When did we get past winter

Don't get me wrong, I am happy we are having 80 degree weather but I didn't notice, did we have a winter? I am just waiting for a cold snap and that horror to rear its ugly head.

I love this weather but there are few down falls to a wonderful spring your yard needs mowing sooner, weeds appear out of nowhere and I am not ready to bare my upper arms. Whimper.

I am totally uninspired. I am in the middle of preparing for our big event at the state capitol and my brain is mush.

Enough for now...

I can't drive 5!

It's 9:45 pm and I still don't feel like I have been home long enough for it to be close to bedtime. I live in Oklahoma where when I get on the highway I get to drive at least 70 mph. On the drive home tonight, I40 west was dropped down to one lane -- really? one lane.

It took me one hour 30 minutes to make what usually takes 20 minutes. I was not happy. Half way home I had to kick on my shoes because clutching and braking was beginning to hurt. I hate I40!

Enough for now...

Butterflies on steroids

Okay major project, check! Finally, I am beginning to knock a dent in all the many projects stressing me out. I didn't know if I was going to make it a 45 minute presentation without really embarrassing myself but I managed to survive. I don't think I will volunteer for another presentation for a very long time.

It's 7:45 pm and I am still very wired. I do feel like it is good to push yourself in tough situations to experience and improve. However, I also feel that moderation is a good thing. The next time I will challenge myself will be around the year 2020.

The biggest problem I had today was with my PowerPoint. Somehow the slides where set on a timer, yet I didn't set a time limit on them.

I have thought about joining Toastmasters but not today. I will let you know if I start breathing normally tomorrow.

Enough for now...

It's only Monday and I am this exhausted??

Today was a whirl wind of projects that I didn't want to work on but required my attention. Since we got three to four inches of snow last night, the Commission meeting was cancelled. I was relieved that I didn't have to video tape our Director, edit the tape, and caption the video. I was going to be able to work on other time sensitive projects.

Nope! The Director called and said "I want to tape the report I would have given to the Commission." Then in his message there were many time references that really dictated that I get the video out today. To make matters worse, my assistant is out this week and I had to transcribe the audio for the captioning. At 5:30 pm, I was sending the email to the director all done!

Then to top everything off, Mom and Dad had to be picked up at the airport. Because of the chaos of the day, they had to wait at the airport until I could get the reporters out of the building - oh, did I fail to mention that I media.

I am cannot believe that I am this exhausted already. Tomorrow (whimper), I have to give my hour long presentation to the web group that I am a member of. What in the world was I thinking when I agree to present on HTML5. Shoot me now!

Enough for now...

Rock 'em, Shock 'em Robots

I am trying my best to be super mellow this weekend and for the most part, I have succeed. I have only worked on my side job, which is fresh and I enjoy it. My full time job is so exhausting that even thinking about working causes a heaviness to fall all about me.

Yesterday, I watched movies all day. First it was road kill - you know, the one you don't want to look but you do any way. Twilight, Breaking Dawn, oh my stars, do the books get as ridiculous as the movies? The wedding scenes where beautiful but the way Kristen Stewart plays Bella just wears you smooth. The best way I can explain it is "Awkward." There was one scene where she was telling off Edward and was actually realistic. The way she acts where she can't breath or can't say what she thinking just bugs the crap out of me.

Jacob's temper tantrums bug me too. Storming off into the woods to brood as a wolf is plan silly. Like I said this movie is road kill for me. I don't want to look, yet I do.

The other movie that I watched was Reel Steel. It was slow getting started but got better as toward the end. I am not a fan of people who are verbally rough on kids and so I really didn't like the lead character. But that predictably came to an end when he got to know his son.

Today won't be as mellow as yesterday. I have to clean my house company clean and I am so not in the mood. My Uncle Bill will be visiting my dad for a couple of weeks and it is bad form for show off all my dad's hard work with dirty clothes and dishes every where.

However, it's only 9 a.m. I think I will read for a little bit.

Enough for now...

IT'S FRRRRIIIIIDDDAAAAYYY

Never had I needed a week to be over as much as I needed this week to end. Three of my massive projects will be finished by Wednesday and on Wednesday I will crash.

I am paying extra care to put my day job on hold for the weekend.The only work I plan to do is for my side job but forget the day job.

So I took Mom and Dad to the airport then went and go a mani-pedi and now I sit waiting for Nitka to come on. Then I will watch Grimm and then on to Merlin. In other words, I am going for mindless entertainment. That is all I can handle right now.

Seamus will spend the weekend with us and I am rather glad that its going to be cold. Seamus is a rather big snuggler and when its cold you don't seem to mind it as much.

Enough for now...

Emotional Overload

One of the things that I hate the most about myself is that I am a complete bawl baby. And to make it worse when I get over worked or on too tight of deadlines, someone can look at me crossways and I will bawl like the world is coming to an end.

I want to stop crying at work, people think you are unstable.  I just want to be tough as nails and not care about anything. Unfortunately that is not who I am. I think the reason I am so emotional is also partly the reason I am creative. If I am able to turn it off and not care what people think, will that cause me to not to care about my work too?

Work has been way overwhelming with too many big projects. By the end of next week, I am hoping to get the Annual Report proofed and ready for print. Then I could settle down and gather my thoughts.

Delima, do I stop and rest and not make any progress on the massive workload or do I work over the weekend and get somethings done? I think I will have to a little of both.

I do think that tomorrow, I need a mani-pedi.

Enough for now...

The Shine has worn off my brillance

Lately, work has been incredibly busy and I have been traveling all over the state. I actually like it except for today's drive, the Malibu they gave me had a super rough drive. I drove to Tulsa and back by 1:30 p.m. and was plum worn out.

The flood of work won't slow down until probably May. I am not overly thrill about this but have decided that I will do what I can and the other stuff will have to wait.

I am lacking some of the confidence I need to do my job due to the extreme workload and I feel like I am slamming things out. I don't like to make errors and yet, lately that been more abundant than I like. I need to figure out how to slow down and be okay with being behind.
I will have the annual report completed by the end of the week and hopefully get to work on our awareness day like I feel I should. I don't like planning events and not being able to devote the proper amount of time.

Then on top of working late and weekends trying to catch up at work, I am trying to complete a side web site job. Talk about burning the candle at both ends (I'm melting). To make this even harder, I have not had a coke, refined sugar, french fries, chocolate, or Mexican food since January 3. I hate diets.

My baby dog is not happy with all this working. He has taken to laying down next to me and pushing the laptop away. I think he has the right idea.

Enough for now...

Declaration Phooey

Today I had to go take care of insurance. Not exactly what you call fun mainly because it can be mind numbingly boring and confusing. My homeowners insurance went up $175 and I wanted to know why. Come to find out that when my roof was re-roofed three years ago, I had to notified my agent and provide some paperwork so that it can be entered into the master computer or else it keeps jacking up your premium.

Thankfully I am neurotic about keeping paperwork and was able to provide my agent the name of the roofers. I hope the roofers keep paperwork like I do, more importantly I hope they are still in business.

My little pitfall car has hit a new low. I no longer keep full coverage on the poor thing. Its not worth full coverage. I am hopeful to retire the little guy next year. When you drive a ten year old car with only three hubcaps, you don't keep full coverage.

Maybe, I will be less boring tomorrow. I am totally zapped looking for some mind numbing TV and then bed.

Enough for now...

I not blue, I am indigo

Bad day. Really bad day. Every time I think things are settling down, chaos ensues and I am back to square one. I don't like square one.

You know what else I don't like? I don't like baked pork  chops. I made them tonight for the first time ever and nope, not for me. I've got three more in the freezer and not sure what to do with them. I am hoping the George Foreman Grill will make them taste better than the oven did.

I also don't like it that my best Friend at work is out on sick leave. She had a knee replaced so she will be out for six weeks. I have been eating at my desk and working through lunch all week. I miss Linda.

I have too much work to complete in a timely fashion and feel the need to work through lunch, late every night and on the weekend. What do I get? "Be careful what you wish for." and "It would be better not to volunteer for big projects when you are super busy with our event because it puts extra pressure on you."

In other words don't complain and don't get out of your box. Today SUCKED. One of these days I will have made up for whatever bad things I did in my previous life.

Here's the orchid I got to kill slowly over the next few months.

Enough for now...

Thank you to all our Veterans

I want to thank all the veterans who have fought and served so that I can speak my mind and live freely.

To my Father,
  Tommie Tallon, Veteran served during peacetime;

To a family friend,
  Lee DeGraffenried, Veteran served during peacetime;

To my uncles,
   Donald Griffith, Vietnam Veteran;
   John McMurtrie, Vietnam Veteran;

To my cousin,
  Roy (Trey) Moore, Veteran served during peacetime;

To my friend,
  Maggie Artime, Veteran served during peacetime;

To my nephews,
  Patrick Logan, future veteran serving us proudly now;
  Jason Logan, future veteran serving us proudlynow.

Because of you and those like you, I am able to say Thank You anyway I want. Thank you for my freedom.

Enough for now...

What's Next? Tsunami at Tenkiller?

I know that I have been noticeably absent from my handy dandy blog. Plain and simple, I have been burned out with technology. My Facebook activity has been lacking as well.  Since I began blogging years ago, I have always written in spurts and for that I apologize.

A couple of weeks ago I was hit with a respiratory infection of the massive kind and it really kicked my butt. Everyday I would think, I will be better and go to work tomorrow and each day I was too sick to go. When I miss a solid week of work, I am terribly ill. I kind of panic when I have to call in sick. I am paranoia that people won't believe I am sick and I end up working when I should be at home. I am currently nursing that lingering cough that makes everyone think I am still sick. Being sick also made very uninterested in being on the computer for any reason.

Now on to the bazaar, Oklahoma has earthquakes. What would Will Rogers say "If you don't like the weather wait ten minutes." I don't think he meant earthquakes!  I know what to do when the sky falls but when my earth moves I have admit I just freeze. When the 5.6 quake happened, I was in bed watching TV. I first thought that a car hit my house but when it kept moving I just laid there - wide eyed shocked. Then earthquake dawned on me and I turned the TV to the local news.

What in the world is going on here? First we are tornado alley, then we have extreme draughts, or we have massive snow storms, now this - earthquakes, really? What's next a quake under Lake Tenkiller causing a Tsunami?

Now the news is telling everyone what to do when we have an earthquake. You know what they don't tell us, what to do if you are driving when an earthquake happens?

Enough for now...

Exhausted - talk among yourselves, I will be back

Enough for now...

It's football again

It's the good time for TV again, all the shows that I watch are coming out with new episodes. The problem I have is that I am really into my book. So this means that I watch TV all evening and read all night.  I am exhausted  all day long and the cycle continues. It's kind of the fish or cut bait delima but I choose to do both.

I am one book from being done with Raymond Fiest and series for a while and I am dying to finish it.

Technically I should be working, cleaning my house and doing some work on a free-lance project but I am thinking this weekend I want to revel in nothingness. I want to watch TV. I want to read. I want to be blah! I am thrilled it is now football season and we have OU (Boomer Sooner) games to veg out to.

Last week's game however did not give the "veg" out feeling. By the end of the game I was such a bundle of nerves that it took half the night to calm down. I am looking forward to Saturday's game against Missouri but it will be another nail biter.

Enough for now...

The Pres needs an easy button

The thing that I am most concerned with is that the American Jewish community feels the way Jerry Springer feels in the above segment. Obama is against Israel and is pursuing a Palestinian state. This bothers me greatly. I believe that if we abandon Israel to the Middle East Muslim hatred, we know they will fall. So abandonment means we kill them by absence. I have a problem with that.

We are a Country built around freedom to practice any religion a person chooses and we need to support a country trying to practice its religion - a country persecuted because they are not Muslim.

Today, Obama went to the UN and decried that "Peace is hard." What? Peace is easy, "my missiles are trained on you, make a move and we will blast you!" Easy.

Enough for now...

I want to be a happy old person

My family is rocking on exhaustion right now. My 98 year old mean great aunt, fell last week at the assistive living home she lives at. The place she lived at was like Spanish Cove or the The Villages in Florida for the poor. It was really nice.

But when she fell, it meant that she needed more attention than she was getting at the assistive living home. So from when she fell Wednesday night, mom and dad went to work and found her a nursing home and move her in Saturday at dinner time.

Let me tell you, that's moving fast. They did the leg work and paper work on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, we all went over to her new place and got it set up as best we could and then went to her old place and picked up the stuff that would go to the nursing home (which is not that much).

Dad and I took the stuff from the old place to the new one, while mom dallied around her old place with her. That way, Aunt Lorene didn't see us move things in and try to start demanding where things went or get upset that people are touching her stuff. Her nursing home room is very limited and we really only could put things in one or two areas. Another problem is that her sight is fading fast and her hearing is almost gone, we were stressed enough making the move we didn't need her trying to move things in weird places because she can't see the whole room.

Poor mom was stuck with her the majority of the time because we wanted to move her into a fully furnished room. She really left one place fit to live in and move to the new one fit to live in without seeing much of the move. I believe that made her more calm in the transition.

The crazy nasty woman was okay with the move because she didn't like the assistive living center. Ironically, I think she didn't like it because she doesn't know how to live well. It wasn't a deteriorating trailer, it was the nicest place she ever lived. It was brand new and she was the first person to live in her apartment. The common areas where very nice and there was a lot of activities she refused to participate in.

She told mom and dad after they said she was moving to a nursing home that it was okay because they (meaning mom and dad) moved her into the wrong place first. She thinks this move to a nursing home is her idea. When actually the assistive living home wanted her gone after she call 911 when she fell. What she should have done was press the "help I have fallen and can't get up" button that was supposed to be around her neck but wasn't because she wouldn't follow the rules.

All of a sudden at 11 pm an ambulance shows up at the home and they didn't know why, I am sure that did not make her popular with the administration. But that is who Lorene is, she call 911 in Atoka because she got mad at the nephew who she was staying with. She burns bridges every where she goes. She thinks she rules everyone and everything and if you won't be dominated or manipulated she is angry as all get out.

The sad thing is that she used to be my favorite aunt on my dad's side of the family and what it really was was Uncle Eude, her husband. He was funny and nice to us and a real talker. I don't think we knew her at all. All the kin folk in California warned dad about taking her, but we really had no choice. We were her only blood family in the state and we thought she was in crisis. She wasn't, she was just mad at her nephew and manipulating all of us.

When we learned how she operated it was too late. She was living with mom and dad waiting to be admitting to the assistive living home. I did learn one thing. Because of the level of cruelty and lies, she has dished out, will cause her to be ward of the state if anything were to happen and she out live dad (her power of attorney). I will not care for her. I will help my parents care for her because they are better people than me.

Her Oklahoma family ends with dad. I fear she will live to make the Willard Scott birthday shout out for being the oldest woman in the world.

Enough for now...

This is not suiting me at all!

I hate this time of year. It is the time that my body violently mutinies against me. I have be dying with extremely itchy eyes, runny nose and a headache to top all headaches. I wake up every morning in so much pain and nauseated to the point of frustration (if I am going to feel like hurling then just do it and get it over with). I would have called in sick yesterday but it was Monday and I don't like to call in on Monday.

I would have called in sick today but I have an appointment  with a program that I am trying to get the staff happy again and I fear they would feel slighted if I rescheduled.

Why does this have to happen?  We have sent men to the moon and no one has found a cure for allergies? I don't buy it, the flu and sinus people want us buying all those drugs that don't work for beans. I bet there is a cure they are not telling us about!

The biggest problem with calling in sick is that until the weather changes there is no guarantee that I will feel better tomorrow.

On to brighter things (you can only gripe about allergies so long), the new fall season will start soon and this aimless clicking of the remote hoping to find something worthwhile on the TV will end. I am excited to see new shows coming out but hate the way the cable channels handle their seasons. Suits is a show that I absolutely love but after the season finale, the little announcer guy on the commercial said "see what happens next summer on Suits." Next summer?

Stargate Universe did that and by "next summer," I had a new routine and kept forgetting that it was on and I loved that show too. Shows should not end and have a return date of nine months later, that is ludicrous.  Come on cable step it up!

Enough for now...

The games have begun

Tomorrow I head to Tulsa for an advocacy conference with Co-Worker Linda. Yeah, not only will the information be good but it will be nice to be able to catch up with Linda. This week has be insane and I don't feel like I have left my office for more than five minutes at a time.

I am looking forward to the trip because we always have fun on road trips. I only wish that this one didn't have to start at 6:45 a.m. That's real early.

On the new web work, I am starting to convert my work website to HTML 5 and I am very happy how it simplifies the code. I just now have to convert everything, yeah....

The President spoke tonight and I just couldn't watch. I am so tired of his empty rhetoric. When Charles Krauthammer says that this is nothing more that a "set up," I can't bare to listen. I am also exhausted with the Presidential debates/campaigns. Let just hurry up get Mitt nominated and join forces.

This election process won't be pretty this year.

Enough for now...

Read the Book!

I should be rejoicing in this beautiful weather we are having, from 110 degrees to 80 over night is a glorious thing.  But I feel like crap. I think the radical weather change has my allergies on over drive and making me feel all around blah.

I should be well rested due to the fact that Mom and I watched 13 episodes of "To Serve Them All My Days" an show made from RF Delderfield's book. The book was much better and has me scratching my head at some spots, causing me to think that I need to re-read that book. Reading my post, in my book blog doesn't help much, but my title says a lot: Another Book I Couldn't Put Down!

The fact that show was shot in the early 80s probably didn't help much. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the show as much as I do the book. Nor, do I recommend watching 13 episodes over a three day span.


Enough for now...

Surprised Nine is Fine

I am now coding my websites with HTML5 and have upgraded from Internet Explorer 8  to Internet Explorer 9. Actually, I haven't cared much one way or the other about IE, I have just always had to use it because JAWS users must use it. I have to design for IE.

I am surprised that I really like it. It seems real fast and HTML5 components and CSS3 tend to behave the way they are supposed to.  What really amazes me, are the people who don't upgrade their browsers and some are still using IE 6. It was introduced in 2001, why would you still use a browser that old. People, your browsers are free, upgrade for every web designers sake.

What was difficult at first was that the tabs are on top of the browser above all the menus and kind of transparent. I keep having to hunt for them before I remember they are up there. I don't like that the favorites are in the right corner now, my mother will never find them on her computer (I may not upgrade her browser and ten years from now she will still be using IE 8).

Just for a little comedic relief, I thought I would add this Toyota commercial. I love her line "I am an only child, [dramatic pause] except for my sister." It just cracks me up!



Enough for now...