chatter

Well I am still on my kick about doing something about this house. Last weekend I was out of boxes and desparate to box something up LOL. Tom at work finally made his move to J28 and brought with him 12 boxes. My eyes glazed over. I took 5. I think that should finish me up.

This week found me taking the train into Chicago for Action Script training. Why oh why can I not find decent training on the finer points of AS? I was disappointed in this class. I had to help the instructor out a couple times and we got out way early every day.

Running around Chicago was nice though. The 1.5 train ride allowed me to catch up on my sleep or reading and lunch was good. I took tons of photos of tall shiny buildings.

Today the DirectTv guy came to install our Tivo. I wished I could of been home for this. Raleigh took that time to also de-install the TV wall unit that I have been clearing. Poor Cloudy, she finally figured out how to climb it and then we take it down. Now it is time to repair the wall underneath it and paint.

I thought the pink carpet the previous owners had was ugly you should see what was still under the TV wall. Orange and brown mottled stuff, yuck!

Last night Cloudy got out. it took us 30 minutes in the dark to find her and get her back in. Thank goodness for her jingling collar so we could pin point her by sound.

Right now I am editing the play Hollace and Haley performed for me that I filmed. It is funny called the Blooded River or as their title screen says…the Blund Rivf Muvie. Got to love 6 year olds.

Haley’s mom told me yesterday that they are for sure moving Nov 17.. Even though Haley taught Hollace the word Mother F&cker (Hollace was more concerned over Haley’s use of the word Stupid), we will miss her.

I want a new iPod.

I am working on my wish list for December when my profitsharing check comes in. I have been getting the computer room ready for a treadmill, my printer is on the brink and I really want a wide angle lens for the camera. I will have to move the numbers around once I know them to see if a new iPod is also in my future.

On Friday morning right before the alarm clock went off I heard RAW curse the house. He hates this house and whenever anything happens he blames the house. Well he was cursing the house so at that moment I decided I will do something to get the house ready for sale. First thing first is to get rid of that built in complete wall entertainment center that came with the house. We need to do that before we recarpet which we are in dire need of. I snagged a bunch of boxes from work and cleared all the books and crap from the wall unit. In the computer room I decided to put my long work table in to storage to make room for the treadmill I want so I am clearing clutter from that room too.

RAW doesn’t know what is going on. I found out later that he wasn’t curing the house but the small lamp that just fell on him. Whatever, the balls are rolling now.

All weekend I boxed up stuff and on Monday I took the day off for Columbus Day. Me and Hollace went to Ikea where I bought a smaller coffee table. I will put my old one in storage. I really hate to spend the money on storage and apparently so does RAW as he keeps offering me to put it all in the garage. The thing is the garage is one of the problems with the clutter that I never hear the end of with him.

Another thing I am getting ready for is high gas bills this winter so while at Ikea I bought us all down filled comforters.

While I am making all these changes around the house, Paula is about to make a really big change. She is moving back to the area! I am thrilled, it will be so cool to have her close to here and I am glad I got a chance to see her while she was in Baltimore.

Anyway, it is time to get ready for bed.

Today I was a wedding photographer for the mafia LOL. Yesterday Raleigh was at Art works with Hollace and the lady next door who runs a cake shop ran in and was asking if anyone knew a photographer. She knew someone who was getting married tomorrow and their photographer fell through. A family member was suppose to take the shots but had to go out of town unexpectedly. They just needed someone to take a few pictures at their home, then the church and then to this restaurant reception. it paid about $100 for 3 hours of work. I am not a wedding photographer or ever desire to be one but I reluctantly said ok when it sounded like a fairly low key, low pressure event.

I then talk to the mother of the bride and she said her daughter already got married by a justice of the peace and already had a kid and is now expecting a second. They finally got it passed by the archdiocese to have a small 30 minute church wedding.

I get to their house which really is a big fancy house and no one was ready except the bride and she is wearing the fanciest dress I have ever seen. It was her mother’s and it cost her back in the day, $5000.

I notice their Lincoln out front has Zaza as their license plate which is the name of the restraunt the reception was. They were very italian and owned this gangster themed place. I felt so awkward hanging around the church and then this restaurant photographing these strangers. My personality does not lend itself well to wedding photography but I hope I give them what they are looking for. Dang, I shot nearly 200 pictures. I ended up hanging around them for 5 hours and she kicked in an extra $25 but sheesh remind me never to agree to do anything like this again.

First of all I am looking forward to this weekend because I plan to go nowhere. The last two weekends in a row we went out of town. Funny that we keep taking road trips when gas has been looming at $3 a gallon. Anyway last weekend we went to Fort Wayne. A few things bugged me about the weekend

#1 RAW’s mom gave him a nice lump of cash. Usually I get a few bucks myself out of this but this time I didn’t. The only thing that MIL said was to make sure we get a will so if somethng happens to RAW I get the money. I thought that was a given being married to him. That is ok, my year end bonus money will just be for me then.

A funny thing MIL said was when she was noticing my new glasses. She said they looked good on me and that they reminded her of Benjamin Franklin. Huh? LOL

#2. The reason we went down to Fort Wayne last weekend after only being there a month sooner was MIL’s church had their festival. RAW and his mom were running into people left and right. When we went into the cafeteria to check out the chicken dinner, the woman that collected the money said, hey I know you to RAW. No big deal. We went to leave but I hesitated because I wanted to take a picture of the door. RAW thought I hesitated because I wanted to meet the woman so he introduced me. He didn’t tell me what her name was so I asked who she was. She said Darleen. Darleen was the name of the woman he was engaged to during the year and a half hiatus we had with our relationship 17 years ago. Was this THE Darleen? I haven’t gotten the nerve to ask.

#3. While at breakfast on Sunday RAW’s mom casually mentions that she was this close to sending RAW to military school when he was 14. I ask what he did to warrant that. She just told me that it is a secret. She won’t tell. RAW won’t tell. What the hell did he do and why won’t they tell me?

Today was officially my first whole day in my new office. After 2.5 years at the main campus, it is odd to be back to the other building. I got to now plan my lunches again.

After work I had a doctor’s appointment to remove my annoying dematofibroma that I have had for 8 years. I had the doc just shave it flat as oppose to digging it out (its deep).

After bending over backward to find a brownie troop for Hollace, she had her first meeting and hated it. She didn’t realize it was today I guess and was really bummed that she wasn’t going home after school. I guess she just sat in a corner crying wanting to go home. She wouldn’t give it a chance. That just kills me. I know she would love scouts if she would give it a chance.

Thats it

Tonight I got my glass of wine. RAW opened the bottle for me. I took one sip then put it down so I could put Hollace to bed. I then started to feel headachy (I never get headaches) and started to get too warm. When I looked in the mirror the left side of my face had pink stripes! I must of ran my fingers across my cheek but it sure lasted for awhile and who knows it still might be striped, I haven’t looked lately.

After Hollace went to bed, I took a shower, put on my jammies, got out that glass of wine. Put some Beethovan on the iPod, grabbed some cheese and crackers and sat down on the bed and folded laundry.

Tonight after I put Hollace to bed I sat on the floor with some paper and threw that bottle of wine in the freezer so it could get a little cold and started on my soul searching. Cloudy was busy attacking the string on the folder of my pad of paper and chewing on other paper while I doodled. I finally go for that glass of wine and realized I never opened a bottle with a cork. I screw in the cork screw and that was about it. I couldn’t get it budge so I put it in the fridge with the cork screw and made a plate of nachos. Like I said, pathetic

Tonight while RAW is in Indiana and Hollace is in bed my big plan was to get to the bottom of some of my issues most namely my self destructive eating and social anxiety. I was planning on sitting around with music playing, a glass of wine (which I never do but it seemed right for tonight) and some paper and just write it out.

The problem is today me and Hollace went to Chicago and I came home with nearly 200 photos that I just had to process. Sherry called during that time and we talked about the weigh thing so I guess I thought I was off the hook and went on going through the photos.

Now it is time for bed and I didn’t figure out a damn thing (one of which was figuring out how to balance all the photo into other things I should be doing). If I wasn’t going to do the soul searching, I had several softwares I needed to do tutorials for (Motion, Soundtrack and some good ole fashion ActionScript)

So tonight it was pretty much a typical night.

What a wonderful weekend was had by the Ward family.

RAW had the bright idea to go camping on this holiday weekend. Normally we avoid the camping scene on weekends like this cause it is hard to get a spot but RAW suggested we go to Chain of Lakes State Park which is 10 miles from home (and with gas at $3.18 a gal, an affordable trip). We had never camped here before but now plan on doing it more often.

We set up camp on Thursday morning where it was first come first served and got the perfect site. Though we were weren’t planning of camping Thursday night we did go there and ate Taco Bell at the site.

On Friday I heard from Kathy about her finally getting a job, hopefully her dream job but I couldn’t get her off the phone and I had to get to the site because RAW invited Barb and her family over for dinner. Scramble, scramble, kind of wished we could of done that on Saturday but oh well it worked out. It was a nice visit and our second attempt at entertaining people. The first was a month or so ago with Barb and Jim the neighbors.

We had a really nice campsite on the lake and the weather was perfect. It was so nice and refreshing to just sit at the site and relax. On Saturday we went home to get some more provisions and to visit with Cloudy. I turned on the TV to watch the latest on hurricane Katrina and the downfall of New Orleans (btw, it was last November that I had my Macromedia conference in New Orleans at the conference center where a lot of evacuees were barely surviving.) I felt the stress of that horrible situation come back so I turned off the TV and headed back to paradise.

On Sunday we went hiking lead by my nature girl Hollace and just enjoyed the park. We debated on whether or not to stay until Monday but decided we better get back to home.

Today we went to Deb’s house for a picnic. Hollace got to go swimming. It was a nice time.

All in all it was a nice fulfilling weekend.

after eating a mini chocolate bar, Hollace says, “It is a bummer when chocolate ends.”

When talking about her art Hollace says, “more time makes better art.”