Sam's Baptism pics

I'm trying a slide show of pics. Let me know if it doesn't work. If you want to see all the pictures, they're available here.

thanks guys. and sorry - i had a bad few days. i really appreciate all the things you said.

so how did i make myself so easy to ignore anyway?

Can you tell I have no one to talk to here at work?

So this blog post # 324 today or something.

OMG Did you guys see The Office last night? Did you see who got the job at the end there? lol And also ER - Ray! oh no! (I hope this doesn't mean they're writing him out of the show. I like him. and I like Neela. and it's not Neela's fault! so there.)

And because you guys know I like free stuff and food and, especially, free food:
Free Caribou Cooler day is June 21st 2 - 3. (you don't need to bring a coupon - they'll give you one when you get there. and you may want to get there a few minutes before 2 - the line was super long last year!)

crud. Someone just dropped off another an updated draft of a 45 page document. It's 2:15 on a Friday afternoon and she wants to meet Monday at 9 to review it. I think I'm going to be bringing my red pen home with me. I snapped the little clip thing off of my red pen in a meeting today. It was really loud. I never really noticed this before, but I must do it all the time - look what I found in my drawer.

My Aunt DeAnn

My Aunt DeAnn was up in Minnesota this week visiting family. I think the last time I saw her was back in 2003! She is such a nice lady. It was fun to see her again.

DeAnn, Viv & Dave

I hate shopping!

I've been looking for a dress or a nicer outfit - Sam's baptism is coming up and I need something to wear. Everything I have is either jeans (or goes with jeans) or black. Plus I have a spend $50/get $25 off coupon too!

I have been to two malls in the past week. I have looked through many, many stores and tried on many, many things. And nothing fits right. I'm really annoyed.

I got really frustrated and gave up. And then on my way out of the mall I passed GapBaby for the 5th time. I succumbed to temptation and hit the clearance rack. I found something really cute that will fit. It just won't fit me.

Sam in Swing

Sam loves his swing!

I feel like I have a ton of stuff to talk about here - so I'm probably going to do a couple different posts. Because it sounds like fun. :)

I'm a little hyper this morning. I got up really early this morning. About 5:30. I was awake so I got up. Really unusual for me lately, especially since the whole radio/car stereo disaster*. I got all the normal stuff out of the way (shower, dry hair, de-cat/de-wrinkle shirt, etc.) and I think I did all of the extra stuff I needed to do this morning. I'm going to spend the night at my parents', so I needed to pack a bag and make sure the cat would be ok (extra food and water, clean litter, pulling the blinds up high enough for him to be able to watch the birds, etc.). I even had time to pack up my knitting and hunt down the battery chargers.

I even made it to work on time! and by that I mean I made it to my desk on time, even after stopping in the cafeteria for coffee. (impressive, huh?)

My mood became somewhat dampened after my 8:30 meeting though. I spent a half an hour listening to people tell me that what I do is a waste of time. I've been hearing this a lot lately and it's starting to get old. It's hard to be motivated to do your job when everyone tells you there's no point to it. :P

I'm still in a good mood though - I've decided I'm going to take my cute new Captain Jack action figure on an adventure in my building. There's a sea of cubicles here, he should feel right at home.

and OMG - did anyone watch The Office last night? I loved it. (water cooler talk here is more likely to be complaining about how Lawrence Welk is no longer on the air. *sigh* I really do feel like I have no one to talk to here sometimes! (although I could actually talk about LW. It's just kind of boring!))

* The radio/car stereo situation: The CD player on my car stereo has been slowly dying all winter. Well, a few weeks ago it finally gave up. I listen to a lot of CDs in the car, so I was pretty disappointed. I started listening to the radio. There are about 4 stations I listen to (I change stations almost every time an ad comes on) but I mostly listened to Drive 105. Well, they changed Drive 105 into Love 105 - love songs from the 60's through the 80's. No thank you.

This severely limits my options. I want to listen to my mp3 player in the car, but my car stereo is 7 years old. I remember asking Sig the Saturn salesman if they had any radios that had a line in port. He hadn't even heard of a line in port. Everyone kept telling me to get one of those FM transmitter things. I kept saying "I had one ten years ago - it was crap!" They kept saying "I have one, it's great!" So I bought one. It's crap. Everyone owes me $20. It works pretty well if I hold the short cable between the transmitter and my mp3 player in my fist all the time. Which makes driving kind of awkward (and forget about eating a gas station doughnut as I drive to work...).

So - my options are: get a FM transmitter thing that connects directly to the wires going in to the back of my car stereo ($70); buy a used Saturn factory radio to replace my old one and hope the CD player still works in it ($100); or buy a new car stereo with radio, CD, and line in port ($100+). I don't actually want a new car stereo because they are all so ugly. (well, they are!)
This radio station problem is also causing me to be late for work. I had to set my clock radio to a different station. But when my alarm goes off at 6:30 instead of getting the station I want I get some faint version of CBS radio news. Which I sleep right through because it's boring. Cities 97 usually comes in full strength about 10 minutes later, but half the time I sleep through that too (they talk sooo much! I want some music! and something besides Paul Simon's Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes! (and I actually really like the Graceland album)).

Really the solution to all my problems is to get the 30g MP3 player I want ($200), a new car stereo with a line in port ($100+) and a docking clock radio/mp3 player thing ($100+). Unfortunately my budget is about $20 - $50. If you know of a better/cheaper solution please let me know!

Really exciting stuff happens here at work

Yesterday someone was firing a cannon every hour on the lawn in front of the capitol building. No one here seems to know why and I couldn't find anything about it online. It happened last year too, so it's got to be to commemorate something. (I'm assuming they don't just let you set off cannons in front of highly visible government buildings on a whim.) Want to see some crummy video of it? You know you do.

had a hot date friday night... with my nephew.

I spent Friday evening with Dan & Sara and Sam. I didn't actually take any pictures of Sam (I forgot, ok? next time, I promise!) but he's awfully cute. He's getting big so fast. He's gotten good at controlling his hands now and he likes to grab things(including glasses!). He also likes to clap his hands. He seems to think that's pretty exciting and it makes him smile. He's still pretty wiggly. He's always kicking his legs or patting something with his hands. If you hold out your hand palm up he'll pat it. I kept saying "Give me five!" and holding out my hand. We're halfway there - he's got the action down, we just need to get him to connect the action to the words. lol He's pretty good at sitting by himself now too - except when he gets excited he starts kicking his legs and tips over. And he still likes to jump and be tossed in the air. He watches everything - he kept looking at me, just looking. Probably thinking "who's that weirdo?" I can't wait until he actually recognizes us. He's a fun baby - he's always pretty calm and happy, he smiles easily, and in general he only ever cries when he's hungry or needs a change. He sure knows what he wants though - if you interrupt his dinner to switch him from cereal to the bottle or to burp him he starts shrieking. "I'm not done yet!" He's a good eater too (which may explain why he seems to double in size every time I see him - he's eating cereal and some fruits and veggies now. And he seems to love it.)

Anyway... I had a nice time Friday night playing with Sam, checking out thier new ping pong table and laughing about The Office (they missed the best part Thursday night - when Dwight dressed up as Jim at the end. very funny.) Dan and Sara always seem to be willing to let me take goofy pictures of them.

I took more pictures of Spike this weekend too. (I take so many Spike pictures it's not even funny!) I got Spike doing the face!

The plant is gone!

Remember how I was talking about the plant at work last week? Well, on Friday there was more plant drama. The plant guy showed up and he was not happy about the rouge plant waterer. There was some heated discussion (including threats of litigation!), some foot stomping, a little swearing (!) and after all that - some plant removal. I find this totally hilarious.

It feels kind of empty here now though.

I really need to do laundry

These socks were the closest thing I could find that matched both my shoes and my purple shirt. (and no, I didn't have my jeans rolled up like that all day. I did that especially for you.)

Do you see who's watching me from inside the window? I haven't been home much lately and I think Spike's been lonely.

Zoo photos

I went to the zoo with my community ed photography class this weekend. We were talking about depth of field and all kinds of technical things that I'm not too concerned with. As some of you may have noticed, I'm not really an artsy-type photographer. I like to take pictures of things like boys with snakes (fake) and toads (real), my friends being goofy, my cat, and, of course, the food at Ikea. I've been trying the things we've been talking about in the class though. So at the zoo I took a bunch of pictures like these: (I have to point out that I don't really like how these are cropped - I made them all fit into 4X6's for printing.)

But I had more fun taking pictures like these:

If you're wondering, the wolf is shaking water out of his fur. But I like it because he looks like he's enjoying himself. I did get the depth of field right on the goose picture though, and that's a technical-type thing (blurry foreground, blurry background and in focus subject). Hopefully some of this stuff will stick and I'll start taking technically-good pictures of strange and goofy things. :)

And in case anyone's interested: today's lunch walk and a picture from today's lunch walk. too.

I'm not surprised by this anymore. I'm just curious.

Sometimes I'm just baffled by the people I work with. Today I noticed something was odd about this plant. Do you see it?

It's a post-it note stuck to the plant. Why? I'm sure someone had a good reason for it. (Also take note of the lovely generic office decor - a bland painting and a recycling container.)

I'm just wondering now if they're going to put a new post-it on the plant every time they water it. Pretty soon it will be covered in pale yellow notes fluttering in the draft from the air conditioning. That might actually be pretty interesting.

Last night's sunset over the Target parking lot.

Finally - spring weather!

We had really nice weather last night for my weekly walk with my friends Erin and Tucker. We've been going for a walk almost every week for about a year. It's nice - we get some exercise and chat and often eat dinner together. (Well, I should say "...and Erin often makes me dinner!" :) ) I think all three of us have been getting tired of walking inside since that means we go to a mall (or Ikea!) and spend money and eat fast food. Kind of goes against the whole point of going for a walk!

Anyway, we went to Como park and walked around the lake. There were a lot of people out walking yesterday. I think we're all tired of cold, wet and SNOWY weather. So we walked, I took a few (bad, boring) pictures for this community ed photography class I'm taking, and we played on the grass for a little bit. And then we went to Target and made pizza. It was a nice evening.

Tucker jumps!


Tucker plays his "guitar".

Easter Weekend 2007

We had Easter at my parents' house on Saturday. It was nice because we had extra company - my cousin Kathy was here with her family.

Annie & Sam

Nate, Viv, Dave, Kathy & Annie

Click here for all the pics!

Pink Sweater

I finished the pink sweater I've been working on. It's the short sleeve cardigan from Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2007. It looks lopsided and and weird, but it's not blocked yet, that's all. I swear! I didn't have anything to wear under it, so I brought out Elvis again. (I promise, I have clothes that don't have a picture of Elvis from the '68 Comeback Special. It's just that I like these t-shirts so much. Besides - when in doubt - Elvis.)


I don't know why, but I just like pictures of myself like that. lol


The whole time I was taking pictures Spike was going nuts rubbing himself against my legs and headbutting me trying to get some attention. He's so needy. The way he acts you'd think I never pay any attention to him.


A few weeks ago I was on a crocheted washcloth thing. Does anyone want one? I have a bunch! :)

Shoes!

I know there's someone out there who wants to see my new shoes. It's just taken me a while to get them up here. Actually, it's been so long I'm not sure the qualify as new anymore. ;)

Prirate shoes!
(It said so on the box!

.

There's a whole story behind these shoes,
but it's not interesting. So I'm not telling it.

A bonus pair of shoes!

I added a few new Spike pictures. I couldn't resist trying to capture how goofy he gets when I try to put new sheets on the bed. He wasn't cooperating though. He seemed a little put out and gave himself a bath instead.

From Spike

From Spike

Elvii at the Mall

Last weekend I coerced my friends Renee and Scott into going to the Contest of Kings at the Mall. You guys all know I have a thing for Elvis, right? lol

From http://picasaweb.google.com/spikeandi/ElviiTheMall

And yes, I took a bunch of pictures (click on the link under the picture to see them all!). They didn't turn out that great becuase we were too far away and the lighting was bad and stuff, but I put them online anyway.

And I got some Elvis on video too! :)
Mike Calamusa singing How Great Thou Art
Allen Robuck singing Suspicios Minds