really didn’t know what to expect. It took two hours and in the end they seemed really thick to me but what did I know, I had never had them before. Within a week they were pulling up on the edges and by the time I had gone in today they were pretty ratty looking.
The lady just shrugged and went to work. In a half an hour not only were the edges filled in and perfected but she had also filed down the thickness on the rest of the nails Now I have realistic looking nails, not thick goopy looking ones.
Of course I *would* find the nail tech that I adore and she is in Maine. Hmph.
On the way back to Mom’s I stopped and got a Coolatta and a breakfast sandwich for mom and then headed out for Naomi’s.
On the way to her house I had to pass by the new location of the garage that my ex-boyfriend R worked at. I had no idea if he even still worked there or not but of course I looked as I drove by. There he was, stepping out from the garage, wiping his hands on a rag. Only…his hair was grey and short. Still had the scraggly beard but wait…was he always that SHORT?? Surely he must have shrunk. I don’t remember him being shorter than me and I *know* he didn’t have that giant gut. I mean, he had a beer belly but he looks positively 9 months pregnant now!
I drove on by chuckling to myself. Of course, I am an older and slightly larger version of the girl he must remember too but it made me giggle to see that time hasn’t been especially kind to him. 😉
I got to Naomi’s and we sat around for a while. Her two youngest came in and dissected my purse. I ended up putting a little make up on each of them and letting them play with my IPOD.
Nae’s husband was kind enough to watch the kids while Nae and I ducked out for some Chinese food at Canton Village. I’ve been taking Naomi here ever since I can remember. In fact tonight she mentioned the time I took her and her sister there after getting my 1st paycheck from my first real job. For some strange reason Nae ended up drinking like 15 sodas that day. Not sure why but that is what we always remember about it. Heh.
As we were pulling back into her driveway Naomi shouts: “Oh my GOD Kelly, is that my daughter??”
I pull into a parking space and we both get out to see her two youngest daughters COVERED in mud and sliding down a hill in a makeshift mudslide.
Naomi couldn’t even stay mad as they screamed: “HEY MOM!! LOOK!!!” and took another trip down the hill. Naomi’s oldest Brianna was free of mud but her clothes were not the same ones she had been wearing when we left. She admitted she might have been the one to start the mudslide but she had since cleaned up and stopped.
However, seeing that her mother wasn’t completely pissed about it, she asked if she could head down again and there she went.
It was quite funny and I got some video of it as well as some good pictures.
We went inside and rinsed the two youngest before I took off back for home.
That is where I am, on my second glass of wine and getting ready for a peaceful slumber.
Tomorrow I will be hitting the gym and probably going to see Donna and Terry. After that I’ll be heading over to Maggie’s where Kim will meet us and we will probably go out to dinner or something.
Sweet dreams all!
It's Christmas!
We got a Christmas tree tonight!!!!! Woohoo!
I know that is exciting for most people, but for me it is super exciting!
I remember as a child sitting in awe on the carpet as my father assembled the giant fake Xmas tree that he put together every year. It was one of those hideous dinosaurs that you had to match color to color each inch of the way. My dad would get frustrated but my brother and I were there to make sure we had all the colors of the branches together to give him as he moved on to the next step. It was one of the few things my brother and I agreed upon.
With the tree assembled, we were not able to decorate it just yet. I remember that clearly. My father had had enough with putting it together and wanted nothing further that night.
Being that we lived next door to our grandparents and the fact that they were semi retired, gave them the job of coming over to our house while my brother and I were still at school and putting the lights on the tree.
That was the official go ahead. Once the lights were on, we were free to decorate to our hearts content.
We were nearly giddy all through the school day, knowing that when we got home there would be fresh strands of blinking lights on our artificial tree…not that we could plug them in…no, that was left for the adults. But the mere fact that they were on the tree meant that my brother and I could pull a full force assault on the tree with our decorations, no matter how horrendous they were.
Tinsel was my favorite. Who could ignore the shiny silver glassiness that adorned the “leaves” of the tree. I loved to pull all the tinsel out and just play in it. This was of course, discouraged.
At the end of the day, after the tree was assembled and lit, my brother and I made haste with the decorations. As if that would hurry Santa down the chimney and deliver our presents faster.
After my father left and it was just my brother and I attending to the tree, the magic wore off. After my fifteenth birthday we didn’t even go on with the charade. There was no point. Christmas wasn’t about the tree or decorations. It wasn’t about much other than family for the few slim years we could afford nothing else.
Now…19 years after I have ever possessed or decorated a Christmas tree, I find myself giddy. I want to document the process on video, though it is a small tree on a table. I want to shout from the rooftops that I have a Christmas tree and I surely can’t wait to string up the lights and put the small green and gold ornaments on it. And I might have gone just a little bit overboard in the star that changes color on the top. It will probably weigh down the whole tree and make it droop, but I don’t care. It is Christmas and I have a tree!
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Well, we are here in fabulous Las Vegas and wow are we having fun!!!
We were planning on leaving work at one yesterday but because the office staff was going to be short that afternoon our boss declared everyone leave for lunch at 12 and come back at one. Since we were leaving at one that meant we get to leave an hour early. I didn’t complain.
Rob picked us up and dropped us off at the airport where Jenn and her daughter Maddie met us for lunch. We enjoyed a nice meal and then it was off to go through security where they ran my purse about a thousand times before finding out that my little mono-pod for my camera was not a shotgun.
The flight was okay until the decent of course. I knew that it would be bumpy because of the heat but even the two glasses of wine I drank couldn’t stave off a minor panic attack. Paula was a doll and kept making me laugh so I couldn’t get too worried. In the end she said it was helpful to her that I was a basket case so she couldn’t be.
Finally we were on the ground and after a quick stop at baggage claim to get Paula’s bag we were off and onto the shuttle in no time. In the back of the shuttle with virtually no air conditioning, Paula and I melted a little until we got to the Venetian and checked in.
Up in the room we took two mini vodkas out of the mini bar and had a cocktail while we relaxed a little from the flight. We were giddy with our freedom to put it mildly. It’s not that our husbands are overbearing by any stretch of the imagination but the word frugal comes to mind. Had they been there they would have reminded us that a quick trip to the liquor store downstairs would have given us more bang for our buck and probably would have cost less than the two tiny bottles and can of soda we took out of the bar. And they would probably be right, that is not the point. The point was that we were on vacation and if after a bumpy flight we wanted to relax with an expensive cocktail in the room, then dammit, we deserved it.
Because our flight was late and the shuttle took forever we didn’t have the time we wanted to go gamble a little so we just got tarted up and headed out to the Excalibur for the Thunder From Down Under show.
Once at the casino we got a quick drink and got our tickets from will call before settling in at a bar so we could smoke.
Finally they opened the doors and we took our seats at the first table and waited. There were tons of bachelorettes there so that was fun to see them all dressed up.
I was a little worried because the theater was so small looking. On the advertisements they made it look like a huge auditorium and it was really just the size of a small club with an average to small stage.
Having said that, I ate my words when they guys took the stage! Wow! Not only are these boys HOT, but they are fabulous dancers and everything was so polished and co-ordinated. The energy was through the roof. And I needn’t have worried about the small stage because they kept leaping off of it and dancing on our tables., running through the crowds, grinding on the ladies.
I can’t express how much fun this was. I highly recommend it to any gal that wants to have a good time and be thisclose to some prime eye candy. The only bummer about this show is that you can’t take pictures. No pictures but you are fully encouraged to touch the men. Anywhere you want to. Heh.
At the end they invite everyone to come on stage and have your pictures taken with the boys (for a fee of course) and while we wanted to do that, we realized we’d probably be in line for another two hours if we did so we opted out.
Instead we found a liquor store and stocked up on booze, soda and snacks before cabbing it back to our hotel where we changed into our PJ’s and had some cocktails. It had been such a long day so we decided we would just stay in and fiddle on the computer, having drinks and relaxing. And that is just what we did.
Twice during the night there was some commotion in the hallway that woke us up but other than that it wasn’t a bad sleep. We woke around eight and got ready for breakfast.
That is when Paula and I met Joey Buttafucco.Okay, it wasn’t REALLY Joey Buttafucco but he sure looked like him! He had on a white wife beater with his massive amount of grey chest hair showing through the top, a pair of running shorts and some cute white socks with black bunnies or something similar on them, pulled all the way up with his sneakers. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure he was as much Joey Buttafucco as Pauly Walnuts from the Sopranos. Either way, you get the idea.
He came down on the elevator with us, it was around nine in the morning. He mentioned that us girls were up early. We laughed and said we were starving because we had drank our dinner. He told us that he tried to place a sports bet the night before but they told him he couldn’t. That is why he was up at the ungodly hour of nine in the morning. He started advising us where to go to breakfast, but we told him where we wanted to go and he followed us down in the second elevator to the casino floor, telling us about how the other food place was closer but the one we wanted had a better selection.
When we reached the casino floor he asked us if we knew where to go and Paula piped up: “Yes, we know right were to go!” Even though we didn’t because I’m pretty sure he would have asked to join us once we got there. Heh.
At the Grand Lux Cafe we got a nice yummy breakfast. Paula was a good girl and got the omelet but not me, I was on vacation dammit and got the truckers special. That is why she is skinny and I am not.
With our bellies full we sat down and some machines and played for awhile. We both got a morning cocktail(screwdriver for me and a bloody mary for Paula) and played a while longer. Me breaking even and Paula winning on the dollar slots.
Finally the booze and lack of sleep from the night before hit us and it was back up to the room where Paula played around on the computer and I took a wonderfully relaxing bath in the huge tub while reading my book. Oh that was just heaven!! It left me relaxed yet refreshed.
We uncorked a bottle of wine and talked for awhile before we got ready and went to the wax museum. As usual, it was wonderful. We took tons of pictures and it was so fun. Well worth the price of admission even though I forgot my coupons.
After that we stopped off at the pizza place at the food court where Paula was a good girl and got a salad and I got a slice of deep dish. That is why she is skinny and I am not.
Soon it was time to get all dressed up and go see Phantom of the Opera. I had seen it once before with Rob on one of our anniversary trips and had just been floored. Knowing Paula was such a fan of the movie I popped for the tickets so she could see it live. I knew what an amazing experience it had been for me and I knew she would have the same appreciation.As soon as the curtain was raised she and I were both enthralled in the tale and mesmerized by the costumes and sets. She said it was one of the best things she had ever seen and I was so glad I was able to give her that experience.
After we got back we had some cocktails in the room and talked a lot. Deep, meaningful, booze-fueled conversations. It was cool, but we decided that it was time to go down and gamble more.
We hit a good run on a Sopranos penny slot. We kept winning but the streak turned bad and we ended up losing. It was okay though because we had a helluva good time doing it and it lasted a long time.
We decided it was time to pick up some pizza and head back up to the room. That is where we are now. Paula has retired to bed and I will follow shortly but I had to type out this blog before I forgot some stuff.
Okay…it’s way late and I need to go to bed. This has been an amazing trip and I’m so happy we got to go!
And how was your weekend?
California Wildfires
In case any of my friends outside of where I live are interested, there are a lot of fires going on in California right now. A lot of them were sparked by a lightening storm that we had recently and I am really frightened about how many will be sparked after 4th of July.
They’ve pretty much banned fireworks around here because of the fires and I am glad of that.
Right now there is a fire raging fairly near my house…not alarmingly near but we can see and feel the smoke in the air and there has been ashes raining from the sky on a couple of days.
It’s disturbing to me because of a couple of factors.
The first is that I quit smoking in August and in the past week I have felt the like I was still smoking given the air quality since the fires. My lungs have felt crappy and there has been that nasty dry hacking cough in the back of my throat in the morning. There is literally a haze on the horizon and it is all smoke from the fire. Today was the first day I saw blue sky before leaving my house this morning.
The second is that locations within 15 miles of my house are now on voluntary evacuation right now. Rob said it is only because of the back fires they lit to help stop the fire and I’m sure that is true, but it doesn’t make me feel any less safe.
Everyone is reassuring me that there is nothing wrong and it will be stopped before it reaches the point of evacuation…and this is exactly what I will tell my mother if she calls and asks about it, but I’m really scared.
Mostly I’m scared to leave the dogs here during the day. I know in the sane part of my mind that we will be notified well enough in advance to bring the dogs to my inlaws, but the panic part of my brain says, well, to panic!
I know that I’m being totally irrational but I can feel the anxiety building(it is what I do, after all) and I just want to make it stop.
Okay, that is all. I know I’m safe and that I will be okay but it helps to vent sometimes.
Thanks for listening Internet.
Things to do and NOT to do before your birthday
Okay I am turning 34 tomorrow and heading to Vegas for the weekend so I thought I would put together a list of things you should do and not do right before your vacation birthday.
1) DO: enjoy a fabulous lunch with your girls! Enjoy every bit of their time and thank goodness you have them in your life.
2) DO: Talk to the friend you are traveling with and plan your fabulous weekend. It is half as exciting as the actual vacation.
3) DO: Pack and get everything squared away for the trip.
4) DO: Shave your legs and pits for a weekend trip. Can’t pack your razor if you aren’t checking a bag!
5) DO NOT: decide to give yourself a makeshift pedicure the night before your flight. Especially when you “shave” off too much skin and can’t stop bleeding
6) DO NOT: pretend like you can stop the bleeding and you didn’t do anything wrong from your husband that is VERY worried.
7) DO: sit and wait until you both figure something out and put pressure on your big toe bleeder.
8) DO: thank goodness that the bleeding has finally stopped and you can just chalk it up to stupidity.
9) DO: finish packing and eat dinner.
10) DO: Try really hard to sleep, knowing that you get to fly out to Vegas the next day!
I hope this has helped all of you.
Not exactly what I had in mind
It is Wednesday night. For me that means it is Avon night. This is the night I get my Avon boxes in. So I plan on watching TV while doling out the goodies and then playing with all the new toys I ordered for myself.
Tonight? Not so much, the dogs had other things in mind for me.
Last night we baked some chicken in the oven on a rack on top of a cookie sheet. You know, so all the grease drips onto the cookie sheet and you don’t have to eat it. We left said cookie sheet on the counter this morning because neither of us had time to clean it up. We pushed it far back on the kitchen counter and figured it was out of the big dogs reach and therefore safe.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Yeah, that’s funny.
We got home and the house reeked of old chicken grease and dog piss and poop. The cookie sheet was overturned on the kitchen floor and the floor was all sticky. There were two big piss puddles on the living room carpet along with two piles of poop and two piles of vomit.
Fun!!
Rob picked up the solid waste and I swept and mopped the kitchen floor. The piss puddle by the TV was quite substantial so I told Rob I’d get out our little carpet cleaner and suck it up. Rob said okay and moved the big screen TV so I could have better access.
Well, what do we have here? Apparently Pappy has been having a good old fashion Piss Party every day while we are at work. I mean, we knew he peed in the house and are trying to figure out how to get him to stop, but had no idea the magnitude of the peeing that was taking place.
The corner of the carpet that was revealed when he moved the TV was just dark orange with pee stains and saturated. I’m not sure it ever had a change to dry with the little pisser doing his business there so much.
I hauled out the portable carpet cleaner and sucked up the pee. I was hit with such an overwhelming ammonia smell when I turned on the machine that I almost gagged. I pulled off all the pieces and found Pappy Piss in every single part of the machine. I know he had peed around the machine once or twice but this fucker was FILLED with dog piss.
I rinsed everything out and put it back together. It was so foul, I couldn’t believe it. I’ve just sprayed the area by the TV and scrubbed it. I’m letting it soak in and I will suck it all up after I do my Avon.
Yeah, not my ideal night kids!
Okay, now I’m off to do my Avon and watch TV.
Guess who is staying in his crate tomorrow while we are at work??
1st Ever Salinas Valley Pride Parade!
I got fried shrimp and fried chicken because I just wasn’t in the mood for Mexican food but it was good. Rob fell in love with the salsa and the nice waitress gave us a small vat of it to go. On the way back from lunch we saw a sign for an estate sale and stopped. It was pretty cool and I got some silver and gold candles for my altar-in-the-making and a candle snuffer for them. We also got some bowls and I got this speech to text thing that pretty much doesn’t work right but it was only a couple of bucks. Heh.
At that estate sale they told us of another one down the street so we stopped there after. It was a HUGE house but everything was overpriced in my opinion. It was the perfect sale for a collector. They had a lot of vintage and fun stuff like an old coin operated scale and a cash register. Just not for us.
We dropped off the parents and did some shopping at Nob Hill before returning home where I tried for hours to get the speech software to work properly and finally gave up. I had an email from the Salinas Valley Pride organizer to call him so I did. He was calling all the volunteers to let them know that there were going to be protesters and just to remind us that at no time are we to let them instigate us. We are just to ignore them.
After talking to him I called my mom because she left a guilt ridden message on our answering machine while we were at the Poison show that she didn’t have Southwests number and she needed me to call her with it. Heh. Nothing like dialing information right? Anyway, we talked for about a half an hour and then I took a bath.
This morning we woke up and headed into Salinas again. This time for the first ever Salinas Valley Pride Parade. When I got there, I signed in as a volunteer and got a T shirt, read the security information and then waited to be told what to do. Rob had headed off to the grocery store to do the rest of the shopping for Vegas.
I volunteered to head off the south end of the parade where it started along with a couple other people to block it off and allow ppl through as necessary. We were armed with wristbands and fliers to hand out. The wristbands were important because the parade was insured. If you were wearing a wristband and god forbid something happened, you were taken care of financially under the parade insurance. I thought that was a good call. I also thought that it was sad that we had to do such a thing, but it was smart.
So we all stood around after blockading the road and eventually started banding people as they came in. Some people wanted nothing to do with us as they were just passing through but the majority were there for the parade and happy to be there. We were supposed to have police there helping direct traffic but they arrived about an hour late. Luckily there wasn’t much of a problem. People saw the barricades and changed direction.
We did experience the protesters. They came in, most refusing wristbands and they were trying to hand out the these small pieces of paper stating some religious stuff. They were very polite and gathered at the end of the parade with signs. It was a peaceful protest as we were told and they had every right to be there as did anyone else so it was cool.
The parade itself was bigger than I thought it was going to be. Not to mention the people that came to see it. It was larger and I’m glad for it. We got thanked a lot as volunteers by the people coming in to watch. They understood how huge this was for Salinas and I was very happy to be a small part of it. It’s a tinystep but I can see this becoming something big in the years to come. The turn out showed us that there was a definite need for it despite the naysayers.
Here we go again…
So into the meeting we go and the head honchos are in there, very grim faced. I told Rose that it reeked of the situation I was in with my old company, right before they laid everyone off.
To make a long story short, they told us that they were “restructuring” our department. In other words they need to cut our group from 79 billers to 30 or so and we will either post out to be an O/C, a meter associate, stay in billing or if all the positions fill up before we can post out, get laid off.
Here we go again. The good news is that our team won’t transition out until next August. The bad news about being the last team to transition is that those of us that want to stay in billing won’t have much of a chance to post out to anything when they make the cut in billing because they will probably already be filled up.
So, it’s Arch all over again.
I told Rob and he said to dust off the old resume and update it tonight. He had already asked me if I wanted him to check with his contact at ASU to see if there are any office jobs available because he knows I am extremely unhappy here due to the stress factor. I told him to go ahead so he did that today but he hasn’t heard back from her yet.
It doesn’t matter. I’ll roll with whatever comes my way, I always do. Just, once again may I state for the record that I reeeeallly need to be indepentantly wealthy? Okay, thanks.
It’s laughable that they expect us to work today after the announcement. What’s even worse is our boss told us that they were going to announce it to us in a meeting right before our team outing next week to Golfland. He said he convinced them not to. Can you imagine? “Hey guys, we’re facing lay offs. Now go play and have fun!!”
Hubs Update
Rob is still in the hospital as I type this. I am hoping by the time I get home tonight to paste this into the actual entry, that he will be home with me but I don’t know. They started him on food on Tuesday. Yesterday was his first full day of solid food that wasn’t pureed.
He is doing better but no one will give him a definite answer on when he can come home. I understand this and I am fine with it. As long as there is the slightest chance something isn’t normal in his levels than I would rather he be at a place that knows how to take care of it. My husband is a very stubborn man and doesn’t like to let on when he is in pain. I don’t trust that if he came home and it started to flair up again that he would tell me until it was really bad again. As long as he is in the hospital they are testing his levels every few hours so they know for sure how it is going. So I’m cool with him being there as long as he needs to be. He however, is not. He is a very frustrated little camper right now because he says he only sees the doctor once a day and it’s only for like five seconds. And of course the doctor is the only one that can release him.
I can’t blame him. Today marks a week since the poor boy has had a shower. He’s been stuck in a bed for five days now and all he wants to do is go home. The day before yesterday he said the pain was still there it was just a whole lot less. Yesterday he said the pain was “pretty much gone”. I’m glad for that. His poor body however is just exhausted. I haven’t been spending a whole lot of time with him at night because all he does is sleep basically.
Last night I got there at feeding time so I got to share his oh so tasty dinner with him. It was nice to see him up and alert for a little bit, but as soon as he was done he was back to sleeping. He hardly ate any of his dinner. He said that he had only eaten lunch four hours previously and he was still full. His tummy must have really shrunk while he was without food. I swear he only had a couple bites of his chicken and mashed potatoes and he was stuffed.
So I’ve obviously been frazzled this week. Monday he was still in pretty bad shape and the last place I wanted to be was at work. I messed up a lot on the training exercises and we were learning something I learned two months ago and already know how to do. This week has been really kind of rough for me. I’m not strong. I used to think I was but I’m not. I’ve never had to go through anything quite like this. The fear that ***
***NEWSFLASH***
I just got off the phone with Rob and he has been told he is getting discharged today!!!!!!!! WOOHOO!!!!! Of course they haven’t told him what time (it’s only 10:46AM as I type this) but I am very happy!
***okay yeah back to me being a weak person. Just the fear that he could have died…I don’t think I could handle that. Seriously. I would completely shut down. I still don’t even want to think of those first days when he was in the hospital. When I do I get freaky emotional.
Ug. He is my whole life. I couldn’t live without him.
6:00 PM
He’s home he’s home he’s home!!!!!! I am so happy!!!!
So he is home. He just got out of the shower and is eating his chef boyarde in bed right now. Oh my god, brushing his hair out was a nightmare!! For those of you that don’t know, Rob has very long very curly hair. It hadn’t been brushed in a week and all he was doing was tossing and turning on his pillow. It was like dreadlocks! I’m sure he feels so much better now that he has showered. A week is a loooonnnggg time.
Not anything else to report really, just wanted to update and let everyone know Rob is finally home and I am very happy and thankful for that.
I am a 40 something married woman living in California.
I enjoy knitting and crocheting, watching crap movies, snuggling with my two adorable dogs and trying to be a good person.
