The reason I haven't just moved into the 2nd bedroom is because the first bedroom, or master bedroom, has a huge walk in closet. It's so much of a walk in closet, you walk THROUGH it to get to the bathroom! How can I give that up? And...my bedroom furniture, both dresser and bureau have clothes in them. I need those too. There's no room here in the second bedroom for those. And by the time I tried to bring all that into the 2nd bedroom, I could have just switched beds. Much easier! The only thing holding me up now is time, energy, and gumption. When I have one, I don't have the other two, lmao.

Here's a tree that has turned yellow, and started losing it's leaves. Behind it you can see one tree that is red, one that is bare, and a few others that are still green. What a strange autumn we're having.

Here's the tree looking out off my balcony that has turned a beautiful red. It was one of the first trees in back of my building to change, and still seemed like it took longer for it to change this year. I've seen so many variations in coloring this autumn. I've seen bare trees, trees half bare, trees fully colored, trees still changing, and some still green like it's August. I've heard rumors that it's partly due to the lack of rain this fall. Or maybe the warmer temperatures had something to do with it. October sure seemed warmer than usual. I've had maybe four days so far where I've had to scrape frost off my windshield before going to work. Today was the first day below freezing when I went to work.

I stopped and bought two cd's on the way home from work tonight. New cd by Little Big Town, and a new cd by Chris Botti. The Chris Botti is actually for my aunt for Christmas. I had told her about the cd a couple weeks ago, she said she would go buy it. Well, she forgot. So I mentioned it to her a few days ago, she went to Target and couldn't find it. Since I was there tonight, and it was only 11.98, I figured I'd buy it, rip it to my computer, then wrap it for her for Christmas, lmao. Then I told her that on the phone tonight, and she was cool with it. We do stuff like that all the time.

Ok, going to go rip these cd's and finish watching the CMA's.

Here's more pictures of my apartment. I couldn't remember what pictures I showed you before or not. If I repeat any, I apologize.

This is my entertainment center in my living room. Note all the cd's? And there's my second shot glass case on the wall. My first one is in my bedroom right when you walk in the door.

Here's the second bedroom, where my computer is. It's on the right, just off the edge of the picture. That's the new comforter, part of the bed-in-a-bag I bought when I was planning on moving that bed into my bedroom. Alas, I haven't done that yet, and now I'm not sure when the mood will strike me to tear up both bedrooms to do it.

Here's my bedroom. Or at least part of it. You can see my little itty bitty bed. Yup, that's where I sleep every night. There was never a need or a reason for me to get a bigger bed, when I was the only one sleeping in it. Pretty sad indicator of my life, eh?

Here' s the "master" bath, lol. The shower is to the left off the picture. So what you see is what you get.

I'm trying to do this post while the football game is on. Fortunately, the Cowboys are beating the Eagles 28-7 in the 3rd quarter.

I went to see my aunt today. I vaccumed all her floors and she went behind me and mopped them. Then we went out to lunch to Portillo's, a Chicago based hot dog restaurant. I always get a chili dog, no onions, cheese fries and a soda. Yummy!!! (Score is now 35-10, Eagles will have do something miraculous to come back at this point.) AND........I finally got my Bo Bice cd!!! I had my aunt get it when she went to Wal Mart almost 2 weeks ago, but I haven't seen her since, so I finally have it, and can listen to it! Wooooooooo Hoooooooooooooo

After lunch, we went for a Sunday drive. We went to the other side of town to drive past my sister's house (long story). Her eldest daughter was on the front stoop talking to a couple friends, so at least I know they still live there. After that, we drove to another small town on the way back to my aunt's house, and I got to see where her ex-husband is now living. A new grouping of townhomes, very nice area. Then we stopped at a store in Sycamore because they have Diet Coke on sale, 4-12 packs for $10, I got 4 Diet Cherry Coke, mmmmm.

Before starting this post, I looked to see if I have any more pictures to show you, but the only ones left are cloud pictures that I wanted to show in order, so I need to load the first ones on my computer first, or they were pictures of my apartment, but I recall everyone was satisfied with what I showed them already, so I guess you'll have to wait for the cloud pictures.

Back to work tomorrow, so as soon as football is done, I'm off to bed. Have a great week!

While I was packing for my trip to Michigan, we had a storm roll in. It ended up missing us (but caused tornadoes in Lansing, MI), but it provided some awesome cloud formations! There are a few more that took with my film camera that I just picked up a couple days ago. As soon as I can get them on my computer, I'll show you the rest.

Here's a picture, kind of boring though, of some of the leaves beginning to change outside my apartment. There's a tree that has turned a beautiful red that I've taken a picture of. I'll try to get another picture this weekend, if the leaves haven't fallen off yet and the sun is shining. It's interesting to see how different trees change. We have some bare trees, some trees that are half bare, some that are very colorful but haven't lost leaves yet, and some that haven't even changed colors yet. The other thing I've noticed this fall...the beautiful sunsets. I don't remember the last time I've seen so many beautiful sunsets with clouds showing different colors as the sun goes below the horizon.

On OCTOBER 19, my aunt and I went back to Michigan for a long weekend, to visit an old chat friend. The timing was perfect, as the leaves were at their most colorful. Below is a picture I snapped outside an apple orchard. It's just on the outside of Manchester. They had pumpkins, apples (bagged and taffy), donuts, and cider. Many apple orchards offer home-made apples, although I've never learned why. These were AWESOME!

On the way into Manchester, right on the edge of town, there's a yard with a tree, that took what must have been left of a branch and maybe carved an arm and fist into the wood. It's also been painted. This was the best picture I was able to get, Monday morning as we were leaving town. In the fall and winter, the sun isn't at a very good angle to get a nice picture of it. By afternoon, the arm is completely shaded, and a good picture, even with flash, is impossible. It's just something we always look for (along with a llama farm) as we head South on M-52 into Manchester.

We had a very nice visit. We did try to get together with Deb while we were in Michigan, but unfortunately it didn't work out. We've decided that next time we go to Michigan, we will go a day earlier, so we have a whole day to spend with Deb. And perhaps in the Spring, I'll take a day and go visit Deb myself (and maybe meet Kerry there????)

I'll be picking up some pictures I was getting developed (to use up the film I started in August), so I can scan those pictures soon and get some posted in the near future.

***Editors Note: Thanks Styx, for noticing I said November instead of October. No, I didn't go forward in time, I just wasn't paying enough attention to what I was doing when I typed it last night.

Here's a picture I took a couple days ago of the sunset by my apartment. The clouds weren't really that red, they were more pink or mauve. But this is what I got using my digital camera. Pretty cool, huh??

I'm home from my long weekend in Michigan. I had a nice time visiting my friend, but was disappointed in not being able to see another friend. Things just didn't work out like I'd hoped, and I'm not sure what the future will bring.

The colors were beautiful the whole way there, we were told the fall colors are at their peak about now in Michigan, so our timing was perfect. I didn't get the opportunity to get many pictures, we just never seemed to be in a good spot to stop and have me get out to snap a picture. I got one picture while we were at an apple orchard getting cider, apples, donuts, and taffy apples. I'll post that as soon as I get a chance to load the pictures from my camera to my computer.

Right now my knee and back are killing me. I don't know what I did to my back, although it could have been the storage cabinet that I had to push up a flight of stairs on Saturday. Although, my back wasn't bothering me yesterday, only today. My knee though, has been coming on all weekend, the more I went up and down those damn stairs the more it bothered me. I took a couple Aleve earlier, but unless I go elevate it, it won't feel any better. I'll do that when I go watch Journeyman in an hour.

I had a nice weekend, but I'm glad to be home.

Another quiet weekend here. I got caught up on all my tv shows this weekend, and watched two disappointing football games. Oh well. This Friday I will be making another trip to Michigan, to visit a couple friends.

The leaves are finaly starting to turn. Some trees have already changed and the branches are now bare, others are just barely starting to show color. Using the film in my camera that I originaly loaded the end of August for the eclipse, I'm attempting to take several photos over a period of may be a few weeks to show the slow color change here. I think I only have about 4 pictures left on the roll of film, so anything I want to take after that's done will be using my digital camera.

Time to go check the weather for tomorrow so I know how warm I need to dress for work. Have a great week!

So much for trying to support a sports team. Every time I do, they lose. I tried to suppor the Cubs, they were swept in the Divisional Series against Arizona. I tried to support the Cowboys, they are being humiliated by a 1-3 Buffalo team. So I'm back to neutral colors, supporting no team. I give up.

It's late on a Sunday night, I've been watching football all evening, we've had summer-like temperatures all weekend, and I have to work tomorrow, lol.

The Bears just went ahead for the first time, with 2 minutes left. GO BEARS! Tomorrow night is the Cowboys game against Buffalo, so I will be watching that for sure! Another late night for me, lol.

Today, after Kerry's stream, I went out to see my aunt. I haven't seen her for at least a month, as she was sick for a few weeks, and then did too much last Saturday and needed to rest on Sunday. I try to go see her every Sunday, helping her clean her floors (I vaccum, she mops) doing anything else around her condo her son hasn't done, she feeds me, and we go see a movie. Today was no different. We did the floors, ate lunch, went to see The Seeker, I helped her clean her sliding glass doors, I attempted to hook up her new dvd recorder, and I brought in her garden hose for the winter. The only thing I didn't get done was to clean her spare bathtub. She has arthritis in both shoulders, can't bend over to clean the bathtub, and her son won't ever do it. So I do what I can to help.

And the Bears just won the game, intercepting the ball in the endzone as time expires. Wooooooooooo Hoooooooooooooo

So now that the game is over, I can go to bed, lol. Have a great week!

Well, game 1 didn't go as I'd hoped. Cubs lose 3-1. Without reading any articles or watching any post game interviews, I have a few thoughts on the game. Those not interested in baseball can just skip today's post, lol.

1. Carlos Zambrano pitched a GREAT game. He only allowed one run in 6 innings.

2. Since Carlos was pitching well, why bring him out? Confidence in the relievers? Concern for his arm since he'll be pitching again on only 3 days rest?

3. Why is Lou Piniella only going with three starting pitchers for this series? Carlos Zambrano, Rich Hill, and Ted Lilly. It sure puts a lot of pressure on the middle and late relievers to be perfect.

4. All the Cubs, with the exception of Carlos, looked flat last night. Ramirez almost looks like he's not trying when he's at the plate. He's reaching for pitches that he would not normally bother with. Derrick Lee looks like his back is still bothering him. Every time he's at the plate, he's arching back like he's trying to stretch it out. That HAS to be affecting his swing. Soriano, who is typically a first pitch batter, is still being bothered by his sore quad. That affects not just his fielding, but his base running too. In the 6th inning, the Cubs had the bases loaded...THE BASES LOADED, only got ONE run in, and left 3 men on base. They have to be better at advancing the base runners or they'll have no chance tonight or Saturday when they come back to Chicago for game 3.

5. Carlos Marmol pitched the 7th inning in relief of Carlos Zambrano. Marmol had been great, not allowing a run in the last 28 innings he's pitched. What does he do? Gives up two runs to give the D'backs the lead for good.

I really was hoping for more from the Cubs last night. Hopefully they got whatever was bugging them last night out of their system and can come back tonight to tie the series at 1 each.

Go Cubs Go! Go Cubs Go! Hey Chicago, what do you say? Cubs are gonna win today!

Go Cubs Go! Go Cubs Go! Hey Chicago, what do you say? The Cubs are gonna win today!

Game 1 of the National League Division Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The game starts at 9pm CDT, so I will be bleary-eyed tomorrow morning. Carlos "Big Z" Zambrano is pitching for the Cubs tonight, he's pitched better away from home all season, so hopefully he'll continue that trend and give the Cubs a chance to go up 1-0.

I know all you hockey fans and red sox fans and basically non-sports fans could care less about the Cubs, but StygianMuse and I LOVE the Cubs and we'll support them until they win the World Series. And just so everyone knows, it's been 99 years since the Cubs last won the World Series. 99 YEARS!!!

Go Cubbies!!!!!!!!!!

Oh good, since you liked the pictures I posted of my apartment, now I don't have to post any of the other pictures of my apartment that I took. Not in the mood to post anyway, didn't have a good day at work, not in the mood to talk to anyone tonight.

Wow, 12 days since my last post. Sorry for the lack of activity here, but I just haven't felt like posting much, not a lot has been happening. I've had new pictures to load that I took just over a week ago, but never felt like moving them from my camera until now.

My half sister and her husband were passing through Chicago last Friday, so they took me out to dinner, and I got the chance to show them my apartment. Of course, that meant getting all my "fall" cleaning done to make the place presentable, lol. Once it was clean, I took pictures of my apartment. Although it was the middle of the afternoon, because of how my apartment is situated, I don't get a lot of direct sunlight. Therefore, after moving the pictures to my computer, I had to lighten some of them up. I don't even remember if I used the flash or not, I'm sure I probably would have, but who knows or remembers at this point.

So, to get everything started, here's what you see when you walk into my apartment starting out looking straight and turning to the right:

Yes, that's a fireplace by the sliding glass door

As you can see, I have a lot of cd's, lol

My tiny kitchen, perfect for one person

Here are the two pictures I took this afternoon of the Rosemont Water Tower about a block away from my building. I can stand at our windows and look out on it. These pictures were taken from the top of the parking garage behind our building, so I could get an unobstructed view of the tower. You can also go to this link to see the article on the Chicago CBS website about the water tower being named "Tank of the Year."

I was right, I did have a couple pictures that I hadn't posted yet. These next two pictures are the view from my balcony. If the sun is shining enough tomorrow, I'll try to go outside at lunch and get a better picture of the water tower. It's actually painted quite nicely.





It's been quiet here the last couple weeks. Just working and watching football on Saturdays (college) and Sundays (pro), baseball at night (GO CUBS!!!) As I type this, they just tied the score in the bottom of the 9th.

I signed a new lease for this apartment, so I'll be here for another year. I jokingly asked the customer relations gal, Dawn, what their policy was on murder...if they would terminate my lease if I were to murder my upstairs neighbors. I think for just a second, she thought I was serious, lmao. If they don't stop doing laundry and vacuuming at midnight on Sunday nights, I might just threaten them with bodily harm.

Hopefully more tomorrow!

Not 5 seconds after I clicked publish, those Cubbies won the game!!!

Go Cubs go...go Cubs go...hey Chicago what do ya say, Cubs are gonna win today!

Here's the last (I think) of the pictures I took on my walk a couple weeks ago.

School where I vote

This is actually a backyard. There used to be a German Shepherd in the backyard that would bark anytime someone walked by. No dog now, but the yard is still overgrown.

Here's a charlie (squirrel) climbing up a tree

I also saw a couple pictures on my computer that I'm not sure if I posted for you. Tomorrow night, I'll go back through blogger and see if I've posted them. If so, then I'm out of pictures for now, unless I find something else to take pictures of. Perhaps the water tower I mentioned in the picture of the plane landing by my office building.

Playing Ketchup!

Ok, so maybe that should have said "catch up," but do any of you really mind? I had to open another window to see when the last time I posted was, because I couldn't remember! So my last post was last Tuesday, right before I went to Indianapolis for the day on a business trip.

My trips to Indianapolis always seem to be interesting, lol. I started out by having my alarm JAR me awake at 4AM. I drove to the airport, parked, went to my gate (I had already printed my boarding pass Tuesday night) for the 7AM flight. Amazingly enough, it left on time. And...it arrived EARLY! Can you imagine? A domestic U.S. flight actually leaving on time and arriving early? It so rarely happens these days, it's shock when it does happen. Since my salesman was just leaving the hotel (he wasn't expecting me to be 20 minutes early), and wouldn't be there for about 10 minutes, I perused a book store for a few minutes then went and sat outside. This was a day trip, so all I had with me was my itty bitty purse and a notebook.

The salesman, John, arrived, and off we went to visit the customer. This customer is one I've gone to visit once a year since 2004 when I started working at Metal One. The customer is a stamping facility that makes the tops, sides, bottoms and ends for caskets. They have about 60 employees, and she is in charge of most of them. They are located on the border of Indiana and Ohio, about an hour and a half outside of Indianapolis. We chatted for a few minutes, then headed off to an early lunch.

Afterwards, John and I headed back to Indianapolis, for the second part of the trip. We were going to the warehouse where we store coils for that casket stamper, to do physical inventory. We needed to go out and physically account for every coil the warehouse said was there, and make sure it matched what we said should be there. It was about 95F that day, and at least that hot in the warehouse, plus we had to wear hard hats while out there (you never know when a coil might drop on your head, lmao.) Everything went smoothly, no missing coils, no extra coils, everything matched up, just as I figured it would. This place is really good about that stuff. I love dealing with them.

My flight home was supposed to leave at 6:31pm, arriving home at 6:41pm. No, it's not a 10 minute flight, lmao. There's an hour time difference between Chicago and Indianapolis, so the flight home was actually going to be an hour and 10 minutes. Note I said "supposed to leave at 6:31?" Yeah, that would be because it didn't actually leave then. First it got delayed to 6:47pm, then to 7:12pm, then to 8:21pm, then to 8:55pm. Argh! We did finally board by 8:55pm, but I'd had no dinner because by the time I was hungry enough to think about it, it was too late to go get anything. And the only place to really get anything was at a little restaurant in our concourse. Anything else, I would have to go back through security to walk to the other end of the airport. No thanks, I just wanted to get home by then. It probably took us another 15 minutes to pull back from the gate, then another 15 minutes to actually get out to the runway and take off. Fortunately, they were able to get a more direct route to Chicago, so the flight was only 30 minutes. I still didn't land until about 9pm, then had to walk out to my car and drive home.

I walked in the door at 10pm. I put 2 pieces of bread in the toaster, put some peanut butter on them, ate that while I got ready for bed, and was in bed asleep by 10:30, lol. I was exhausted the next day at work, and again on Friday. But I got all caught up on Saturday. After my stream Friday night, I was in bed at 11:30pm, slept until 8:30 when I moved from my bed to the loveseat in the living room cause it was darker there, then slept until 11:20am. I love love LOVE getting 12 hours of sleep, lmao.

I did pretty much nothing, nada, zip all weekend. My aunt is still trying to get over bacterial pneumonia, so I stayed home again on Sunday. Yay! I got to watch a full day of FOOTBALL!!!!!!!!!!! Too bad Da Bears sucked, but Dallas won big! Woooo hoooooo!

So that brings us up to today/tonight...it's raining, cool, fall like temps (where's summer go?) and I can go back to posting more pictures, cause I'm sure AK will want to see some more very soon, lmao. (Do I have any more pictures to post? Hmmmm, I'll have to look.)

Here's some more photos of where I live. These are pictures of the pond/lake that is at the one end of the golf course. While taking these pictures, I had to make sure I stayed out of the way of three golfers, who weren't too happy I was wandering around the course while they were trying to play through, lol.

You can just barely see part of the road on the left, that takes you out to the main road. On the other side of the pond/lake are townhouses. One just out of the picture was on fire several weeks ago. Last I saw there was still a chain link fence around the building so people wouldn't go in the building.


Here's a little bridge for the golf carts to cross to get over the water. You can see how green the grass is, and it's all done by natural watering this summer! Normally on Aug 26 the grass isn't this green. It's normally all burnt up, as someone I know likes to say.

Another view of part of the lake/pond.

As you can see, we have plenty of water, but not too many mosquitos for as wet as it's been.

And last but not least, the view you get if you go out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon before the garbage men have a chance to come Monday morning and empty the dumpsters, lmao.

It's a slow holiday weekend here in the U.S. and Canada. I've just been lazing around, reading and watching t.v. Here's some more pictures I took last weekend on my walk around my neighborhood.

Beautiful blue sky!

Golf Course around my complex

Another part of the golf course

Anyone got $429,000 sitting around?

Here's more photos of where I live.

Sign for my complex

View of my street looking South

The pool across the street from me.

The city has been working up one side of my entire street, putting in new light poles. Before they were spaced quite a distance apart, leaving a lot of unlit areas to drive past. Now, at least on one side, there are about three times as many lights, so once they are working, the street should be lit much better. Now if the Management Company would only do that for my parking lot, lol. Once the lights are completed, and hopefully working, I'll try to take a picture at night to show how they look. And maybe I can get a picture of my parking lot to show you how little light we have there, too.

Here's a couple pictures so you can see just how big my balcony is. This is the end of the building, around to the left of the picture of the front of the building. My balcony is the middle one, I'm on the second floor. It's hard to see in the picture but hanging from the bottom of the balcony above me on the right corner, is my birdfeeder. I've seen Cardinals, Sparrows, Red-Winged Blackbirds, Grackles, and Mourning Doves, feeding at or under the feeder.

My balcony in the middle

This the the view I get from my balcony of the building next door. On the first floor is a black family with a little boy. They rarely come outside, unless they are having a bbq, then they blast their hip-hop music so we all can hear it. The second floor is a white family, not sure if I've seen the wife, just a little girl, a couple young men, and an older gentleman who I think is the girl's grandfather. They tend to talk on the phone on their balcony all the time; do they not get reception inside or do they just want me to hear their conversations? On the third floor is another black family, they also don't come out often, and I think there's someone living there, or maybe was just visiting, that is scared of heights, lol.

All that for nothing!

I took the day off from work, stayed up ALL NIGHT so I could watch the lunar eclipse last night. I had my film camera with the 110mm zoom lens ready, I was even prepared to play around with the exposure, taking lots of pictures to see if I could get something half decent of the eclipse. My biggest decision was whether to go to bed and set my alarm for 4:00AM, or to just stay up all night, then sleep after it was over. Since I'm a night person, I thought it would be easier to stay up all night. I watched tv mostly. AMC had The Bishop's Wife on, I watched about half of that. I watched parts of one episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, part of another episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Then when nothing was left on tv to watch, I started reading a book. A romance novel to be specific. I like the author, I've read some of her other stories, but this one was kind of boring. Some of them get me hooked right from the beginning, but not this one. I trudjed along, killing time, and going outside to check on the moon every hour or so.

About 3:00AM, the moon was still in good viewing position, but was partially covered by clouds. I said to myself, "Please have the clouds go away so I can see this." Again at 4:00AM I went outside to check on what might be happening. At this stage, it would only be the prenumbra stage, not much to see, I was more interested in the umbra stage, full coverage of the moon by the earth's shadow. Bright full moon, the clouds had passed by, no shadowing yet that I could see, but some clouds were approaching from the west. Hoping those clouds would all go away before the viewing got good, I went back inside to wait until about 5:00AM when the show would start, back to the book that was not holding my interest. At about 5:00AM, so tired I could probably fall asleep standing up if I wanted to, I went back outside in my jeans and sweatshirt, camera around my neck, hoping for something to photograph.

Clouds! Not just one puffy cloud that would move away, a whole bank of them, with no end to the west. The moon was completely blocked from view, I couldn't even see the glow from it. I had just stayed up all night to see clouds. Looking at the clouds to the west, I decided there was no way the moon was going to peek out for me to get a decent view of the eclipse. I silently trudged back inside, up the stairs, into my apartment, stripped out of my clothes and went to sleep.

The next lunar eclipse is supposed to happen in early February of 2008. That upcoming eclipse will also be viewable from the Americas. Given the time of year, and the typical weather here in the U.S., I'm going to go out on a short limb and say the weather will not co-operate then either. That's the last of the three known lunar eclipses that were expected. I have not heard of when there might be more in the future.

Now I have a fresh roll of film in my camera. I wonder what I should take film pictures of?

I'm thinking it's time to make a change to my blog. Not to the colors, maybe just the background. I'm not sure, let me think on it for a bit. In the meantime, let me find a picture or two to sooth the angry mob that demanded more pictures from me.

Front of my building

The three buildings are connected

Mine is waaaayyyyy down at the end, where you can hardly see it. But I wanted to show how there are three buildings attached together, and I'm in the end one. So if the fire alarm goes off in one, it goes off in all three.

Not much to talk about here. For only the second time this month, the sun actually came out. LMAO. Ok, I'm sure it's happened more than just twice, but that's the way it feels! Anyway, since things are slow, I thought I'd post a picture I took at work, from inside my office, of a plane going in to O'Hare to land. The round thing sort of below the plane is the top of the water tower that we also get to look at every day. Next week I'll take a picture outside of the water tower. It was named "Tank of the Year" lmao!

Not much going on here today. I picked up a couple cd's this week, have already ripped them and sent them to Kerry. One was Joe Nichols' new cd, Real Thing. The other was Travis Tritt's new cd, The Storm.

Since I have nothing much to talk about tonight, I'll tell you a story about what happened last night before I went to bed. Keep in mind that I had already stayed up too late watching the Nascar race that finally ran Tuesday due to rain delays. And it was VERY humid out, I think about 96% when I checked last night. I had not turned my a/c on because I am always reluctant to turn it back on once I've turned it off during a cool-down. Anyway...

If you're not already aware of this, and most of you shouldn't be, I don't like ants. I don't like ants almost as much as I don't like spiders. And spiders really creep me out. For several years I have had intermittant problems with little itty bitty ants in either my master bathroom and/or the kitchen. Sometimes they will find their way onto the carpeting, and thankfully it's a light tan so the ants are easily seen moving around. I've used ant traps, sprayed along baseboards, etc. They go away, but the next year they come back.

This year, it seemed for awhile, that the ants weren't really going to be a problem. I haven't seen any in the kitchen, and until about a week ago, just a couple in the bathroom. Then the appearances increased to a few a day. Then several a day. Two or three in the morning, two or three more in the evening, two or three more at night before bed. Did I mention I don't like ants? LOL As usual I was annoyed that I have not been able to determine exactly where they are coming in. I never seem them by a crack, or hole, they are far away from that wandering around in the middle of the floor. Last night, during a commercial break in the baseball game, I went into my bathroom to put my bath towel in there for my morning shower, and I turned the light on in my closet to figure out what I was going to wear in the morning. While standing in the bathroom, looking around after killing a couple ants, I noticed one on the carpeting in the closet. (Keep in mind that I have to walk THROUGH my closet to get to the bathroom. Talk about a walk in closet! LMAO) I killed that ant, then noticed a couple more by it. I moved a couple things that were on the floor in that area, and noticed a few more, in a line, like they were following a trail from somewhere. I moved a few more things, including a couple pairs of shoes, and discovered about 50 ants underneath one of the pairs of shoes. I had already gone and grabbed my can of Raid, so after uncovering the annoying pieces of shit, I sprayed them and committed mass murder. I will not apologize, I feel no sympathy for their relatives, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Guess there's no reforming me!

So it's now almost midnight, I've missed the come-from-behind rally by the Cubs to win the game in the top of the 9th, and my closet/bedroom is all messed up. I can't even vacuum it up because it's too late. Remember that humidity level I mentioned above? I was so hot and sweaty by this time, I could have taken a cold shower, lol. I'm hot, exhausted, and my bedroom smells of Raid, lol. I laid down on the couch, under the ceiling fan to cool off. I was almost asleep when one of the guys upstairs comes home. I hear the door slam downstairs, their door close, then a few seconds later, BOOM! Like he was stomping his foot down to kill something. That woke me up but good. Now I was too alert and listening to every little noise from upstairs. I decided it was way too muggy to sleep, so I got up, closed the windows and sliding glass door, turned the a/c on, and went to bed.

Tonight when I got home I moved the last couple things out of that side of my closet, brought the vacuum into my bedroom, cleaned up the mess, sprinkled some carpet deoderizer, vacuumed it again, then put everything back. I sure hope that took care of the ants. My boss at work suggested I buy some Boric (sp?) acid and sprinkle that along the baseboard in the closet to take care of the ants. That's IF they are coming in from there. Well, I'm hearing a bunch of thunder outside, so I better finish this up. I hope that's all we get, thunder. We really DON'T need any more rain.

A co-worker of mine sent me an email that I had to post here.

A girl from Chicago, and a girl from the East Coast were seated side-by-side on an airplane. The girl from Chicago, being friendly, says, "So, where ya from?"

The girl from the East Coast says, "From a place where they know better than to use a preposition at the end of a sentence."

The girl from Chicago sat quietly for a few moments, then replied, "So, where ya from, bitch?"

This joke was being discussed at work because this same co-worker of mine ends many sentences with a preposition, such as "Do you want to come with?" That style of speaking drives her husband's family nuts, and they've tried to correct her on it, to no avail. Now one of her sisters-in-law is starting to speak that way, lol.

Been a very boring weekend here. The weather sucks! Cloudy, cold, rainy, NOT what I want in the month of August. It feels like mid September right now. Where did summer go???

Anyway, with the weather being so gloomy, I haven't been in the mood to post anything, and I really don't have anything to post anyway, since I've done nothing all weekend. I'm hoping that if we can get away from the rain, my mood will improve and I might actually get motivated to start taking pictures of my shot glasses to show you. In the meantime, you get this stupid post which says nothing much at all.

Unfortunately, my funny story about trying to get home last night turned out to not be quite as funny as I thought. But since I mentioned it, I'll go ahead and tell you the story anyway. Here's a little background information that will come in handy, not that it will mean much to those who have never been to Chicago.

I work right by O'Hare International Airport. The most direct route to get between home and work is I-88 (runs E/W) and I-294 (runs N/S), both tollways. Because we have two seasons here, winter and construction, both of these roads, in addition to every other road in Chicago, are very busy during rush hour. I also have a couple of alternate routes I could take, but they are a little longer travel time, so I only take them in emergencies. I have set up two traffic reports that I get each afternoon, via email, about 10-15 minutes before I normally leave work. They tell me travel times, average speeds and list any "problem spots" on the two specific roads listed above. That way I know whether I should take an alternate, or just be prepared to sit in traffic.

To yesterday...I got an email at 3:45pm that said there was a car on fire on the shoulder on I-294 about a mile before I would exit off to get to I-88. It sounded pretty bad, and based on the other information, I believed traffic was going to be a nightmare. So I decided on an alternate route home. I checked the two alternate roads I would take to bypass the car fire, and decided traffic was light enough to make it worth my while to do it. That particular alternate was I-90 West (sort of goes in a NW direction), to I-355 South, which then meets up with I-88 a few miles before I would exit off for home. Traffic on I-90 was great, hardly any slow spots. I got onto I-355 South and everything was looking good. However! I got to the one toll booth on I-355 and traffic comes to a dead stop. At first I was thinking it was just backed up because of people who were paying with cash had to merge back in to traffic, and once we got past that we'd get moving again.

Nope. We'd move a couple car lengths, and stop. Then we'd move another car length and stop. This went on and on and on for about a mile. Trying to stay calm, which is hard for me to do, I looked at my clock for the umpteenth time, and realized I could get the traffic report to hopefully find out what the heck was going on. I listened as the traffic reporter went through the various roads, he or she finally got to I-355, and they said there was a car fire on the right side by an exit up ahead of me. I looked to the right, the sign for that exit said it was still 3 miles ahead. THREE MILES? I have to sit through this for 3 miles? But wait, wasn't the car fire supposed to be on I-294? I kept listening. Nothing about a car fire on I-294! Could my emailed traffic report have listed the wrong road for the car fire? Surely not!

All I was thinking about was that I was trying to avoid a traffic jam due to a car fire, and it wasn't even on that other road, and by taking my alternate, I was actually in the middle of the traffic jam. I fully expected to go into work, mention to my co-worker Cathy about the car fire, and she was going to tell me there was no car fire on I-294. THAT was why my story about getting home last night was funny.

That all changed when I went in to work today. I asked Cathy about the traffic on I-294, expecting her to say there was no traffic, and that she "flew" down the road to her grandma's house. Nope. She said the traffic was horrendous. She said there WAS a car on fire on I-294, that it was completely destroyed from what she could see while it was on the wrecker. In addition to that, someone going North on I-294 must have been paying too much attention to the car on fire, and lost control of their vehicle and smashed it into the cement barrier between the North and South lanes. So there was now a second problem on I-294 for everyone to gawk, looky-loo, rubberneck, etc at.

I think I'm glad I took my alternate after all. I only had the one car fire to deal with, not additional idiots crashing into cement barriers. The joys of living in the big city.

Spent another nice quiet evening at home. I've been watching a lot of the Hallmark Channel on tv. Last week, there was a different Mystery Woman movie on each night. It stars Kellie Martin as the owner of a mystery book shop, who helps the police solve, what else...mysteries! This week the channel is showing Jane Doe movies, starring Lea Thompson as a secret government agent by day, wife and mother by night. It's part of the August Files, mystery movies and shows all month. Last Saturday I taped a movie with Valerie Bertinelli in it, called Claire. She's a psychic who helps the police catch a murderer. And tomorrow I believe I won't have the Hallmark Channel anymore, as it's being moved to a higher cable tier, and I'll have to pay more to get it. Waaaaaaaaaa!

The nice thing about watching these movies, is that I can sit here in front of the computer, and while I'm watching the movie, I can work on my music. I'm still trying to get all my files "converted." Meaning, I am taking all my files that are at 128 kbps or larger, and what Musicmatch calls converting is actually shrinking the file size (compressing?) to a smaller kbps. It makes the files smaller, so they don't take up so much room on my hard drive, and I will have more room for my music! I'm all the way up to Barbara Mandrell. But as I come across a song that is from a cd with various artists, I just do all the songs from that cd at the same time. So by me saying I'm only at Barbara Mandrell, doesn't mean much, because there are a LOT of songs in other letters that are already done.

Tonight I stopped at Target on my way home (oh that's ANOTHER story) and bought a couple new country cds. Luke Bryan and Halfway To Hazard. I've never heard of Luke Bryan, but he's listed on the CMT website, so they must have played his video at least once, lol. Halfway To Hazard is another new group I just heard about Sunday. I was driving home from my aunt's house, listening to the country music station in the car, and there was a promo for one day this week when the afternoon dj was going to be someplace, can't remember where, and she was going to be talking to Halfway To Hazard. Well, when I saw that their cd was out this week and on sale at Target, I figured why not buy it! Maybe tomorrow I'll get them ripped so they can be added to the stack to send to Kerry. Oh damn! Forgot to send her another cd tonight! Oh well.

While at Target, I also bought a new phone. The battery in my current phone, although rechargeable, finally is about charged out. It happens. In the past, when I tried to replace a rechargeable battery in a different phone, it never worked right after. The buttons didn't want to work, and I eventually had to just toss the phone and buy a new one. So I figured I'd save myself the hassle and just buy a new phone. It's the same brand as what I have now, Uniden, and when I compared the battery in the new one to the battery in the old one, they are identical. So what I might do is insert the new battery in the old phone, see how it works, and if I have any problems, I have the new phone that I can always hook up instead, and switch the battery over to that one. Haven't decided, and I got distracted watching the movie and reading blogs, and working on my music, and and and...

I also have a story to tell to AK. If you don't want to read about a spider, stop reading now and go to another page. This morning my alarm goes off, I get up, go into the bathroom to start getting ready to take my shower. I'm naked as the day I was born, going potty, after I'm done I stand up and turn around to put the lid down to set my towel on the lid, and there, on the lid, right where my back had been was a black spider! I barely held back a scream, I jumped and wiggled and got all jittery, went quickly into the kitchen (still naked mind you), grabbed the flyswatter cause there's NO WAY I'm killing a spider that big with anything else, go back into the bathroom and swat the spider dead right into the garbage, lol. I don't know where it came from, and I don't care, I just didn't like seeing it right by where I had been sitting, where it could have crawled on me. Ewwwwwwww.

Tomorrow I'll tell everyone about my exciting trip home from work tonight, lol.

Not much going on here today. I felt sort of "blah" when I got up for work this morning. I dragged my ass to work, but decided I would take a 1/2 sick day this afternoon and come home early. It wasn't that I was overly tired, or that I had an upset stomach. I just didn't feel "right." I came home, got into some comfy clothes, and watched a movie I taped Saturday night while hosting NTT. I'm feeling better now, so it was a case of the "temporary blahs."

I don't know if the lighting will work, but I'll try to start taking pictures of my various shotglass cases, and perhaps try to do individual shotglasses (which should bore EVERYONE to death, so I can live up to my statement of living a boring life). LMAO

I had to do quite a bit of tweaking to the following picture so you could see what I saw. One night this week, I was looking out on my balcony late at night, to see how wet it was (had rained quite hard almost every day). I had turned on the little outside light I have, and when I looked up at it before turning the light off, I noticed a HUGE spiderweb right in front of it.

The accent of the light against the back of the web gave a nice effect, but I was not able to capture that with the camera. You can't see it now, but there is a spider in the middle of the web, waiting for a bug to come along and get caught. I was a meanie though, and broke one of the lower support threads, so the web collapsed against the light. By morning the web and spider were both gone.

Not a lot happening here right now. Dog days of summer and all. Had some really bad storms go through yesterday afternoon, then again tonight. Lots of heavy rain, lightning, thunder, even some flood watches for some areas. Humidity is high, so I've been keeping my a/c on. I'm sure I'll be cringing when I look at my electric bill in a couple weeks.

I talked to my aunt in California last night. For those of you that don't know, my uncle was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease a few years ago and my aunt has been taking care of him at home. She did it alone until she physically couldn't anymore due to her health. He's a tall man, and it became physically impossible for her to help him up when he would fall. She actually hurt herself trying to. She eventually had full-time caretakers at the house, but now he's unable to swallow properly so he was taken to the hospital where they inserted a feeding tube. Because of that, it was time to put him in a care facility. I hate to call them nursing homes, simply because of the image I get, after visiting a couple of them when my father was sick. Anyway, he's in the best one in the area, and my aunt is now dealing with living on her own for the first time in her life, at 68.

I have a sister living in Colorado that is going to be moving back to California before the snow flies, and my aunt suggested how nice it would be if I were to move to California, and the three of us could hang out together, lol. I told her I'd look into it. I obviously can't make any decisions right now, my lease is up end of November, and I don't think I could realistically get everything done between now and then, even if I did find a job next week. So the fastest would be a year, and that's IF I could find a job and was willing to make the move. The weather is beautiful out there in San Diego. But I'm concerned with the cost of living, and the smog/pollution laws there mean I would have to buy a car in California to make sure it conforms, instead of just taking the car I have. So much to think about. Good thing I'm giving myself lots of time, lol.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Sorry I don't have any pictures, but I've shown you everything that was on my camera. Guess it's time to take more pictures, huh? Hmmmm, now to find something interesting to show you...

Since I hadn't posted in a few days, I thought I'd show you the pictures I took a couple weeks ago of my friend's kids in the pool.

This is Sarah, my friend Pam's youngest. She just turned 6.

Another picture of Sarah.

This is Rachel, my friend Ann's oldest. She's almost 10.

This is Jimmy, Pam's middle child. He's 7.

Here's Evan, Ann's youngest, also 7, and his sister Rachel is behind him.

Evan defending himself from Julia, Pam's oldest. She will turn 12 at the end of December.

Evan and Jimmy trying to play Alligator. A game Ann told them about where one person is the alligator, standing in the middle of the pool, and everyone else has to cross the pool as quietly as they can so the "alligator" won't hear them. And you can't swim underwater. LOL, no one EVER got across.

I'll have to find my pictures from my hot air balloon ride several years ago, so I can scan them and show you what happened, lol. It won't happen tonight, since I'm keeping score for NTT later. But maybe by next weekend.

No picture tonight, so this post will probably be considered boring by some, lol.

The past few days have been tiring. I was bad and stayed up too late Sunday night and Monday night. So last night (Tuesday) I was ready to crash early. Ready but not willing. I think it was about 11pm before I actually turned the light off to go to sleep. Needless to say, my ass has been dragging all week.

Work has been steadily busy for me since the first of July. In June I had hardly anything to do, now I can't seem to get it all done each day. Because I was so slow, new customers with orders were being directed to me in the hope that at some point they'd start shipping and I'd then have something to do. Boy howdy, did that ever happen!

Plus, tomorrow I'm going to go visit one of these new customers, located in Peru, IL. About a 2 hour drive from home. The salesman that I am going with wanted to go down the night before, stay in a hotel, get up in the morning, visite the customer and return to work in the afternoon. I couldn't grasp the concept of driving an hour to work, then towards the end of the day, deal with rush hour traffic to go back the way I came, practically go by my apt, to go down to the hotel in Peru. So he agreed that I would drive down in the morning, while he went down this evening and stayed in a hotel.

On top of all this, is it's end of month, and tomorrow is the last day we can complete July transactions and date them in July. I had to try to get it all done today. Then, my boss decided he wanted to have a meeting at 2pm today about this stupid checklist/form that we will have to start filling out for EVERY ORDER as part of our Japanese Sarbanes-Oxley certification. The meeting lasted 2 hours, which I could have used to get stuff done. Our department is contesting the logic behind this checklist, because of the added time it will require of us. Unfortunately, when this was all discussed, and the areas were decided upon, as to what was going to be put on this checklist, our accounting department didn't talk to our department. They didn't even talk to our international department. They went out to California and talked to the 2 people out there, who handle a miniscule fraction of the orders we do. Are we supposed to pay because they don't follow the rules? Apparently!

Our computer system automatically checks the customer credit line when we enter an order to determine if their credit is good. Now we will also have to check the customer credit before we can invoice. What good will that do, when the mill has ALREADY shipped the material, and in some cases, the customer picked it up themselves? We HAVE to invoice it once it ships. And when we pay the mill for that material, it cross references the individual coil number and our PO number to the mill, along with the mill invoice number. Yet we are still supposed to write the payment voucher number on a line, next to the invoice number for that coil (after we've generated the invoice to the customer). I could go on and on and on with these stupid procedures we're going to have to follow. AND after the 2 hours discussing this? We weren't even DONE! We are having another meeting on Friday morning to talk more about it.

After exiting the meeting at 4pm (the time I would normally leave work), I still had work that I needed to get done since I'm not there tomorrow. Nothing important, just invoicing customers and paying mill invoices. By the time I left it was almost 6pm. Because I'm visiting a customer tomorrow, I'm driving the company car (why the salesman didn't take I have no idea). I left my car in the parking garage at work, and filled out the form so security knows my car will be there tonight and tomorrow night. Nice thing is, the company car is the same as mine, just an upgraded model. So it drives the same and feels the same. I grabbed my IPASS transponder out of my car so I would pay the cheaper toll rates coming home tonight and going to work on Friday. It's easy to just add the company car to my IPASS account for a couple days, then remove it.

I also stopped by the library on my way home. I had reserved Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, and they emailed me to let me know it was ready for pickup. Since I saw the movie on Sunday, I wanted to read the book again so I could see what all they left out. I already know of a few things, but can't wait to read it again to get all the details. At least I have three weeks to read it before it's due back, so I don't have to rush through it like I did with The Deathly Hallows.

Well, I think that's enough rambling for tonight. Keep cool everyone, and pray for the injured people in Minnesota who were on I-35W when the bridge over the Mississippi collapsed.

I've been staying up way too late the last couple of nights, and am exhausted. I'm posting this picture, although it's not very clear, of a shot glass AK sent me. You can't read it, but it says Watkins Glen on it, it's from a National Forest in NY that Terri was at for some reason or another. TY TY TY AK!!!!!