CafeChatNoir

We’re getting a touch of Spring this weekend, and not a moment too soon. Saw a robin this morning, the crocuses are starting to pop up in random places in my front yard, folks with motorcycles are out and about, and I was able to have the sunroof open on the car.

It’s been a spectacularly lazy day for me. My big accomplishments have been taking a shower, making myself some lunch, and just now starting some laundry.

I wear *one* outfit a day. How do I have so much laundry?

Wit the spring weather, I should probably start with some spring cleaning tomorrow. By which I mean, “spring throwing things out the windows”

Wow, it was nice to not have to wear a coat today. :-D

that I am still trying to kill off:

Sarbanes-Oxley stifles growth - Commentary: Law hurts small companies, cuts innovation

He’s right. Here’s hoping they fix it. Beyond just making it hard to get good people on a board, it’s hard to get good people into acct/finance departments w/ this crap.

Yes, we’ve made it to FRIDAY!!!

And I have absolutely NOTHING on tap for the weekend.

Yes, there will be some serious sleeping going on.

No other word for it.

A couple days ago, I transferred money from savings to checking. I thought. The transfer went through today. In FUCKING REVERSE.

Some days I think it’s a miracle I can dress myself.

Overdraft will get a nice workout the beginning of next week.

However tired I am tonight, autiger23 is 10 times more tired. Hope you get some good sleep!!

Damn cats. I have the alarm clock on the floor next to my bed, as one of them had taken a liking to getting on the nightstand and knocking it on the floor anyway at 4 in the morning.

Last night, he decided to chuck the book on the nightstand on the floor. It hit the alarm clock. Perfectly. And TURNED IT OFF.

Got to run. Literally.

Letter from the county, the tax assessment has gone up on the house, another $325 a year in real estate taxes. So, not only an additional $325 a year out the door, another increase in what I have to save to cover the expense if I ever get to the point that I can stop working…

Note to self: Find *cheap* place to retire.

http://www.livejournal.com/editinfo.bml

Scroll down and there is a new option:

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Edit: I’ve tested it, and it works!

Got my check from the CD class action anti-trust lawsuit today. I’m usually not one to join this type of thing, but if the settlement came in under $5 a person, all of it would go to charity, so I tossed my name in w/ the theory that more people would result in a lower settlement, and some charities would get some cash out of it. Not quite enough people I guess, as I got my check for 13.86 today. Think I’ll just forward it to charity anyway.

Now, not being Catholic, Shrove Tuesday has little meaning for me, but I have to say, the Brazilians have it DOWN with Carnival. I *love* all the pics from the Samba school parades - the costumes are fantastic. This is one of my favs from this year

Probably work safe, less nipple action than Janet at the Superbowl, but cut just in case:

First, wow these gals have fantastic bodies, and second - how do they get those costumes to stay on? It *has* to be glue of some sort - it’s the only thing I can think of. There’s another picture of two women in full regalia (full = barely anything) meeting a man coming off the Queen Mary 2. He’s got to be 80+ years old, and I laugh every time I see it - poor guy will die of heart failure, but with a permanent smile on his face.

Happy Birthday astrojetta!!!!!!!!!!!

Despite my amazing skills with excel, I still cannot come up with a budget plan that both accomplishes saving as well as well as ridiculous levels of spending.

I just don’t know what. Again, my face is all red and splotchy and itches like crazy. Argh!!

Wow, I am strangely alert & chipper & quite relaxed today. No clue why, cause I didn’t get enough sleep, but there you go.

It’s been kinda quiet at work today, calls are showing up in fits, but things are getting closed pretty quickly so the list of open calls isn’t a mile long like it has been recently.

Nice fun, relaxing productive weekend. Need more of those. :)

You can now rank items on your wish list at amazon.com from “must have” to “don’t buy this for me”

The best and easiest chicken salad ever…

Toss some boneless, skinless chicken breasts into a deep skillet, cover w/water, put on med to high heat. Bring to a boil (~10 mins), cover, cook 10 minutes, turn over, cover, cook 10 more minutes.

Put chicken in fridge to chill (just makes it easier to cut up. If you prefer shredded, then go at it)

Dice chicken, slather in sauce, chill, eat. It’s carb friendly to boot. Personal fav is on criossants.

Sauce:
~2 parts mayonnaise
~1 part Country Dijon Mustard (the kind w/the seeds)

Mix to taste, mix with chicken until it looks like you’ve put a little too much on it - as the chicken sits, it will soak up some of the sauce.

Things you can add that are good:
- chopped celery
- chopped walnuts
- chopped apples

Didn’t finish the work in the bedroom, but it’s going along, so it’s all good.

I am a happy camper today. Found the silverware, just need to check w/ Mom & see if she is ordering the 4 place settings or 8. If 4, then I’ll order 4 too so I can have 8. Fortunately, they’re not ungodly expensive.

Replaced the little food processor so I can cook without fear of burning down the kitchen. OK, I can cook without fear of this particular appliance burning down the kitchen.

The dishwasher is running, laundry is going, the bedroom/clothes organization has started (with a bag for things to toss - when the undies have no elastic left, it’s time for them to go!!), and the chicken for the chicken salad has been cooked and is cooling in the fridge.

It’s turned out to be a freakishly productive day, which is very unusual for me.

Edit/Addition: There is now light in all the major rooms of my home. Here’s hoping those flourescent bulbs last a LONG time.

about naps that gives me such *odd* dreams??

& I were at a Dave & Busters/bowling alley type place to start, and they had lockers you could put your things in. I had a couple notebooks I put away, locked it, and when we came back, the locks were gone and so was my stuff. Ran into some ex-coworkers, and was *sure* one of them had taken my things, but she was too drunk to even know what was going on.

So, we get in the car to go have dinner, and decide to go to some fancy-ish place, the maitre’d puts us off 3 times and then finally tells us we need a reservation (after we’d been there for a very long time.) As we’re walking out, says, “That just isn’t a fun place to go anymore.”

Then he decides for some reason, he needs to be in his uniform from college. (This may have been before the restaurant, I can’t remember what order things happened in.) So, he’s in my car, changing and I’m trying to keep a lookout…

Then we’re off to someone’s house - I’m not sure who - someone’s parents apparently, that he knows, and I worked for the same company as one of them at some point. (I even said the name of the company - some brokerage firm. I’ve never worked for a brokerage in my life.) We get in, try to find them, first it seems that no one is around, so we go upstairs to the dining room (weird house), the dinner table is all set. starts snarfing down pickles that have been put out, I ask, “What are you doing??!?” “Getting the pickle salt.” Of course…

Then all of a sudden we hear people coming upstairs - it’s their kids & husbands/wives. Apparently, Dad isn’t home, but Mom is, as the daughter-in-law said, “Of course she’s here, there is wine and dessert.” We quickly explain that we had just stopped by to say hello because we were in the neighborhood and next thing you know, we are *running* for the front door, and that’s when I woke up.

Something about naps…

Found my flatware. The ones at Crate & Barrel were nixed when I saw them close up, the spoons were all wrong. Hard to explain, but suffice it to say, I would have ended up with more soup in my lap than in my mouth.

So over to Tyson’s mall & Hecht’s - everything was too frou-frou, and $90 a place setting. I think not!! Priced out the mini food processors, Cuisinart has another one that is a little larger than the “mini” but still much smaller than the full size - but it was $50, and I just didn’t feel like spending that much.

On to Williams Sonoma. Found the same food processor, but for $40 if I went for white instead of stainless steel. Works for me. So this is it, except white, and $10 less.

After that, we had to go out to Fair Oaks, cause Tyson’s pretty much sucks anymore - hit Pottery Barn, and I found them!! None in stock in the store, so Mom’s gonna order them for me.

A successful day!

Since this house goes through lightbulbs so incredibly fast, I have been switching to the fluorescent ones. Dropped a wad at Target this morning on 8 of them, already broke 1 within 60 seconds of opening the package, and another one doesn’t work at all. Argghh!! (However, the ones that I have installed so far have held up really well…as long as you don’t break them before you get them into the light fixtures.)

Went to Bullfeathers for dinner last night and got the lobster artichoke dip - OMG, that is *so* good.

Gotta run, shopping, laundry, organizing and then making a big ol’ batch of chicken salad is on the list.

Enjoy what’s left of the weekend!

Farker can’t read the 10 commandments on these tablets very well. Please help farker by making the script clearer. Difficulty: Hell-bent

So very wrong. My fav:

Went to Dave & Buster’s last night - fun, but *loud*. Got enough tickets to get a kinetic motion thing for my desk at work (something to play with while I’m on the phone), and a spongebob keychain :) Thanks for giving me all of your tickets! But yeah, SO much fun. I suck at pretty much all the games, except the air rifle game, and I did respectably well at skee-ball.

I’m still not sure why the doorman wanted to know if I had other adults with me when I went in. Could have been the 5 or 6 little kids swarming about me, maybe you’re supposed to have X number of adults per Y number of kids or something like that. I assured him they were *not* with me, and that I had some supposed adults that I was meeting inside.

Got inside, looked for who was going to meet me at the door, didn’t see him, briefly started wondering if I had managed to come to the wrong place, when he walked up, the source of the delay in hand - a Guinness for ME! :-D Yup, he’s a good catch.

Got an insane amount of sleep last night, wow that felt good.

Tomorrow is Crate & Barrel… *bounce*bounce*bounce*

Let’s hope I can show some restraint and only come home with the silverware. :) But, I did just discover this on the site:

It’s only $30, and my black & decker version of the same (mini-food processor) is about to die - it started smelling of smoke & oil the last time I used it, which usually is a bad sign with any kitchen item with a motor in it… I may have to take a closer look when I am there.

Also, come hell or high water tomorrow - laundry and organization of same. I must get all the drawers in the bedroom emptied out and things put back in some semblance of order, so I don’t have to go through every freaking drawer to find things to wear. I’ve been meaning to do it forever and a day, and it’s time to quit putting it off.

Heart of Crystal

What is Your Heart REALLY Made of?
brought to you by Quizilla

step 1: open your MP3 player.
step 2: put all of your music on random.
step 3: write down the first ten songs it plays, no matter how embarrassing

Well, I wouldn’t go so far to say embarrassing, but seriously eclectic:

Bare Naked Ladies: One Week
Charlie Daniels Band: Dueling Banjos
Jamiroquai: Traveling without Moving
The Rolling Stones: Satisfaction
The Replacements: Back to Back
They Might Be Giants: Particle Man
Dave Matthews Band(?): Your Mistake
Tito Puente: Swingin the Mambo
Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops: Ave Maria
The Rolling Stones: Mother’s Little Helper

I had to log into my work email to snag an email address and there was an email from this week’s call from hell and IT IS NOW CLOSED!

However, because no good deed goes unpunished, there was a follow up email, “Can you help us with this, too? So and so hasn’t gotten back to us on it.” Yep, I’m right on it. Forwarding it to the person who was working it. I’ve had enough fun with these folks for a while. :)

Edit/Clarification: This client has been such a pain in my ass during this call, I have repeatedly wished that she would go out to her car one morning and discover that a moose had discovered an unnatural romantic interest in said auto, and that her insurance would not cover the damage. That would be why I do not want this follow up call.

And yes, I did dial into the office and into the queue and close the call at 11:30. I don’t want that thing open a second longer.

Vertigo, all the fun of the carnival rides, but no standing in line. (No funnel cakes, tho, which sucks.)

My call count is down to THREE. Meaningless to most, but considering it had been hovering around 9 for most of the week, I’m a happy camper.

With the temps whipsawing about like they are (50s today - w00t!!), my sinuses are having their own little psycho dance party. Arghhh. Came home w/ a headache and a touch of the spins. Ate and hit the rack for a bit and had some bizarre dreams about a call I’m working right now… I think this weekend I will have to break out the heavy duty meds that can’t get used during the week…

The weekend. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Less than 24 hours away. At the present time, I am still OFF on Saturday. Coworker who is on the shift has tomorrow off, and when she left this evening, did not say anything about not being able to do it. Sure, if she bails and lets me know, I’ll be there - but HER name is on the schedule, the boss knows it, so if she doesn’t show and I don’t get word, it’s not my backside on the line.

Said coworker has also just had a review and as part of being up for a promotion in the relatively near future, she needs to demonstrate some leadership type stuff vis a vis, junior staff coming to her for assistance. She is driving me batty at the moment with that. “Do you have any calls I can help you on? Any questions!? Anything?!!” Heavens, NO. First, I am finally getting to the point where I can wrestle most calls to the ground on my own. Second, the last time I got “help” from her, it was WRONG, and then she tried to call me on it later, conveniently forgetting that she had given me the information. Third, I’ve got a very strong working relationship with another second liner and we do very nicely together.

Nothing on tap for the weekend except a trip to Crate & Barrel w/ Mom for new silverware.

I am 99% sure this is what I am going with

I’d like to get some new dishes in the near future, too…

I am seriously stuck on these

but I think I want to see these up close, too:

and these are growing on me as well:

I like that most of the platemaking folks have gone w/ the 4 piece option w/a decent mug instead of the cup/saucer thing. I don’t use saucers, except for milk for the cats! This could turn into an expensive trip if I am not careful…

Got too much on my wants list right now. The silverware is a gift, but the plates are around $200 for 4 place settings. ouch. That and I want a digital camera very badly. Neither of those things I truly need. Just WANT.