Monday, November 06, 2006

Grateful

OK, I'm really terrible about updating this thing on a regular basis. Thanks goodness I have the School of Scrap to give me reminders to update my blog here and there. So today's prompt: write a list of what you are thankful for. Well, I'm going to limit myself to 10 things I am thankful for:
1. to have come from a loving and very functional family
2. to have my Mom still alive and in my life
3. to have a husband that supports and loves me no matter what
4. to have a decent job at a good salary and a decent boss
5. to have creativity to fuel the hobbies that keep me satisfied
6. to have decent health in spite of the way I keep my body
7. to have had the honor to know and love my Dad for 37 years of my life
8. to have a beautiful house that I can make into my own and to allow me to do the things I love (like have a dog)
9. to have had a great education with encouragement from my parents
10. to have a beautiful world to wake up to every morning (even when it's nasty outside)

Friday, October 13, 2006

And...One Month Later.....

You've Changed 48% in 10 Years
You've done a good job changing with the times, but deep down, you're still the same person.You're clothes, job, and friends may have changed some - but it hasn't changed you.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Interesting Day...

Well, I thought today would be a difficult one for me. Today would have been my dad's 65th birthday - and our first one without him. It's been a little over 5 months since he passed away. So I started off a bit sad. Jon was sad all day long - he feels he never got a goodbye with my father. Mom went out to dinner with some of the female friends of my dad, and it sounded like she had a good time.

But then my co-workers took me out to lunch, since I won't be at work for my birthday, to Macaroni Grill. And they bought an Opera Creme Cake for me (well, to share), since that is nearly everyone's favorite cake from this bakery we get the cakes at. But then my day got interesting. I have been having this issue with this customer not providing us PO for nearly 5 months in order to allow us to bill them. Well, they all arrived this afternoon.

And then. There's a couple of the security guards in our office building that I chat with when they come by checking everyone's cubicles. Well, one of them, who happens to be training for a body building contest right now, asks me as I'm leaving today that IF I wasn't married would it have been possible that he and I would have dated. Of course I said IF that was the case, yes (he is an attractive man although I don't normally go for African-American men). WOW! It made me feel really good about myself. Like - I'm attractive to someone else other than my husband. I don't feel that way often anymore. It was nice...

I have been happy all night - not even Jon's mood could spoil it for me....

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

9/11 5th Anniversary

So, the 5th anniversary of 9/11 was yesterday.
I remember where I was when I heard about the attacks. Since I was living in Houston at the time, I was an hour behind those on the East coast, but I had just arrived at work already. I had listened to my tape player on the way in, no news (I can't stand chatty morning radio shows). I was at my desk and there were a few of us working. All of a sudden I get this call from one of my co-workers. He asked if I had seen the TV. No. He said someone just attacked in New York City. I said very funny. He wasn't kidding. I tell someone else in the office. We turned on the TV in the conference room, though we had some maneuvering to get it on a network station. We tuned in just after the second one hit. We just stood there, still, shocked, awed, frozen. My boss came in shortly after that. He, too, was shocked. We managed to work a little that day, but a little piece of everyone wasn't there in that office. Those pieces were with the tragedy we had just witnessed and the aftermath. Each of us would take turns looking at the TV for updates, watching as they revealed that the Pentagon had been hit and that they didn't know if there were other flights that might be attacking. The nervous reactions as we saw how many fights were still reported as not landed after flights had been grounded, wondering if one of those flights was next, only to find one more crash which we wondered at first if they were related. A couple of people knew people who worked around the WTC area. I knew a colleague from grad school who was working there the last I had talked with him. For weeks I looked to see if his name was on the missing/confirmed dead list. One of my co-workers' brother worked in a nearby building and took some pictures. Almost every station was broadcasting 24/7 on the tragedies of that day. This was not the same twisted fascination that we Americans tend to have of tragedies - this was fear, concern, worry and uncertainty that was compelling us to watch constantly.

I was so busy yesterday that I didn't even have a chance to watch the TV. I briefly listened to CNN on the way into work, and I got a little sad listening to the 9/11 stuff, but because I was so late, I couldn't dwell on it.
Jon was watching some of the programs this weekend and when he was watching something on the controllers, I thought to myself: imagine what it felt like to those that were on the ground in line to take off from an airport when the planes struck and then being turned around, brought back into the airport and finding out what happened. Would there be annoyance, fear or relief? What did the pilots communicate to the customers and what was communicated to the pilots themselves when they were told to turn back to the airports? How surreal was that experience to those people?
Every year I think of a group of different people that was affected - one year I thought of the people who weren't there at the towers or the Pentagon for one reason or another (although they were supposed to be) and what kind of thoughts were running through their heads when they saw what happened - many felt guilty, others felt blessed; another it was imagining what those in NYC were feeling while dealing with the crisis and afterwards. I've been to NYC many times before but only twice after, and the only difference I noticed were that there were quite a few more police in and around the subway and Grand Central Terminals than before.
Jon thinks about the fact that less than 2 months before the attack, he was on top of one of the WTC towers (with his friends 2 days before we were married) and that what if the terrorists had picked THAT day to carry out their attacks instead of September 11?
There are so many "what ifs" when a tragic event like this takes place, so many unanswered questions. You could drive yourself nuts thinking about them. I think that I was trying to get my wedding to be in September/October timeframe, but my parents wanted it in the summer. If I had had it in late September, it would have been nuts to try to get some of the relatives to go to the Northeast after those events. The list could go on, especially with those closer to Ground Zero. My parents had been in NYC when the first WTC attack happened in 1993. But they were fortunately nowhere near the city on September 11. But they knew people who were there - one of my dad's closest friends lost his brother that day there.
The question still is out there: Why? Not why did it happen. Why did some people live and why did others die?

Monday, August 28, 2006

I'm back

I've been trying to get back on here since Friday. Don't know why I had so many issues.
This weekend, Jon and I went to the zoo and we saw the new baby gorilla - he was so cute and you could tell Muke (the mom) was very protective. They say that Samantha (another gorilla) will have hers in a couple of weeks. We also saw kangaroos, koalas (well, sort of), billy goats, as well as the usual suspects. The gibbons were especially active and Jon recorded their sounds on his cell phone. Between Jon and I, we took over 250 pictures and we've already printed out 120 of them. LOTS of pictures, especially of Muke and her baby as well as Jomo (the loaned gorilla who is the baby's dad). We also got Jon a new vacuum cleaner. It boggles my mind how he can get so excited over a vacuum cleaner. He'd been talking about this for days, researched Consumer Reports, tested out the one he wanted, second guessed himself a gazillion times before he even purchased it. When we brought it home last night, within an hour he had it put together and was vacuuming all over the place. Crazy man!
So Liza at the http://schoolofscrap.proboards102.com/ posed a challenge to us to say what we are thankful for. So here goes:
I am thankful for -
great parents who raised me in a wonderful loving environment
a wonderful who inspires me with her creativity and generous spirit
having known and been related to such a wonderful man as my father, who taught me so much
a great husband who is intelligent and takes care of the household wonderfully
a loving dog that is there for us when we come home and gives us affection
a job that allows me to afford our lifestyle
a boss that is friendly and easy to work with
a nice roof over our head that we can afford to own
great relatives that support each other through thick and thin
good co-workers that make this job easier to take
my health, which is decent
my intelligence, which enabled me to get my job and my husband
great doctors that take care of me through any of my health issues
never worrying about where the next meal is coming from
the ability to change whatever I don't like in my life
my creative spirit which allows me to relax through my artistic endeavors

Now, hopefully, I can keep being able to get on here going forward....

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

A Monday kind of Tuesday

Lovely day today - well, at least outside it is!

I woke up this morning tired (I was up until midnight scrapping) - and I didn't hear Jon moving up and about. I get out of bed and look for my glasses and not only had I been lying on top of them, but they were broken. Crap! I go outside and Jon is trying to sleep - it's 7:15 and he's usually out the door by 7:30 for work. He's got another one of his massive headaches and he took the medicine the doctor gave him yesterday for the issue. He called in sick to work. I load some pictures onto Photobucket (what I worked on last night) and then find my old glasses. Off to work! I forget my sweater for work at home. And I can't find my wallet - I realize I left it in my food bag that I stuck in the fridge at work overnight. Hopefully, my wallet wasn't taken (after all they take other people's food all the time). I get to work and it's there and all my CC's are there (whew!).
I am so tired, I'm nodding off at work. And I'm freezing cold to boot. I take off early for lunch in part to get warm. I get to my car and I say I'm going to rest my eyes for a few minutes. A half hour later, I wake up and realize I need to get going to the optometrist. They can't fix my glasses there - it needs to be sent out for repairs, they've been damaged so badly. Good news is they're still under warranty. Jon calls me on the cell phone while I'm out. Can I stop and pick up a new prescription from the pharmacy that the doctor called in - his headache got worse instead of better with yesterday's medicine. So I do - he's still in his jammies when I drop it off at home. The good news is that he was home when the lawyer called - the health insurance company is only taking 13% of our settlement money from Jon's accident (we thought it would be half). That means we'll personally get about 40% of the settlement money - what a relief!
And that's my day so far - and it's not even 3pm!

Monday, August 21, 2006

Big Quiz

Saw this quiz on Ginger Rohlfs' blog and thought I'd try it, too. So here goes (and yes, there are some questions missing):

200. My middle name is: Anne
199. I was born on: September 15th
198. Your sign: Virgo
197. My cell phone company: Cincinnati Bell
196. My eye color: Blue/Gray/Green (depending on the day/mood/whatever)
195. My shoe size is: 10 1/2 W
194. My ring size is: 8 1/2
193. My height is: 5'9 1/2"
192. I am allergic to: dust
191. I was born in: Shelbyville, IN hospital where my grandma was the head nurse
190. I live in: Mason, OH - the 'burbs man
189. The last book I read: 52 Scrapbooking Challenges by Elsie Flanningan
188. My bed is: comfy, especially after a long day/night
187. One thing I know for sure about the opposite sex: they're men!
186. I am glad I'm my sex because: we have more logic to us
179. My favorite Holiday is: Thanksgiving
178. The perfect kiss is: one that makes me warm inside
177. The last three cd's I bought are: Sun Kil Moon's "Tiny Cities", The Dandy Warhols "Odditorium or the Warlords of Mars" and She Wants Revenge (self-titled)
172. My most treasured possessions are: my quilt from my mom, my photos and scrapbooks, and our dog
170. What did you do last night?: Scrapbooked and talked to my mom on the phone
167. My skin's reaction to the sun is (tan/burn): Burn, then go back to pale white

I Do (YES)/Do Not (NO) Believe In:
143. Santa? His spirit, yes
142. Love at first sight? Yes
141. Luck? to a certain degree. I also believe we make our own luck sometimes
140. Fate? again, to a certain degree
138. Aliens? Yes, but not as we want to think of them
137. Heaven? unsure
136. Hell? a personal one, yes. ina religious sense, I'm unsure
135. Ghosts? Yes
134. Horoscopes? For entertainment purposes only
133. Soulmates? Somewhat

Which is Better?
129. Hugs or Kisses: Hugs
126. Red heads or Dark Brown hair: Dark Brown
125. Blondes or Brunettes: Brunettes
124. Hot or cold: warm preferably, but of those two, cold
123. Summer or winter: Fall
122. Coffee or tea: Herbal tea
121. Chocolate or Vanilla: Chocolate!
120. Night or Day: Inside
119. Oranges or Apples: depends on the day
118. Curly or Straight hair: straight

First Thing That Comes To Mind
115. Backstabbers: Nasty people
114. Parents: loving, caring
110. School: learning so much stuff

Last time I
103. Showered: this morning
102. Last time I hugged someone: this morning
101. Saw someone I haven't seen in a while: a few months ago

People
90. Who's the ditziest person I know: Me
89. Who makes me laugh the most: my husband

87. One thing I'm mad about right now is: the lack of justice sometimes
83. The last movie I saw in the theater was: Clerks II
82. The thing I don't understand is: why I can't seem to get my but in gear regarding my weight
76. This summer I am: actually getting some projects completed
75. Something I will really miss when I leave home is: our dog
74. The thing that I'm looking forward to the most: taking some days off in September to get the house re-organized
72. Today: is boring
70. Next Week: month-end closing - busy, busy, busy
71. Next Summer: who knows?
67. People call me: Leslie, Les
62. The person who knows the most about me is: Me, I hope
61. The person that can read me the best is: Jon
60. The most difficult thing to do is: hurt someone even if it's to help them
59. I have gotten a speeding ticket: never
53. The one person who I can't hide things from: me
51. Right now I am talking to: nobody
48. I work at: Siemens
47. I have these pets: a dog, Harley
45. The worst sound in the world: a high-pitched scream from a child
35. Florida or Hawaii: Hawaii, though I've yet to go there
33. My favorite piece of clothing is: sweatpants
32. My favorite sport to watch is: women's basketball
31. Last time I cried: I don't remember
27. Last person who hurt you: again, don't remember
22. The all-time best movie is: Star Wars
21. The all-time best thing in the world is: being happy
20. The all-time best person you know is: my Mom and my Dad
19. The most annoying thing ever is: where do I start?
18. The most annoying person you know is: don't have anyone specifically in mind
17. I lose all respect for people who: step all over people to get their way
16. The movies I have cried at are: I don't remember
15. Closest friends Names: Holly, Caryn, and of course my DH, Jon
14. TV show you're watching? waiting for 24 to come back
13. Favorite web site: School of Scrap
12. I want to be: a mother
11. Something you want most: right now - a remodeled kitchen
10. My favorite phrase: By the way...
9. My room is: depends on the room
8. My favorite celebrities are: 7. The hottest celebrity is: Matthew McConnaughy
6. Your strongest physical feature is: my eyes
5. My weakness is: cheese
4. If you could be anyone in the world, who would it be? Physically, Sandra Bullock. Otherwise, me
2. I filled out 200 (well, less than that) questions because? because I was bored and felt like it
1. What do you want? Satisfaction

Random Childhood Memories

I'm here at work with {almost} nothing to do again. So I thought I'd answer a blog question posed at the School of Scrap by the fearless principal Lisa for a blog challenge to talk about a random childhood memory.
My memories of my childhood have been focused more on my dad lately since I lost him in April of this year. For a while, to make ends meet, my Dad worked two jobs. His regular job at The Williams School as Assistant Headmaster and teacher, and a second job as an employee at the hardware store True Value. I know we were living in Plainfield at that time, and I think that's why he had to do the second job - this was my parents' first house. I remember going to visit my dad at True Value every once in a while with my mom. My mom also worked a job at the time - she worked in the children's section of the Otis Library in Norwich, Connecticut. I remember going there more often (than to dad's workplace) and participating in their children's reading program during the summer. I remember them showing movies, including one of the Beatles' animated movies (was it Yellow Submarine or the Magical Mystery Tour?). I also remember distinctly one day, wandering in the adult section of the library, turning down one stack aisle and seeing this old, homeless man peeing in the corner of it. Never looked at the library the same after that....

What Language I Should Learn

Another interesting Blogthing:
You Should Learn Japanese
You're cutting edge, and you are ready to delve into wacky Japanese culture.From Engrish to eating contests, you're born to be a crazy gaijin. Saiko!
What Language Should You Learn?

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Wrong Career?

I just had to laugh at this "quick and dirty" career profile for me - not even close to what I'm doing now (financial analyst/accountant).

Your Career Personality: Independent, Insightful, and Ingenious
Your Ideal Careers:
ArchitectArtistBusiness strategistCollege professorComputer programmerMathematicianNeurologistPhilosopherPhotographerVideo game developer
The Quick and Dirty Career Test

Friday, August 18, 2006

Intro and Freeze Tag!

So I started a blog over a year ago and didn't do it for quite some time. Meanwhile, I've forgotten my user name and password over there. So here I am starting anew!

And what better way to start my new blog than with being tagged. Liza from The School of Scrap tagged everyone there, so here goes...

1. If you could build a house anywhere, where would it be? not too far away from where I live now.
2. What's your favorite article of clothing? my linen shirts from Lane Bryant (I got the same shirt 3 times just in different colors)
3. Favorite physical feature of the opposite sex? eyes
4. What's the last CD that you bought? it was either Sun Kil Moon's 'Tiny Cities' or The Dandy Warhols' 'Odditorium or Warlords of Mars'.
5. Where's your favorite place to be? in my scrap room or buried in my bed
6. Where's your least favorite place to be? outside doing yardwork
7. What's your favorite place to be massaged? my feet
8. Strong in mind or strong in body? mind
9. What time do you wake up in the morning? between 6 and 7:30 am
10. What is your favourite kitchen appliance? microwave
11. What makes you really angry? someone trying to pull the wool over my eyes or acting like I'm an idiot
12. If you could play any instrument what would it be? drums
13. Favourite colour? green
14. Sports car or SUV? with gas prices today, sports car
15. Do you believe in an afterlife? somewhat
16. Favorite children's book? The Velveteen Rabbit
17. What's your favorite season? Fall/Autumn
18. What is your least favorite household chore? dusting - I'm allergic to dust (literally)
19. If you could have one super-power, what would it be? to make people get along
20. If you have a tattoo what is it? I don't have one, and now I can't get one because of my fibromyalgia
21. Can you juggle? hahahahahahaha, like I have any coordination
22. The one person from your past that you wish you could go back and talk to? It would probably be my Dad
23. What's your favorite day? any day I have off
24. What's in the trunk of your car? junk and bags for when I go to the scrap store (I hate wasting bags)
25. Which do you prefer-sushi or hamburger? tough choice - depends on what kind of each, where I get it, and the mood I am in.

Tag goes to anyone who reads this blog (and hasn't already been tagged)!