Weekend so far

I had Friday off from work, which was wonderful. I'm scared to see my desk when I get back though. We're two people short and it's getting kinda bad. I worked through lunch almost every day this week and stayed late 3 nights too. Also I have 10 vacation days that I have to use before the end of the year, so I figured I'd better get one in while I can. If I get accepted for my grand jury interview on Tuesday, I have to go down there every Tues and Thurs for the next four months. If I have to start scheduling in vacation days, I'll be only working two days a week! Yikes!! Friday I had a dr appt at 9 am and at 10 am, so I had to get up the same time I get up for work. That was stupid of me, huh. So, after my appt, I had to hit the mall. In the summer at our work, we get to wear capris and open toed shoes, but after Labor Day - we are back to long pants and high heels. Ugh! I didn't have any pants that fit me, so I just had to go shopping. In a few hours, I managed to spend over one week's salary! Mark said I should have just gone to work!!! I had a blast though, I just wish that Marie or Laura had been at the mall with me. I haven't been on a spending spree in quite a long time. I was also very excited that I went down a pant size. Since I wasn't working, I headed over Laura's early so that I could watch Dylan while she took a shower and got ready for work. Dylan and I had a great night.

Saturday morning I went over Laura's at 8 am. I spent the day over there watching Dylan. Marie and I had reservations at a wedding reception hall for us to interview for her wedding. Dylan was such a good boy during the interview - not a peep! Mom and dad came over Laura's and we had a Labor Day cookout. Dylan hadn't taken a long enough nap all day, so after dinner, Laura took him upstairs. Mark and I then headed off to my friend Maryann's house for a party. She had gotten married in Malibu CA and they had a reception at their house to celebrate. It was so nice to see the work people outside work! I had a blast playing with Erin's daughter Claire (on my left knee) and Crystal's son Peyton (on my right knee). I also got to hold Claire's little brother Ethan and Peyton's little sister Gracie. The weather was prefect and Maryann had such great food and cake (see the forks in the kids mouth-cake!)



Today we went to the Indians game. Dad was able to get a few cheaper tickets through his Union, so we went. They lost, but it was okay. The reason was the air show was in town for Labor Day so we got to see all the jets and Blue Angels flying over the ballpark during the game. It was really cool to see. Mark and I had gone down to the airshow a few years ago, and it really is neat to watch.

Tomorrow, Mark and I are going over to Carol's for Labor Day cook-out part two.

I will fill you guys in on Tuesday about how my jury interview goes.

Pansies

Who says you can't have pansies in August. Here's a picture of my very pampered pansies. I love them but hate that they die so early into summer

Thanks Marie!

While Mark and I were at his company picnic, I was a little worried about Blarney being home alone all day. So I texted Marie and asked her if she'd be in the area if she could go let him out to pee. Moments later, I got a reply on my cell phone with a picture of Blarney peeing! Thanks Marie-you're the best friend a girl could ask for.

This weekend

I watched Dylan Friday night and dropped him off at Laura’s on Saturday morning. Mark and I had his company’s picnic so mom and daddy came over to watch D while Laura slept. Laura had to work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night! Three nights in a row sucks for her! I came home Saturday morning and showered quickly and we left for good old Wadsworth. The picnic was at a park which was mostly for kids. They have a big lake with diving boards, sprinkling toys, etc. they also had volleyball nets, softball diamond, batting cages, etc. It was hot as hell outside so I stayed in the pavilion in the shade. They ordered tons of good food, chicken, pulled pork, corn, etc. They had tons of prizes too and the grand prize was a 32” flat screen tv. We didn’t win it, but Mark did get a First Energy notepad holder-oohh!! Last year he won a pen. Maybe next year he’ll win something bigger, he seems to get a better prize each year. The best part of the company picnic was our leaving. I know that sounds bad, but it was. You know how those things are, you kind of mill around shaking hands with strangers and saying nice to meet you nice to meet you. It was nice to get to meet Mark’s boss and his wife though. Everyone is very nice that he works with and it was nice to put faces with the names I know. It’s the other hundred people that I don’t know that gets kinda boring. But the best part of leaving was Mark was on the company picnic committee and he was in charge of clean-up. That means we got to load up my truck with all the leftover food and take it back to his office for the dispatchers that had to work. Obviously the electric company has to be open 24 hours a day, so the people that had to work couldn’t come to the picnic. I had asked Mark previously if I could go to his office but his boss said no because I am not authorized. When you pull up to his office with three layers of leaded walls, by the way, there is a 20 foot high fence with barbed wire on top. A huge rolling gate opens up when Mark swipes his badge. We park and have to go through another 20 foot high gate. Then a locked door with an armed guard to get into the building. Once in the building, another locked door to their lobby. 5 steps into their lobby-you guessed it-another locked door. Just to get to the kitchen, I think we had to go through 6 locked doors. Their kitchen looked like a restaurant. They have all stainless steel appliances, a center island, and high end coffee makers, a toaster oven like they have at Subway, dishwasher (which I must say our office has a dishwasher too, but not stainless steel). They have a cement patio which you can go and eat outside and look at the scenery. It’s in a wooded area, but all you really see is the high barbed wire fence. Mark took me on a quick tour too. About 4 more locked doors and I was in their phone room, which is just banks and banks of floor-to-ceiling phone stuff. Then we went to their computer room and Mark showed me all the servers he works on. It was so awesome to see! I know I am a geek but anyone would be impressed by this stuff. His cubicle has 6 flat screen computer monitors on it!! I can’t imagine having to look at that many screens on my desk at one time. I forgot to mention the flat screen TVs throughout the entire office. I counted at least 15, the lobby, one in each of their 5 conference rooms, the receptionist desk, kitchen, two in each division’s cubby areas. THEN – THE BE ALL AND END ALL OF MARK’S JOB!! THE CONTROL ROOM! I knew I wasn’t allowed in there, but Mark let me peak my head in. The control room manager, whom I had met briefly in the kitchen, said I could go in through. My jaw just dropped to the floor. It’s a room that’s probably 50 feet long and lined with flat screen tv screens. Some had the weather channel, the rest had charts monitoring energy flow, and some even had the Browns football game on. It looked like the movie Apollo 13. I really didn’t think that rooms like that existed in real life, I thought they only were on tv. It was so cool.

The Feast

I’m a little behind in my postings. Last weekend, Mark and I went with his best friend Dave and his fiancé Kelly to Little Italy for the Feast of the Assumption. They block off the street to cars and many of the restaurants open up outside booths. There are just rows and rows of food and bakery. Yummy!! We went to two of the bakeries and got stuff from each of them. The line for Corbo’s was at least a 10 minute wait, but worth every second! Mark said his mom’s pasta and sauce was better than the one he bought, but he had a good time. They have some rides for kids and tons of gambling too. Kelly has her own motorcycle, but rode on the back of Dave’s and Mark and I took his bike too. Parking is so much easier when you only have two wheels and half the space of a car.

When Mark was little, his dad’s mom lived in Little Italy and they used to go there all the time. Carol worked in a restaurant there, Mama Santa’s, and Mark and his brother went there for grandma babysitting. His grandma worked at Corbo’s Bakery too. I had never been to the feast, and Mark said it’d been at least 9 years since he had been there. It was a great time.

Ceiling fan

Mark put up a ceiling fan in our living room. I helped a little bit. We love it!! It's very mission which is the style we are going for. Mark bought this really cool wall switch which has three positions for high medium and low. That way we don't have to get up on a ladder to pull the chain on the vaulted part of our ceiling.

Blarney's new bowl

I finally took a picture of the bowl I painted for Blarney when Marie and I went to the paint-your-own-pottery studio.

See Marie...

See Marie, everyone likes incense, even Blarney. I hope that you can see the smoke in the video. I had my powder incense burner going and Blarney was biting the smoke. So cute!!

Lampost and KK

Love and miss you guys!!!

Set your clocks

Olympic TRAMPOLINE Starts on Saturday at 11:38 AM.

The US have never qualified in this event...Mark is in training for London 2012



Video of the real people

Carol & the grandkids

Aidan, Carol, and Evan

Update on my jury duty

I went online to register for my jury duty and it turns out that I am signed on for the GRAND JURY!

Vote for Obama

Two people told me this post was too confusing, so I am editing it.

Me vote for Obama, are you freaking kidding me?? No way!!

But, I DID vote for what breed of dog the Obama family should get. If the link doesn't work, try this: http://www.akc.org/poll/special/presidential.cfm

One of the choices is the Wheaten which was tied with the poodle when I voted. Even Blarney is a Republican.




VOTE FOR MCCAIN

Happy Birthday Ray!!!

One thing I don't like about the Olympics!!

Why do the girls wear skimpy bikinis and the guys are fully clothed??



Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh with W

About my fencing post

Just for some clarification. I don't know anything about fencing. Mark did take some fencing lessons and we do have an epee in our basement. Mark even found a class at the Y and he wanted us to do couples fencing (I said no) I did watch the girl win the gold medal, but am not really sure how you score or what it takes to win, but it did look cool. Their outfits are somehow rigged so their helmet lights up when they get touched, which I thought was cool. Anyways, I was more excited that USA took gold-silver-bronze and swept that competition!

I bet that Mark's epee is something most of you didn't know about us, huh?

Fencing sweep for USA

All are from the United States and all got the top 3 places in Women’s Individual Sabre (Fencing). Mariel Zagunis defends her Athens 2004 Olympic title, clinching a gold again this time round. Fellow mates Sada Jacobson took silver and Rebecca Ward with bronze.

Don't leave me in charge

My mom and dad were on vacation at Aunt Kathy & Uncle David's summer house last week. Marie's mom gave me a piece of her shamrock plant because everytime I came over, I loved it. Mine is doing great, it's more than tripled in size and has flowers on it about 60% of the time. My mom bought herself a shamrock because she liked mine so much. Here's is a different variety, more purple, and the petals are almost twice the size. She asked me to transplant it and water it while she's on vacation. Here's mine:

Whoops - here's hers!! I HAVE KILLED IT! Mom, I'll give you a piece of mine, and next time I see your variety in the store, I'll buy it.

Crystal took her baby, so I had to too

Crystal took Peyton for a haircut last week so I had to take Blarney this week. Seriously, Blarn was getting pretty gross looking. He will NOT let us groom him here at home, he thrashes around and he's very strong! He will, thank goodness, let us give him baths so at least he doesn't smell - he just looks like he is homeless. Anyway, he looks pretty much the same as the last time we cut him, but he's not shaved to the skin this time. I love his rust-ish color knee caps and face, it's his puppy coloring. His ears still have a little black in them too. He also loves to lay with his legs stretched out backwards.


*************Forgot to mention, so I am editing my post:

The groomer (he's been going to her once a month since he was 3 months old now) finally said that he can't come in on Saturdays anymore. She said it is too stressful for the both of them! She said since Sat is so busy, he has to look at and turn around to watch everyone who walks by. She said he has to come in on Friday nights when it's dead and they are the only two in the store. I guess it makes sense, Blarney is one crazy dog!!

Brought tears to my eyes - TWICE

Watching the opening ceremonies after Mark went to bed last night, I found myself crying my eyes out as China joined the parade. Mark hates the Olympics because EVERYTHING is POLITICS to him and he hates the Chinese government. Anyways, I love the Olympics and told him for once in his life to try to put politics aside, so he did watch a little bit with me today. Anyway, Yao Ming (I guess he's some basketball player that's like 7 and a half feet tall) was chosen to carry the flag for China. There was a little boy walking next to him. The boy looked like he was Peyton's age because Ming is so tall, but he was nine. He's a survivor of theat horrible earthquake. I couldn't find the story online to copy and paste it into my blog, but I saw the story about the little boy twice (once during the opening ceremony and a second time today while watching with Mark), so I think I remember it correctly. He's in the second grade and 20 of his approximately 30 classmates died during the earthquake. He pulled himself from the rubble and got outside. He then went back in and got TWO of his classmates out to safety. I don't know if he went back in twice, or got the two kids on his only trip back inside. I am sure he saved two kids though. When someone asked him why he did it, his comment was "I had to...I was the hall monitor...that's my job"

Such an exciting day

Okay, so not only did the Olympics games begin, but I got a jury duty summons in the mail! I wanted to get called for jury duty so bad when I was at my last job. It was probably because I never really got a day off and even if I did take a vacation day, I had to call in all the time. Well, I got my notice in the mail and have to go the Tuesday after Labor Day for a minimum of 5 days. I'm still very excited about it and can't wait to go. I hope I at least get a case! My friend Karin left Guardian to go get her Master's degree, so we are short by one person. Also, Crystal is leaving after her daughter is born. To go back to the Olympics for a minute, I had wanted to take vacation days or at least halves for the next two weeks so I didn't miss anything, but I decided not to because I have my DVR and being short staffed, I didn't want to put any added pressure on Marie & Denise. More importantly, Mark and I have tons of projects we are trying to get done around the house, so sitting on my butt and watching TV isn't a good use of my vacation days. Anyway, I got off topic (of course!) Well, my boss said today that she might want to write them a letter asking to defer me as it will cause hardship on our short staffed office. I don't know how I feel about that, but I'll keep you posted. I can't wait for jury duty!!!

Opening Ceremony tonight

Cheeky first date

Here's a nice little story. Yes, Sarah - this actually happened. My mom and dad's first date: My mom said that you could always tell my dad was coming to pick her up because you could hear the tires squealing around all the corners on the way to her house. I'm sure my dad was hot in his red convertible. So, he takes her on a picnic in the park. If you've ever seen daddy start a fire you know he uses so much lighter fluid that he is probably solely responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. Anyways, he sprays the the lighter fluid on the coals in the bbq grill in the picnic area of the park. It, of course, makes a huge fire and the can caught fire too. He throws it and it catches my mom's pants on fire! She goes running and pulls her pants down, well what she didn't realize is that she also pulled down her underpants! My dad got to see my mom's ass on their first date.

Coke Polar Dog

I shot this pic of Blarn when he was laying with his little doggie knee caps up in the air like the Coke polar bear.

Happy Anniversary

My parents got married in 1974!!

Forgot the pic!

Weekend

I was off work Friday. Mark was going to take off too, but he was on call - so it wasn't worth it because he knew he'd be working all day from home. I got up around 9:30 and decided to tackle Dylan's bedroom slash my closet room. It has wallpaper in it and is the only room (besides our downstairs half bath) that hasn't been pained since we moved in. Now, painting is not something that's easily done without patience - and patience is something that doesn't come easy to me. I remember Grandma Alice telling me when I was just a child "be patient" Anyway, I had to take the wallpaper down first. I had only ever taken wallpaper down once before and it was horrible. I had already removed all my shoes and extra stuff from my closet room so I had no more excuses. I was armed with plenty of towels, the wallpaper tiger scoring tool, and a spray bottle of fabric softner. However, when I got there, the wallpaper and paper backing both came off in very easy strips. It took me less than an hour!! Amazing! I didn't think I'd even get the wallpaper and glue backing paper down before Mark got home from work. So, I decided to prime the walls too. I got out the sandpaper and sanded everything. Here's a picture that I am so embarrassed to post, but it's for the good of the blog. My hair, including eyelashes, were white!! I then washed the walls and was ready to prime. However, the 5 gallon bucket of Kilz was painted closed. I tried working that thing for 20 minutes. Then, I spotted my neighbor across the street and decided that it just needed a man. It took him a few minutes, but managed to get it opened for me. So, I primed the walls. I think we'll just leave it white until we decide on a color for it. Hopefully one day it'll be our nursery. Then I went over Laura’s to pick up Dylan for our sleepover. He was really good, no crabbing or fussing at all. I took him and Blarn on a 30 minute walk, they both really enjoyed it. The weather was wonderful. As I mentioned, Mark was on-call. He’s on call once a week, and it’s a rotating schedule – Monday this week, Tuesday next week, etc. It always depends, but he only gets paged about every other time. However, last night was bad! First Energy had 6-hour project scheduled to start at 8 pm last night. Mark had to be on a con-call from 7-8 to prepare for the project. Then, they asked that he stay on the phone until 3 am when the project was scheduled to be finished. Mark stayed on until about 9:30 and told them to just page him if something went wrong. 8-9:30 went smoothly. 10 his pager rang-problem. He was on the phone until just before midnight. He then crawled into bed until his pager rang at 2 am. He fixed that problem quickly, but only got about 45 minutes of sleep before they called the house! He was on for another 30 minutes or so. Then, they were nice enough to page him with a note that the project was done and there were no more problems. Ugh-just call if something is wrong. I don’t care at 4 am if the project is finished. One final page around 4:30 with another problem which was unrelated to the project. Ahh! Thank goodness each on call day isn’t like that. Oh yeah, did I mention he switched with one of his co-workers who had to go to a wedding tonight. Another project is scheduled for 10 pm tonight. Mark said he’s fairly confident he won’t get paged tonight. I hope he’s right! As I type, he is on the phone with a co-worker. From his side of the conversation, I can’t tell if things are going well or not. Dang-this was a long post.

Starting him off early on Pepsi

At Carol's house, Mark was drinking a Diet Pepsi. Aidan ran up to him and grabbed for the pop can. Mark let him have it because it had just a little bit left. You'd think you had just given Aidan the greatest thing ever. He tipped his head back sooo far I was afraid his head was going to pop off. He also held that can, with his chin towards the ceiling, for several minutes straight. Good to the last drop!!