Sunday, February 12, 2006

We watched a bit of the opening ceremonies of the Torino Olympics on Friday night.  It seemed odd to me that the Italians played American disco music from the late 70s-early 80s as the teams entered the stadium. Beau said it’s because American pop music is popular all over the world, but I still think the Italians would have wanted to showcase their own or used classical music or something.

Other than that, we’re a bit meh about the whole thing. We watched a bit of the skiing and skating yesterday and we are having a hard time mustering up much enthusiasm for it all. I fell asleep in the middle of the pairs figure skating short programs last night.

Anyone else feel like this about these Olympics?

The Weather People™ threatened snow all day yesterday. We started to get skeptical until it really started in earnest at about 3:30 or 4pm. I just had to shovel a path from the deck to the yard for Annie to navigate because our accumulation so far is about her height - 6-8”. And they’re calling for a few more inches through this morning - with total of 10-14”.

...HEAVY SNOW WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM EST THIS MORNING…

.TODAY…SNOW…HEAVY AT TIMES THIS MORNING…THEN A CHANCE OF SNOW THIS AFTERNOON. NEW SNOW ACCUMULATION 2 TO 4 INCHES. TOTAL
ACCUMULATION 10 TO 14 INCHES.

That’s higher than they were saying yesterday, which was 6-12”. Interesting.

It’s that heavy wet snow that clings to the trees. Pretty. But treacherous for shoveling. It clings to that too.

I predict many school closures tomorrow despite today’s clearout.

LATER: I just remembered that we have tickets to see Rory Block at the Barns at Wolf Trap tonight. (Thanks for the tickets, G!) Here’s hoping the afternoon snow they’re predicting isn’t as much as they say it might be.

LATERER: We got about 12-13” total. The plow came to clear off our road and parking lot, which was nice. Things look to be very wet. We will head out to Wolf Trap as planned tonight, but I admit that I’m a bit nervous about black ice once it’s dark.

Friday, February 10, 2006

I defy anyone to say that this boy is not the cutest ev-ah!

From My Boss:

TRY THIS ONE:

The rules are:
Click on link then click on blue circle. Use the rules below.
This is going to do your head in, but it can be done.
For those of you who are not going to even understand the rules (you know who you are) get someone to explain them to you.
Apparently this is an IQ test given to job applicants in Japan:  “Everybody has to cross the river”.
The following rules apply:
Only 2 persons on the raft at a time
The father can not stay with any of the daughters without their mother’s presence
The mother can not stay with any of the sons without their father’s presence
The thief (striped shirt) can not stay with any family member if the Policeman is not there
Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operate the raft.
To start click on the big blue circle on the right.
To move the people click on them. To move the raft click on the pole on the opposite side of the river.

Good luck!

I’m in a small pool run by my sister for this season. Right now I’m #1 out of the 6 of us playing, although I believe that I’m really tied for 1st place. I think I’m ranked higher because I scored points with last night’s episode and no one else did. So I’ve got that going for me.

Spoilers follow, click the link…

Mom and I met with the gal who leads the wedding coordinating at our church. She does it now because she’s our senior pastor’s assistant and it’s where it fell, but as we talked she paused and asked if I would be interested in taking that on. Whoa. I would have a team of coordinators, so I wouldn’t have to work every wedding myself, but it will be more work than if I were just one of the coordinators. The biggest perk is that I would get paid a little bit per wedding, but as I told her I would do it for free because I enjoy it.

So I’m praying about this and will talk to Beau, too, since it will be larger time commitment than just being on the team would involve. Could be fun though. And it means that wedding blogging would continue indefinitely. :grin:

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Does it feel like Friday to anyone else?

Dang…

I sold the gun today. My boss and the ops supervisor both came down to the garage inspect it and pull the trigger a few times. There was much manly drooling.

Dad, got your message. No worries - it was in the trunk, I’m with the security agency, we’re good. I have transferred it to My Boss, so it’s his concern now.

And now I shall research china cabinets. :wink:

Just kidding - we’ll go out shooting with Beau’s Glock 27 first, see how that feels before we rule out the smaller one for me. I told him since it was his gun, it’s his money to spend.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

So I’m generally well, except that I’m still fighting this sinus thing. I’m not in need of a visit to my doc or antibiotics because it is clearing up on its own if slowly. However, I have days, like today, when my sinus discomfort is such that I wonder if I should have gone to the doc after all. I didn’t because I had finished a round of antibiotics just one day prior to developing the sinus thing and I didn’t want to continue taking the antibiotics.

Anyway, all this to complain that the sinus pressure in my head is increasing as the day continues and I’m feeling a little whiney.

Given that my husband is a gun nut, it was only a matter of time before he bought me a gun of my very own. So he mentioned this Smith & Wesson that he’s been thinking of selling, explained the specs to me last night, and encouraged me to let it be known here at the office that he was looking to sell.

A little while ago, I walked into My Boss’ office to find he and the ops supervisor drooling over a S&W catalog. Apparently, MB is in the market for a revolver. So I casually mentioned that Beau has a gun for sale and was MB interested. This led to a phone call to Beau for additional questions and an asking of the selling price. MB is 99% certain he wants to buy it; I’ll bring it in to show it to him tomorrow.

With that money, Beau plans to buy one of these for me as well as pay for the class that I need to take to get a license to carry.

Cool.

LATER: There were a couple deputies in the conference room when I went in to eat lunch, so I quizzed them about good places to gun shop. They asked what I was looking for and one of them said, “That won’t do much damage. You should get something bigger.” To which, I explained that I had no intention of damaging anyone, thank you. Nor do I plan to carry the thing around with me all the time - I can’t bring it into the courthouse at all. It would be for shooting at a range only.

Then I got back to my desk and found that ECD called and left a funny voicemail all about how the Glock 26 “will only shoot your eye out” and won’t really hurt anyone. She then went into all of the other Glocks I should consider the Glock 27 instead, which is the gun that Beau carries. Apparently, there’s an extender magazine that adds a finger notch if your pinky extends beyond the grip. Nice added feature. We’ll see.

My Boss has a kook who called him several times last week. He was telling me about her and how she has managed to talk to just about every person in one of the suboffices and continues to call them as well. I figured since she was pestering that office that we would be safe up here. I was wrong.

At about 4:50pm on Friday she came into our courthouse, telling the front guards that she was here to collect her money. So one of those guys came to my office to see if she could come in and I, unsuspecting, said it was fine. I met her at the front window and asked for her name so that I could get the money out of the vault while she got her ID out. I didn’t recognize the name but checked the vault anyway and sure enough there was no money. When I told her I didn’t have her money she said that we didn’t have it, but that her bank accounts were frozen. That’s when it got weird and I realized this was My Boss’ kook lady.

I spent the next 20 minutes trying to get rid of her. After insisting that we couldn’t help her, I told her the building was closed and that she was going to have to leave. She asked when My Boss would be back and I told her Tuesday. (My little revenge for him not being there to deal with her lunacy.) She finally left.

Yesterday she returned to talk to My Boss. I saw her at about 10am, but he said she actually showed up at about 8:00am and waited for the building to be opened at 8:30am. He had to escort her out the front door both times and told the front guards that she was not to be allowed into the building again. The guards said they thought was used to be a resident of St. Elizabeth’s mental hospital (also the home of one John Hinckley Jr.)judging from some of the things she said about her home - apparently she described that facility perfectly.

A check of her rap sheet confirmed that she is schizophrenic. Unsurprising.

Just now a visiting deputy who is here for The Circus™ came by to tell us that she came back last night at 2:30am and 4:30am. This time the night guards called the police and she was told not to trespass on the grounds again or she would be arrested. We’ll see if she returns to us or moves back to pestering the suboffice.

Beau and I were sitting in the living room after having read our devotional when an ad came on TV for CNBC’s Jim Cramer - apparently they’re running some sort of contest called “The Battle of the Booyahs” or something like that. I guess that’s his catch phrase, although I seem to recall that I first heard “booyeah” on ESPN‘s Sportscenter about 10 years ago.

Anyway, my pop culturally illiterate husband asked, “What’s ‘booyah’?”

I found that like “irony” I can use it in context, but I cannot define it. So I’m asking for your help. In the comments, leave your definition or explanation of “booyah.”

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

The Muppet version of Serenity = Seremuppety.

[via Ith]

I don’t have much to say about last night’s episode of 24. But what I do have to say is in the extended section…

Monday, February 06, 2006

As Beau said, “If I wanted Diet Dr. Pepper, I would have bought that.”

Blech.

Back to Fresca for me.