Aloha!

Aloha from the island of Oahu. Since the supposed lightening fast wireless does not really work in my room, I had to come to the business center of the hotel. Since the wireless does not work, pictures will have to wait until we get home. We are having a fabulous time. Hawaii is a very beautiful place. We have done a lot and seen alot. Pearl Harbor, Dole Plantatoin, snorkeling, Luau, Waikiki, Diamond Head, all of the north shore by car and have almost circled the island a few times. The next couple of days I am hoping to get in some much needed pool and ocean time. Happy trails until we return.

Baby Shower Time

This past weekend I hosted a baby shower for mom-to-be Karo and mini-Karo. Karo is my BF from high school. And let me just tell you, mini-Karo is going to be the cutest baby ever. I am quite partial you see. Mini-Karo will be the closest thing to my first niece. Up until this point, I called Karo’s dog, Kota, my niece along with many other pets out there. Kota is a beautiful dog, but I cannot spoil her and buy her such cute things like I can for mini-Karo. Karo has about 8 weeks left and she still looks teeny tiny. I think mini-Karo is going to be a petite little thing.

Here are a couple of pictures from the event. Lots of food and lots of gifts. I included the picture of the teddy bear because Karo’s younger brother got this gift for mini-Karo. I think her brother foresees mini-Karo following in her mother’s footsteps! The other pic is Miss Chris and Karo. I think it's obvious that I am the one on the left!

Extras

Also Happy Birthday to my daddy in NC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For those of you who know my dad, he is doing pretty well lately. My mom said his speech is a little off lately and he gets words mixed up. In his mind his world is totally different than reality which I am thankful for! A couple weeks ago when my brother was visiting, he told my brother to go downstairs to see his new motorcycle. When I was little my dad in fact had a motorcycle, but that was over 20 years ago. For those of you who may not know my dad, he was diagnosed a few years ago with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. He now lives in a nursing home because he requires 24 hour care and my mom cannot provide that because she must work. I try not to talk about him too much because I get sad, so hopefully this blog will also help me document this part of my life. I think it's also important to get the word out and educate others about multiple sclerosis.

On a more positive note, I would like to say congratulations to my friend Michelle who got engaged this past weekend. CONGRATULATIONS!!!! Keep us posted on the plans.

Me and my ipod in ET land

I first must explain that ET land is my place of employment. ET land can be a fun and interesting place. Lots of drama, lots of noise, lots of food, lots of laughter and sometimes lots of stress. I try not to focus too much on the stress especially this week. I am 9 days away from vacation so I really don’t care how much work I have right now. I don’t have any pressing deadlines on my plate. I have a few things to wrap up but nothing major. Some days I cannot survive without my ipod. Since it’s summer time and lots of people are on vacation it can get very quiet around here. That’s when I pull out my ipod. Yesterday my ipod was dead. I did not have my charger with me either. It was a difficult afternoon because I was doing monotonous work by compiling/formatting data in Excel. Oh joy…no brainer work. No brainer work = ipod time. My ipod definitely helps my creativity. This morning I was on a mission to find my charger. I had to dig through boxes in the garage to find it but I was very successful (although I still cannot find my cell phone charger – another story, another day). So now I am enjoying my somewhat stress free afternoon with my ipod while I am still working with this crazy data. Once I have it all organized, I get to make some pretty “eye candy” graphics for a report. Now that’s the fun part. More detailed stories to come soon about ET land in the category of drama.

4th of July Blues

Why do you have to go to work the day after July 4th? Everyone is up late shooting fireworks and you don’t necessarily get to enjoy yourself with an upcoming workday looming. Even if you choose not to shoot fireworks, your neighbors are certainly out there having fun until 10:30 pm. I believe the 5th should also be observed as a holiday by many employers. Kind of like the day after Thanksgiving. I say this too because our office hours changed. As of July 1st, our office hours are 8:00 am to 6:00 pm Monday thru Thursday and 8:00 am to 12:00 pm on Friday. I really like this schedule because it’s very nice to work ½ days on Friday. My goal is to work 7:30 to 5:30 instead and be out of here at 11:30 on Fridays. This week is different though because we only get 8 hours for yesterday so that is one hour that has to be made up. Also today is another take Sophie to the vet day. That means I had to get to work even earlier than normal. After the late night fireworks, it was very difficult to get up at 5:15 am, to be at work by 6:45 to leave work by 4:45 to get Sophie to the vet by 5:30. What a crazy schedule for a day in which I should be home relaxing after enjoying the fireworks last night.

What an ordeal indeed……

moving that is. I warned you all last week that I would be using my blog for a venting session. Well here it is. This past week I have never endured so many sweat drops in my eyes (with contacts), headaches, bruises, stubbed toes and fingers, moments of confusion/frustration, waitress moments by taking everyone’s order for lunch, high heart rate and way too much family togetherness.

How many different ways are there to move a refrigerator? You either move it on something with wheels or you pick it up. How hard is that? Well the engineer-minded members of the family wanted to have a 2 hour discussion about the subject. Well that is fine, but it was predetermined that this would be the very first thing to go onto the truck. We only have the truck for 2 days and we must have everything out of the house in less than 24 hours. No time to pull out the intelligent measuring methods. That is when I “escaped” to another a room to figure out what would go on the truck next. Just a little hint of the frustrations of moving.

After a full day of loading the 26 foot truck twice (how do two people accumulate so much stuff in 3 years) in 95 degree very humid weather, who needs to go to the gym. I just thought the best about moving was loosing those 10 pounds. Negative, when I have had fast food Japanese, Zaxbys, Arbys, Dominos, Dukes Sandwich Co., etc. for the past 10 meals (lunch and dinner since Monday night) those pounds seem to still be there.

Closing at the lawyer’s office was by far the most dramatic part. The best part for me is that I was not sweating, dressed neat, sitting in a cushy chair with fantastic air conditioning. As a home seller you hope for your home to go to a nice person/family that is looking forward to having a new home and treating it with care. Not the case for us. In walks Mr. Toolbox. He has to own stock in Sears and be related to the Craftsman family. I was very disappointed and still am. For a few minutes we were afraid that he may walk away from closing. He understood from his agent that we would be leaving the refrigerator. From what I understand the refrigerator is not standard and can be used as a negotiating item. It was not written into the contract so our agent, Karen, stood up to Mr. Toolbox’s agent and put her foot down. Karen is awesome and if you need to move to G-Vegas, check out her site. We highly recommend her as an agent.

After closing, then it was time to unload. Thank goodness for friends and ones who have just moved or are getting ready to move. We are all helping each other. Unloading was much easier and took place later in the day so it was not as hot. Now it is just a matter of getting everything in place. That will for sure be a 6 month process. We barely survived and we will not be moving for a really long time. One of our neighbors is 83 and we say we will live here until we are his age. We’ll see how long that feeling lasts.

More stories to come soon about ET land (my place of employment) and my baby girls (my kitties Maggie and Sophie). Stay tuned….