Friday, October 31, 2008

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Haven't gotten any little goblins yet. Lark & I both bought candy. We may not get any kids...it's supposed to rain, so we'll have candy up the wazoo!

Speaking of rain, I heard some guy on the radio this morning talking about forest fires and said "if we continue to have rain in the near, distant future..." Huh?

Here's our Halloween decorations:

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Rasta Jason

Here's another LO I just finished for a challenge.

What A Week!!!!

Budget, analysis, puking, celebrations... It ran the gamut.

Back at work on Monday after 3 days in Roseville and Saturday at a Scrapbook Expo in Sacramento. I spent most of Sunday in bed recouping/sleeping. Bought way too much stuff at the Expo, but then that's point, isn't it? I've been tied to my office doing budget projections. I'm still without a Budget Manager, so lucky me. On Thursday, what's left of the Admin Services Management Team took me to lunch for Bosses Day since I was in Roseville on the actual day. I wasn't feeling 100% before we went to lunch and got ill after. This seems to be getting to be a pattern. However, this time it wasn't the food. Last night the girls celebrated Roni's birthday and Vicki's new job. Can't wait until she's with us on Monday...for both personal and professional reasons. Personally, I want my friends close by. Professionally I want a full Accounting team. We're still short on that, but Vicki will help. Hope everyone is watchin the Saturday Night Live spots on recently. They are hilarious.

ps - Lark will be standing by the mailbox for the next few days. :-)

Here's my latest post for a new site I just found:

Thursday, October 16, 2008

FINALLY!

After 2 days I finally got into the internet. Of course it's when I only have 25 minutes to play. We are meeting at the restaurant across the parking lot at 6:30 to celebrate one of our group members 50th birthday with the folks from Los Angeles County. Margaritas here I come. Called Lark while I was signing on and I just cut him off because I need surfing time.

The learning collaborative hasn't been too bad so far. We'll be done by 1:30 tomorrow so I can head home. Vicki and I will be back up here on Saturday for a Scrapbook show. Luckily, she's driving.

Back with more later.

Musings from Roseville

Sacramento and I are becoming very close. I’m on my 3rd trip up in the last month. At the end of September I came up for an Alcohol & Drug fiscal training. Last week I attended the Mental Health Services Act Fiscal Summit #3 and today I was at Medi-Cal Policy Doesn’t this all sound like fun. After Medi-Cal Policy I drove to Roseville (about 20 miles east towards Reno) for a 2 day “Learning Collaborative” that starts on Thursday am.

The Hilton Garden Inn supposedly has wireless internet. My system says it’s connected, but Internet Explorer won’t boot up. I’ve tried back-dooring it through every means I can. One gave me an error message that my firewall was preventing connection. So I turned it off. I still can’t get connected. I’ll start getting the shakes pretty soon if I don’t have internet access.

I’m typing this in Word to be transferred when the system decides to work or I get home, whichever comes first. While I do this, I am waiting for my room service meal from Tahoe Joe’s to be delivered (Sirloin, Caesar salad, baked potato and ice tea). I can’t put a Margarita on my County credit card. The rest of my group will either be up late tonight or early tomorrow morning.

I just got back from the Galleria Mall. I remember the girls and I driving up one time to go to this mall and thinking it was fantastic. I guess my trip to the Mall of America has warped my perception of a cool mall, because the Galleria just didn’t have the same magic it did the first time. However, I did get to hit Harry & David’s and Williams-Sonoma, both of which are not in Modesto…yet.

I also got a 25 minute massage from the Traveling Chinese Massage Group. They come to the Stanislaus County Fair every year and Lark & I always take advantage of it. $25 for 25 minutes. I swear 20 minutes of that was spent with the masseuse’s elbow in my back, one time she had both elbows going. She beat the Hell out of me…and I paid her to do it. And I got to be accosted by all the cart vendors. One enticed me to let her exfoliate my hands, but couldn’t get me to buy anything, even after she told me about the great deal and was for “today only”. I bet I can go back tomorrow and get the same deal.

Monday, October 13, 2008

The Camera Is Charged

so I can take pics of the new window.

the first is from the outside. Unfortunately, it shows the need for a paint job (next on our list). You can really see where the old planter box was. What looks like wings on the sides are the wing-windows. The cats love them. The get a breeze from both sides.





this is from Jack's new 180 degree view.




and without the cat.


Sunday, October 12, 2008

I Can See Clearly Now

OK, the cats have gotten used to the new window and have decided, most of them anyway, they like it. Unfortunately when Bill took the old window with him, he took part of the alarm system. We can still arm the system, but have to force feed it every night. Bill is going to check to see if he still has it and bring it when he comes to do the trim. That will save us a $125 for the 1st half hour and $31 for each successive 15 minutes. I'm in the wrong business. Should have been an alarm company service person.

This is from the Stone Accents Studios Color Challenge, which had "mystery" as its theme.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Garden Window Update

the cats are afraid of it. Go figure.................

Bellowing Cats - what an appropriate title!

The Garden window is being installed as I type. I was going to include a picture in this post, but my camera is dead and the charge seems to be missing it's plugs (for the wall). Next time. It really looks good. When Bill showed up this morning he was concerned that he's have to remove part of the tile in my kitchen to get it to fit right. Luckily it slid right in. The kitties now have their own sunroom.

Speaking of kitties, 3 of the cats are locked in the Master bedroom with one of their cat cottages, 2 loungers and several assorted toys and the sliding glass door open for fresh air. Baxter is hiding in the linen closet and I'm not worried that he will scurry out. Since we took down the wall between our den and the MB, the room is pretty good size. Those cats are bellowing like I've locked them in a closet. The funny thing is they would probably been sacked out in there anyway, however, it would be on their terms.

Hubby is in Elk Grove at a two day golf tournament with a college roommate. Day 1 was yesterday so Lark stayed with Dan so they could drink beer in the garage with the neighbors and watch the MLB playoffs. For some reason he didn't like it when I said they were having a slumber party in the Man Cave. One of the local radio stations is having a drawing/contest for a fully equipped ManCave. Lark can sit in the living room to moan & bitch at the 49ers, Raiders and Sac Kings. I have my own escape pod. Especially if the Kings are playing the Lakers. It gets ugly.

Fall has hit in Modesto. Last week it was in the high 80's. Yesterday and today it's in the 70's and windy. However, we're hearing that we'll be back up in the high 80's nest week. It was just enough of a change to stir up allergies and to rain Wednesday night and give drivers an excuse to plow into our building at work. The first rain in awhile and the roads are slick. So let's drive fast around the curve and lose control...right into Linda's office, or in this cast the "decorative" pots in front of it. Hit and run of course, but I bet it did some damage. One of the dirt filled pots was moved back about 2 feet. Someone would have to give it a good shot to move it at all.

Oh, the good news for the week. I've hired a new Accountant...Vicki! So now or will on the 27th, I have both her and Kathy on the same campus as me.

Here are a couple of new LOs:


Saturday, October 4, 2008

Damn Rain

I've had a garden window sitting in my garage for 2 months waiting to be installed in my kitchen. We finally found a weekend when Bill (friend and carpenter) didn't have another job or his band wasn't playing. So what happens? IT RAINS. Hubby's in Reno on his annual golf weekend. It was supposed to storm there big time. I haven't checked weather.com.

Scratch Royal India off my places to eat. Took a co-worker to lunch and felt crappy the rest of the day. It even continued into the next couple of days. The Butter Chicken must have been too much for me.

I've been off work since Thursday, taking advantage of Lark being gone. Unfortunately, Thursday was wasted due to the sick thing. Yesterday and today I've actually accomplished a couple of things.

Here's a couple of Layouts I did for challenges. The first one is FOR PAT. It's a little more cluttered than I normally like, but I had to use all of the elements in the "Candy Jar"





This one is from our Labor day weekend trip to deliver my mother's electric wheelchair to her sister in San Bernardino and hit Disneyland since we were so close. It was crowded, but we had a blast.