Woopsy!

I got so tied up in some minor domestic goddessing yesterday that I forgot to post. This is getting monotonous I am sure but still smoke free.  I found out yesterday though that my car still has a little bit of that funk when you turn the heat on - I guess my nose is now working a bit better, too. I can only assume that the smell will go with time...and if it doesnt I will have to detail the interior of the car which sounds kind of shitty for as cold out as it is at the moment. Truth be told Im just happy that I can smell it.

So some fun news! Tim at Craft Pittsburgh Magazine has asked me to write another cooking with beer column for the next issue.  I had written the Cooking with Beer feature for the Pilot issue a couple months ago and was pleasantly surprised when it showed up in print almost exactly as I had written it with a delicious recipe for Beer Braised Chicken Thighs & Cauliflower Smash and all of my beer tip rambling.  Im flattered and excited to be participating in the next issue as well.  It will probably go to print & be available for download sometime in late January early February.  Honestly I was quite impressed with the magazine.  Tim believes, and I happen to agree, that our fair city has one hell of a beer scene that is grossly neglected in most of the regional beer rags and could be well served by a local publication so he started one.  If the pilot is any indication great things are coming and I love his website for keeping up with the latest info on beer goings on around the Burgh.

I also decided to donate some homemade cookies to Secret Agent L and her fundraiser for the CHS Christmas Cards & Cookies event coming up so that'll be fun! Gotta love it when I can help out with a charity by doing something that I love doing anyway, its a beautiful thing!

We are supposed to get some snow today...it was originally predicted at epic level proportions...I now hear maybe an inch. A note to all my fellow yinzers: CALM THE FUDGE DOWN! Its winter. We live in SWPA. Its going to get cold. Its going to snow. These are all facts. Facts we can do nothing to change. We dont need to flood the grocery stores for Milk, Bread & TP.  Wind does not require that you drive 20 miles under the speed limit because there is snow on the ground somewhere. I know Snowpocalypse is still fresh in your minds...but really, was that the worst thing ever? Lynch me if you wanna but I kinda dug it, even the shoveling part. I would rather look at snow blanketing the earth than dormant trees and dead leaves, it feels more like the holidays when there is snow on the ground and this twisted soul really genuinely enjoys the extremes of all 4 seasons we are lucky enough to experience here!

I FINALLY sort of started my Christmas shopping....I am such an AWESOME procrastinator!

Random Woooos!

Still not smoking and it gets better everyday.  Its funny how different things taste to me in less than a week.  I love it. I noticed it first on, of all things, a Diet friggin Coke and since then have found that EVERYTHING tastes better, or at the least more pungent. This is a pretty important thing for a chef...obviously.  This is really the longest I have ever made it without some type of cheat or just a plain all out fail...so if you see me daily and youre sick to hearing me woooo! about my accomplishment Im afraid youre just going to have to deal with it...I am WICKED proud of me.

Another bonus ~ I havent had to step foot into a "convenience" store in over a week. I love that. I can actually take my life in my hands and go to *GULP* Get Go (you guys know what Im talking about - that place is fucking insane no matter what or when you get there) get gas and go without having to go through any of the crap inside the store. This makes me happy.


Unrelated me & Mister went out for a late lunch yesterday & I have a note to all the dive bars/bar bars out there - stop with the frozen bullshit breaded fried chicken. Please? Seriously...it is really not all that challenging to bread and fry chicken parts to order, its actually cheaper and you can take a relatively pedestrian sandwich to another level by that one simple thing! I usually stick with wings and other bar-like noms there and decided to go for the gusto and get a sandwich ~ I know I'm living dangerously ~ but it SOUNDED good - fried chicken tenders, bbq, fried onion straws & mozzarella. The bun was perfectly grilled, the bbq was pretty good, the onion straws salty & crisp...and then those damn stupid prebreaded dry as hell flavorless yucky chicken tenders. The sandwich would have been worthy of some raves except for that one part. Two more minutes and a little bit of give a fuck and it would have been next level. Its lazy. And dumb. Bread your chicken to order. Feel the same way about places that use frozen burger patties ~ and it makes me ragey when I see people RAVE about them being the best burgers ever when I KNOW they are those damn puck burgers you can buy at Sams Club. Want a good burger? Portion fresh ground beef, dont freeze it, dont smash it into oblivion when its on the grill and put it on a good bun. Frozen burger patties? Really? You should be ashamed. Pattying ground beef is not rocket science & the end result is just a eleventy times better than ANY frozen burger patty.

It was another good day...The Pens kicked come C-Bus ass tonight and it was epic, Angkor made me my most favoritest Cambodian fried rice for dinner {note to self: figure out what that delicious sausage is in there would ya?!?} and imma bout to practice some Grand Turismo so when Mister decides he wants to challenge me I wont embarrass myself with my suck.  Also might toss together some snickerdoodles because, well, they are delicious and I want them.

Happy Saturday Y'All! Hope it was as awesome as mine if not better!

My favoritest Friday!

In the famous words of Ice Cube....today's been a good day!

Its Day #3 and I am still smoke free.  Today was actually a pretty easy one - I wasnt around any smokers all day since I was off. I had some shizzle to do this morning so I had to RO the day from work, completed obligations and then had a day with Mister. The days with Mister have become a rarity...I pretty much work all daylight and his bartending gigs are mainly at night so yeah, we see each other in passing upon occasion and if we are REALLY lucky have a matched day off ~ today was one of those days. And for the record it was an EPIC day.  I will divulge more details as to the Epic as I can, but rest assured it was the best day I have had in a very long time and barring unforeseen bullshit it will only get better from here.  WOOOOOO!!

I was feeling inspired to make us dinner tonight ~ Paupiettes of tilapia stuffed with shrimp mousseline topped with lobster hollendaise with broccoli & purple cauliflower couscous. It was friggin delicious. I forget sometimes how damn easy it is to toss together something that sounds wicked complicated in about half an hour. Felt good to cook a real meal at home as opposed to grabbing something at the restaurants, take out or cereal.

Talked Mister into getting the steering wheel doohickythingie for the Grand Turismo 5 game he bought. This is going to be a cant beat 'em join 'em scenario and the steering wheel looked kinda cool.  Thank god I can really drive better than I can in that game....prob didnt help I'm imbibing a St Bernardus Christmas while playing...but regardless I kinda suck. This is going to require some practice. I dont like hes better at me at it and I will need to fix this. Yes, I am 34 and play video games...got a prob with that?!? :-)

So today I give thanks to chewing gum for saving me from myself, for lights at the end of some tunnels and for Mister for sharing a pretty awesome day with me and supporting my crazy while I try to kick this crap habit Ive acquired. Somewhat related: He has agreed to not make me walk the dogs the whole winter when hes home if I stay smoke free ~ that is some SERIOUS motivation right there, its effing COLD out there!

This isnt as bad as I thought it would be really.

So its Day #2. This is the day that everyone has told me would be the worst. If thats true then it should be all down hill from here.  Think it helped immensely that I was busy as hell at work all day...but thats the case most days so that should continue to be helpful.  Havent had any major headaches that werent caused by a human or anything else.  I can still tell in my own head that Im edgier than normal, but it is what it is.  Still havent cheated even though I have been more than tempted by all the co-workers that have delicious cigarettes all around me, but I have adopted the "these idiots are NOT going to knock me off this wagon" mentality that seems to be working. Still taking it one day at a time and thats about all I can do. I can tell you that I am very sincerely anticipating the day that the smell of cigarette smoke will repulse me...so anytime that side effect would like to show up I would be most appreciative.

Got home last night and was thinking about bailing on the visit to Mom's but decided that sitting here all obsessing about how bad I want a smoke was a BAD idea and went.  Didnt dig through the Fenton but had a great time making cookies with my nephews and trashing my mom's kitchen. Got me thinking on my holiday baking so that will be starting soon.

So I had a little back and forth about the holiday season with some Twitter friends today and it does make me feel better that I am definitely not the only one who is just not feeling the holiday love this year.  This isnt uncommon for me - I in essence work in retail. NO ONE who works in retail loves the holiday season...you'd be a sadistic fuck if you did. But in my travels today I reflected on some things that were said by a Christmas Zealot that I follow. He's an interesting fellow that I find I rarely agree with on most things but thats what makes life interesting, right?  Bottom line his argument for all of us Bah XMas folks to just relax and enjoy it, its only a month, whats the big deal just get over it and enjoy yourself.  I get where hes coming from...hes been dry humping Christmas since Halloween and obviously is much more into it that I am and that cool, but I disagree with a lot of it. I especially found his speeches funny because this person who is all about ramming holiday cheer down all of our throats has also had his fair share of pouting & whining like a 5 year old when plans hes tried to make to help him live out this ridiculous ideal about the serenity of his Perfect Holiday Season falls through because hes living this ideal outside the realm of reality and is then just dumbfounded when real life interferes with his dream of  Normal Rockwell Christmas.  The hypocrisy of his "spread the love and all of us be happy" message is complete tossed out the window when he doesnt get his way...and me having the dark sense of humor I have finds that LaughOutLoud funny.

Its not just a month. The holiday bullshit has been on display, on my TV and generally infiltrating my existence since 2 weeks before Halloween. That makes it what...over 2 months plus of BUY BUY BUY, Norman Rockwell ideals of holiday perfection, warm fuzzies and sentimental bullshit being rammed into my consciousness for MONTHS. Thats just too much. It actually makes me want to buy less rather than more, it makes me want to dodge the retail and commercial aspects of the holidays entirely and just ignore that its coming. Its the entire retail industry's fault. There need and desire to make the holiday shopping season a quarter of the year ruins it for me.  Yeah I get that they want the sales revenue - but they have taken what was when  I was growing up a holiday that was less about spending a gajillion dollars buying a bunch of shit we dont need and was more about time with family & friends, taking time to celebrate being together and just taking the time to appreciate what you have and share it with others. 

Black Friday crap sickened me this year. People camping out in Best Buy parking lots for days, waiting in line at 3am to get some great deal, people fighting & attacking each other about toys & electronics, stores opening up in the middle of the night and psychotic people actually GOING out at 3am to shop there. I mean its news all day how many people get injured at a walmart stampede, the people arrested for assault fighting over a TV, old women being assaulted by people to get a damn doll. Really? This is what Christmas shopping has come down to? This is what this holiday as become? We should all be ashamed. They retail industry keeps taking it further because there are enough assholes out there they make money doing it. And I HATE it. With ever ounce of my being. There was a time when I enjoyed going out shopping...hunting for that perfect gift for that special someone, walking the mall and looking at decorations and just enjoying the festiveness of the season but that time has long gone. I dont find it very "Holiday Season" to go to the mall and have to deal with the assholes there that are literally and figuratively FIGHTING for the hottest trend because some ass on TV said it was the coolest shit ever and you MUST have it. Bury your head in the sand all you want...but Christmas stopped being about family & friends and started being about greed & materialism years ago and I dont have to like it.

I will definitely have my kind of Christmas. We will go to my Mom's on Christmas Eve and have a fantastic dinner with my family and sit around the tree and open gifts with the kids, we will eat until we can teat anymore, we will talk, tell stories and enjoy my mom's awesome decorating and the warm glow of lights.  I will spend Christmas Day making a feast for my family and we will spend more time eating, drinking, relaxing and enjoying each others company being thankful that we have each other and appreciating the time we have together. I will get some presents, I will much more enjoy giving presents and it will be a great holiday for us all.  I will hope we get snow, its cold and crisp and I will see Christmas lights reflecting off it giving a time of year that is usually gloomy a warm and heartening glow. I will watch Rudolf, Frosty the Snowman, Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation and all of my other favorite holiday movies. I will donate money and toys to help family's around me have better holidays and feel good that no matter how small I played a part in helping some child or family have a happier holiday. I will bake enough cookies to feed a country and revel in sharing those little pieces of me with people I genuinely care for. I will spend this holiday with a husband I adore and who adores me back, my family and friends and it will be as awesome as any has ever been and it will be far too short as always...

And even with all of those amazing things that will make this holiday awesome for me...i will still HATE the blatant commercialism that has infected this holiday like a plague, the Christmas ads I see on TV will still make me sporky especially the make me want to vomit jewelery ads (real people in real life dont fucking act like those idiots they script in those ads), I will still get ragey watching people be just dickish to each other just because they can be while wrapped up in their own selfish existences, I will still be nauseated by parents who think that the only way they can give their kids a nice holiday by buying them half of a toy store while their kids apprecaite none of the crap they get and I will still abhor the way Christmas went from family traditions to a gluttony of commercialism.

Yes, I still love Christmas, the traditions, the time to get together and enjoy our friends and family...but as a sane person I will at the same time completely hate and do my best to not participate in all of the overly commercialized and insulting transparent attempts of the majority of the planet to turn this holiday into retail gluttony.

And for any that say Im a hater...you very well may be right, but in my opinion you're living in denial if you cant see that your holiday is designed to cost you a fortune, stress you out, has little or nothing to do with the holiday & is more about giving your money to the retail machine ~ when in reality the best gift I will get this year is just some down time to celebrate life with my nearest and dearest.

I would rather be flat ass broke sitting near my Charlie Brown christmas tree with my Mister drinking a beer laughing at crude dick & fart jokes all night than frantically trying to make sure that our holiday lives up to some imaginary standard set by Martha Stewart or whoever.

Im curious to hear your thoughts.  I can see both sides of the equation...but seriously I cant imagine I am the only one that has reached max for the forcing of Christmas down my throat for over 2 moths so Old Navy can see cheap fleece.  Christmas means more than stupid shit to me. Its about appreciating what you have, helping others who may need it and saying thanks to the people in your life that make it a better place to be.....and Im pretty sure that a drill doesnt express that as well as a hug, a personal gift and just saying the damn words.  Am I wrong?

The bitch is back!!

Hot damn its been a while since Ive come to tend my little piece of the internets! Its been a busy busy busy couple months (as always) and Ive thought of a bazillion things that I wanted to blog about but just have just not taken the time to actually sit and write them out once I get home from work.

So this post is going to be a "random" post in a way because I have a goal here I want to share~

• The primary reason that I havent posted for a bit was because I was feeling a bit exposed.  I have unleashed my store managers on the Twitters because I couldn't keep up with the comings and goings that were necessary for the 5 of them.  My Twitter account is public (because I kind of feel like what is the point of twittering if you are going to privatize your account - if you are that worried about what you have to say then maybe you shouldnt be saying it) and it is my personal account - so the views, opinions and thoughts expressed here and there are MINE and mine alone. I make it a point to not mention anything specific about my place of work or my coworkers & employees here or there and always have.  Well it took them all about 2 weeks, but the Pittsburgh beer scene is a close knit one but they found me so instead of blocking and hiding I just let it go and they follow me.  This is good and bad. But bottom line is I shouldnt let it effect me saying & doing what I want to do on my personal blog or twitter account. I think I can safely assume that all of my peoples get that there is the Me they work for and the Me that exists outside of that realm and though they both live in the same body they are very different people. Well that and I swear to all thats holy that if they are reading this and decide to turn my blog or twitter into any kind of gossipy bullshit with ANY of my employees or coworkers that there will be extreme hell to pay (If youre reading this guys you have been fairly warned...ok).  I do NOT invade their personal lives and doing that to me would be an excessive invasion of my personal life...but after much consideration I dont think they will. I work with some pretty awesome people and they are all grown ups...so I am going to roll the dice and see what happens. 

• I think Im really done smoking. Been pondering this a lot of late and I feel like its time.  I had this AH HA! moment a couple weeks ago. Im a smart person. I have a good job, I pay my bills, I am a good person, I possess the ability to make all kinds of good decisions large and small all day every day.  And yet at least 10-15 times a day I CHOOSE to put something in my mouth, light it on fire and inhale the smoke full on KNOWING that it will kill me. I wouldnt step in front of a bus 15 times a day. I wouldnt play Russian Roulette with a double barrel shot gun 15 times a day. I wouldnt jump off a roof 15 times a day. But I will smoke 15 cigarettes a day. Took me 17 years but yeah...thats fucking stupid. So there are 2 left in my current pack. I am not buying or bumming (see how I sealed up that loop hole right there) anymore of them after these last 2. I also am going to do this cold turkey even though the general consensus is that may be a bad idea. Through all this thinking and pondering I have also come to this conclusion - my smoking is a choice. Yes...there are things that make them addictive, yes there are chemical receptors in my brain that are going to be PISSED for a couple weeks, yes I might be more bitchy & aggressive than I normally am (sorry in advance) but fuck it. I am NOT going to spend a couple hundred dollars a month to make it easier for me to quit. I am not a weak person and there has not been one thing outside of this that I havent been able to accomplish in my life once I have set my mind to it and this is no different. I am not going to stop giving my money to Big Tobacco only to give it to Big Pharmaceutical. Fuck ya both...Im gonna buy a flat screen or a new Mac!! 

•  Related: I am going to blog my quitting. I am promising myself I will post at least once a day until I have kicked the habit and have realigned my routines accordingly. I genuinely enjoy blogging, it gets a lot of things that get trapped in my head out for me to look at and I want to do more with my little space on the internets. I like being able to read my thoughts with some objectivity...which is hard to do when wrapped up in your own head.

• Sarah Palin. I am pretty sure I have launched off about her before, but I read an article today that really pissed me off.  Michelle Obama has made it her initiative to help curb and control childhood obesity. I dont give a flying fuck how you feel about her politics - but this IS a huge problem. I dont have kids - but I know kids and shes right. They spend far too much time sitting on their asses in front of monitors & TVs than is good for them shoveling shit they really shouldnt be eating into their faces. I walked around for trick or treating with my nephews and my sister had her husband go home and get the car because  HER 9 YEAR OLD COULDNT WALK ALL THE WAY HOME BECAUSE HE GETS TOO TIRED. Hes 9. Are you fucking kidding me?!?!? I wanted to hit her and make him run laps. Through this entire conversation he is rooting through his bag looking for more reeses. Sheesh. Her kids also dont eat vegetables. They eat garbage. She eats garbage. Maybe if they learned about healthy eating in school it would help. Maybe it would inspire then to try different foods. I full on blame my sister for the poor eating habits of her kids...but maybe healthier school lunches & better budgets for those programs would help all kids. Its possible. It definitely cant hurt.  But Mrs Palin launched off about Mrs Obama's program saying it is the government's attempt   to tell us how to eat and control our diets. She was down right obnoxious about it, ill informed and just plain wrong.  I wont even link to the story - I cant bring myself to contribute in any way to more people hearing what she has to say. The School Lunch Program and its supporters are not trying to control our diets, they are attempting to educate kids and families to make better choices for their overall health and if that woman is too dumb to see that WHY DOES ANYONE GIVE HER THE TIME OF DAY?!? I dont get it. It scares me...sincerely scares me...that she may make a run for President in 2012 and there are a large amount of vocal people who insist she will win. Please. No. Just No. She is terrifyingly stupid. Believe what ever political ethos youd like - hell! be a tea partier for all I give a shit - but see her for the vapid & ignorant woman she is and make her go away. Her and her entire family. Oh...and take Glenn Beck with 'em - hes just an asshole no matter what you believe.

I will return tomorrow with more focus...promise. I hope you all had a great Turkey Day and Im doing my best to get in the Christmas Spirit without much luck.  The icky rain today isnt helping. Go ahead and assassinate me if you want...but I really really really wish it were snow!!

I already know I perpetrated a Stupid.

And yes...it was a Stupid with a capital "S".

So Monday night/Tuesday morning. I am sleeping, as I should be at 3am. Cell phone rings (we dont keep a house phone & it has to be on because I am the first call for the security company for all of our buildings - you SO want my job now, dontcha?!?) and its our security company telling me that a motion detector has been tripped on the second floor of the restaurant closest to my house. Fine. Am I happy about this ~ fuck no. Did I lay there and pout for 10 minutes or so ~ hell yes. But I eventually got up, found clothes, pulled the hair into a ponytail and head to the store to see what stupid fucking Oktoberfest decoration set of the stupid fucking alarm that I am getting up at 3am to go check out. Because every damn call I have to go on is something dumb like that, but I still have to go. I did ask them to send the cops out, but I ask them that most times and have yet to actually see one.

I get there around 3:30. I drive the lot & walk the perimeter, I dont notice anything alarming. I go inside and in my best Paul Rudd Wet Hot American Summer impression I start to check the building. I hit all the lights, look for anything out of place, stomp around a bit and dont find anything out of whack that would have set off the alarm. I am confused by this. I believe I said so out loud while standing in the second floor dining room tired & out of sorts. Yes, I talk to myself, dont judge. I do a very perfunctory look in the upstairs bathrooms, hit the lights, go back to main floor, walk the basement (fucking CREEPY when its NOT the middle of the night for the record) check all the doors, still see nothing odd, hit all the lights, reset the alarm and go home. Cranky. I was home a smidgen before 4am.

At 4:10am my phone rings AGAIN. Its the security company AGAIN. Telling me the upstairs motion detector went off AGAIN. This time I tell this way-too-fucking-happy-to-be-calling-me-at-4am-woman to silence the alarm, send the cops and ignore that sensor...something must be wrong with it and I will deal with it in the morning. She says fine, whats your passcode, enjoy the rest of your evening blahblahblah. I go back to sleep.

At 5:07am the phone rings. Guess who it is this time? If you took the security company you WIN!!! I got bitchy. Something to the effect of "which part of ignore that goddamn sensor did you NOT get when I told you an hour ago?!?!?" to which the pleasant lady replied "well we are, for the upstairs, but this time its the bar & side door. In that order." Hmmmmm. This is odd. Unless the whole system shit the bed. Which would also be odd. So I have to go back in and check it out. I tried the boss first because he is usually up at 5am...but he didnt answer my text & I didnt want to call.

So I go back. And this time I go over that place for about an hour trying to figure out WTF is setting off the alarm. I find a bottle of tripel sec & a screw driver on the floor behind the bar that wasnt there at 3am. I dont like that, its just not right & no reasonable way for them to get there outside of our building's ghost - which is not out of the question.  I finished up around 6am. Didnt rearm the building because the opening manager was due in in about half an hour, came home and emailed the boss to 1) tell him what had been happening all night and 2) tell him my ass wouldnt be in until later because I needed some fucking sleep and then go back to bed. Where I promptly passed out.

Woke up at 10am and the boss texted me that yeah, someone had in fact attempted to break in but was unsuccessful.  They had smashed in a window under the deck and tried to gain access by removing the hinges from a door. They failed because the doors wont open that way...

Him telling me this weirded me out. They could have been under the deck while I was there. Wasnt freaked out, just a tad unsettled.

Well after I go back in daylight and start piecing together all of the stuff the Boss found and what I found and doing some Sherlock Holmes work me & my General Manager are convinced that there was definitely SOMEONE in the building last night. Had to be. Boss is unconvinced. We ask him to come down so we can show him what we found that has us so sure. We show him, he is skeptical. We push harder, he believes.

So this is what happened after it was all figured out.  At some point after the closers left at 1:30am someone broke in under the deck. They busted 2 screwdrivers and destroyed the door hinges in their FAIL to get in. When this didnt work they tried to pry open a door on our deck & on the side of the building - both new doors and also a fail. They then used our hood duct work and the deck railing to get onto a roof that gives access to the 2nd floor windows and came in through said window, setting off the alarm at 3am. I can only assume they were on the 2nd floor while I was at 3:30am hiding somewhere I didnt find them. *shudder*

They attempted to leave a little after 4am, setting off the alarm again because I had reset it while I was there. But this time I didnt go out, I just had them silence it so as not to bug our neighbors and went back to bed. But Im guessing they hid again waiting for me to come back or the cops to arrive. Either way they stopped moving.

At 5am they moved again, only this time down the service steps, into the kitchen and behind the bar...where they attempted to clean sweep a liquor shelf quickly, dropping the screw driver they brought up from under the deck, knocking over the tripel sec and a bottle of tequila we found behind a piece of equipment. They grabbed partial bottles of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Well Bourbon, Grenadine (LOLZ), Seagrams VO & SoCo. Less than $40 worth of liquor, really, it was just the closest to the door and the alarm was blaring at this point. They dropped the grenadine outside by the side door, where boss found it in the morning.

I arrived about 10 minutes after the alarm went off. I probably missed their exit by a couple minutes.

Fucked up, huh? Things I figured out: 1) Not going to go into a building on an alarm call without a cop no matter the circumstances ever again. I was naive to just assume it was something dumb setting off the alarm. 2) I am amazingly lucky. I could have been very seriously hurt if I had come across this person on my first trip in had I accidentally confronted them while I was there. *shudder* and 3) I really really really miss my big lab, Diamond, that passed last February. I usually took him with me on calls because he was the Protector & would have let me know that I wasnt alone in that building at 3:30am.

We finished Tuesday night at The ScareHouse for the Crazy Scary event that was a fantabulous fundraiser & one hell of a good time that raised almost $6300 for Christmas Crazy & Make Room for Kids which is awesome.

And I have decided the only kind of scary I want to experience for awhile is of the Haunted House/Scary Movie variety. No more creeping on thieves by myself in the middle of the night. Promise.

Happy Happy Weekend!!!!

So I know its only Saturday night but its been a pretty awesome couple days so far!!

First Mister FINALLY got the ice maker & water doohickeythingie (that is a VERY technical term) on my 10 month old refrigerator fully operational. It makes me giddy that I will not have to make stupid ice in stupid ice cube trays ever again...or at least as long as the maker keeps working anyway...because I do not know the recipe for ice ~ and this drives Mister nuts! (psssst- dont tell him but I really do know how to make ice I just absolutely hate doing it!)

I bought my tickets to Scarehouse for the Tuesday Night Tweet-Up shenanigans on 10/5 that is described ever so fabulously by BurghBaby right here. It benefits a couple of awesome charities, as she explains, and I am asking that if any of y'all would like to join that you do so via HER link on HER page. Please and Thank You! I have also managed to get Mister to agree to take me to this event, which would be our first haunted house trip in years. See...I LOVE this kinda stuff but him not so much but because he loves me he has agreed to deal with me there and buy me some depends just in case. I thank him for playing along and promise not to do too much damage to him as I am getting the bejesus scared out of me. Should be an excellent time!

Attended a seminar this morning & afternoon held by SCORE Pittsburgh about entrepreneurial types of things that provided confirmation that I DO know more than I thought I did (yaay!) and learned a few other things that will be helpful.  I think me & Mister have finally decided on the smartest path for us to take that will get us where we want to go with far less head bashing and am actually looking forward to starting this process. We have had a bazillion ideas about "what we want to be when we grow up" and all of them have been pretty awesome, but this one feels right and makes the most sense in my head. We need to think of an awesome name and start the planning, but because Im me half of the plan is written in my head already...now to get it on paper.

Since we were in town all morning & afternoon we decided to have lunch down there. Let me first say that holy hell all the Market Square construction bullshit is going to be well worth it once it is all complete. It was very reminiscent of a Grand Place in Europe and was gorgeous! We had a delectable Mexican lunch at Las Velas (if you dig Mexican you HAVE to go...it was delicious) and had a walk around the Cultural District. They had a bunch of the street lights wrapped up in that colored cello paper stuff and I dont know why though... It was a beautiful afternoon for a walk and as we rounded the corner to head back up Penn I HAD to go get a Burnt Almond Torte from Prantls. I got THE last one and wanted to squeeee because I have been jonesing for that cake since my birthday in August.

I finally got a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday with a financial planner dude so we can get our personal affairs in order and get a plan of attack for getting that all squared away. Im sure it wont be the most exciting meeting ever but its a baby step toward bigger ones so win. I kinda felt bad for the guy, 3 weeks hes been trying to get me to set an appt...we finally found a day that works. He wanted to come by the house...I didnt think that was such a great idea unless he happens to be a dog person. Little puppy butt likes strangers a lot and can be a bit much to take if you dont dig beasts.

And in case anyone missed it....IT WAS A HOCKEY NIGHT IN PITTSBURGH!!!! In case you cant tell I'm a tad excited. Baseball - hell freaking no. Football - meh, if Misters watching it I will but otherwise I could care less. Hockey on the other hand - I will watch that alone! It was awesome to see all my boys back on the ice tonight at Consol! Chris "Sex Hair" LeTang had 2 fights, Geno (my hard core hockey crush) beat a guys ASS, I was impressed from all 3 preseason games with Mr Hillary Duff (Comrie, I know but my way is funnier) and Fleury looked really good in net. I will miss Staal until he is back but honestly Im just happy to have hockey back...I missed it so. I also decided that I will sell a kidney (or maybe even kill The Wizard for his tickets) to get into Consol at least once this year to see a game live. Anyone have 2 tickets and need a kidney? I haz an extra one & am willing to sell!

Mister & I also made a mostly final decision...we plan to sell this house sometime spring/summer next year as quickly as possible and move. We want to go downtown/East End and rent. After years of trying to force ourselves to be "responsible homeowners" we have decided that it just isnt us and would rather not deal with all this bullshit. We work way too much & would rather spend our down time doing things we want to as opposed to shit we HAVE to because of this house. If we had kids and had to worry about schools or whatever that would be one thing, but the dogs dont really care where we live and we just plain dont want to. It is going to be a project & a half getting this shit ball rolling but I am motivated to get the fudge outta here. Between the shitty neighbors, abandoned houses, ridiculous borough and just an overall unhappiness with the 'hood its time to roll! Yay!!!

Who knows what tomorrow will bring...but its Sunday so it cant be all that bad. I see a trip to an orchard to I can get some apples to make applesauce and some fall stuff I want in the very near future and as soon as my replacement paddle comes for my mixer I will be regaling you with a recipe for these cinnamon roll cookie things Mister found on line that just look like they should be awesome.  Hope you all are having a great weekend too!!!!

What I did on my (2nd) Summer Vacation

HOLY HELL! So Ive been on vacation all week. Sort of. Well.....I havent been to work all week anyway.

First - I will NEVER understand why when I tell the folks that work for me that I will be off work and incommunicado for a week and to PLEASE email me if I am needed they still insist upon calling. I would NEVER call any of them on a day off, least of all while on vacation, unless it was dire. None of the calls have been dire. For the record I have let them all go to voicemail and havent returned one of them...all could have been very easily handled via email, so thats what I did. Just annoying. I run restaurants, not hospitals...there is no life & death in my job generally and an email will suffice. I have had a blissful week of not really knowing where my phone is...leave me alone and GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

So Mister''s jerkface manager decided to go ahead and schedule him to work this week and ignored his ROs for the weekend...so no going aways for me. Side note: I have met & chatted up Jerkface manager he is not JUST a jerkface - he is also an amazingly incompetent assbag who, if when my vacation rolls around end of October, is still Mister's manger and pulls this bullshit again will not only be dealing with a surly Mister (this is torture BTW, I know from personal experience) he will also be getting a pissed off Mindy upside his melon of a head. Last I had spoken to Jerkface Manager was while I had dinner at the bar while Mister was tending. He was telling me how amazing he was for being a corp assistant manager at 34 and all about his resume full of suck (Mister did not enlighten him as to what I do for a living at all apparently) and I took a moment of sheer pleasure when I told him my job title at 34 and a little about what I do. Unrelated - through the course of this conversation he said the weirdest thing to me. Hes a black guy, and made a crack about how he doesnt understand ebonics. He made this comment out of no where and it had NOTHING to do with our conversation. Even made a comment about his brother not being professional and "ghetto". I am not sure why he felt the need to tell me any of this -strange fucker to say the least. And Ill kill him if he fucks up another vacation for me.

Anywho....back on track. So since all travel plans were prohibited by Misters work schedule I decided some home improvement was necessary to keep me busy - I cant sit on my ass at home all week with no purpose. The Dining Room. It was one of the first rooms we tackled when we moved in here...and it showed in the plaster & patch work we were learning to do when we did it. Honestly that wasnt the main driving force behind my desire. When we did the room initially I did a sponge paint on the walls, we hung mahogany wainscoting & a chair rail and it was done in taupe & beige colors. This room is also in the back corner of the house  so its kind of dark but I dug it for awhile. The more Ive looked at it over the last, oh I dont know, 5 years, the less Ive liked it. For some unknown reason that I do not understand at all I decided that I wanted the ceiling painted the same base color as the walls - a beige kind of color - and I hated it more the more I looked at it. Made the whole room look like a cave and it was just dark and felt oppressive......yeah for the 3 times a year we actually use that room.  So dining room make over it is.

I painted all the wood a light sage color, the walls are a really light yellow, ceiling is white finally and we spent yesterday laying a laminate floor that I AM LOVING. The whole room just looks airy & bright and welcoming. Have a couple more floor pieces to lay today or tomorrow that involve some serious cutting around the radiator base...but overall I feel like we have a new house! So many hours of labor, a lot of swearing and most of a bottle of ibuprofen later and its looking good. Once its finished completely I will post some pics...at the moment it looks like a bomb went off somewhere around the center of the house and shit got flung everywhere.

My Mother-In-Law will be here Monday for a week - itll all be cleaned up & put away before she steps foot in my house!!

Have a whole nother post to write about this house....but I'll write that one later. I'm going to go sit on my new floor and bask in the glory that is our happy new dining room!

Twitglish?!?

An observation I dont fully understand....

I use Tweetdeck to follow my Twitter feed and my work ones. I actually love the program, makes it wicked easy to keep track of things at a glance and I am all about that kind of efficiency. Because I use it for both work & personal I have a couple search columns loaded up with some fairly general search terms that bring up a completely random list of tweets that are most often completely unrelated, sometimes amusing and occasionally relevant to what I am looking for.

I have noticed though that a portion of this random feed of humanity speaks a complete different language. It is challenging to even try to read and translate this twitglish into comprehensible english. I noticed this special language a lot a couple weeks ago, it was a particularly chatty day I guess, and started watching my personal feed for it. I dont really pay much attention to my counts, but I think I follow somewhere around 175 people. These are all kinds of people; regular people like me, celebrities, news & sports stuff, random tweeters I find entertaining, all kindsa people. And none of them speak this special language (thanks to them all!). They use their vowels, manage to speak mostly coherent thoughts in 140 characters and I can read all of them without having to say them out loud to try to figure it out.

I usually just skim the Twitglish over. I very much doubt that I am missing much by not spending the time to translate them. But I do not get it. Its not phonetics. I know that not everyone is excellent at spelling, and im totally cool with typos, I make a lot of them...but this is just strange and very deliberate.  If I had any idea how to take a screen shot I would to show you what I am talking about.  If you have the ability to see tweets around you on your smart phone of choice check it out and you'll see this bizarre language. I warn you, it'll make your brain cramp up a little.

It is the deliberateness of it that makes me scratch my head. I've met a lot of people in my adventures and would say that very, very few of them weren't at least high school graduates. Even those that may not have graduated from high school attended school for a a good number of years before leaving for whatever reason. Basic reading, writing and spelling is taught early, like what...1-6th grade? I think it is safe to say just about all of us made it that far with varying degrees of success...but we made it. And I kind of figure if your smart enough to figure out the Twitters there's an even better chance that you've made it out of high school and beyond....

So why Twitglish? Some may argue its the 140 character thing...but I disagree. You can be brief without your tweet reading like the random ramblings of an intelligent toddler. Use your words people!

Failbooking...an irritating adventure in socail media.

I resisted Facebook for a couple years. Mister had an account and I knew OF Facebook, but had no genuine interest in being sought out or found by anyone and kind of felt that if I was meant to keep in touch with ghosts from the past I would have. Well that worked for a couple years, and then I caved. My excuse for caving was family. Mister's entire family lives out of state and I am shitty at keeping in touch if it involves the telephone and where as I am pretty good about replying to emails I pretty much suck at sending them, and I missed them. Me & the Mister have been a pair since way back in the high school days...his parents and sisters are just like my own (we have both known each others sister for more than HALF their lives. Fuck we're old!) and long story short I liked being able to keep in touch relatively effortlessly and stay up to date on the daily comings and goings...

Well it didnt take long and I was found by a ton of old high school & college friends, random people I had worked with, and just folks I had fallen out of touch with as we grew up and became "adults", just like happens to everyone Im sure. And I dug it. For awhile. It still makes me smile that I get to interact with so many people that I would not otherwise, I have rekindled friendships that I value and didnt know that I missed and have even got sucked into a couple of those stupid games for a bit before I realized that the HUGE time suck they became was detrimental to...well living. Well that and I got bored with it honestly. It would be nice if people only updated their status with clever and witty things as opposed to a running diatribe of their mundane existence...or even worse - what Jane Pitt so succinctly summed up in a status update of her own this morning - VAGUEbooking. This is the art of putting up a highly dramatic yet completely uninformative status update (like OMFG why does this shit happen to me?!?!?) basically pandering for people to fawn over what could possible be wrong with you so that you can just not tell them - if you are one of those people I have probably blocked you - because that shits ANNOYING. If its a big enough deal to make the effort to type an update just SAY it for fucks sake...but I digress.

So last night before bed I was surfing the interwebs and popped into FB for a quick visit and saw an update that irritated me. Not because the updater was wrong...but because they were just plain dumb. Doesnt matter what the update was, but it sincerely made me want to comment on the drivel, and I opted not, mainly because I really do not care if the judgmental prick lives the rest of his life alone - and I hid him instead. He can be blissfully unaware of his own hypocrisy without having to bother me about it.

I hopped on my trusty MAC this morning to check emails and such before I left work and cruised FB. And then I got irritated.....

•  In my feed this morning I see an updating asking people to stop using curse words in their status updates and lets all try to keep FB nice and clean. Not an unreasonable request really, but brought to mind this question - Why is it ok to ask people not to curse or use offensive language in THEIR status updates? This same individual is a Born Again Christian - and litters her feed with it. I find that offensive, ok well maybe not offensive - but definitely irritating. I respect anyone's belief and faith, but I do not want it rammed down my throat in status updates. I deal with your religious zealotry without commenting, you can deal with a few curse words in status updates without feeling the need to police it. Free speech bitches! Respect it! And a big fat KABLOCK for that one....it was a recent friending and obviously a poor choice.

• There should be rules to being allowed to post anything political on there. 1) you have to actually read, from more than one source, information about the topic you plan to preach about and Fox News is NOT allowed to be a sited source. 2) You must be able to participate in a discourse about your rant, if and when that happens, without resorting to name calling and finger pointing - you do your point no justice when you cant defend it intelligently. 3) You must be able to acknowledge that it took decades of BS government to get us here and holding any single one individual (esp the one we are currently beating the shit out for not being able to wave his magic wand and fix it as quick as wed like him to) responsible is complete and utter BULLSHIT. That is just reality and fact. All political opinions aside - the poor chump that got elected last time, regardless of their political affiliation, was going to be handed the biggest shit sandwich ever created and to expect anyone to solve decades of abuse, misuse and poor decision making in 4 years is just plain fucking stupid, I dont care what you believe in. If you dont meet the above criteria keep your damn mouth shut, all youre doing is embarrassing yourself and pissing me off.

• And this is a very recent annoyance...but it seems my feed is littered with people that are so sick to death of their children and they just cant wait to send them back to school. Seriously.  You decided to birth them, this school schedule thing is no surprise, been this way forever...shut up already. The same things happens at every long school break. Honestly I cant imagine I am the only one who doesnt want to hear about your little terrorists driving you nuts. Now if the story of them driving you nuts is funny - the PLEASE share - kids funny stories are awesome...but if your only intent is to whine about your choice to reproduce or inability to entertain your kids for 2.5 months - hush up & consult the Googles - there a bazillion cheap & easy things to do with kids out there...get off FB and go do some of them. Maybe your kids are obnoxious because they want some attention or to go outside and play.

• STOP FUCKING WHINING ALREADY!!! Some folks do it via vaguebooking, some are a hell of a lot more detailed than others and maybe I just have a large section of rabid miserable FB users in my friend list but holy shit these have got to be the most unhappy, unsatisfied and miserable humans on the planet. They NEVER have a positive thing to say and are just gigantic steaming piles of bitter negativity. My suggestion - spend less time whining & posting about the awfulness that is your existence and go out and DO something about it. Make a difference, change it up, find something that makes you smile, go get ice cream...whatever it takes...but FIND a glimmer of happy somewhere. And if you cant or wont, call a friend who can actually help you, dont put a faceless plea on FB, it doesnt come across as sincere, its comes across as whiny and pathetic. Call me cold, but if was ever in dire need of something, anything really...the last fucking place I would ask for help is on FB. Thats what REAL people are for.

I'm coming to the conclusion that I was right when I was dodging the Facebook & MySpace (I never had one of those pages there either really) thing. Yes, there have been some pros & for those I am thankful, but on the over/under all I think it really has done is reinforced my belief that most people are completely unaware of themselves and how they affect the world & people around them, have some very serious ego issues (what would ever make you think that anyone gives a rats ass about your step by step progress through the day? I dont even think Mister needs or wants a play-by-play of my every waking moment & hes married to me) and that most people are sheep that will believe whatever they are told first. All of that saddens me and also makes me stabby.  If FB is any indication us smart people (and yes I count myself in that category) are severely outnumbered - and that is kind of scary.

Will i delete my account? Probably not, I really do like keeping in touch with my family.

Should I delete it just to save myself the aggravation? Oh yeah definitely.

A Post Inspired by Burghbaby

So I read Burghbaby's blog post from last night and had a good laugh at her retelling of her car vs. biker experience in NYC. Yes...I know that it would have been much less funny had it been my car or me sitting in it...and I wasnt laughing at the poor guy who got clothes lined - seriously if you didnt click the link up there go now...I'll wait..................ok so maybe I was totally laughing at the guy who got clothes lined. Ill own it. I have a twisted sense of humor and I find it extra funny when I see people doing just outright stupid things that FORCE karma to kick them in the proverbial balls. Im not saying its right, but its me. In my defense I do a TON of shit that makes karma kick me...and I laugh at myself too...so I think thats fair.


Ok so back to my point...


Bughbaby twittered her blog post today, and I commented to her that I found it hysterical...and though a little back & forth i totally remembered....

GERMAN ARMY HELMET GUY!!!

Yeah that pic was the closest I could find to what this guy was wearing....now to the tale.

Me & Mister were in his Ford Ranger on a holiday weekend before noon- it was Labor or Memorial Day - at the red light at the intersection of Rt 50 & Carothers Ave (near Flynns EW Tire in Scott), we were heading into Heidelberg (and no I have no idea if it is north or south or whatever - i give directions via landmarks like everyone should!). We had the red light and were just sitting there in the right lane minding our own business.  Anyone who is familiar with this intersection knows that the people making the lefts onto Carothers and onto Hope Hollow (or some other name that sounds like that) get the right of way for turning - seriously its like 1 out of 100 times there wont be someone turning there - so they got their green light and we watched them all make their turns and hurry off on their way to great fun I am sure. Our light turns green. So Mister proceeds to drive...cuz thats what you are supposed to do when your traffic signal turns green....

And this is where things went horribly wrong.

There was a guy driving up Rt 50 heading toward Carnegie and moving into the turning lane to make the left onto Corothers. He was on a Harley or some other monster bike of that variety. I noticed him for a couple reasons - 1) He was wearing a German Army Helmet complete with spike on the top and 2) He WASNT SLOWING DOWN. Mister noticed both of these things around the same time I did.

So we both make some kind of aaaAAAhhHHH!! noises at each other because HOLY SHIT THAT GUY WITH THE SPIKE HELMET IS TOTALLY GOING TO HIT THE TRUCK!!!! takes far too long to say when you're panicking and GGGAAAAHHHH!!! - where not as good at communicating a specific thought does effectively let your partner in crime know something is amiss....

{This is the part that reminded me of Burghbaby's post}

In exceptional slow motion I see Mister start to stop abruptly, I see Army Helmet just continue to drive without slowing at all to make his left. I see Army Helmet not even look at the light at all and continue through the intersection. I said OH FUCK! and Mister was quiet. I am now LOOKING at Army Helmet - willing him to look up, swerve, stop ANYTHING to stop him from HITTING THE LIFTED, GIGANTICALLY TIRED,  BRIGHT RED, FORD RANGER WITH AN ELECTRIC BLUE CAP (yeah totally hot I know...) that I am sitting in. 

FAIL

He gets into the lane next to us before he even saw the truck. I was looking dead at him and saw that second of jesusfuckingchristiamgoingotnailthistruck panic as it ran across his face and it was too late to do anything except lay the bike down to avoid a collision...which he didnt. 

Instead he drove at about 25mph right into the front drivers side wheel of the truck. Like I said - it was lifted with custom tires on it so it was HUGE and he hit the rim & tire HARD. So one second he was there and the next he sprawled out on Rt 50. 

Mister looks at me and says "WTF?!?! Did that guy just drive into my truck?!?!?!"

I said "Yeah"

Mister then leans out the window like he was getting ready to order a burger and says to the man now lying in the road "Hey man, you ok?" in this casual could you please pass me the sale tone and i see this man pull himself up on the rear view mirror of the truck with that STUPID spike helmet on looking totally bewildered and somewhat woozy and say "I think". Personally I will NEVER loose the image of a very confused & shaken up mid 40s biker wearing a spike helmet pulling himself into my view through the window looking like the truck just magically appeared in the road...

From there it got ridiculous. I was very thankful there were a lot of people around to witness what happened because the jerkoff then tried to tell us & the cop that we blew the red light....that we had been sitting at for 2 or 3 minutes prior to it turning green & that it was somehow, someway our fault. 

I def got angry...but then this crazy woman (bless her heart for being crazy might I add) gets out of her car and begins to tell the cops with amazing color commentary detail about how this idiot was driving like an asshole, wasnt paying attention, blew that red light and drove into that truck!!! (for the record my way was much faster - in true Yinzer fashion she was making a full production out of the retelling of the tale in her house dress in the middle of the street). In short I loved this woman for her insanity & willingness to share it with us all - made things much easier as far as police reports & insurance BS was concerned.  

It was a pain in the ass, but thankfully no one was hurt except the bike & the truck. The truck was retired from service not long after it was repaired from this accident, which was a shame, I kind of miss having a truck to be honest.

somewhat ironic - we both had the same insurance company and they STILL fought over who was at fault for a couple weeks. Car wrecks are a huge pain in the ass and insurance doesnt make it any easier.

Hey Burghbaby thanks for inspiring me to tell a story - its been awhile since I have last blogged. It really isnt for lack of things to say, but more lack of time to get them out of my head.

Happy Summer!!!

Happy Girl Dance!!!

It was another shitty day in a string of shitty days. There are going to be a lot of those in my immediate future.  I'm ok with that, really.  Its one of those things that I really cant do much about without making some ridiculously impulsive and stupid move that won't be at all helpful, just stupid.  I'm know to be many things, but I'm pretty damn sure stupid isn't one of them...or at least if it is I'm blissfully unaware of it and that's good enough for me.

Work just sucks.  And I'm not going to launch into some diatribe about it...there's really no point, so I'll just sum it up. We are wicked short staffed management wise, both me & the Mister are having to do a fuck ton of shift cover just to make sure we have openers and closers and whatnot while training a couple of new managers. None of those shifts will make our regular work go away, it's just going to postpone it to a much later, amazingly overwhelming & messy date. Add to that an ever increasing list of things The Wizard (apt new nickname for the Boss courtesy of a friend) wants taken care of, the things I really do have to do, and the other restaurants that also require attention and you've got what I like to call a KLUSTERFUCK! And honestly that little list over there is nothing compared to the REAL one that I haven't yet had the time to compile that will actually give me a well defined look at exactly how fucked I am.  I think the list's lack of creation is equal parts no fucking time and I really don't want to know.  Right now I know I've got myself, albeit with some assistance from various parties, so far in the weeds I don't even know if I know which way is out...but I'll figure it out.  It quite frankly just blows goats. And it'll be over soon enough, but you can sure as shit bet that as soon as this quagmire is all cleaned up it'll be some other bog I wander into, nature of the restaurant beast I'm afraid.  But like I said, it is what it is, no point wallowing in it, so I find my silver linings.  Its the closest one to my house so quick ass commute...WIN! The staffing woes are due to a not so tragic loss we shall nickname Bitchface~ so thats done and that was best for every single party involved...WIN! I genuinely like the staff and the restaurant so its not painful, just irritating...WIN! So its not so totally awful I can't stand doing the shift cover, the point of ~ tension shall we say, is that I am not doing any of my work, and that stack just keeps growing, but all my office time is spent catching up on what I HAVE to do...and that is rarely what The Wizard wants me doing.

So I got a few annoying emails from our not so pleasant bookkeeper about invoicing some bullshit to somewhere and I had to do it RIGHT NOW because we had never done it in 5 years but it was all of a sudden, and for no obvious reasons, suddenly very important that we start doing it IMMEDIATELY....and then began a flurry of emails these need to be transferred at $XX each, stupid shit and I got annoyed and may have kind of sort of yelled at The Wizard. Long story much shorter I told him I was not even getting what I had to do done and if it was that fucking important for this to be done she could take care of it her damn self but if I got one more terse email about some stupid fucking garbage can I was going to blow my stack.  I think I also may have told him that it was epic bullshit and that if he or she thought I could just extract a fucking invoicing system for about 150 different items from my ass, have it implemented and working at the drop of a hat he was high. Oh, yeah, and a buncha other shit about a myriad of other things that have pissed me off in the last couple weeks.  I'll give him this...he stood there and took it. I was swearing, I was pissed, I was completely for real and mostly outta line. He stood there, decided that the invoicing thing could be done over the course of this year, we would plan to implement by the beginning of next year so we did it for the full year, agreed with all my other issues (not that that means much, he usually agrees, he doesn't do anything about it), talked about some things he had planned to do tomorrow and then went home.

I left shortly thereafter, annoyed and all sorts of irritated & frustrated. Just MEH! Honestly not shocking, about par for the course really. I was a bitch, and maybe for a good reason, but mostly because I wanted to be. I don't function well when I'm spread this thin, no one does really, and he is not helping or even just shutting the hell up. It would be helpful if he did, I always take care of my shit one way or another and he knows that so leave me the fuck alone. I'm on it...mostly. It's not like we are reinventing the wheel or saving lives. The bare minimum will get done, we will scrape by and he will make his money. So yeah, KLUSTERUCK!

Oh, yeah, and Mister's car went into the shop yesterday with some brake issues as yet to be diagnosed so we are with my car so that's fun.  Going to be AWESOME!!! when I have to go out at 1am and go pick him up tonight...he's closing. YAY! <--- insert dripping sarcasm here

So I get home finally, find a box for Mister on the porch and am greeted by my ever so happy to see me and always makes your heart feel better puppies.  I text Mister that he got a present from Amazon.  He tells me that HE didn't, I did. I don't remember ordering anything, and was informed that it was ordered for me. That means present. I LOOOVE presents - fuck, who doesnt?!? So I ask if I can open it and yes I can! Mister said I CAN open it. I really found that kind of surprising. Usually I think he tells me I can't just because he knows I will listen and NOT open it, but that it will taunt me until I can and that amuses him. So I walked the dogs & then opened my box. 

On top was a book I had heard about & mentioned I wanted, Mister had assessed it wasn't published yet (he's part google, ya know) and I had honestly mostly forgotten about it.  Well apparently he didnt and he'd gotten it for me.  I was wicked happy...and yet another reason Mister rocks~he remembers things like that!! So I pull the book out and notice this odd box thing, take it out, look at it quickly and figure out I don't know what it is therefor it must not be mine and put it on the table.  Puppy makes a grab for the pillow plastic doohickythingies in the box and in the process I see ANOTHER thing in the box. So I look to see what this thing might be, it was just a small white box. I look at it and take off the paper and inside is an iTouch, I was confuzzled, he has an iTouch. So I grab the other box and its the rubber thingy that the iTouch lives in and its purple.  Purple=MINE! I think i said Holy FUCK! to the dogs and texted Mister a wow...wtf?!?!? He says its just a present for v-day, just cuz & as a congrats for getting started on my business....and THAT'S why my hubby is the #1 ever!

Not to mention impeccable by accident timing for delivery of presents on really shitty days.  Its really cool that he got me an iTouch, I really dug his and its just cool.  It's even better he got the book, that's some pretty damn good paying attention skills there Mister.  The very bestest part?  He just did it because he knew I would love both & wanted to.  He didn't do anything that warranted an expensive I'm sorry nor does he want anything that I'm aware of...he's just awesome.

So thats how my day went from dumb dumb stoopid dumb dumb to HAPPY GIRL DANCE!!!

And for the record I've been using my time with Mister closing to work on my business plan.  I've made some pretty good headway so yes, I may be tired, but I'm tired from staying up too late working on that.  I think I can live with that kind of tired...it's a productive for ME tired.

And totally off track ~ but I think Olympic Cross Country Skiing could sincerely be one of the most BORING things I've ever had the misfortune to watch.  It's on as I'm finishing this, it is just boring.

I'm going to play with my iTouch some more and see what I can figure out before I hand it over to Mister to get it all set up with whatever it is I need on there ;-)