Friday Bullets – 4th Edition

• This morning alone I had 8 spam comments for cialis & viagra – thank you so much for the information Mr., Ms., or Mrs. Spammer but I’m a WOMAN & not at all interested in those particular drugs.
• The husband was waiting at DMV to pick up his new license plates (and this is a post in itself for another day) and overheard a lady talking to her daughter – whose name just happened to be Desiree.
• Excited about my friend’s birthday party that is tomorrow night. We got my niece to watch the gremlins so we can go sans children to the party.  Drunkfest!
• I’m so tired of people complaining about our FREE, yes I said FREE, videos. Without ever having bought anything from us. They’re just complaining about the FREE video. You can go SUCKIT!
• SOMEONE brought donuts into the office today & before I had to control myself so as not to eat any of the donuts I found that another employee had eaten my favorite kind! Yes!! And I did thank him ever so much for eating it before I could get my paws on it.
• Filing paperwork is at the bottom of my list of favorite things to do. EVER.
• And I have a month & a half worth of papers to file. Oh, here let me show you!

Granted this stack (or my current papers to file) isn’t nearly as bad as the stack below (or my SIX months worth of papers to file) that I put off for oh, SIX months.

• Thankfully the antibiotics are doing their thang. I finally feel human again.
• I decided to wear earrings in the second holes on my ear lobe today after not wearing earrings there for 5+ years.
• I don’t know why I stopped wearing them but for some reason I felt like wearing them today.
• Actually had to go to Honey bunny’s room and steal borrow some small stud type earrings cause I have none anymore.
• Have officially begun the punch list of required records for our CPA for 2008. BLECH!

Well, that’s enough for now,

Ciao

Note to my 16yr old self

Hey D,

It’s me.  Just wanted to let you know that you don’t have to cry about not seeing George Michael in concert.  When you’re 37yrs old, you’ll get to see him perform.   And what a show it will be!  The stage, amazing, technologically so far advanced you wouldn’t believe me.  Just trust me, it will be phenomenal.  Plus, he has still got it after all these years!!  In fact, he’s probably better.  Sexy, check. Voice, check.  Boody shakin, check, check.     

So dry your tears, you’ll get a chance to see him; you’ll drool, sing, dance, and laugh with your friends about how silly you can still be… even in your 30’s. 

It’ll be all right darling.  Just go on & remember that you’ll see him eventually. 

Now if I could just tell you that you’ll see Duran Duran, then everything would be perfect.  Maybe another time. 

Love ya,
D

P.S.  Word of advice… maybe you should – you know what, never mind, just do what you’re gonna do.  Lessons learned. 

We’re moving, again -or not (part 7)

Just in case you want to get up to speed on the whole saga of ‘We’re moving, again’ there are seven other posts on the topic.  And I have tried, tried, tried to get the damn things to link here but it just isn’t working so you’ll just have to search.  Sorry.

Ok, are we ready?  Here’s the latest scoop.  It has officially been 12 months (yes, I said 12 months) that our house has been for sale.  You’d think we must have one dump of a house for it not to have sold in 12 months.  Oh, contrare, we have a stunning house.  And if you read any of the above referenced posts on this topic, then you know cause I’ve described the house in detail… anyway, the only thing I can attribute to the house not selling is this unbelieveably horrible housing market. 

Thank heavens we’ve managed to make it this whole year.  Things could have taken a disastrous turn if our business hadn’t picked up during the same time frame.  Luckily it did & we can still (barely) afford to stay in our house.  For at least another year.  Maybe we’ll get really lucky and the market will be back on the upswing this time next year.  Bwahhahahahahaha!

So for now, we are not moving.  The house is officially coming off the market on Saturday and we are now in the process of possibly refinancing in a slightly vain attempt at reducing our monthly payment.

Ciao 

More Quotes on which to reflect

Without much ado… on to the quotes: 

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
- Danny Kaye US actor & singer (1913 – 1987)

Conquer thyself, till thou has done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another’s appetite as to thine own.
- Sir Richard Francis Burton British explorer & orientalist (1821 – 1890)

Wisdom doesn’t automatically come with old age. Nothing does – except wrinkles. It’s true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place.
- Abigail Van Buren, 1978 US advice columnist (1918 – )

When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.
- Paul “Bear” Bryant, I Ain’t Never Been Nothing but a Winner

The gods too are fond of a joke.
- Aristotle

Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.
- Annie Lennox

Better by far you should forget and smile than you should remember and be sad.
- Christina Rossetti English poet (1830 – 1894)

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
- W. Somerset Maugham

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
- Harry S Truman

Leave well – even ‘pretty well’ – alone: that is what I learn as I get old. 
- Edward Fitzgerald English poet & translator (1809 – 1883)

Life is a long lesson in humility.
- James M. Barrie

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
-Steve Jobs US computer engineer & industrialist (1955 – )

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
- Oscar Wilde Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 – 1900)

But penance need not be paid in suffering…It can be paid in forward motion. Correcting the mistake is a positive move, a nurturing move.
- Barbara Hall, A Summons to New Orleans, 2000

Our lives improve only when we take chances – and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
- Walter Anderson

Complaining is good for you as long as you’re not complaining to the person you’re complaining about.
- Lynn Johnston, For Better or For Worse 11-06-03 Canadian cartoonist (1947 – )

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- CP Snow

It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship.
- Colette, The Pure and the Impure, 1932 French novelist (1873 – 1954)

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Pan American Day address, April 15, 1939 32nd president of US (1882 – 1945)

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.
- Jane Wagner

Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.
- Victoria Holt

Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty… Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.
- Rainer Maria Rilke German lyric poet (1875 – 1926)

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
- John Stuart Mill

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
- Carl Jung Swiss psychologist (1875 – 1961)

If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.
- Oprah Winfrey, O Magazine US actress & television talk show host (1954 – )

And now we bring you

More on the saga of our house for sale.  It is now month number 9.  Hey perhaps this will be like pregnancy but instead of giving birth to a child, we will sell our house!!  God willing.  We managed to survive Christmas and New Year with the house ready for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to come tramping through.  I somehow kept the house looking like a show piece despite the massive amounts of wrapping paper, ribbons, tie wraps, plastic packaging, and loads of new toys.  The day after Christmas our house looked like it had vomited colored bows, torn bits of paper, and random utensils and plates from the 1,000 piece Tea set my evil  wonderful sister got Pumpkin for a gift.  Ordinarily, it would have taken me weeks to get that mess cleaned up.  This year, I didn’t have weeks, I had a ~as in ONE~ day to get it back to Open House status. 

Believe it or not, there was actually a call from a realtor who wanted to show the house the day after Christmas.  I suppose we could have said no.  But we are trying to sell the house.  So we got it ready for them…  Yeah… they didn’t show up.  Big *f-in* surprise.  Gggrrrr.   

I have just finally agreed with the Husband to stop obsessively cleaning the house on the “possibility” that someone might be coming by to view the house.  Yes, it’s been 9 months and I am so incredibly tired of the constant cleaning.  So we decided that we would bring the lockbox in the house & make all agents call to schedule an appointment before they just show up with their clients.  One agent actually called & said, “we’re outside your house, can you come up and let us in?”  Hmmm, let me think about that…. “No”.  For goodness sake, make an appointment and give us a little tiny bit of notice.  That way the house looks presentable for you, not as if a twister had just blown through.  So no, a minute notice is not enough, but perhaps a days notice??!!  Or at the very least a half an hour notice?

Basically, moving the lock box inside frees me up tremendously.  It means that I don’t have to flip out over every toy Pumpkin drags out of her room to play with in the morning, cause I DON’T HAVE TO CLEAN IT UP BEFORE I leave the house!!  I don’t have to make three beds before I leave the house!  I don’t have to wash every dish before I leave the house!!  You have no idea what a relief it is.  Plus, I’m not constantly yelling at the children not to make a mess.  This is better for my mommy self-image, my mental health, and the gremlins mental health.  And you know, when you really think about, what I consider a mess, to them is just being creative children at play having fun. 

So we came to the conclussion, after reviewing data on the market and discussing the absolute least amount we could accept ~and still have money left for a downpayment on a new house~ that we should reduce the sale price.  This is the second time that we are dropping the price.  Believe me when I say that it makes me want to be sick when I think about how much money we are potentially leaving with this house.  I don’t want to go into the details since I don’t feel up for vomitting right now… suffice it to say that we will barely have enough left to make a minimum downpayment on another house.  And the housing prices here are still ridiculously high even on a simple single family home.  I try not to think about this overly much since it’s fairly depressing.  It is what it is.  I just need to learn to deal with the reality of the situation as it is now.  However, on the upside, once we reduced the price we had about 150 views per day of the virtual tour which was up by almost 100 pre-reduction.  More traffic viewing the house means more chances of the house selling.

********************

So, yesterday we had two agents bring their clients over to see the house.  One agent was bringing the second half of a couple to view.  This could be promising.  If the wife saw the house first and now wants her husband to see the house, then we might have a potential offer.  However, if it was the husband that saw the house first and now wants his wife to see it, then it probably won’t go anywhere.  Reason being, the wife almost always makes the decision about which house they will live in… think about it, you know this is true.  The husband may set the price limit but the wife will ultimately decide which house will be most comfortable for her family.  The other agent has never been out to the house before so his clients are really a long shot.  I sent all the info to our agent last night for him to follow-up.  We shall see if anything comes of this.  I try not to get my hopes up since it has been so long already without any offers.  I’m just going with the flow, what will be will be, and all those other corny expressions.

Enough for now,

Ciao 

Quotes part deux

I have been freakin’ busy lately so I have been unable to come up with anything original to write in this blog.  Then again, I don’t think that what I’ve written so far has been all that original either, but anywhoozlebee, here is a bunch more of my favorite quotes. 
Bon Appetit!  (Geez, I must be in a french frame of mind or something.) 

All of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
-Dale Carnegie

If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive.
-Dorothee Solle 

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
- Robert Anton Wilson

The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.
-Gordon Parks

The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.
-Pablo Casals

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
-Shana Alexander

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
-Henri-Frédéric Amiel

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
- Aesop

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain.
-Unknown

Perfectionism is simply putting a limit on your future. When you have an idea of perfect in your mind, you open the door to constantly comparing what you have now with what you want. That type of self criticism is significantly deterring.
-John Eliot, Ph.D., Reverse Psychology for Success

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
- Brendan Gill

The best cure for worry, depression, melancholy, brooding, is to go deliberately forth and try to lift with one’s sympathy the gloom of somebody else.
-Arnold Bennett

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
-Marcel Proust French novelist (1871 – 1922)

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.
- Edith Wharton

Enough for now,

Ciao

Fire (part 3)

Well, it’s been over a week since the fire first started and it is now about 95% contained.  It has burned nearly 48,000 acres of land.  Becoming the largest fire in the county; quite possibly the whole state.  And costing nearly 10 million dollars, yes, I said 10 MILLION dollars, to fight.  The fire fighters were working 24 hr on/off and sleeping in a make-shift camp set-up in a nearby city. 

Thank goodness most of the land affected was not full of homes, businesses, and schools.  If it had burned in a south or north westerly direction, then it would have burned through thousands of homes, businesses, schools, and churches costing probably 100 times that amount in damages.  It’s hard to say whether as much would have burned if it had been in less difficult terrain.  Since there were many steep hills and no real roads, it made for a challenge.  Increasing the level of difficulty in extinguishing the fire.  It certainly is possible to speculate that it wouldn’t have burned as much if it WERE in a more easily accessible area. 

I have to say that I am so grateful that the fire didn’t change direction.  We could have been one of the many affected by the fire.  Instead it was merely grass, trees, shrubs, etc. that burned.  Leaving charred ground in its wake and not devastated families and communities.

Thank you, again, to the fire fighters for all your time and energy! 

Enough for now,

Ciao

Fire (part 2)

Here is the update on the fire… it has moved in the opposite direction of our house and has remained in a fairly remote area.  Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at the situation, it has burned more than 19,000 acres.  I say this because I know there are types of trees that only release their seeds when temperatures are high enough ~as in the case of fire.  Without fires, they are unable to do this.  But, as if we don’t have enough S*HT in the air with all the car exhaust and factory exhaust, now we get to breath in smoke from close to 19,000 acres of burning trees, grass, shrubs, weeds, etc.  Here is a picture from my car driving into our town yesterday:

Today the sky is completely covered in smoke.  The fire is only 25% contained and they are having real difficulty fighting the fire because of the remoteness of the area & weather conditions.  High wind gusts, high temperatures and dropping humidity continue to spur the fire.   

They think the fire was started inadvertently by a man using a burn barrel.  That’s a really big ooopps.  At this point they are estimating 4 more days and roughly 30,000 acres will be burned before they get the fire out.

This morning the husband asked Honey bunny’s teacher if they were going to keep the kids inside during recess period in order to reduce their exposure to the smoke.  She looked at him like he was growing snakes out of his head.  Hello??!!  Do you want to be breathing this stuff in?  Then the kids shouldn’t be allowed to be outside inhaling the smoke!

Oh, and before I forget, here is another big THANK YOU!! to the firefighters!!!

Well, enough for now, I’ll keep you posted,

Ciao 

Fire

In some cases fire is a good thing.  Like when you are really, really, really cold or even when your only just really cold.  And, also, when you want to snuggle up with your honey.  It’s good when you need to cook some food.  It’s great to have when you want to take a hot shower.  But there are times when it’s not a good thing.  Such as when you burn yourself roasting marshmellows.  Or when there is a fire burning its way toward your home or school.  Like this…

photo taken from our dining room window. 

This summer, like many summers before, there have been fires.  It certainly isn’t an unusual occurrence.  Different things can start fires, in the case of this fire, they still haven’t determined what started it. 

I always feel terrible for the people that are affected (or is it effected? I can never remember); those that lose their homes, mementos, and sometimes family members or pets.  We have always been incredibly lucky.  Misfortunes have passed us by.  For this I am truly grateful.  I pray that this is another one of those occasions, where fate is on our side. 

Now, from the photo it is difficult to tell how far or near the fire is to us.  It is actually somewhat far.  Plus, there is a lake in between.  Therefore, the likelyhood of this fire reaching us is slim.  That doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible, just that it’s unlikely.  God willing. 

~NEW DAY~
Ok, it is now the next day.  Got too late for me to stay up & finish the post last night.  Here is the update: They say they have the fire only 10% contained.  There is lots of wind continuing to blow the fire in all directions and the fire itself creates wind, making it even more difficult to fight.  Its already burned 1,000s of acres.  Who knows how many more it will burn. 

As I was driving to pickup Honey bunny from school, I passed about a half dozen fire trucks loaded with tired, soot covered fire fighters.  Those guys need to be thanked!  They risk their lives to put out fires.  THANK YOU FIREFIGHTERS EVERWHERE!!! 

I’ll keep you posted on the situation.

Enough for now,

Ciao

   

Girl’s night, drunk night

Oh, yeah!  It’s girl’s night!  I am so excited!!!  I think I can probably use a few more exclamation marks!!!!

After we went to movie night, a few weeks back, see my movie review, we went to a little bar by the theater and got a drink.  It was mentioned that we should have another girl’s night.  One of the girl’s boyfriend was gonna be out of town for about 4 days.  This makes their place an ideal location to hold “Girl’s night, drunk night/sleepover party” & we picked tonight! 

So after multiple emails between the 8 of us we decide we’re gonna:

1. eat
2. maybe go to a bar
3. drink
4. eat some snacks
5. drink
6. laugh our guts out
7. watch a movie
8. play some cards 
9. drink
10. watch a movie
11. eat more snacks
12. drink again
13. drink more
14. LAUGH our ASSES off
15. eat again
16. drink some more
17. possibly throw up

Probably not in that specific order.  And hopefully not #17, but we shall see.  In fact, I will continue this blog in a part 2 with all the details of the night.

I wish I could say that we are going to be all intellectual while daintily sipping our cocktails and discuss important world issues but I can’t and we won’t.  We all have jobs and most of us have kids so when we get a chance to let loose, you better watch out.

All right, I gotta go start packing.  Aahhhhh, I’m so excited!!  I can’t wait!

Ciao