And as if I'm not busy enough...

...with the flood of guests since the peep meet (I'm serious, almost every day since we saw y'all there have been people staying at our house)....


...I just found out I'm going to The Netherlands. In 3 days.

Wow.

Well, on the plus side, I'll probably have quite a bit of downtime in the evenings so maybe I can finally get the peep meet pictures updated.

Oh my.

A Toddler's Wrath

Something about this story struck me as both hysterically funny and infuriating at the same time.

Hysterically funny because the kid was just doing what toddlers do. At his age, everything is a toy and everything belongs to him. I also find it hilarious because I've been struggling with my own "how to approach the discipline issue" thoughts and have found myself mildly frustrated by them recently.

Infuriating because where was his mother?

Finding new and creative ways to destroy things is a toddler's job and after reading this? Somehow the cheerios deep in the couch cushions aren't that big of a deal. :-)

http://www.bnd.com/breaking_news/story/41918.html

How funny are the monks though?

"No problem."

I love it.

If you've never seen the Mandala, here's some more info:
http://community.berea.edu/galleryv/MandInfo.html

It's really amazing. Especially to see them working on it.

Although it is made to be destroyed shortly after it's creation, so the kid was actually helping them out. Maybe he's the next Dali Lama!!! :D

I DID IT.

Yeah that's right, you heard me. I DID IT.

Today? I am officially a professional success.

I got the job at the cruise line. I start on June 5th.

I am so excited I can't even come up with words to make a coherent post, so I'll just stop trying and leave it brief. I'll have more later when I can think straight.

It's just a really really big deal. It's awesome that I finally have a full-time, permanent gig with health benefits and such but, well this is more than I expected. Let's just say I've been dreaming about a job with a cruise line for a long, long time. This whole move has been so kismet-y, it's startin' to freak me out a little bit. :-)

More details coming but for now, I'm gonna do a little celebrating.

*smooches* all around.

Whoa! Almost a month!!

Dang. Working has indeed cut into my sittin' around time. :-)

Things have been suuuuuuuuuper busy lately and I have not been around the computer very much. (And that's not totally because somebody frequently hogs it for fantasy baseball :P) Also since the purchase and installation of the hot tub, well let's just say we aren't terribly productive on the weeknights. ;-) Plus, we have started taking the bus in together in the mornings (instead of driving) and not only does that take a teeny bit longer, but since we are walking around downtown (instead of me just picking him up) we've been lingering around bars and stores and generally just screwing around instead of just getting on a bus. :-)

The job is going very well. It's totally stress-free and very boring -- I love it. The people I work with are pretty fun and while I haven't really made any "friends" per se, I do enjoy hanging around them at work. We'll see -- I still have 2 more months here.

Speaking of jobs -- I applied for (and got a call back about) an analyst position at a cruise line. OMG! I returned the call as soon as I could but I have not heard back from them yet. :-( It's a bummer because I've been spending a lot of time in the robotics lab this week and I can't have my cell phone with me in there. So keep your fingers crossed that I can get in there for an interview. That would be a GREAT place to work but there may be some travel involved and I have questions for them about that. Let's face it, I didn't move all the way up here just to get on a friggin' boat half the year.

I'm not that worried about it though. Things will work out the way they are supposed to. The BF went through all of our finances the other night and paid a bunch of bills and damn...we are livin' lean from now on. But my paycheck showed up the next day and I think that made him feel a little better about things. :-) I'm pretty confident that once this gig ends, my contracting agency will find a new one for me. So they won't be repossessing our hot tub any time soon (at least not until AFTER the peep meet LOL).

I finally ventured out last weekend and got my hair cut. The same person has been cutting my hair for 14 years, and I had it cut one last time before I left California. I was putting off trying to find a new place for as long as possible, but I just couldn't stand it anymore. I wasn't too crazy about the salon itself, but the stylist was super-nice and she did a nice job. She is also kinda new to the area, she moved here from Savannah, GA about 6 months ago. She actually lives pretty close to us and told us of a couple of places to go and hang out. Maybe we'll give it a try and see if we can meet some people.

I'm excited that it's Friday -- the sun is even (kinda) out. I don't know if it will stay that way but it's nice for now. We have some fun plans for this weekend -- fun and kinda sad. Our friend is moving back home to Africa for good so we are going to try and spend a little time with him before he goes. :-(

Happy Friday everyone!!!

Happy Easter, Friends!!!

I'm such a Buddhist -- I totally spaced on it being Easter today. :P

Meaning I also forgot to put together a basket for Rambo. Or buy a ham. Or do anything, really.

It might be a good thing though as we got a little gift basket from the spa place and it had a couple of little plastic decorative easter eggs in there. I thought it was cute so I put one on Rambo's highchair when he was having his snack.

I'm such a dumbass. OF COURSE he picked it up and shoved the whole thing right into his mouth -- and it was just small enough to fit ENTIRELY in his mouth and most likely choke him.

However, it was a little funny -- I didn't panic, I just reached out and squeezed his little cheeks together and the egg shot right out of his mouth. Crisis averted. *whew*

And I did go down to the store today and buy a ham. Uhhhh this is my first one I've cooked by myself soooooooo...well, just wish me luck. ;-)

Happy Easter everyone -- I hope you have all had a wonderful day with the ones you love.
*smooches* and *hugs*

Ahhhhhhhhhhh...the weekend....

And ahhhhhhhhhhh it's even better when you have a hot tub to get into. :P

Longest.Friday.Ever.

But totally worth it. :D Our new tub was all heated up and ready to go so I couldn't wait to get home! So after working all day (at a job I'm actually enjoying -- WTF? That's new!) and then getting horribly, HORRIBLY lost trying to go pick up Dingus after work, ahhhh we were able to step into our new hot tub.

IT'S GREAT. Just so great. I'll have pics and more details later. But for now? I'll just keep saying IT'S GREAT. :D

But that's not what I came in here to tell y'all about.

Today we had Rambo. And it was, without a doubt, the best day I've ever had with him. Strange, but still the best.

He was so much fun today. I say it was strange only because he kept staring at me today. I mean, STARING. He was sitting in his Daddy's lap drinking his juice and he didn't take his eyes off me the whole time.

We played together and he smiled at me a LOT and laughed a few times. But the best part?

Today was the day he reached out and hugged me for the first time. I've gotten a lot of hugs in my life, and I've given a lot of hugs...but seeing him reach his arms up for me, and then feeling them around my neck....wow I was hugging him so hard in return I was almost afraid I might hurt him!

(Then it was kinda funny later in the day cuz Dingus and I went shopping...in the shoe store this lady in line behind me had a little girl about Rambo's age who I was smiling at and talking to...and she reached out and hugged me too! Then I started worrying...."oooh maybe I just have a wierd 'hug me' smell going on today or something" LOL)

It was a great visit and we had a lot of fun today. We played and laughed and I fed him a snack and we hugged and had a wonderful time. I was very sad to see him go. But I'm very excited to go buy him some swimmy diapers and show him the hot tub on Tuesday. :D

And now we've taken our break and the tub should be nice and hot again so I'm going back out. More later. ;-)

Day One: It's Quiet, Too Quiet

Seriously -- this is the most laid-back environment I've ever worked in. WTH? Either this place is decidedly exceptional or I've been getting screwed blue all these years! In all honesty though, it's a great change from where I came from. Now that I look back on it, I'm not sure how I survived it with even this small amount of wits about me.

Initial thoughts:

Truthfully, I am GROSSLY overqualified for this gig. But as long as you're overqualified you might as well be overpaid and thankfully, I'm that too. ;-) All kidding aside, the work is insanely easy and anybody with the tiniest bit of computer exposure could do it with no problem. The upside to that is that I've got all the confidence in the world that I can handle this (and getting in over my head is one of my biggest fears) and it's certainly a nice change of pace from the "OMGWTFBBQ!!!111" environment I just came from. The downside is that I'm likely to get damn bored damn quick. Good thing I'm only working there for the next 3 months, eh? ;-)

As usual, no chicks. It sure would be nice to chat with a female every day but the guys that I work with are really really nice. One of the guys looks like Bill Engvall and sounds EXACTLY like Jeff Bridges. (That drove me crazy for HOURS until I was able to finally place the voice).

The campus is beautiful (apparently it's practically brand-new) and my desk is nice and clean and cool. It's nice and clean because they still dont' have a computer or a phone for me yet. :D As pretty as it is, it is kind of a pain in the ass to get to. But the cool part? I get to drive past the Space Needle every day. AND they had Nutter Butters in the vending machine!!!!

I do have to figure out my shoe situation though because I'm on my feet almost ALL day. My back is killing me right now. The hardest part about my job is going to be that, and trying to find my way around. The place is HUGE!!


All in all, it was pretty cool. I was actually quite proud of myself today -- I toned it down just enough so that I was funny but I didn't butt into conversations or was loud and obnoxious. (Yeah yeah I know I can get that way...what can I say? It's part of my charm.) I was confident, had a firm handshake, smiled and looked everyone in the eye and never let 'em see me sweat. :-)

Also -- I noticed one of the guys I work with struggling to fix an issue on a computer and I knew exactly what he needed to do. HOWEVER, I said nothing. Nobody wants to look like Little Miss Smarty McKnowitall on their first day. Even though I wanted to laugh and shoot my coffee out my nose when he asked me "do you know how to add a computer to a network domain?", I didn't, and just said "yes I've done that before" and moved on.

So all in all it was a good day but I'm exhausted and my back is killing me. I just got a pizza and Dingus is on his way home so I'm just gonna kick back for the rest of the night. More later. :-)