Random Tidbits and Minor Musings

Well, here we are at the end of the year again. I've managed to be busy enough to get behind on all internet social media for a few months now. While I have a few minutes to poke my head in, I guess I'll provide a little update.

Late October or so, just after my last blog post, I decided to try my hand at making some homemade lotions and balms. This idea was devised because I have many nieces and nephews who have every toy I could imagine plus a few and their parents agree. Around this same time, a newish friend of mine found out I have made jewelry in past incarnations. She also started making and selling soap the previous year.

Imagine my surprise to find out how fun lotion-making is. Imagine my bigger surprise that my friend liked my jewelry and my lotion and wanted to partner at some of the craft shows this next year? Imagine the frenzy I went into to get products made for a tiny little pilot craft show in early December. Yes, the frog has a new addiction. Yay me. Now I am spending a good chunk of my free time trying to figure out a way to make this little adventure somewhat profitable. A little extra money to support my personal penance-the money pit is always welcome.

Speaking of my money pit, I am fresh out of renters. My last ones left at the end of the lease--right in the middle of the holidays and I am still without renters. Renting my house and becoming a landlord (quite possibly one of the things I least aspired to be of all time), has confirmed once again that being nice to people you do business with typically doesn't pay off. When they saw the house they pretty much begged me to rent it to them on Dec. 1st, rather than for November when it was available. They weren't ready to move yet, but please please please, we love it and really really want to live in this tiny coastside community forever.

I caved to that shit and what I ended up with was a house to rent in the middle of the holidays right AFTER the main rental market started declining due to higher inventory. Oh, and these lovely folks who (granted kept the house in very good repair) were willing to bend over backwards to help get the place rented? Well, my agents informed me, they insisted on being available at appts., but were never home; they refused to take their dog out, so the house could be shown when they were out of town; and they left the place a filthy mess and didn't return the keys for 3 weeks post move out.

I really don't want to examine this owning an upside down house too closely because I might cry. This is painful and hopefully I can get decent renters in there, so I can at least stave off financial meltdown for another year. One thing I have learned from this situation is to never ever buy a house with someone else. If I purchase a home again, it will be what I can afford not what we can afford.

So yeah, that's the update. New possible business venture and crappy house saga continues. Hopefully 2009 will bring a little more cheer and a little less worry. Maybe it will also bring a functional shopping website, but, hey, I do have the domain back now. www.celticfrog.net Back with me where it belongs.

Obviously I have nothing to say.

I haven't been here since August. I try not to use this space to bitch about work. It happens, but not my favorite. My tenants aren't renewing and need to get someone else in there. I really need a vacation and spend much time fantasizing about having time off, having a calm life, and just doing nothing for awhile, so that when I do come to my blog I might actually have something to say, but yeah, I don't. Nothing to say. I don't care. Will try again later.

Favre in Purple is a Travesty.

REALLY? REALLY? Who thinks the possibility of Favre joining the Vikings is a good idea? Hello, Fan Base here. What the hell am I supposed to do? I HATE THAT GUY. Probably the most hated player in all sports and I am a big sports fan.

How about we field a team and beat the Pack without the face of their franchise?

I do not know the definition of weekend...

I always thought that "weekend" meant having time off to do those things you can't do during week. Maybe even doing something fun. It suddenly occurs to me that weekend means that for some people, but for me it means, I don't go to the office.

I do make plans like normal people--usually. Ok, sometimes; however, I end up doing about 25% of the things I WANT to do and about 100% more work than I want to do.

This weekend:
Planned: finish all my work up Friday night, so I could catch up domestically (grocery shopping, dishes, vacuuming, etc) and actually spend some time with the boy. We had a birthday party Saturday and a trip to the pool planed for Sunday. Puppy training class Sunday morning. Also, I hoped to sleep since weekdays net to about 4-5 hrs. a night.

Actual: all holy hell broke loose with a production problem, so planned Friday work deferred to Saturday. Worked 4 hrs. Friday night to resolve issue. Handed off to other team members. Worked 4 hrs. Saturday morning and encounter same bug we just dealt with in production. Had to leave for errands and party. Receive 4 emergency emails and a voicemail during one 2 hr. birthday party. Person on team with next task is not available--decided to go to mountains (wtf? I'm going to decide to go to mountains with production problem--watch me get fired for that) Can I please do that? equals another 2 hrs. Plan to finish deferred work Saturday night to at least salvage Sunday. Power outage for 4 hrs. 6:30-9:15. Too tired to work. Manage 30 min. Go to bed. Get up at 6 on Sunday to work on original weekend task. Continue to encounter bug --work for 3 hrs. troubleshooting. Go to puppy class, finish errands, do chores with attempts to work on problem equaling another 2 hrs.

This weekend is a worse disaster than most. Everything is broken, no one is reachable, and everyone wants this shit by Monday. Of course, I didn't introduce the bug that is currently wreaking havoc. As work goes, I have had worse weekends of course--with more hours especially, but I especially hate when not one thing goes right.

So here it is 4pm on Sunday and I am more tired than I was on Friday. Last week sucked ass and this one isn't looking much better. Fantastic.

Fuck it, I'm done for the weekend. The bug is going to have to wait until Monday morning.
I have a kid, a dog, and a house I mostly ignored all weekend. Bite me.

This blog entry is a rant--if you don't like it, suck it.

As you can see, I've been MIA. I had a nice badly needed vacation with the family Up North. Yes, I said "Up North" in caps because that is what Minnesotans say. We camped in my Grandparents' yard, resisted all attempts to have a political conversation, didn't argue too much, and played cards. If I hadn't worked 30 hrs, it would have been perfect. Typically Midwestern. The only thing we missed was a Twins game.

We returned home and a week later found out our dog, Rosa (see her above at Ramsey Falls), had advanced stage lymphoma. She lasted 2 days. Many tears later, we have a puppy--Meet Popcorn aka Poppy and PopPop.


We have just set the stage for my rant. I work A LOT. I hired a dog walker to come over 3 days/week to let her out to do her business. She has kids and a dog--fantastic, good for socialization. I am easy-going--nice even. IRL. Shut up, I know it's hard to believe, but it is true. I tell her, don't sweat the kids playing with the toys. As long as they are put away when you leave, I don't care.

She has been by 4 times so far. One of them was an emergency call on Tuesday because the sky was falling (as usual) at work. Three of those days I came home to toys all over the floor in playroom and/or the boy's room. Seriously? Pictured below is Friday's mess. This is the latest and worst of them. Isn't it great? Exactly what I look forward to when I come home from a shitty day at the office.


I picked them up and found that the some of the Transformers are in pieces, in this case fixable pieces, but pieces nonetheless, playsets which have many small parts have been dumped randomly in the toy box with baby dino broken, and right now I am just pissed. Of course I'll be calling her to tell either the toys are off limits or they are treated with care and put away, but, really? I really need to have this conversation with someone?

Now on to today, aka Rant #2. Big 5 Consulting, you are a bunch of whiny-ass babies who create work effort to stay employed. You do not need a fucking status every 30 minutes throughout the night and weekend when your next pick up window is Monday at 5am. When you are told we will make the next window, you do not need an ETA at 10:30pm on Friday night, or 10AM Saturday, or Noon on Saturday, or 2pm on Saturday...fuck that shit. Your last pickup for the weekend was Friday at 5pm Central Time. I know this because you told me. It makes no damn difference if I send it Friday at 5:01PM Central or Monday at 4:59AM. You bastards are reincarnated cockroaches with a base instinct to plague those you have a small amount of control over. Get over yourselves or go whine to your mommy. My 5 year-old has more common courtesy than you do.

You might note from above that I now have to work through the weekend (again.) to get my normal job done AND be on call because the whiny-ass babies need instant responses--and really, they escalate everything to management, so I'm not sure why we bother.

I bet you're glad you stopped in to read, right?

Today's recommendation: Do not enter the IT field unless you enjoy whiny-ass bastards.

That pretty much wraps up this shitty mess for today. See you next time.

Random Unrelated Thoughts

It's Sunday again. The 3 day Memorial Day weekend enabled me to get caught up domestically last week and I was able to get something unheard of this week: free time.

I spent it wisely doing the following:
Sat outside in the sun for 1 hour each of the last 2 days.
Read a book.
Listened to Friday Night Live with Monty and hung in the chatroom.
Went out with friends for dinner.

I, perhaps unwisely, didn't do much office work this weekend, but my level of burnout is such that I am on a daily countdown to my vacation home to see the family. I still have time to do something to make tomorrow less painful, but if you are a betting person, I'd bet on taking the boy out for one last walk in the gorgeous weather when he returns from his Dad's.

New Haircut

Yeah, MIA again. It's been nice out and I like outside. I had a fantastic baseball weekend with friends. My team (MN Twins) was in town playing the Rockies and we went to all three games. The boy came on Sunday and had a blast as well.

I also had my hair chopped off. Here's a look:


That's it for now...just chugging along trying to keep up and get a little sunshine.

Shame

Today is April 27th. My last blog post was in February. Holy Crap, what happened? I had a birthday, a first trip to Vegas, endless hours of working, a trip to playoff hockey, and ....well, the working is what kept me away, but there was plenty happening.

I'm making this post out of shame. I clearly need to come back and bring the life up to date.

Bagel Making Day!

I had promised myself that this weekend would contain some fun stuff for the boy and me because we have just been crazy busy lately. I've been putting off trying Nic and V's bagel making extravaganza because I knew my son would like it, so that's what we did today.

The flour prevented any picture taking of the kneading, but trust me, my son was really into it. He did about 1/2 of the required 10 minutes of kneading. He also made the little balls of dough for rising.

Once it was time to roll things out, he was a little worried about his not working so he handed it over to me and did all the arranging. After a long long long (is time yet? is time yet?) 40 minutes, we were ready to boil the bagels.


The boy did the sesame dipping and we were ready to bake.













And here we are...all done. They tasted great!

Hi! I'm not dead (though the illness that went through our office like wildfire made many people wonder about survival), but I have been busy. My family came a visit--love you Mom and Dad. We spent a weekend hanging out in Vail (Yay, gondola. Yay skiing. Yay beautiful mountains) having a great time with S's other Grandparents as well. So, I haven't been around to blog about the craziness that life has been. We've been working hard. We've been playing hard. Now we are planning to have a little break to enjoy the little adventures before we try for the bigger ones again in March/April.

Randomness

Well, here I am again, this time practicing work avoidance. It's Sunday after all, I should be enjoying a nice relaxing day off, but alas, not this weekend. That said, I am not here to talk about work; I am here to ramble.

This morning at 8:15am, I took the dog out for a walk. I decided to see if I could find the rental that fell through prior to settling on the place we are in now. I did. I am infinitely glad I ended up where I am. The house itself is fine, but the houses nearby had a myriad of cars, ATVs, Truck Campers, barking dogs, etc. I ended up with at least 1 great neighbor and respectful quiet neighbors on the other sides.

This is Rosa:



















My parents are coming for a visit next week. First time in 3 years. For anyone that knows me really well, you will understand just how bizarre the plan to take them to the CO Stock Show is. You see, I pretty much despise rodeo from a previous stint as an English Comp I teacher at a Jr. College in a rodeo obsessed part of the middle of nowhere. There is nothing like reading 10 or 12 rodeo papers for every assignment. I was so sick of rodeo, I nearly banned it as a topic.

Thus we return to the oddity of me taking my parents to the Stock Show next week. But, I grew up on a farm. My parents will like it. My son will like it. I will probably like it--if I don't have to see or hear anything about bull-riding. Yeee Haw.

I really do live in the Great West. In CA, we were not steeped in the "Old West" tradition. Gold Rush maybe, but no one much was into the Wild Bills and Ranching.

The other day in the car my son asked me if I had ever seen a real canon. And also, could he shoot one. This triggered a memory of Birch Coulee from my childhood. The battle occurred in 1862 (my memory is not quite this awesome--I had to go look up the year) during the Dakota War and I did a book report on it in 4th grade. It is listed as a MN historical site and I remember specifically seeing a canon as well as bows and arrowheads when we visited 25 years ago. It remains a field trip for many elementary age students still back home. I think when we make our summer trip back home we'll be doing a camping trip there to go hike that old waterfall and so my son can have his "field trip" to Birch Coulee, like all good Western MN children do. There are some traditions worth passing on.

Last night I finished The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. It was a fast good read. If I could pick what heaven would be like, this way wouldn't be half bad. Sadly, it was my first book of the year. I want to read more this year. I miss reading.

Speaking of reading, my son is starting to learn. He can sound out small words and is practicing writing. He loves books and stories and I am pretty excited that he is learning so he can try himself. I know he is going to love it. That day when we both have reading time before bed is going to be great.

Time to end this procrastination effort and kick myself in gear. Unfortunately for me that work is not going to do itself, nor will it go away if I neglect it.

Happy New Year from the Frog Family. Don't have much time to blahg tonight, but wanted to post a couple of pictures from the holidays. Sullivan and I had a bunch of fun hanging out together. Sort of a mini pictoral of our daily life. lol













We always do self portraits around the holidays. His self-portrait didn't turn out so well, but mine is ok if you ignore the crazed look in my eyes.





And the last one, well, there is a boy in there somewhere.....sleeping. rofl