CafeChatNoir

The problem with taking a couple days off work is that though I really like my job, damn, I can’t wait to get to the point where I don’t have to work for a living anymore…

No matter how pretty in the package, round steaks are NOT good on the grill. Edible, but still… Next time ask the butcher to go get some filet mignons…

But all in all, a nice afternoon.

Went back downstairs and discovered that the cats had knocked the treat jar on the floor, the dog managed to get the top off, and had quite the snack… This would be the second time in two days he’s managed that. Amazing that he doesn’t have massive indigestion.

Zipped up to the store for more treats, since Mox took the last of them. (They’re an integral part of feeding time around here - I toss two of them down the basement stairs, the cats follow, I lock them in for a couple minutes so I can get the dinners put together without having to fend off furry rockets.) Of course, it’s never “just cat treats” when I hit the store. Ended up with cat treats, chips, fixins for onion dip (it’s not a holiday weekend without onion dip!), and baked potato soup.

, I took your advice and snagged some battery powered fold-up speakers for the mp3 player while I was out - getting ready to go test them out now, since I need all the musical help I can get while cleaning. :-D

So, yes, cleaning. All over it this time. Really.

I’d been leaving the back door open w/the screen closed, because there’s a doggie door in it, the dog can come & go, but the cats don’t know how/aren’t strong enough to get through it. (The cats basically think the dog can walk through walls.) Works well for everyone.

Except when the dog decides to just slide the screen open instead of using his door.

I went downstairs, screen is open, I close it and do a cat check. Snoopy, check! Target? Um, Target? TARGET??!? I didn’t immediately see him outside, but just called around the house in case he was just in the basement. Looked out the window just in time to see him hop up on the porch and stroll over to the door. I was afraid he wouldn’t come back in cause the dog is getting bouncy wondering why I am a smidge frantic, but I opened the screen again and he waltzed right in. Treats for all!

So, the screen is now latched so Mox can only use his door, and Target got lots of pettins & treats for coming when called, and Snoopy got pettins & treats for staying IN. *whew* Mox & I had a discussion about how it is his job to make sure the kitties don’t go outside, and he has to leave the screen closed. He got a biscuit for not keeping Target from coming back in.

For the most part, Target has gotten Mox pretty buffaloed. Yesterday Target was lounging in the sunbeams in front of the screen door, Mox started to go over to go outside, saw Target and decided inside was fine. Last night Target was curled up on the bed by my shoulder, and a couple times I saw Mox’s head pop up over the end of the bed, see Target, and decide, “Hey, I like the floor just fine” (At some point overnight Target did go back downstairs and Mox took the spot on the bed.)

Little bro is coming over for an early dinner, and we’re going to scatter Mom’s ashes in the gardens - seems like an appropriate weekend to do it, and the weather is cooperating to boot.

However, I have some major picking up to do downstairs - living room & kitchen both look like a tornado hit. Frankly, I am concerned that the vacuum will explode given the rather insane amounts of Moxley hair about. I’m also a tad worried that the grill won’t start up, since it hasn’t been used since last fall. I also had to actually go find directions to bake a potato…it’s been so long since I’ve done it, all I could remember was “about an hour in the oven” - but no temp… (BTW, the United States Potato Board says 55 minutes at 425 degrees - gotta love the internet.)

I think we’ll eat out on the deck - it’s certainly nice enough for it today. But, nothing is going to get done if I don’t get off my lazy butt and go get some things cleaned up.

Just finished watching Pretty Woman. Yup, total fairy tale, but dammit, we ALL deserve the fairy tale.

and we’ve still got another day of weekend after it! :-D

Went over to Glory Days last night cause I didn’t feel like cooking. Two guys come in & sit next to me, the one right next to me is bummed that they don’t have mashed potatoes, I mention the red potatoes are good… Next thing I know, I’m his best friend. Now, are these cute college boys? Nope. My new best buddy appears to have been rode hard & put away wet (I pegged him in his 40s, turns out he was younger than me) and seems to have lost at least a few brain cells through the mantra of better living through chemistry. Why are these the ones that want to chat me up?

Came home & fell asleep on the couch watching TV. Bad idea, as you end up contorting yourself to fit, and one of my legs fell asleep. I realized this as I jumped up off the couch to answer a ringing phone - but realized too late to be able to do anything about it. Put that foot down, knee buckled and I was on the floor. At least I didn’t hit my head on anything, and it didn’t take long to get the feeling back in my foot…

I’ve also been discovering the joys of living with a dog. They make you feel guilty every time you leave the house. Dinner last night? I got the look of “Why are you abandoning me? Don’t you love me anymore?”. Went out earlier today to get some breakfast & hit the grocery store. Got the look again. Had been thinking about going out again later to search for Micron pens cause Total Crafts was out, and the couple I’ve got have gone dry, but I don’t know if I can take the look again…

If the dog doesn’t kill me in my sleep tonight, then he loves me. :)

Finished up the haircut this morning, his back is MUCH more even now, sides are OK but not fantastic, and I’ll readily admit his legs look weird - there were some matted spots I had to shave down *real* close. But he was very good through it again, at once point he just laid down on the deck and let me work, and even rolled over so I could get his stomach.

Then it was bathtime! He isn’t much for the bath itself (but he was real good again once I got him IN the shower!), but man, let him out and it’s like he’s been turpentined. Tearing around the house like he’s gone insane.

But he’s clean and fluffing out as he dries and is ready for the summer!

The more I look at the dog, the more I realize we’re gonna have to do some touchups after his bath. Found the rest of the blade guards *after* the fact, but they should help immensely.

I did take him for a walk and had a teenager type on a bike tell me I had a cute dog, and three little ones swarmed him, without Mom saying “Um, I think that dog has some weird skin condition, stay back kids!”, so it can’t be *that* bad.

But yeah, another once over with the clippers is warranted. (I could only find the very short blade guard earlier, and was combing him out and then trimming against the comb, this way I can just zip it right along w/the long guards.) It’s gonna cost me a lot of biscuits, though.

watercolor pencil

The smudges on the right side weren’t there when I finished it, I think a feline may have dragged a tail through it…but happy nonetheless.

Being a cat, Snoopy likes high places. The other night, he decided to leap to the top of a 6 foot high cabinet from the desk. (I had to help him get down…) He did it again last night, but decided to just leap from the cabinet to my desk - scared the crap out of me.

Anyway, here he is in all his top of the world glory:

…to reward Moxley for being such a GOOD DOG!!

Why? Because today, I decided screw the groomers, I can give him his summer cut myself. Mainly because he was out on the deck with me and absolutely roasting and I wanted to do something NOW.

Yes, it’s rather uneven - but there are no bald spots, and he has GOT to feel better - I filled up an entire grocery bag with all the hair I took off him. Later this weekend I’m going to give him a bath, and once that is done and he’s all fluffed up, the unevenness shouldn’t show as much. (I’d do it now, but it’s just too much to ask of the little guy in one day.)

He’s also not hiding in the bathroom like he did after his first summer cut - so he can’t be too traumatized. Heck, once we were done he was running like mad along the fence with the dogs next door.

I think it had to help that we did it outside, and every swipe with the clippers made him feel better and he quickly realized this wasn’t so bad. That and he got a good dozen biscuits through the process.

It’s been too long since I did anything creative. So today, I took an iris I’d cut (dog had run it down in the garden) went out to the back porch with my pencils and paper and went to town. It’s hardly fine art, but it makes me happy. :) I’d forgotten how hard it is to draw bearded irises, cause they’re so dang frilly - and also that yellow is hard to work with. Also got some more photos from some more blooming things, I think I am going to use those to do another drawing.

colored pencils & charcoal

Iris - this is the one I think I am going to try and draw next - I think the colors will be easier to work with than the yellows were.

I believe this one is called Loop the Loop - it’s one of my favorites, and I love that I’ve got one with three huge gorgeous blooms on it!

Wild strawberry!

The rowing machine is here now!!!!! Many thanks to for helping me get it moved over - it’s heavy as hell and only one piece and definitely a two-person job to do anything besides slide it across a room.

- it’s basically in the middle of your room right now, at some point we’ll have to rearrange things to other parts of the basement so I’m not barging in on you to row my way across the imaginary English Channel…

Hit Hopsfrog for a late dinner, and now I realize why their Irish Coffees are so good - they make them w/ 1/2 irish & 1/2 kahlua. I’d never watched the bartender do it before tonight. We were also scolded for not having been in for quite some time… Oops. We had to order off the late menu, so I still owe a flaming cheese dish at some point. (It’s really good, they take a block of cheese, bread it & deep fry it, soak it in alcohol and set it ablaze and serve with bread. Very tasty, and unfortunately, one of the most hated orders by the waitstaff, something to do with singed eyebrows.)

He also gets the good egg award for listening to me ramble on over many things, and saying “I understand.” Always a good thing to hear out loud.

Go me, go me, go me!!!

The car is all emptied out! Which means, I’ve moved the bathrooms and about 1/3 of my clothes. Wait, it doesn’t sound quite as impressive that way… Ah well, it’s still something.

I did take a stroll through my basement today, and there is a LOT less down there than I had previously thought, which is a Very Good Thing. The closets & utility room are another matter entirely, but the basement itself is much emptier than I remember.

Food at Hopsfrog has been promised to in exchange for the manual labor of getting the exercise equipment over here. However, if he wants to collect on it tonight, I am gonna have to insist on 10 minutes to jump in the shower before going anywhere in public. The only time I have been out in worse shape than I am now was during the hurricane a couple years ago, and everyone looked like nine miles of bad road because of the lack of power & water.

Seriously, I really need to get cleaned up. Ick.

I am sweaty, sticky, nasty and generally gross right now. When I got dressed this morning, I didn’t dress for lugging things around, and I ended up lugging a fair amount of things around this afternoon… (And I’m still nowhere near having an empty car - damn I can fit a lot in that Jeep!)

I’d gladly go hop in the shower, except that is supposed to help me move bikes & a rowing machine later this evening, which will just result in sweaty, sticky, nasty & generally gross all over again…

Might as well go try to get the car finished up!!

More Peonies:

Either Japanese or Siberian Iris - I don’t know which, and they’re really more purple than the photos are showing…

Honeysuckle!

Clematis

Closeups of Variegated Wygelia

OK, definitely not a wasted day by any means. I now have a bread box so the cats can no longer throw bread at the dog when I am not around. Also snagged a set of metal measuring cups, because all I have here are plastic, and they suck.

Hit my place & picked up my art supplies (such that they are), bunch of mail (WTF, US Postal Service, I put in the change of address WEEKS ago!), more laundry, and a boatload of hangers. Then hit the store on the way home and got a couple new notebooks to use said art supplies in. :)

The car is still filled to the brim with stuff, and I really should go do something about that. But I think I may go take a “woohoo, I have the day off” nap first. :-D

And I just watched the cat chase the dog downstairs.

I am a dumbass. I signed on to work this morning to “wrap up a few things” and then be on my merry way. That took about three hours…

Honestly, sometimes I don’t know why I bother taking days off if I’m not actually leaving town.

It’s too late to be running up to the city at this point, so it looks like I’ll be running some errands and then getting my car cleaned out…. woohoo?

It’s my Friday! Well, sort of, I have to dial in tomorrow morning and get a couple things wrapped up and/or passed off, but still, damn near a five day weekend, YAY!!

What kills me is that my entire reason for being this week at work has been to get my calls closed… By 5 today, I was still right where I was this morning when I came in. Argh! I did manage to get lucky and make a few last ditch “Is it working yet??!” calls before I left and knocked a couple out. Sooooo, I’ve only got something like eight calls sitting out there… *sigh* Someday I will have a day where I have ALL my calls closed when I go home.

In other work-miscellany, I got tapped to “become the expert” on a particular report we have because of some client asking the account managers if it was “hard” or not… So, I was able to mooch some info off a coworker in the form of a marked up copy of the report, took that, produced a killer piece of documentation with screen shots and sample reports and the whole nine yards. Sent it off to my boss for approval before getting it to the client and hearing…”Wow, that’s great for internal use, but too much for a client.” Well, crap! So, I’ll just end up walking the client through the document over the phone, which kind of defeats the purpose of creating it. Ah, well…

Oooh, big plans for the weekend… Um, hmm, no, not really. Depending on how long it takes me to get things wrapped up in the AM, I may head up to DC and hit a museum tomorrow, or just go over to my place and pack/toss things. Might go catch the SW movie. Heavens, if my existence gets any more whirlwind, I don’t know how I’ll handle it.

Yes, I have absolutely no life outside of work. Zip, zilch, nada. I’m taking the days off cause I’m overdone on work, but it’s not like I actually have anything else going on…and it’s just sad that right now I am excited about sleeping in right until 8 so I can do more work…

Must. Get. Life.

Thank God, cause I would have truly lost my mind if I was as scattered as I was yesterday. Though my last client of the day did completely suck the life out of me, but in return he has promised a nice note to the boss.

We’ve got another new hire starting in two weeks. Combo “Yay!!/Aww Crap” with that. Talked w/ our old manager the other day and she pointed out that new folks really are a drag on the group. (It one of those things, it’s just how it is, but it doesn’t make it any less wearing, and it was nice to hear someone else acknowledge it and know it wasn’t just me!)

Tomorrow I am going to focus on nothing but getting rid of my calls, so I don’t have to dump them on anyone else, helping others be damned.

As it is, the newbs are pissing me off a bit, one of them left two calls open for a week with no followup to the client to let them know we were working on it - boss jumped him on that and in turn he came and complained to me cause I am trying to help, but also FUCKING BUSY MYSELF. He’s not *learning* anything, just dumping what he doesn’t know on the rest of us. Boss apparently also told him he’s got to stop cherry picking shit off the queue, which is good, because pulling off an 11 minute call when there are two at 50+ just defeats the purpose of *having* the queue. Boss came by to tell me afterwards that she wasn’t trying to put pressure on me, was glad I was helping - and that it’s time to start pushing him to do things himself. Honestly? I don’t know that he’s cut out for this work.

We’re also out of space at the office. And have another person arriving in two weeks. So, I will be doing the full 50% work from home and splitting a desk w/a coworker. Fortunately we will not have to share a computer, and the way we each keep our desks, it will work fine. So, I’ll be doing split weeks, 2 days home/3 office/2 office/3 home. Keeps the week broken up nicely.

In other news, I have managed to exercise daily for 11 days straight - go me for not falling off the wagon on day 3 when it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my collarbone. OH, the muscles that hate you after 30 pushups each evening. And *gasp* definition in my waist is starting to kinda sorta appear! Granted, no one really gets to see it, but it does give me hope that I’ll be able to put on my swimsuits and not cry when the weather actually warms up. Also have this aerobic rider thing, that while I can’t say it gives you a kick-ass aerobic workout, it does get your blood moving and does a most excellent job of stretching out your back. Getting the rowing machine over here this weekend as well, looking forward to being able to use that again.

Bedtime for this chicky-chick. Sleep well my friends!

Here’s hoping for a day with more focus!!

However, the jury is still out on that - I had these weird dreams last night. One that I had this executive type job, and I spent all my time just telling people what to do (ok, kinda cool, LOL!), and then I hooked up with some married guy. Oh, and he had gotten married that weekend. My brain is still trying to wrap itself around that. (And yelling “homewrecker!” at me to boot.)

She just called. Wanted to see how we made it through the weekend (said she would have called sooner, but one of her grandchildren *ack* graduated high school this weekend Totally understandable - except that he’s just not old enough for that!). As I told her, “weird, but not bad.”

This is a woman to whom I have no relation except that she married my grandfather after my grandmother died.

And yet, she is just as much family as any blood relative I have.

Happy to say, I’m feeling a touch more centered now. Some unwinding time, a cold beer, some comment spamming in friend’s LJ’s… :)

I think the combination of the 5 AM freakout wakeup + general nerves about training = one seriously flipped out chicky chick…

Thing is - I like training. I like teaching people things. I like being able to share some tidbit of knowledge that no one knows yet. Boss even came over beforehand and reminded me, “They know NOTHING. You know EVERYTHING. You can make stuff up and they won’t know!” :)

But, before today, I seriously can’t remember ever having to do group training before. And I was flipped about it. And then everything breaking… Apparently folks even told the boss that a) it was all understandable even without the software available and b) I recovered from the repeated breakage of software quite well.

Come August, I have to train on two more modules. I think that will go much easier. I now have a workaround if everything is broken (oh how I WISH I had known that this morning!) There is also a good chance I’ll be rewriting the docs at some point or another, because I know I can do better than what we’ve got.

OH - and in the spirit of the pinball machine that is my brain today - the peonies are just starting to bloom here!!! I am betting they’ll be totally open by the weekend. And they’re gonna be GORGEOUS. I have GOT to get photos of them.

This day is finally over.

What a totally fucked up day. Not a BAD fucked up day really, just a fucked up day. I’ve been out of sorts since I sat straight up from a dead sleep at 5 AM thinking “OMG, did I set the alarm clock??!?!” (I did.)

It’s like my brain went on vacation and forgot to invite my body along. (Body is hurt and insulted at the lack of an invite, by the way…)

But I digress.

Seriously, I have been a complete flipping space cadet today. Did the 5 AM “Ack!” wakeup, didn’t really fall back asleep, got myself up and out, and left my lunch behind (that I had HUNG ON THE DOORKNOB so I wouldn’t forget it), did the “let’s have only 25% of the apps I am to train on actually working” fiasco, which left me even MORE flustered and distracted, then lunch that I had to go buy and was still so generally flipped that I barely ate anyway. Spent the afternoon trying to work, but it’s hard when you’ve got the attention span of a gnat (and yes, we’re probably insulting the gnat here) and frankly, it’s a miracle I didn’t blow up anyone’s databases this afternoon.

It’s like my subconscious decided to gather up every random thought I’ve had for the past six months and spend all day churning through them, which unfortunately, left no CPU cycles left for the rest of my brain to work with. Just kinda insane.

Oh, and additionally - - major mad props for going for it, and congrats on the results!

Oh.
My.
God.

I’m just going to lose it. My head is seriously about to completely and utterly explode.

Just, just, *kablooey*.

Eep.