Footprints on the Moon

Orlando in June?

I think I’ve mentioned before that I was hoping to go to Florida in June for a blogging convention. I’ve even started saving money in my PayPal account to that effect. These days though, it’s looking more and more like I won’t need those Orlando vacation rentals after all. I’d still like to go, but financially, I don’t think I’m going to make it. I’ve got some shopping I need to do this weekend, and I’ll be cleaning out my paypal in order to do it. I’ll start over, obviously, but with travel, hotel, and convention fees, plus probably two days off of work…. I’m not sure I can justify it. It will just remain to be seen, I guess. But when I get off work tonight, that balance goes to zero!

Food Now!

Do you remember those Burger King radio commercials from a few years back? The stomach was saying “Foooood…. Noooooow…. Foooooood…. Noooooooow!” for a double whopper. The commercial always cracked me up, and Erica and I still quote it when we’re really hungry and looking for lunch or dinner. Apparently I should’ve grabbed something else this morning or something because my stomach is yelling “Food Now!” and there’s still over an hour before lunch! I had mini-muffins, like I do most mornings I work, but they’re just not cutting it today. I could raid the candy drawer, but I’m trying to be good.

Custom Colors

My friend Julie posted the other day about people in the medical field using a Littman stethoscope that is the boring black. She mentioned that nurses should have the cute colored ones, especially on the peds floors. I thought for sure that quite a few nurses actually had them- I’ve seen them! But when I went up to see my mom’s husband the last time before he came home from the hospital, I decided to pay attention. Sure enough, every single nurse we saw had the same boring black stethoscope! Is it a matter of just not shopping around? Or a matter of price? Or maybe they just don’t care. I’d want a blue one… at least something a little more unique than the same old black.

Luxury Vacation

As the weather gets nicer, I really have the urge to go on a vacation. You would think I would want to get out of town when the weather was cold and snowy, but apparently not. Winter is the time for hibernation! What I find I want to do is spend the time and money on a ridiculously indulgent getaway… something like a week at the spa, or one of those crewed yacht charters. Take a girlfriend a long and spend some time getting away from work and getting waited on hand and foot. Yep, that sounds like just the ticket!

Mom on Myspace

Every morning when I get to work, I turn my radio to B100, which is the local country radio station, to listen to the morning show. All my days are running together, but I think it was yesterday morning (maybe the day before) that they were talking about myspace. One of the DJs was rather freaked out about the fact that his mom had gotten a myspace account and was messaging him. A rather humorous discussion ensued in which he found out that his sister actually helped her set up her page, but it got me to wondering. Do your mothers have a MySpace, or at least visit yours? How do you feel about that?
My mom doesn’t have a myspace, but she knows where one of my blogs is. Or she does if she remembers that I showed her one day when I was looking for a link that I wanted to share with her. I didn’t really think anything of it until I was telling her about when the cats tried to eat my frog, and she suggested that I “write in my journal” about my frog that by all rights shouldn’t be alive. I don’t really have a problem with her having my blog, but I think I would be uncomfortable if she had a myspace page. I’m not sure what the difference is… maybe it’s because I know the kind of sleezy messages I get there, and she’d probably blow a gasket if she got a message asking her if she “ever does it with her glasses on.” (Yes. I got a message from a stranger asking me that.)

Paid Surveys

Over the years, I’ve signed up for many survey sites, some of them paid, some of them on a points/reward system. It’s an interesting way for companies to do market research, I’m sure but most of them have never panned out for me. Either they send me endless amounts of the same surveys over and over again, and I quit opening the emails, or the rewards they are offering are so small that you have to take a million of them to actually make a decent amount of money. I still take surveys when I’ve got a little bit of extra time, but it’s not one of the more lucrative online-money-making programs I’ve found. It’s not going to be supplemental income anytime soon.

Another Big Kitty

I don’t want my baby girl to feel left out! I have TWO kitties, and my Lucy has been getting bigger too. She’s much daintier than Pudge is, but she’s still not the tiny baby she was when I got her. I got a before and after picture… it’s not quite as “the same” as Pudge’s before and after, but it’s the same kitty, and the same window, so I think you’ll get the idea.

Here’s a picture of Lucy that was taken on August 3, 2006. She was three months old…

And now here’s the picture I took of my little girl earlier this afternoon.

She’s obviously not in the same position, and she was closer to the camera, but I think you get the idea. She wasn’t cooperating with her photoshoot– she wanted to be a centimeter away from the camera lens, so I got plenty of pictures of her eyeball! She’s the baby that everyone thinks is so sweet, and innocent. Don’t let that kitten face fool you– she’s rotten!

The Definition of Insanity

Do you know what the definition of insanity is? Without digging out the dictionary, it’s essentially doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. At least that’s what I’ve heard… and that is why I’m going to go ahead and say that the local power company is insane. Or at the very least, not the people you want to be involved in your power supply repair. This is an unfortunate fact, as they obviously repair their own stuff.
Why do I claim they are insane, you might ask. The transformer for their area is located in my best friend’s back yard. One day, I think it was about a week ago, they came home and their power was out. It was a fairly chilly night, and she has a five month old baby, so she made arrangements to spend the night elsewhere. Before they left though, the power came back on, so she figured everything was okay, and they settled in for the night. Oh how wrong she was. About two hours later, they hear a big BOOM and see a flash of light– something in the transformer blew. They called the power company. They sent someone out to fix it, the power comes back on. A little while later, it happens AGAIN. This time, the transformer catches on FIRE. The fire puts itself out, and then the power company decides to keep turning the transformer back on from their main station or whatever (I don’t really know how that whole thing works, all I know is they didn’t send people out everytime). Erica said that about every half an hour, until about 6:45 am, they would turn the thing back on, with the same results- a flash and a boom. Obviously if it doesn’t work the first 6 or 7 times, it’s probably not going to work the 8th time either! Clearly the electric company is not the brightest crayon in the box.

Diabetes Alert

You may not have known this, but today is the nineteenth annual Diabetes Alert Day. I wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t work for a company that deals with diabetes, and just received an email to that effect. I think raising awareness about diabetes is important, and that has nothing to do with where I work. Diabetes can be very serious if left undiagnosed or untreated, and the number of Americans at risk for type 2 diabetes is somewhere around sixty million. The risk factors for diabetes type 2 can include: having high blood pressure (at or above 130/80), having a family history of diabetes, and having diabetes during pregnancy or having a baby weighing more than nine pounds at birth.
I personally have a family history of diabetes, and even though I participated in the Diabetes Walk last year to help raise money for diabetes research, I don’t do enough to lower my own risk of developing the disease in the future. The ADA has a diabetes risk test for anyone who wants to assess their own potential risk. Awareness is the first step, so pass it on!

My next job

The company I currently work for has a love affair with consultants. They hire consultants for everything. Often, these people are former employees that retire, take a few weeks off, and come right back in a different capacity! Seriously. One guy “retired”, took a 3 day weekend and was back at work. (Don’t tell anyone, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this penchant for consultants, and meetings, and committees is a large reason many proposals never make it to completion). Since I’m spending so much time answering the phone these days, I decided that when I’m ready to move on, I’ll just come back and do some telecom consulting. Wait, I guess that would probably require me to know how to FIX the phone, not just use it. Nevermind then… I’m sure there’s something I could do. One of our phone guys is leaving at the end of the week, and I can’t help but wonder if I’m going to see him back in the relatively near future!