Friday rewind

Been a while so I've got lots of recap.

I was sick with either some serious food poisoning or possibly ecol i. Not sure how, but it laid me out for a solid three days and i spent four more getting over some of the more mild symptoms. I use mild relatively because even the recovery wasn't pretty. I spent a lot of time getting to know the porcelain god and wondering if my appetite would ever come back.

In this last week i've lost nine pounds also. While loosing weight is a goal of mine at the moment, i would have much rather lost the weight on my own terms. Not feeling even the slightest urge to eat, having to force myself (mind over matter style) just to get crackers into my system is not my idea of a healthy weight loss system.

And through it all, Boyfriend Jon took care of me. He's deserving of some major koodos.

My apartment is a mess....again. I keep looking back to how i lived back in 2008 and wonder why i can't keep my place as clean as I did post roommate Katherine move out.

At most, i would have two days worth of clothes on the floor, papers all over my desk, and about two plates in the sink for cleaning.

Now, living completely alone, no chance of anyone going into my apartment without my say so.....there is mess everywhere. Paperwork everywhere. Gaming controllers, pools of candle wax, dust, leftover bags from shopping, piles of clothes either waiting to be folded (my most hated task ever!) or washed. And don't even get me started on the kitchen which still has not had a full wash-down after the wedding escapade. (edit: i went and took care of this at lunch. But I still do need to reorganize my pantry.)

This is not to say I've been totally idle. I pulled apart the food trap in my dishwasher and cleaned out what appeared to be leftover tomato skins and everything else that got caught. EWWWW.

Rave: Ikea truely has some awesome ideas. One such that is making my life easier is this little gadget. It's a pot lid holder and it accordions in and out depending on how thick your lids are. Needless to say, i'm in love now.
Oh and then was the bite of the Girly Bug. 275$ later.....i'm ready for fall :)

The other side of Chaos

It's over, I've survived.

It's been three weeks since i realized my month of August was going to be a trial for certain. First the family members from New York arrived. It meant a whirlwind of family get-togethers. And then the brother from Texas arrived...which meant we got to do it all over again.

This was coupled with an unplanned stressful week at work. I not only lost my dear friend, and Administrative Ally, but one of the single most bitter women i have EVER met, decided to try and throw me under the bus and focus every ounce of her snarky attitude on me. By the end of the second week, i was talking with my boss asking him to get her off my back.

And then there was the wedding. The ceremony was GORGEOUS. At an outdoor gazebo over looking the lake. The breeze off the water cooled us all down which was a blessing in the 90 degree weather. The reception was filled with delicious foods, heartfelt well wishes, and a generous helping of humor.

Between the best man retelling a roast tale that the groom didn't remember, the garter flying in the wrong direction, the bride promising to obey her new husband...sometimes and the Final Fantasy theme song upon their entrance as Mr and Mrs... overall i enjoyed myself.

Baking the cake was a pleasure. Doing two hundred cupcakes....was decidedly not. I have decided that while i don't mind making the wedding cakes... I will not be making cupcakes again. Ever.

Good idea in theory... but completely unrealistic for one person alone. With two it was still a solid day of work and way to much frustration on top of a cake. Never again. I'm only glad that Josh and Christabelle both were extremely appreciative of all my work and said so numerous times. Not to mention the look on their faces when they took their first bites was thanks enough. I'll get pictures up soon.

In other news. Boyfriend Jon deserves some serious praise. He tolerated me dragging him to family functions so as to not go alone, venting my frustrations from Bitter woman at work nearly every day, and having to take a rain check on our 9 months while i did major wedding prep. (we got together on Friday the 13th, and our 9 months also happened to fall on a Friday the 13th). And then best of all, he gave me a neck rub when it was all over. He is the BEST BOYFRIEND EVER! Spending Sunday after it was all over with him all day was so perfect, i can't describe.

Now if you don't mind...my apartment is a disaster. No corner was left untouched by this fiasco...and i must clean.

Well for me, It comes in more than threes.

Well, I thought i could barely squeak by on the stress without having to resort to freaking out. Yeah, life had other plans.
On top of the aforementioned contributors to stress, it got even better.

• Between baking prep for the wedding, an overactive kamikaze fly, the neighbors getting it on at 1am on a Tuesday, my upstairs neighbor building a jungle gym (or something heavy when dropped....FREQUENTLY) and my alarm clock.... very little sleep has been had,
• I've had the most bitter woman in the world at work trying to throw me under the bus for three days straight and doing it in a team wide email.
  
• they laid off the only other admin in the building
• and i got into a minor fender bender with a Hispanic guy who wanted me to pay for it out of pocket right there because it will raise both of our rates, it was his friends car, I knew it was my fault, and oh wait.........he had no insurance. I played stupid, and told him we needed to go through insurance, and we should call the cops....and wow...surprise! he just got into his car and left.

Yeah, it's been a fun week. NOT. The only saving grace was Boyfriend Jon. He brought me flowers to make me feel better. And not the standard red roses. Nope, he thought outside of the box. :)

From Firefly's Haven

is there a worse time for this?

So, in my building with roughly 200 people in it. There are three admins. Just three. For the most part, we handled our own business occasionally soliciting some help from the others. We were all pretty busy from what i could tell.

But as it's summer, it was time for Diana's trip to Scottland. The last time she went, her and her husband were in a horrible car accident. By sheer luck, both of them made it back alive. Back then i had been horrified at the thought of being without her as my counterpart. I have said before, and i'll say it again. The day Diana leaves, i'll be on her heels. More than a year and a half has gone by since the last time Diana took a serious trip. And in that time i have learned, i have grown and i've developed the ability to adapt and delegate.

Or....so I thought. This time, instead of begging Diana not to go and leave me at the whims of her boss (my boss's boss), i simply insisted that she comes back on time. Sure i can handle this for three weeks. Difficult, but not utterly impossible.

Again. So i thought. I had gotten through both of our's morning chores with some head scratching, fuming but with my hair mostly still attached. Only to learn quite suddenly that the only other admin in the building had been laid off effective immediately. A quite, little older lady who had been dying her hair auburn for far too long and pretty whimsical glasses would be arriving at work no more. Her pragmatic disposition and patient indulgence of even the most ridiculous requests would no longer be a comfort to me on bad days. And what was worse. I could no longer turn to her for help.

By no means was i more concerned for myself than her, but now that she's gone and all that's left of her are T pins where her family pictures had once been and stacks of paper....i can't help but feel a small amount of hysteria over the apparently insurmountable task I'm faced with. 200 people versus little ole me.

I know the ole mantra "Do your best and no less" but really. That just isn't very comforting right now.

I guess this just gets piled on my stress layers. How long till it teeters over?

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's SUPER-GIRLFRIEND

There's something wrong with all of these new electronic gadgets coming out. Mostly it's how different brands widgets interacting with other brand widgets which is most annoying. And I'm not talking about programing flaws, I think those issues are covered well enough elsewhere.

I'm talking about actual logistic problems caused by having a flat screen TV, Surround sound systems speakers, various gaming systems and all the other nonsense.

Ignoring the most obvious flaws (WIRES- god i hate wires).....The installation of a new webcam on my boyfriend's TV left us scratching our heads and fuming slightly till about 11:00pm. Problem was.... The only way we found to fix this problem was to place said webcam on top of the flat screen TV.

Oh wait. The manufacturer didn't account for the majority of the entertainment consumers to have a flat screen TV of which THERE IS NOT ROOM TO PUT SAID WEBCAM ON TOP OF! No...for stability purposes...they decided to put a flat bottomed wide base which does not work with flat screened TVs. AT. ALL.

Now, there were some other logistics to take into account. 1) Boyfriend Jon lives in an apartment with a strict No Holes Policy. 2) there was no room in front of the TV at the base because that's where the center speaker for his surround sound system is. And 3) duct taping to his tv....= not an option apparently.

So...it's 11:00 on a thursday night, I'm tired, and only mildly amused at his obsessed behavior to make sure this thing works before he can sleep. We've tried a plethora of things with no viable solutions in sight.

Suddenly the epiphany hits me. I locate an unused shoe box (yeah, who would have thought there's be an empty shoe box in a guy's apartment) and start hacking away at it with my knife (cause I'm the girlfriend who always has a sharp knife with her somewhere). A few bits of packing tape and voila! Jon's very own-custom designed-on top of the flat screen TV- Stand.

From Firefly's Haven