as promised

Pictures of the new museum. We moved the store to the new location last weekend. (I say "we" like I helped. I most certainly did not.) So first, a couple of pictures of the old place. First, the view from behind the counter, then the view now with nothing in there.


The view of the counter, then the same empty space.


By the way, both of the "before" pictures were taken on my phone. That's why they're kind of crappy. Here are a couple of pictures of the new store. It's flippin' huge! (That's what she said!)


It just so happened that we moved the store right before the busiest week we'd had so far, i.e. last week. The combination of the newly massive store, plus all the groups, made for quite an interesting week. There was one point where we had 3 full coach loads in there, which is about 150 people. It was crazy. Hence my 55 hours. I wonder how many times I'll break that record between now and the end of May.

Just a couple more of the programs. First the school house. This is half of it, the left side looks the same. Except with a shelf instead of the desk and blackboard.

Also, archaeology. I thought I had posted one before, but I couldn't find it after a good 2 minutes of searching, so here it is.

I have a picture of the new Spanish house, but it doesn't have a roof yet so I'll wait until it's more done to post a better picture. The whole no-roof thing may cause us some problems tomorrow, as there appears to be 90% chance of rain. Thursday, 80%. Should be fun. (It literally just started raining as I was typing that sentence. Pouring, in fact. At least I don't have to worry about watering my azaleas this week.) Also, I discovered during my search of previous posts that "museum" is my most commonly used tag for posts. As in, I refer to the museum more than any other individual thing that I write about. Despicable.

stupid blogger

I was totally going to post a bunch of pictures of the new museum tonight, but blogger keeps freezing whenever I try to upload pictures. So, screw it. I'll post tomorrow. By the way, I ended up with 52.75 hours last week. Really it was more like 55 hours, because on Saturday I filled out my time card before I left and then ended up realizing I had to take care of something outside, and I wrote in a 30 minute lunch break every day even though I only actually took a lunch break on Saturday, and technically that was a business lunch. So, I think that's a new record.

Alfred's Antics

What has he done this time?

Apparently he looked down to read some directions while driving and looked up about 2 seconds before hitting the car in front of him. Oh, Alfred.

Luckily he's completely fine. Also good is the fact that his engine is in the middle of the car, behind the seats. So the car still runs, although it's probably not going to last too long because there are other vital car parts in the front. This means Alfred gets to start doing car research again. The other car was fine too, as was the other driver. The crappiest part is that we had just paid off his car a few months ago. So really, the timing was about right, I guess.

Oh, and who did he hit? Turns out it was a guy in his company car, so they had to call the police and everything. And what does this guy do for a living? He's the driving safety instructor for his company. Ah, irony.

happy birthday Katie!

I couldn't let the day end without a quick post about my favorite sister's birthday! Katie's 20 today! Only 1 more year until she can finally have her first alcoholic drink.

I think she was just smelling it here. Because she clearly would not have been drinking way back in Christmas of 2006 when she was only 17. Anyway, way to make me feel old, Katie. I remember the day she was born, getting the call at my grandparents' house and all 3 of us kids getting on a separate extension to hear the news. And the next day was Easter, Dad took us out to breakfast and I got "Fancy Pants," aka waffles with fruit and whipped cream, instead of my usual chocolate chip pancakes. Huge mistake. Then we went to the hospital and got to see our new baby sister. And now she's 20. Holy hell. Ok, quick, need a distraction from feeling old.

Ah, this works nicely.

quick thumb update

Cause I know you've all been concerned about it. It's been almost 3 weeks since I smashed my thumb, and I'd say it's finally almost healed. As healed as it's going to be anytime soon, I would guess. The bruising is gone, the scab fell off, and there's just a tiny bit of swelling left along one side of the nail. Also, the nail has started growing again! It freaked me out when I noticed it hadn't grown since I hit it, but late last week I noticed it was a little longer, so that's good. There's still some bruising or something under the nail, but at least it's not going to fall off. Oh, and all the skin peeled off of it last week. It was weird.

Most importantly, I can finally use my thumb a little more now. It still hurts to put much pressure on it, but I can use it more than I have been able to. Opposable thumbs really come in handy. I'd go take a picture and upload it, but there's not much to show, and I'm far too lazy. I have to start getting ready for work in about 10 minutes so I'm trying to stretch every last second of relaxation out of this morning. I have to work until 10 tonight, but luckily we didn't have any groups this morning so I didn't have to go in until the afternoon. I've been catching up on blogs that I haven't read in probably a month. Where does the time go?

Sorry this is a little lame. I'm going to try to remember to bring the camera to the new museum and take a few pictures to show the new stuff. I had it yesterday but forgot to being it over. My bad.

3 beds in 3 nights

(So this guy I think I "dated" for a day in middle school is chatting with me on facebook. See, this is the kind of crap I could have avoided by not joining. Curse you, Katherine and Katie!)

We've been living the vagrant life this weekend. On Friday after work I drove up and met Alfred at one of the houses he bought through work. The plan was to spend the night there and do some work on Saturday, but as with many of our plans, it ended up changing slightly. Turns out the well pump didn't work, so we had no water. So we ended up at Alfred's parents' house that night. Saturday morning we started out at our CPA's office (we're such grown ups) to get our taxes done. I stayed in the car and read, thinking it would take about 30 minutes. An hour and a half later, I had to pee like crazy and Alfred still wasn't back, so I went into the lobby of the big fancy building in search of a restroom. Luckily there was a woman there who pointed me in the right direction. I realized once I looked in the mirror how crazy I looked: jeans, sweatshirt that looks like something out of the 70s, glasses, and windblown hair. In other words, like a bum.

Eventually Alfred came out and we went to Chik Fil A for breakfast. We got there right as they were switching from serving breakfast to serving lunch, so we got a little of each. I decided that was a good time to put my contacts in, so I did so in the bathroom. It took awhile to get our food, so the manager gave us a coupon for a free sandwich, which was awesome. Since we had to redeem it at that restaurant Alfred went up to get it before we left. While we were eating that, an employee came around with a tray of breakfast food that hadn't sold and offered us samples. So of course we took some. While we were finishing those up, she came back around and asked if we would take the last 2 sandwiches so they didn't have to throw them out. So we did. It was flippin fantastic. We ended up getting 10 different items for $11. We figure it was because we looked like bums and seemed so desperate for food.

Eventually we did make it to the house.

We got some painting done, although not as much as I had hoped (I always forget how long it takes) then gave up around 6 and left to meet Ilya and Mercedes for some beer, wings and Uno. We crashed at their house that night. We took advantage of the running water and showered too, which was nice. Cause when you're a vagrant, you need to take advantage of those situations.

Today we were up early again and back to the house. More painting, more plumbing, more running to Home Depot and other houses Alfred has bought. Then we met up with Ilya, Mercedes, Max, and Robyn for lunch at this awesome barbecue place. We finally ended up getting home at about 6. Since then we've both exercised, done laundry, made granola, Alfred made lentil soup to cook overnight for lunches tomorrow, and I obviously blogged. Busy, busy. And I got harassed by that dude on myspace. He said I should call him. Um, weird. This is why I don't want any reference to my blog or any link to it on facebook, by the way. Cause of weirdos. I just logged the f off. Ooh, granola's done. Time for bed, laters!

work anecdotes

It seems that all I've been doing these days is work, so here are a few little stories for you.

Exhibit A: In one of my programs today, the one black kid in my group wrote his name on his paper, then wrote "aka White Chocolate."

Exhibit B: A week or so ago I was walking a group into the archaeology program. One little girl was talking to me about how much she liked fossils, etc. Then she asked me "are you going to teach us the theory of evolution or the theory of creationism?" I told her neither, that we were only talking about people who lived a thousand years ago. Then she went on to say "I believe in the theory of creationism. Because when you start really looking into the theory of evolution, you see that it's really just a bunch of dead ends." Precocious, huh? A little sad, too. So brainwashed already at the age of ten.

Exhibit C: A little girl puked in a garbage can today. Guess who got to clean it up?

Tonight I finally finished folding and ironing clothes that have been spread out across the couch for 2 weeks. We're trying to catch up on 2 weeks of tv. Tomorrow I'll be at work from 9:00 until about 8:30. It's gonna be awesome!

bullet points!

• I left work at freaking 4:00 this afternoon! I had to stop at Home Depot on the way home, but still got here by 5:30. Amazing. I've been working a lot of (unpaid) overtime the past couple of weeks, so I decided to see what it was like to work only a 40 hour work week again. So far, it's nice. But judging by my schedule the rest of the week, I'm guessing the 1 hour I saved today is going to be swallowed up by Wednesday.
  
• We made a massive amount of beef stock yesterday. About 40 cups, to be exact. Which sounds like a lot less than it was. Alfred got a bunch of beef bones for free from our grass fed beef source, so we couldn't let them all go to waste. We froze most of the stock, but kept some in the fridge for french onion soup this weekend. We actually just went through the process of getting rid of the fat (it solidified in a thick, disgusting layer on top overnight) and packing it all up for the freezer. Messy.
• Yesterday I also made what might be my best loaf of bread ever. We cracked open a jar of our fresh strawberry rhubarb jam to try it with. Words fail to describe just how delicious it was. I could eat the entire loaf in one sitting. I'm trying to resist.
• We totally forgot about the shuttle launch yesterday. We were watching tv while dinner was in the oven and suddenly Alfred said "hey, when was the shuttle supposed to go off?" Answer: ten minutes earlier. Oops. We had discussed driving down to see it go up in person, but that damn stock needed to be made.
• I went jogging this afternoon when I got home from work. I also planted my new(est) azalea (I'm up to 5 now, and I think I'm killing them) and cleaned the bathrooms. I should work 7 hour days more often.
• Re: azaleas. Yeah, of the 3 I got last year, 1 looks awful, 1 looked great and had lots of flowers but the flowers and leaves have gotten all droopy, and 1 looks ok but has no flowers. I have 2 new ones now, both of which still look ok, but haven't been around long enough for me to really destroy yet. Give me time.
• I found a hilarious blog by this girl who was rereading all of the old Baby Sitter Club books. I loved those damn books when I was younger. She's not posting anymore, but I've been plowing through the archives. It's good stuff.
  

so, what's Alfred up to these days?

The short answer: he's buying houses.

The longer answer: I think I mentioned here that he took a class and passed his exam to be a real estate sales person in FL. I don't know the technical name, I just know he's not technically a realtor because you have to join their little realtor club to be able to call yourself a realtor. So he's basically a realtor but can't call himself that. Anyway, he's become slightly obsessed with finding cheap bank-owned properties to buy. He has a friend he used to work with (when he was with a home building company) whose construction company is going to do the work needed on these houses, then they're going to sell them for a reasonable, but still relatively cheap, price. And then everyone makes money. Sounds good, no?

He found a house that he has apparently fallen in love with. He wants us to live there. I haven't seen it yet, which sort of puts a slight kink in that plan so far, but he wants to go look at it this weekend so I can see how I like it. So we'll see. It's pretty far from the museum, but it's so cheap I could just quit and raise some babies. Anyway, Alfred spends all his free time these days scouring the internet for good, cheap houses to look at. That's what he's probably doing right now. He couldn't sleep last night because he was thinking about a house. He leaped out of bed at 7:00 last Saturday morning to check for new houses. He's a crazy person.

Also, he's talking about shaving off his beard. If he does, hopefully he'll shave it into funny designs first and let me take pictures. That would be some good blogging material.

it's back!

Briefly, at least. Obviously it went out again the other day after that short post, but right now it's back. I started writing this Sunday and hopefully it will post today. We'll see.

So what have we missed? All sorts of fun stuff! For one thing, we opened 2 new programs at the new museum last Thursday. I was insanely busy Wednesday through Friday, getting things ready and set up, and then making sure everything ran smoothly with groups. There were a few really long days, but in the end, everything went very well. Except for a slight mishap first thing Thursday morning: I smashed my thumb with a hammer. Hard.














It's doing better now, the swelling has gone down some and I can bend it almost all the way. The bruising is healing a bit already, too. It doesn't hurt to touch at least, but I can't put any pressure on it yet. It's interesting to see how often you use your left thumb. Toothpaste, for instance. And it's a good thing I cut my nails last week!

Friday was also Ella's sixth birthday! Mike sent me a picture of her with her cake that he took on his phone. Freaking cute. Damn kids, getting old.

This weekend was nice and calm, but productive. We made a whole mess of jam, since we still had some frozen strawberries from last spring, and they're on sale right now since they're in season.

We made strawberry kiwi, strawberry rhubarb, strawberry ginger, and strawberry apple. Now all we need is some more yogurt to eat it all with. The goat we get our yogurt making milk from should be producing again, so that's exciting. I think this weekend I'm going to make some bread to eat it with, too.

The last 2 nights we have had the most delicious, gorgeous salads for dinner, using lettuce that we bought from the farmers market. There's only 1 true local farmer there, and it's the lettuce/green leafy veggie guy. It was so good, I didn't even use dressing. Also, I'm listening to the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in the car on my way home from work (mornings are for NPR) and I'm turning into a total hippie. I want to move to a farm.

Ok, I think we're pretty well caught up now. In case the internet doesn't work (assuming this posts), I may not post again till Saturday. I hope you can all hold out until then.

sorry

Our internet has been out for most of the past 2 days, which is why there has been no post since Thursday morning. If there's no post after this, it means it went out again. We don't have an appointment until next Saturday for them to come look at it (a guy was here yesterday and this morning and it worked for about 5 minutes then, then he left. Then it stopped again). So if there's no other post from me this week, that's why.

four years ago today...

... we got married! Happy anniversary to us!

I'm totally cheating and writing this ahead of time, because by the time this posts I'll be at work already. Today we have 2 new programs running at the new museum, so it's going to be another long day. I was at work until 7 on Wednesday, and had to be back at 7 this morning. I'll probably be there until about 6 today. Awesome! But Alfred bought us some mussels to make a special anniversary dinner, so we'll at least have a good meal tonight. And hopefully go to sleep by about 9:00!

one year ago today...

... I wrote my first blog post. It was terribly exciting. I had been reading blogs like it was my job (and it might as well have been, since that was the majority of what I was paid to do) and kept thinking about starting my own. At first it was just a good way to kill some time at work. At times it's been a pain in the ass, other times it's been tough to come up with something to write about, and other times it's just been fun to post pictures and entertain myself, if no one else. And I have to say, just one last time, that Alfred thought I wouldn't last a month. Ha! Ok, I won't mention it again.

Some things about our lives have changed a lot this year. I'm at a different job, we're not in a different house, Alfred has a beard. But overall, things are about the same. Which is good. And this year is going to be even better, we've decided. It's going to be our year. So stay tuned for greatness!

pictures!

Now you can get a visual to go with all those words from yesterday! Here we are in Mexico. Lucy got some dirty looks for carrying the extra margarita.

Norway. Apparently I was feeling the effects of the free margarita, cause I whipped out my tattoo in the middle of the store.

China:
Germany. I look completely trashed, but really wasn't all that drunk at this point. Tipsy maybe, and I had a bit of a stomach ache from my bratwurst, and was mad at the German waiters.

Italy. I think this is my favorite picture, it's the Dave and Face bunch! Face is third from the left, next to Lucy, and Dave is on the far right. I don't know the ninja's names, but they look like they're about to attack Alfred's crotch.

The United States. My favorite part of this one is the random Epcot employee on the right.

Japan. That's our friend Jeremy in the striped shirt and Jason on the right. I'm not really that short, I'm bending down a little so you can see Alfred. Those guys are extremely tall, though.

Morocco:

France. The camera was on the night time setting and flashed twice, so after the first flash everyone started moving. Those are some more Epcot employees with us.

England. Alfred set his beer down on the phone booth next to this one for the picture, and some little kid was playing right next to it. I don't think the kid's mother was amused.

Either there are no pictures from Africa and Canada, or they're so bad Lucy refused to send them to me. I'm not sure.

In other news, I played Suzi Homemaker tonight and made a couple batches of soup for the week. Pumpkin sweet potato and tomato vegetable with quinoa. I'm pretty zipped up about eating them later this week. I have to work late tomorrow, then have long days Thursday and Friday, so with the soup and a slow cooker meal we should be set. It's nice to not have to come home and cook after a long day.

no pictures!

We got back from our weekend in Orlando a couple of hours ago, and never got the pictures from Lucy's camera! They're at a party tonight, but I emailed her to ask her to send them to me. Hopefully I'll be able to post some this week.

Anyway, we went to Orlando with Lucy and Phil this weekend. They came down and spent the night here on Friday so we could get an early start Saturday. We had a couple of delays Saturday morning, but were at the Epcot entrance by about 10:00am. We did a couple of rides first (nothing too vigorous, since Lucy's 3 weeks away from giving birth) then headed over to the world showcase to start drinking. Alfred and Phil were planning to drink around the world. In case you have not heard of this little adventure, you basically have a drink in each of the 11 countries (and 1 outpost, if you're not a wuss) in the world showcase. I thought about joining in, but (wisely) opted to just drink casually in a few countries as the drinks interested me. Apparently this has become rather popular, as we ran into people drinking around the world all day.

We started the morning strong in Mexico, with 2 beers for the boys and a frozen margarita for me. When they gave us our order, they mistakenly included an additional margarita - bonus! It was a good omen. We went on Mexico's ride, made a reservation for dinner, and moved onto Norway. Beers for the boys, nothing for Tracy. Rode Norway's ride, met a couple of guys (Jeremy and Jason) traveling the world for one of their (Jeremy's) birthdays, moved on. China. The boys got beer, I opted for some plum wine. While drinking, we met a couple of large groups also traveling the world, with matching t-shirts: some blue shirted fraternity group, and some green shirted friends celebrating the birthdays of 2 of the participants (Dave and Face, which was a nickname for Lisa). A couple of green shirts offered to sell me a shirt in the bathroom for $5. I think they may have been kidding. After China was the African outpost, which the blue shirts skipped because it wasn't on their shirts, but the green shirts didn't. Again, the boys had beer, I think I had a bottle of water. We lingered a bit in Africa, enjoying the non-professional drum playing by some kids. Finally we moved onto Germany.

Ah, Germany. We were looking forward to brats and a beer stein here. We ordered our brats outside and took them inside to watch the show. We were given quite the run-around while trying to order our steins, which pissed me off, but eventually someone came through. However, since the steins were 48 ounces, we ended up sitting there for quite some time. It really set us back, time-wise. But eventually we finished and moved onto Italy. Dave and Face were on their way out as we were coming in. By this point I was rather tipsy, having had a few of my own drinks and shared quite a bit of Alfred's stein. I went on an adventure to the bathroom, marched alongside the American colonial band, then sailed back across the ocean to Italy. I think the boys got wine. We stopped and got some coffee on our way to America, then had burgers and beer in the New Country. Oh, and some delicious, refreshing Coca Cola. I think the green shirts were on their way out here as we walked up, too. We lingered here a bit.

Finally we moved onto Japan. Here we ran back into Jeremy and Jason, who by now had made it to the second-last country but had to back track because Jason had skipped a couple of countries, puked, then had to go back to make up what he had missed. All the guys did sake shots together. I bowed out, as sake is not my favorite. Then we tried to ditch the J's, unsuccesfully, before moving onto Morocco. We got sangria there, which I sampled, then hunkered down to listen to some music and get rid of the J's. Next was France. Phil got wine, Alfred chose beer, and I had a frosty orange Gran Marnier drink. By this point, both Alfred and Phil were really showing their drunkenness. We were also starting to discuss our dinner plans, since it had somehow gotten rather late. Our Mexican reservations were for 8:30, and Phil particularly did not want to go back. After some discussion we headed to the U.K. Here we finally ran into the Dave and Face bunch again, who told us that the bars closed at 9. Our hopes for a Mexican dinner were dashed. A round of beers (and a cider for me) later, we finally staggered into Canada. Labatts all around! The boys were really quite pleased with themselves for successfully drinking themselves silly.

Our world tour complete, we watched some fireworks, did a bit of baby shopping, and left. We ended up at a Pizzeria Uno for dinner, and finally crashed at the hotel around 11:30. As Ellery would say, what a day.