Oy

Alfred asked me last night why I hadn't blogged in so long. I told him I blogged from my phone on Sunday. He said he hadn't even checked it in a few days and didn't realize I had posted. In other words, I've been too busy to post at night, and he's been too busy to check it at all. And since I'll likely be busy tonight too, I guess I'll just blog by phone again. I prefer to do it on the laptop because then I can add my tags, and I never remember to go back and do them when I blog from my phone. This is all fascinating, no?

So, we've been busy in the evenings cleaning and getting ready for the familial invasion that begins tomorrow (yay!) Since we weren't home this weekend, I've had to fit all the laundry and cleaning into my few hours between work and bed, along with the usual dinner work. We've had a bunch of other work on the computer to take care of too. And a tiny but of TV (wipe out is back for the summer! And so you think you can dance, of course, which I'm super pumped about. I've been reading spoilers online this morning.) Tonight I also get to make a cake for a co-worker's birthday, her birthday is actually Friday but they're celebrating it a day early so I can come. And make the cake.

Work's been good. I'm trying to balance the actual work with goofing off, so far so good. I catnapped mama kitty yesterday morning and brought her to the new museum, but she bolted as I was opening her cage a bit to give her some water. Damn cat. We're also in the midst of starting up some new tours for the summer so we can make some money for a change. Of course it's happening when I'm planning to take a few days off. Oh well, they don't need me.

This has been a nice way to spend some time. It gets boring all by myself. I like to time how long I go without speaking to another human being. My record was about 2 hours on Sunday. It was broken by a tourist calling me. Damn tourists.

it's like I never left

Yup, I'm at work on a Sunday. This is my view from my office into the store. This is what I do all day now. I sit in my office, do some work sometimes, and watch the store so when someone comes in I can go sell them stuff. No one has come in for the past 2 1/2 hours or so. So it's pretty exciting. Anyway, I'm working today because I'm taking off Friday to go to Disney with my family. We've got a crowd coming in Thursday, we'll be in Orlando until Sunday, then at our house until Friday. At which point we will be lonely again. We're pretty excited to see everyone though. Should be good times.

We had a short weekend, what with both of us working (more or less) today. We wrung as much excitement as possible out of the approximately 39 hours we were off, though. Friday night we hung out with Ilya and Mercedes (and I got rip roaring, sickeningly drunk), Saturday we went blueberry picking, made the most delicious blueberry pie and ice cream in the world (we're nice and full of antioxidants at least), and went out to dinner at the most hoity-toity "casual" restaurant I've ever seen (I guess the fact that it was in the TPC golf course should have been a clue). The food was good, at least. Some of the staff was in a tizzy over Ilya wearing a t shirt, which added some drama.

So, that's what I'm up to at the moment. Could be worse.

a pair of Guys

So, you all know my dad, Guy.

And you may know the Food Network personality, Guy Fieri.


I don't know if anyone else has ever noticed this, but.... don't they kind of look alike? I mean, take away the Guy Fieri's hair, and













Or you could give my dad a little hair













It's uncanny! And has anyone ever seen the 2 of them in the same room? I know I haven't! The mystery deepens...

I'm rich!

As I was opening the register this morning, I found an Indian head nickel from 1935 (worth 35 cents!), and a dime (I think) from Panama! Today must be my lucky day. I should go buy a lottery ticket or something.

word

So, we've been busy. And I've been sick. I was fine all weekend, felt just a tiny bit sniffly Sunday as we were getting ready for bed, but totally healthy. Then bam, woke up with a miserable cold Monday morning. Going through tissues like it was my job. Today it seems to have moved more into my throat and chest, so at least my nose gets a break. Which reminds me, I should go refill my orange juice glass. ..... Ok, I'm back. I really did go get oj, too. You can ask Alfred. He's sitting here on the phone with Ilya. They're talking about blueberry picking this weekend. We need to stock up again, our supply from last year is out.

So, the business. Monday evening we had a couple of friends stop by for dinner. We see them about once every 2 years, they live out near Tampa. Alfred knows JJ (the guy) from like middle school or something, I think they were in boy scouts together, and he was in the their wedding.

They ended up spending the night in the guest cottage and then leaving in the morning. They brought some sort of good beer which I didn't drink because I was miserable and dripping snot everywhere. Being stuffed up is the worst. But a fun evening, anyway. Christy works at Busch Gardens as a zoo keeper, so she had plenty of interesting anecdotes to share.

Yesterday we met up with Ilya, Mercedes, Max, and Ellery for a big wing dinner. We polished off 100 wings without much effort. They were ok. Not Anchor Bar quality, certainly, but not bad. Then we went to Ilya and Mercedes' house to work on a website and spent the night up there. We were woken up at 6:30 by a dog barking down the street, but someone finally let the dog in (or someone shot it or something) because we eventually fell back asleep and didn't wake up until 8:30! It was craziness! I have big plans to go to bed early tonight too, so tomorrow I'll be completely healthy again. I've been saying that since Monday, and eventually it has to come true.

Alfred's about to make banana chutney. We have 2 bananas that are far beyond ripe. I'll report back with the results later. Oh, and as he was about to move the load of laundry from the washer into the drier he discovered another load already in the drier. As he just said, "we need a better maid."

happy birthday Lindsay!

First, I want to say happy birthday to Lindsay! I've been intending to email her for months, but she beat me to it the other day with a super cute picture of her daughter. I think the only picture I have of her is the one I posted last year, so I guess I won't post it again. Happy birthday though! :)

Next, I want to say hi to Meghan! Meghan lives in Kapolei, Hawaii, and apparently just found out about my blog from Mike. I met Meghan when I went out to visit Mike a couple of years ago when he first got back from Iraq. In fact, you can see Mike sitting with his leg propped up in the reflection in the glass door at the right side of this picture. I bet Meghan loves that I'm posting this picture. Hi Meghan!

I considered posting a picture of Mike's bullet wound here, just for fun, but decided against it. Maybe later. Instead, here are some pictures of another wound of sorts. Mama Kitty is still living at the old museum (we're going to try to bring her over to the new place this coming week) and apparently had an accident of some kind. I think her tail is broken. She isn't moving it at all, but doesn't seem to be in much pain. It had some fur on the end of it last week, but now it's gone from about the halfway point down. It looks like a rat's tail. See?

Gross, huh? In person you can see the individual vertebrae that make up her tail. It's kind of cool in a gross way.

Friday was Kara's last day, so I also took a picture of the cake I made for her. Unfortunately the cake was baked over a fault line, and an earthquake struck before we could eat or photograph it.

Really, I frosted it that morning and it didn't have enough time in the fridge for the frosting to set, so it slid in the car. I did all the piping myself. Not bad, huh? Katie taught me all I know. Which isn't much, but it's more than I knew before. It tasted damn good, that's all that matters. And I have a little tupperware container of frosting left in the fridge that I've been sampling over the past couple of days. Mmm, butter and sugar.

All right, I'm going to go back to watching Alf now. I mean, go make granola. One of the two.

I'm so firing my maid

The lazy bitch has seriously been slacking off. I just washed a bunch of dishes that have been sitting in the sink for (let's hope only) 2 days. There's a pile of laundry staring me down from the other end of the couch, waiting to be ironed. There's one item in particular that has been there for at least 2 1/2 weeks. It had company, but they eventually gave up and went back to the closet unironed because I had nothing else clean to wear to work. (Luckily it's been raining for the past 10 days so everything I wore was wet and muddy within minutes of me arriving at work anyway.) The bathrooms haven't been cleaned in weeks on end. The pile of mail is slowly taking over the counter top. BUT - the dishes in the sink are clean! And the laundry we did on Monday is folded, upstairs, and half put away! Someone hasn't gotten around to putting their half away yet. Not naming any names, of course. In case you were wondering, no pictures today. I can admit to this in writing, but photographic evidence is going too far.

Anyway, Alfred just texted me that he's still working and will probably just spend the night up there. I guess that gives me more time to get some crap done. I do still have half of last week's So You Think You Can Dance to watch, so that's some incentive to iron at least. Which reminds me of Katherine (the SYTYCD part, not the ironing part), which reminds me to mention that if anyone else is interested in guest blogging, just let me know. Just email me the post along with any pictures or anything else that needs to be included, and I'll put it up for you. And use it as an excuse to be lazy and not post for a couple of days. I mean, leave your post up longer for more people to see. Yeah, that's it.