A long week

This week has been so busy! I worked a ton to get a project done by Friday only to find out on Thursday we were going to be given a two week extension. Which is awesome, because Thursday night would've really sucked. Unfortunately I'm sick now. I woke up yesterday morning feeling like someone had scraped my sinus cavity with a spoon and that feeling has not gone away yet. Your body has ways of telling you to slow down.


The worst thing about working that much is the parts of your life that fall to the wayside. Like working out, and eating right. All you can do is get through a day of work, eat, and hopefully get enough sleep. My brain was just fried at the end of each day. One night I came home and tried to hang up my coat in the bathroom. Thursday afternoon I walked into the mens bathroom. Thank god nobody was in there, because the urinal is right next to the door. Being a girl, you never think about how little privacy men have when they're going to the bathroom. Although standing up to pee would be awesome sometimes (which we can now do thanks to "Go Girl") I'm glad I at least get a wall between me and the next girl.


In cat news, Traxx continues to gain weight from his drugs. He looks really good now, although we have definitely noticed a personality change. He's a lot calmer abd he sleeps a lot more. Enough more that he's been allowed to sleep in our bed this week and he hasn't bothered us at all! In general he's just a lot more cat-like. I miss my crazy cat sometimes, but he's healthier, and that is what's important.

"The Drug Den"

I've been asked for some more controversial topics. The car company bailouts? Truthfully I don't know the answer to that question. I do know, from personal experience, that the car company's treat their employees amazingly well. Perhaps too amazingly well. When the Ford Plant announced their shut down here, Chris was able to walk away with a full ride to school for 2 years (he could've had 4 if he had so chosen), along with benefits and 70% of his salary. Those two years were up this past month and Ford sent him a check for $900 because they didn't pay out as much as if he would've taken another option. Seriously, is there any other company that you can go to, with no education, and they'll take care of you like that. It's a wonderful and terrible thing all at the same time. The medical benefits we had through Ford were amazing. I had to pay for nothing, basically ever. You can see where the waste came from. And the waste wasn't only through compensation. As always, if a safety net is inplace, people will try and abuse the system. The UAW was an amazing safety net, you could almost not be fired. So there were people who took advantage of that and would freeload on Ford. I think the same thing happens in government. I think it's sad that these jobs will most likely not be available anymore with the same benefits. It's a great thing, and with almost all companys moving to 401K's versus pensions, the burden of retirement and taking care of yourself will fall solely on the employee. Considering what the stock market did to my 401K last month, I'm not sure this is the greatest thing. But we're competing in a global economy and we have to adjust to global markets in order to be competitive, there's really not much choice. Unfortunately I think that the auto bailouts will need to come with a huge restructuring of the auto industry. The elimination of waste and more maintainable salarys and benefits in order to compete globally.

So that's all folks. From mens bathrooms to drugged up cats to my view on world economics. I'm off to enjoy the weekend.

Tittilating Tuesday

"Keep Off

Dangerous
Ice Not Safe"

Folks, we have a mixed messages problem here. Don't plow the ice, set up a warming shack and then face the sign the wrong way. Ah, bureacracy, how I love you.

All the love in the world

Although I think valentine's day is a rather silly holiday, I like an excuse to go out. We've gotten all old and static so we need an excuse to not fall asleep on the couch at 9:30 on a Saturday night. We went to Spoonriver, near the Guthrie. It was full of pretentious ex-raver waiters who were not interested in waiting at all. The menu promised an aphrodisiac, which I didn't receive (sorry Chris, the waiter hates you and doesn't want you to make babies). During dinner we kept watching the other servers walk by with the dessert tray. I love the dessert tray, it's so much easier to pick a real dessert than an idea of a dessert! But alas, the server left the dessert tray sitting on the counter, unused while he told us which desserts were available. So we left without dessert, deciding we could go to Sebastian Joe's ice cream and relive our wild and crazy youth. (Ice cream in the winter you say? Why, yes, we are rebels!).

Before we left downtown we stopped in the Guthrie:

Oooohhh, look, fuzzy cell phone pictures. This blog is CLASSY!

We went and ate our ice cream, sharing our flavors with each other, and trying to ignore the woman sobbing in the corner (Valentine's day snub??).

We made our way over to Mortimer's, our old hangout. Seriously, that is our "Cheers" bar, where everyone knew our name (and for a time, knew us by our drinks....hello gin and tonic girl!). They've forgotten us by now, but the same dirt, popcorn, and darts were still there. Chris really knows how to wine and dine a girl (but it's more like beer and popcorn a girl). I really do love that man.

Next year we're going to do the "tour de uptown" and go to Khindo's for dinner as well. Turns out we're not fancy at all.

Daily Daly

So it's only been about a month, and I think all of my posts contain animal drama. Yes I live in a menagerie/zoo but ilovethefurrylittlethingskthanx!



Daly went to the vet today, and not just any vet, he gets the University of MN veterinary medical specialists. Where University specialists = empty pocketbook. So yea, Chris, about that new tv? Totally not happening.

The poor guy has a front leg limp that's been getting worse and worse over the past month or two. He's always ready to go, but this limp is just breaking my heart. Many dollars later, we've narrowed it down to 2 tendons. They need to cut one of them, and choose the right tendon, or else he's going to have some major trouble. So we spend today testing, trying to figure out which one it is...which, surprise! We still don't know. There will be results tomorrow and will hopefully give us something more conclusive. Either way it's more money and more time at the vet.The funniest thing was that they had to drug him and miscalculated the dose. This dog is feeling no pain....poor guy can't even move his back end. It's pretty pathetic to see a puppy like that!! Right now he's sleeping it off.

What I found on my walk

I went on a walk with Daly today around Lake Calhoun. On my way I saw one of those advertising cars with http://www.go-girl.com/ plastered all over it. There slogan is "Don't take life sitting down". So curiosity got the best of me, but I figured it's some sort of active girl thing.

Active, pshaw - Boy was I right.

Check it out, girls. You can now stand and pee - and save your pee to dispose of later if you'd like!! Free to Pee!! Ohmygod I just died giggling. I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old boy.

The Dodged Bullet

There were layoffs at my work this week. Seven people out of 70 at my office are now looking for work. Have you seen the paper? First the jobs section shrunk to 2 whole sheets, and then they increased the font. It's never good when they increase the font. Oh, and the newspaper is bankrupt and has been calling me twice a week to try and get me to sign up for more newspaper. With bigger font.

It's hard though, to see your friends get laid off. It's hard because you're happy that you have a job and don't know why it's you and not them. It's hard because you know they have houses, and bills, and all the things you were worried about when they told you there were going to be layoffs that they will have to take care of and it's fricking scary to think about that. How quickly your money could run out. I found myself saying, "If there's anything I can do to help...." like somebody died and you know there's nothing you can do to make it better, but you say it. So I've been calling and emailing people I know, looking for jobs for these guys. I hope it helps.

And through all of it I can't help but be a little selfish. What does this mean for my work going ahead? Am I going to have to work that much harder to keep up? Did they lay people off to simply save on a salary and have others fill in that void and work harder? It's confusing because we are BUSY. What if I feel I already work hard enough? I think I just have to let the dust settle and give it a couple of months.

It's been a slut of a week. I'm glad it's over. The weather is starting to warm and the days are getting longer. I hope spring is the new beginning it's said to be.

There must have been a full moon last week....

Chris called Tuesday morning and said there was something wrong with the cats butt, in that it looked like a monkey butt. So I ran my anxious, high strung cat to the vet to get checked out. Traxx just loooovvves the vet. They actually have a note on his account about how crazy he is. So, yum, anal gland issues (which the vet proceeds to tell me what it looked like when they squeezed it out). Vet says cat lost 3 pounds within a year. HOLY TWIGGY CAT! That herion-chic look was soo 1990's, so we decided to try and find out what was wrong. The cat has hyperthyroid (ism?). So we're fixing him by rubbing cream on his ears, which comes in syringes that make our house look like a drug den. He hates this too, but we are so excited to have a fat, lazy cat.

Then I pick up Daly from daycare. I'm informed he was limping and they gave him time-outs. I got a little snippy and told them to put that in his chart, cuz the boy has arthritis and he's going to limp a little, sheesh. So then she pulls me aside and tells me that in the time out he pooped on the floor. Really? My dog? The dog who never had an accident inside the house even when he was a puppy? So disappointed.

This is the closest they'll ever get to each other.

Not to mention I filled every minute of my time with something over the last week. Except for yesterday, I read a book. It was nice.