Best Weekend Ever

Well, maybe not ever, but last weekend was quite stellar. I didn't even get Friday after Thanksgiving off, but I made the best of the hand I was dealt.

Thanksgivings in California are not Thanksgivings in Kansas (slash Missouri). Alan and I would much rather be back home with family and having reunions with our oldest and best friends, but alas, it is just not possible with so far to travel and the opposite of all the money in the world. However, we've made Thanksgiving decidedly our own since we've been out here. This year, Alan's lab once again played another lab in the Turkey Bowl, aka "The most serious game of touch football ever." And by serious, I mean, bruises-on-the-arms serious. Still. They should be turning yellow any day now. And no wonder. Check out the hoss Alan had to block.

This year the game was more intense than last year, but they pulled it out in the last play to win for the second year in a row. Hurray for champions!

After the game, we spent the rest of the day "relaxing hard." This consisted of opening a bottle of wine and playing Scrabble all day while football played on TV. I relaxed a little too hard, apparently, because Alan beat me like eight games straight. And I'm supposed to be the "word" person. Whatever. A good vocab doesn't give you luck when drawing letters out of a bag. (Just kidding, Alan's very good at Scrabble.)

Because I wasn't trusted to cook dinner (and because I really didn't want to make dinner for just two in a kitchen with no dishwasher), we had reservations at a local restaurant. We'd wanted to eat there anyway, and they had a four-course meal, complete with turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie. We were a little too full when we left. It was awesome.

On Saturday Alan and I headed up to "the city" to go to Phantom of the Opera. We ate a delicious Thai meal beforehand and had fruity drinks that equaled the cost of both of our entrees and appetizer combined. But at least they came with flowers.

It was an overall fabulous weekend, with plenty of relaxation and good times and way too many drinks. I'm 28. Three days of hitting the bottle is a bit much. But it should confirm to you kids that no, I'm not pregnant.*

*Two people in one week asked, and my boss dreamed I had a baby in an airport, so I feel I should set the record straight. But congrats to my cousin Stacey who actually is pregnant!

That's what I get

Remember all of my moaning about how hot it was and how miserable it was sweating all day in the heat of the apartment?

Well, wouldn't you know it, it's coming back to bite me.

It. Is. Freezing.

We cranked up our heater a couple of weeks ago. And although it doesn't run all day, it's definitely getting cold enough that it needs to kick on a couple of times at night and in the morning for it to be comfortable. If our windows were at all decent, I think we could get away without heat for another couple of weeks, but you can literally feel the draft coming from them.

At the end of the year last year we started having trouble getting our very scary wall heater to kick on. We'd have to open the cover to the thermostat and wiggle a sensor to get it to turn on. That worked this year, until last night. No amount of wiggling is getting that puppy to give us the sweet heat.

We woke up freezing this morning, not wanting to get out of bed. My hands are currently like popsicles as I try to type. I just want a happy, comfortable medium.

Off to call the landlord.

Oh my gosh, stupids!

I am running into ridiculous amounts of stupidity today. AND I WORK AT HOME!! And no, Marti is not the stupidity that I'm running into, jerks.

Unfortunately, the stupids are able to find me by phone and via email. If I had to be within spitting distance, I might explode.

Example 1
For the newsletter at work, I send instructions and all content to people in Iowa. They in turn do it up nice and send a proof email. I get an email from one of them regarding the proof:

"The subject line in the proof is different from the one you sent in the instructions, which do I use?"

Um. Maybe the ONE I SENT WITH THE INSTRUCTIONS? And the one I mentioned SEPARATELY IN THE EMAIL. And NOT THE SAME AS THE ONE TWO WEEKS AGO.

Iowans. (sorry non-idiots from Iowa.)

Example 2
A company gets back with me regarding a product information request.

Stupid: "Does this cost money?"

Me: It's editorial, free of charge.

Stupid: Is there anything that costs money?


Yeah, if you want to advertise. But no, what I'm asking for does not cost money. I'm not trying to trick you here.


I could keep going, but don't want to bore with details of my dramatic dumb day.

Have a Bumbling Good Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Marti the Bumblebee!

Assistant Pug

Marti loves to "help" me work. She shares my chair with me when I'm working at the desktop, and she loves sitting as close to me as she can when I'm on the laptop. Her top job duty is making it as difficult as possible for me to move the mouse. She totally deserves a raise for a job well done.

Some days you're the hydrant

You know the saying, "Some days you're the dog; some days you're the hydrant"? Yesterday, I was the hydrant.

I was minding my own business at the dog park, on watch to make sure Marti wasn't devouring mud, as she's grown quite fond of doing recently. I was there, with my squirt bottle handy to spray her should she even think about it, and I felt a warm sensation on my leg. It took a second before it soaked through my jeans and hit my skin, and by then it was too late to figure out who the culprit was.

I hoped at first that it was my water bottle leaking. But I knew that my water wasn't warm. It was thus confirmed upon jean-removal that it was, indeed, dog urine. I guess my new jeans couldn't stay untarnished forever.

Professional Development

Check out what I got to do last week.