Two More Weeks

I need to get in control of my life again. I heard on the radio that the Mets clinched their division last night. My response was, "Oh yeah, I knew they were going to do that, just didn't know when." Other seasons I'd be following every pitch and every swing of the bat. Yikes! Now I've hardly got a chance to post in my blog. Fortunately I did get a catch a break, today's class got canceled! Yes, we still have to present our group project next week, but the good thing is NO NEW assignment this week. Maybe I'll get to read the assignment I couldn't finish last week because I was busy writing my web critique/research paper and studying for a quiz (that also was canceled.)

While this past weekend was work, work, work, the weekend before my husband and I got together with 80sgirl and her friend, K, who were visiting Cornell. Ithaca is so nice, I'm sorry we don't get a chance to visit there more often. Maybe with Hubby's niece at school in nearby Cortland, we'll have an excuse to go down there more. Although with the work load I currently have, that looks pretty doubtful.

I really enjoyed our afternoon with 80sgirl and K. First lunch at The Pines for 80sgirl's favorite -- The Pinesburger -- followed by Apple Cranberry Pie ala mode and Chcocolate Decadence for dessert. Then off to check out some beautiful gorges. We ended up back at Cornell for a chimes concert in the bell tower. It was an incredible experience. The weather was perfect; the view spectacular; and the music in the bell tower was terrific. The songs included "The Rose" and "Moon River." It was almost as if they had been selected just for 80sgirl. I'm only sorry that they didn't play any Sting songs.

The high point of the day was when K saw hubby's Grateful Dead skeleton sticker on the rear window of his Forrester. "Oh, a Dead Head," she remarked and proceeded to tell us about her old boyfriend, an Egyptian, who was a Dead Head.

I hope to post again soon, but can't promise you when. Maybe with only ONE assignment to work on this week, I'll find time to post this weekend, but I'm not making any promises. I might end up watching a Mets game on television.

Wet Weekend

It's just another rainy Saturday in the 'cuse as the remnants of tropical depression Ernesto slog up the Mid-Atlantic States into New York State. This is our third rainy weekend in a row. I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll have good weather next Saturday in Ithaca with 80sgirl and her friend.

I'm feeling pretty good since I've already finished all the house work except laundry, and I've already got a good jump on my class readings. Hubby's going to be home brewing with a friend this afternoon so it will be quiet around here. There's no excuses not to continue on with my reading, especially since it's too lousy to do anything outside.

Tomorrow I'm hoping the rain clears. I'd like to see if the billboard I designed for my company is up. They said it was to be up the entire month of September. I'm pretty excited about it; I've never designed a billboard before.

The Week That Was

Another week's come and gone without a post, but it was a very busy week as the fall semester begins. Here's the run down in brief:

Friday: B brought in donuts for the office. I was very proud of myself for abstaining.

Saturday: Hubby went to Scranton with T to attend an old friend's clambake. I went for a walk at the lake and sanded the rust off my car doors.

Sunday: I caught up on some neglected house cleaning then primed the areas I sanded on Saturday. Hubby returned from Scranton. He was so impressed the work on my car, he's questioning whether I should return to grad school or consider training for a career in auto body work.

Monday: Back to work and plenty of it.

Tuesday: I had my first web site usability class. The professor admitted to being a Red Sox fan, so he can't be all bad. He reviewed some content management software with us, then let us out early. Hubby and I went to dinner at the mall and then shopped for something for me to wear for his awards dinner. I tried on a few suits, but they all seemed to make me look like an old stewardess.

Wednesday: We got an invite from T & E to a family get together. T's Uncle Tony was visiting from Los Angeles. My husband and I have been wanted to meet Uncle Tony for a long time. He was a character actor in Hollywood in the 1950's and '60's. He worked on several Roger Corman films. He also did an episode of "The Twilight Zone" with Peter Falk and guest starred on several episodes of "The Untouchables" among other shows. Uncle Tony was very charming and a super nice guy. We had a great time with T & E's family.

Today: I'm debating whether to start reading for class or to watch "The Office." I guess it's not too difficult a decision since there's a three day weekend coming up. I'll finish doing the laundry while I watch television. I'll start reading on Saturday.

Up next week: The final SkyChiefs game of the season is Monday. We're going tomorrow night since they're forecasting yet another soggy weekend for the area. (Besides we have free tickets.) 80sgirl will be here on Wednesday. I can't believe it's coming up so soon.

Seems Like Old Times

My husband is still trying to cope with the New York Yankees crushing 5-game sweep of his beloved Red Sox over the past weekend. The Evil Empire dealt a crushing blow that has all but extinguished any hopes of post-season for the Bosox. I, on the other hand, am filled with great joy, for not only will St. Thomas of Glavine continue pitching for the New York Mets, but also Shawn Green formerly of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays, and yes-- Syracuse Chiefs will be joining the team as well. This will reunite Green and Delgado again. I spent many nights at the old Mac Arthur Stadium watching them perfect their skills for the big leagues. I am totally thrilled. Sure, the Mets really needed a top tier pitcher, who doesn't? But face it, while Lastings Milledge has a lot of potential, he's not the guy I'd want playing outfield in the post season.

So good luck, Shawn. I'm glad I can cheer for you again, and I'm looking forward to seeing him in a Mets uniform.

Procrastinating Yet Again

Hubby's away with the boys this weekend. It's a good thing too. Otherwise I'd be stuck here listening to him whine about the Bosox dropping a doubleheader to the Yankees yesterday. With all this freedom, what have I been up to? I just spent the past hour installing (or attempting to) a subscription update to Norton Anti-Virus. Geez, I hate windoze, the same procedure would have taken around 20 minutes on my Mac.

I should be working on my freelance project right now, but I got an e-mail from the client saying they like the brochure they just had designed (by another designer) and maybe they'd like to use that design or flyers and brochures. Well great, go see that designer and ask THEM to give you THEIR files so you can convert them over to word docs so you can do print future flyers out on your home office ink jet. See how far you get. BWAHAHAHAAAA!!! That ought to go over big. So I guess I'll hold off working on this project for another weekend. I need to do some sanding on my car, anyway.

I have to go to a graduation party for a friend's granddaughter this afternoon. Of course, the weather's miserable. I'll get to sit in a tent in the rain with a bunch of people I don't know. It should be a lot like Relay for Life.

Back From Beantown

We got back from Boston on Sunday but I haven't spent too much time on line. My wrist's been aching again. Boston was great. We visited hubby's 92 year old Uncle. We usually visit him for his birthday in July, but he was still recuperating from pneumonia so we went later this year. My sister-in-law, her husband and daughter came up from LI. They were in Hartford dropping their granddaughter off after her week with them. It was a nice weekend for catching up and reminiscing. Well, mostly for my husband and his family. Hubby and I snuck into Boston on Saturday afternoon. We went to Quincy Market for shopping and bar hopping. The Black Rose is a really nice Irish Pub located on the edge of the Market. We usually stop in there for a pint when we're in that area. Although last time I was there I made the mistake of using their ladies' room. Scary, scary.

I just received an e-mail from Amazon.com that my textbook has shipped. I guess I'm looking forward to school. I'm not anticipating school as much as last year, but then last year it was all new and different. Now I know what to expect -- a ton of more work. K and I had lunch today. I sold her my textbook from last semester as she's taking the database administration class this semester. I'll be taking Internet Architecture for Web Services. It looks fairly interesting. Some of the material to be covered, I already do at work so I shouldn't be as clueless as I had been in my past classes.

I was also disappointed to find out that I'm not going to be able to make the DayGlo Radio reunion next month. Hubby's awards dinner is the same weekend. I wasn't all sure I could have made it anyway. Fortunately I'll get to see R, and I'm looking forward to that. I picked up a little joke gift for her in a very wild shop, called FUNusual in Quincy Market. Oops, if she reads this post it won't be so much of a surprise, oh well.

Aches & Pains & Ergonomic Keyboards

I really hate to sound like a little old lady here, but I've been on the computer only for work purposes the past few days. I did something to my wrist this past weekend and it's been killing me. I'm suspecting it was tendinitis. Today's the first day it's felt better since Sunday, and it still doesn't fell all that great. I also scarfed the ergonomic keyboard that was in the supply closet at work. It seemed to help more than I imagined it would.

Tomorrow's the company clam bake. Having been umemployed for 9 months, it's been a long time since I had to attend a company function. The lunches that G throws occasionally don't count. They occur in the office on company time so I think of them more like staff meetings with food. This will be off site and significant others and rug rats will be in attendance. It should be an interesting evening.

Losin' It

The title of this blog definitely implies double meanings. As far as my sanity, I lost that a long time ago, and not a day goes by that I don't miss it. I've also lost some weight -- four pounds since I started using fitday.com a couple of weeks ago. I'm six pounds away from my ten pound goal. I seem to do better when I don't set very ambitious weight loss goals for myself. Unfortunately, after I lose the first ten I never seem to get motivated to go on to lose the next ten. Maybe I'm just meant to be voluptuous.

Last night I got together with my old pals. We go back twenty years to our partying days back in the eighties. R and I go all the way back to sophomore year in high school. We always have a great time hanging out and reminiscing, but I did some massive damage to my diet plan. The Rosemount Cabernet Sauvingot was flowing. I brought chips and a salsa dip. R brought all kinds of chocolate goodies. I definitely overindulged. There was one minor triumph; I didn't eat any of the "whoopie" pies (see photo) she brought.

Heck, I did finally finish painting my garden fence and put in a few miles at the lake yesterday so maybe I worked a glass of wine few M&Ms off.

Still Steamy

I've got to make this post brief as my laptop battery's running down. It got up to 96 degrees here today. Hubby and I went out to dinner since it was just way too hot to cook. Ruby Tuesday's was a good choice. Hubby ordered their new mini burgers, and the air conditioning was cranked way up there. Tommorrow's going to be almost as hot and the dreaded thunderstorms will be returning.

Too Darn Hot!

I always feel guilty complaining about hot weather when I live in an area where it's usually colder than hell. Tomorrow Syracuse is actually going to have a "heat emergency!" The local television meteorologist said tomorrow's high temperature should be somewhere around 98. I also saw a news story on the national news about global warming and how the world's climate is getting warmer. My husband and I have been spending a lot of time recently talking about moving out of the area, but perhaps we should stay put. By the time we're seventy (if we're still around by then) upstate New York's climate might be pretty similar to what North Carolina's climate is now.

Despite the weather I'm already beginning to think about the fall. I e-mailed my professor to check with him regarding the texts for his class. I'm going to shop around and see if I can pick them up used online.

Stuff Always Takes Longer Than You Think

Why is it that I'm so bad at estimating how long a particular job will take, especially if it involves home upkeep? Yesterday, I had to stain two garden fences, each about six feet high an ten feet long. I figured one morning, tops. Well, got up late then realized I had no paint thinner; the stain is oil based. I had to run to the hardware store buy thinner and gloves. According to the warnings on the stain can, this stuff is almost as carcinogenic as radioactive uranium.

After I finally got started, I made good fairly good progress until I reached the part of the fence behind the giant hosta, which is in full bloom. I should have cut that stuff back BEFORE I started. It took a great deal of maneuvering, around them and finally the bumblebees drove me away from the area. I had no idea how popular those plants are with bumblebees. So I now have both fences stained except for the two and a half feet behind the hosta. I'm hoping most of the flowers will be dead by next weekend, so I can cut them down and finish the job. All in all, bumblebees not withstanding, it took me three and a half hours to stain, 17 1/2 feet of fence.

Of course, I was so exhausted from the staining job, I was no good for anything else for the rest of the evening. We had planned to go to the SkyChiefs'game. B had given us his tickets, but it was raining at game time. Hubby tells me they did eventually get the game in, but start time was postponed two hours. We'd already spent 2 hours hanging around the stadium in the rain waiting for the game to start on Tuesday night.

Judy

Wednesday a friend of mine lost her battle with cancer. She was gracious, considerate, selfless and intelligent,and she had a terrific sense of humor as well. We met through the Arts and Crafts Society. Both of our spouses were board members. Judy served for a time as the Membership Secretary, a position I has also held. I know what a thankless detail-oriented and time-consuming volunteer job that is.

I will remember Judy most for her undying optimism. When things got shaky with the Society, she always said we'd get through it, and she was right. Every time I saw her, while she was fighting her cancer, she'd tell me she was doing much better than the day before and, "I'm going to lick this thing." Sadly, this time she wasn't right.

I'll miss you, Judy. You were a great person to work with and even greater person to know

I'm Marge!

Last month Deathlok asked me to post my TV meme. I answered that I was Lisa Simpson, but image my surprise to discover that I'm actually Marge!

You Are Marge Simpson

You're a devoted family member who loves unconditionally. Sometimes, though, you dream about living a wild secret life! You will be remembered for: your good cooking and evading the police Your life philosophy: "You should listen to your heart, and not the voices in your head."

The Simpsons Personality Test

They're sure right about the good cooking and evading the police. (That's for another post.) I'd guess that a lot of the guys will end up as Homer. He seems to personify every bad trait in all the men I've known.

Two Little Stuffed Mushrooms

Alright maybe the stuffed mushrooms I had at Francesca's Cuccina last night weren't that little. It's amazing that something as innocuous as stuffed mushrooms can totally derail your diet. A few days ago I read a comment to one of Wombat-Socho's posts. Willow_one had suggested an online diet journal, fitday.com. I started using it and found it to be very easy to you and informative. They track your recent foods, so you don't have to do searches on foods you eat regularly. I like the custom foods feature. I occasionally buy a mocha flavored milk drink from a deli near my office. I just plugged in all the nutrient information off the drink's label, now it's in my database for the next time I drink it. FitDay will also track my activities (if I ever get around to doing any.) It's raining this morning so no walk at the lake. I like FitDay's graphic reports too. They really can tell you if you're keeping your diet on track. If you're trying to lose weight definitely check it out. If you're not I'd check it out anyway, you might be surprised the impact certain foods, like little stuffed mushrooms may be having on your diet.

I'm not beating myself up about last night's dinner. Hubby and I were celebrating sixteen years of wedded bliss. Hugs and smoochies out to the best husband on earth!Looking forward to many more years together.

On the baseball front, Yankees go down in defeat yet again to the Toronto Blue Jays. Kudos to A.J. Burnett for getting ten consecutive outs against the Yanks. This puts the Boston Red Sox 3 1/2 games in first.

Ok I know, I know

I've been remiss at keeping up with my blog. This is my first post in over a week. Sorry. My friends, Token Asian aka 80sGirl and Deathlok have very good reasons for not posting. They are going through some emotional days right now and my thoughts and heart goes out to them. Me, I have no good excuse except for the nice summer weather here and my general laziness. Who was it who wanted to start her own tech blog, anyway? The net has enough tech blogs as it is. I think I'll just try concentrating on this one for the time being.

Who says there's no good news? I read one of the crawls on CNN yesterday that said that Justin Timberlake told a reporter that would never run for President. Now I can sleep nights with one less thing to worry about. (I tried to google this story but couldn't find it. If one of my readers finds it please e-mail me.)

I need to run. I didn't realize it was getting so late. We have an overnight freeloader..umm, I mean guest tonight, he's supposed to show in a few minutes. I'd better go be on the lookout for him.

The Halfway Point

It's that time of the year when some of the world's most overpaid athletes converge in one place to smack little white balls with big wooden sticks. I'm referring to Major League Baseball's All-Star Game that takes place in Pittsburgh tomorrow night. Although it seems to me that the main event is beginning to get eclipsed by the bashfest going on tonight in PNC Park, The Century 21 Home Run Derby. I don't know who thought this up but what a genius! Let's get people to pay to watch batting practice. For those of you like my pal Deathlok who are unfamiliar with the game, in a real game the opposing pitcher tries to throw balls that the batter can't hit. In batting practice they throw balls that should be easy for the batters to hit. Don't get me wrong, watching major league players in batting practice can be pretty thrilling but to turn it into a "event" is pretty damn savvy. I guess the draw is that they take the hottest hitters in all of baseball put them all in and one place then let them all hit home runs all night. While it is fun I rather lose interest after the first hour or so. David "Big Papi" Ortiz hit four balls out into the River. OK the first one was exciting, the fourth one? Well you get the picture. They're going into the second round as I write up this post. David Wright, of the New York Mets is leading with 16 runs. Ortiz is in second with 10 and the Florida Marlins' Miguel Cabrera is in third with nine.

In other baseball news, "The Career That Wouldn't Die" looks like it's finally over. The Minnesota Twins released Ruben Sierra today. Notice I didn't say it WAS OVER. Knowing how desperate the New York Yankees are they just may sign him up...AGAIN.

Blogging and Chatting

Friday night and my husband's already crapped out, but then the guy does get up at 4:30 am on Fridays to get to work so I can't blame him. I usually spend Fridays on my laptop chatting with friends on a sort of an online Happy Hour. We've been doing this for about the past 2 months on and off. K is in online with me now. I'm hoping R will show. She mentioned something about chatting with me to firm up plans for when she visits the east coast in September. I doubt Dlok will make it. I read his blog, it sounds like his father-in-law is gravely ill. My heart really goes out to him and his family.

It's Friday and I need to concentrate on more positive thoughts. Not too much going on this weekend. I need to make a trip to get my hair colored and cut. Then this weekend hubby and I have to start moving stuff out of the living room and dining room since the carpet cleaners are coming this week. Hopefully I'll have time to weed the garden and make it out to the lake for a nice long walk.

One more thing, the final totals from Relay for Life are in. We raised over $47,000! There's a wrap up meeting on Monday night.

D'oh!

Yesterday I couldn't log into my cpanel account and then to my horror found an error page where my web site should have been. Several hours after placing a support ticket this e-mail message appeared:

Hello,

We are currently experiencing an issue with the Jefferson server which our technicians are looking at now. We have posted a NEWS item on our website concerning this and will update it as soon as we have more from out technicians.

"Jefferson server"? When the hell did get it moved there? The last time I checked it was on the MacDonald server. Thanks for the big heads up on the move. So I go to their web site and here's the announcement:

Tuesday July 4 2006 - 12:30PM - Jefferson.genwebhost.com - Connectivity Issues

Our datacenter technicians have traced the source of the recent issues to a faulty hard drive in the server. The technicians have reinstalled Cpanel on a brand drive and have begun to copy the backup data to the new drive. The account restoration process has already begun and we will be updating this thread with the progress to ensure clients are updated.

What they're backing it up NOW to another server? You mean it wasn't already backed up on another server? I'll have to remember to place yet another support ticket in order to find out what the name of new mystery server is. And don't ask me to cut them slack because it was the 4th of July. This is a Canadian company and for all I know their datacenter technicians are in Bangalore!

Good thing it's only a portfolio site. God forbid I was dependent on this site for my liveihood. Although all my e-mail accounts on that server are all messed up. I'm not happy at all.

How American am I?

I did take this completely objective quiz How American Are You? Here's my results:

You Are 59% American

Most times you are proud to be an American. Though sometimes the good ole US of A makes you cringe Still, you know there's no place better suited to be your home. You love your freedom and no one's going to take it away from you!

How American Are You?

I'm so relieved. All this time I thought I was an heinous bleeding heart America hating liberal. I'm not so bad after all. Of course, I'm sure would have scored much lower if I had chosen Carter for the best president of the late twentieth century, and fortunately, there weren't any questions concerning Michael Moore.

But then of course, I'm not as bad as these guys!

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Must Look Away...

Must not watch "Law and Order" marathon, must look away, must read web marketing book, must not watch "Law and Order." Ok, I'll admit I already sat through two episodes before tearing myself away to sit in front of the computer. I did, however, put in almost 5 miles walking by the lake early this morning, before the rains came. I have such good intentions to get things done, and then I get sucked into an episode of "Law and Order" which I've already seen about a half dozen times. Why does that happen?