Jumping for Your Heart

This is a shameless plug and a flat out request for donations.

As most of you already know, my husband passed away on Dec 6, 2008 from a massive heart attack at the very young age of 45. On Christmas morning, my mom was in the hospital having a heart attack. (yeah, it was a sucky Christmas this year).

Heart disease is something that runs in my mom's side of the family. Both of my uncles have had heart attacks and bypass surgery. I have had many a relative pass away from heart disease. Too many.

So... m nieces (ages 6 and 8) are doing a Jump Rope-a-thon for the American Heart Association.

This is a request to help support them in their quest.

To donate to Jayanna (age 6) click here.

To donate to Skylinn (age 8) click here.

Thanks in advance for your support!!!

The American Heart Association is a 501(c)3 organization which all donations to Jump Rope for Heart and Hoops for Heart are tax deductible. Everyone that makes an on-line contribution will instantly receive a confirmation e-mail that includes the amount donated along with the American Heart Association's Federal Tax ID #. Thanks for your support of the American Heart Association.

Not A Winner

I got the email today.... I was optimistic when I seen the subject line "Thank you for entering the Opening Day ticket lottery" Then I read it...

Thank you for registering for a chance to purchase tickets for the Milwaukee Brewers Opening Day game, scheduled for April 10, 2009. Unfortunately, your entry was not selected for this ticket purchase opportunity.

I had also signed up with my 3 other email addresses as well as one of hubby's. None were a winner.

I guess that I have to hope that one of the other girls were winners so we can go to the game.

Concerts Galore

There are several groups coming to town in the next few months that I would like to see.

The best one is Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Audioslave. I first started liking him when I seen the Audioslave in Cuba concert dvd. He is hot and just rocks hard.

The Gsslight Anthem is here in early April as well. I love their song The '59 sound. They kinda remind me of the '80's group The Hooters.

At the end of April is Franz Ferdinad and the day after that is the Killers. Phish and Coldplay at Alpine Valley round out the list. And this is before Summerfest hits.

Anyone up for some music??

Simply Amazing

Tonight was the premiere of the new season of Amazing Race. It looks like once again it should be a great season.

I think my favorite team may be the mom and her deaf son. They are going to prove that you don't need to hear to do well.

The roadblock proved to be a doozy to start the season out. The teams had to bungee jump more than 700 feet from the second highest bungee in the world. Not sure I could have done it. It seems like the older I get the more freaked out over heights I get. I hate the upper deck in Camp Randall and the Bradley Center. When I was younger I thought nothing of doing back flips off the high dive in the pool or jumping off the roof of the chicken coop into the snow banks.

After that the teams had to move 200 lbs of cheese from the top of the hill to a rack at the bottom. I was busting a gut laughing at the teams who's carrier things broke and the cheese goes flying down the hill. Seems to me that would have been easier to do than hauling it down. The best was Linda and Steve from VA. They came up with a way to only make one trip and it worked out for them. They may prove to be annoying as Linda is not in very good shape. She can't run. You keep hearing Steve tell her to go faster. I was glad that they didn't finish last and will survive another week.

I spent most of the day (can you say almost 6 hours) cleaning out the basement. Heck I even vacuumed all the cobwebs from the rafters. I wanted to get rid of some of hubby's things and organize it better. When he moved back in we just kinda dumped it all in piles. I have 3 boxes and one bag of stuff for Goodwill. Now just have to figure out what to so with the extra set of pots and pans, silverware, toaster oven and the pizza oven. I will probably try to sell it on Craigslist. If you know of anyone who wants or needs them, let me know.

Have the day off tomorrow for President's Day. Gotta love those bank holidays. Since I now have another 10 vacation days to use (unfortunately, they are unpaid) I will try to take some random days off. Probably Mondays or Fridays. Heck, I could not work a full week from Memorial Day to Labor Day. I have the annual girl exam and am going to lunch with a friend. I also want hit Kohl's up. I have some bonus bucks to use and want to get some stuff for my trip to Florida next month.

Well, that's about all for now. Have a good week everyone.

MN Recap

The last couple of days have been busy.

Work has been nuts the past few days. Being in the same location as most other people I work with is good because you get to sit down face to face with people and work things out. I am not convinced that this project I'm working on is headed in the right direction. There are ALOT of things that were 'lost' in the original requirements and the statement of work that we are now working from. One bomb shell was dropped yesterday that I consider a show stopper. All I can do is express my concerns and if others choose to ignore them... oh well...

Got my review yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised. I ended up with a 4.55% raise and my bonus was actually doubled from last year. It is good to know that my hard work over the last year has been appreciated. This has made me a happy camper.

Bad news is that today they announce that everyone will take two weeks off unpaid as a cost savings measure. I think that they will implement this by taking a portion of the time off out of each paycheck. You then don't miss an entire paycheck. You are shorted about 2 hours a week. I only had one vacation day left that was not planned for. I now have at least another 5 and maybe another 10. Can't complain that I will end up with 6 weeks of vacation. Bottom line the raise I got will probably not be actually seen on my check. Oh well.... at least I still have a job.

Hit the Mall of America again the past two evenings for dinner. Last night, was Tiger Sushi. YUMMY!!! Hubby never cared for sushi so we never went to places like that to eat. I had the number 10zen maki roll. It was shrimp tempura, garlic chile mayo and mango on the inside. Outside was smoked salmon, unagi (which is eel), avocado, sushi rice, spicy mango sauce, unago sauce and toasted sesame seeds. It was soooo good.

Tonight was Ruby Tuesday's. Also good but nothing special.

After dinner we went to the Underwater Aquarium. Very cool. I took a bunch of pictures with my BlackBerry. You will have to wait until I get home to take them off my phone. You walked thru this tunnel so that you can see all around you. The sharks were really neat. They swam only a few inches from you

Survivor started its new season. I have Debbie Beebe from Timbira and Sandy Burgin from Jalapao. I was sure that Sandy was going home. Didn't happen, so I was happy. I hate it when my people are the first to go.

I head back home tomorrow. Don't fly out until 5:20 pm. I can't wait to get home. I miss the dogs. It sounds like they have been good.

Hope you all have had a good week.

Life in MN Day 1

I'm up in MN this week for work. Thanks to A for getting me to the airport with time to spare. Can there be anything more boring than sitting there waiting for your flight to board?? Nope.

Got up here and settled into the hotel by about 5pm. Unpacked and checked out the local restaurant menus. Decided that I did not feel like driving anywhere so just walked thru the building to the TGI Fridays. Take a seat in the bar and look at the menu and watch the Pro Bowl. I look around and discover another person from work there. He sits like 6 seats away from me in the office. I grab my beer and sit down next to him. We order food and more beers. Blue Moon was the special of the month so there were only 3 bucks. Whoo hoo. I had a nice time getting to know a co-worker that I really never knew before. After about 5 beers I decided that it was time to head back. I wanted to have a clear head for the long day today.

Got into the office about 8 am. Spent the next hour trying to get a pc that could remote into my workstation in the office. I soooo wanted to head off to a coffee shop where I could just use my laptop and be done with it.

The building is home to about 2500 people or so. They have a cafeteria. It is good. Real food not vend-o-matic stuff I have back at the home office. Today I settled on the salad bar. All sorts of yummy stuff.

After lunch we start the training class that I am up here for. After about 15 minutes, the instructor realizes that I am the one who knows what is going on and the other 3 people will have no clue. We spend the next several hours going over the material. This is my element. I am geek and love the geeky stuff like this.

After work headed over to the Mall of America for dinner. My former now demoted boss is here as well so we went together. Ate at Bubba Gumps. Yep that Bubba Gumps. It was fantastic. I highly recommend it if you get to one.

May try to hit trivia at the mall tomorrow nite. Could be fun.

Wandered around the mall a bit more and headed back to the hotel. I did not sleep real well last nite so want to hit the hay early.

Size What??

About two weeks ago, I was heading out to the local mall. I have a ring that I needed to have resized. It is my favorite ring. It is a three stone LeVian piece that had a tanzanite as the center stone and two diamonds on each side. The lady at the store took my information and said that it would be ready today.

Last night, I get home from work and there is a message on my machine to call the jeweler back. They need to 'talk' to me about the ring. My first thought is "Fuck, they lost it."

So I call them back. The girl said that the ring would not be ready to pick up as they have not sized it yet. What?? Why, I ask. When I dropped it off they said that they would size it in house as it is a simple task. Because it is a LeVian piece it come with a lifetime guarantee for any repairs or sizing. It turns out that if the jeweler resizes it the LeVian warranty becomes void.

So, now they have to send it out to LeVian to be resized. It will be back in 4-5 weeks. WTF???

My question is why did they wait almost two weeks to even look at it and then decide the night before I was going to pick it up that they could not do it. When I dropped it off I even asked them if they were sending it out to LeVian to be resized and was specifically told that they weren't.

Maybe I will be lucky enough to get it back before I head to Florida in March. sigh......

Should a Three Year Old Watch Childbirth??

Due to a power outage, only one paramedic responded to the call. The house was very dark so the paramedic asked Kathleen, a 3-yr old girl to hold a flashlight high over her mommy so he could see while he helped deliver the baby.

Very diligently, Kathleen did as she was asked.

Heidi pushed and pushed and after a little while, Connor was born. The paramedic lifted him by his little feet and spanked him on his bottom. Connor began to cry.

The paramedic then thanked Kathleen for her help and asked the wide-eyed 3-yr old what she thought about what she had just witnessed.

Kathleen quickly responded, 'He shouldn't have crawled in there in the first place ....smack his ass again!'