Hump day is almost over. And what a quick day it was! I got to work about 8am, left at 9:45 to go to lunch with a customer, got back to the office about 1:45, and was heading home at 4pm. And I was able to get pretty much most everything done that I needed to!

My plan this morning was to leave between 9:15 and 9:30. The customer is just over an hour away, and I wanted to allow for enough time just in case. We have two company vehicles. One, the van, was being used today by a salesman in town. The other one, a Mitsubishi Galant, has been in use by a new employee from Japan. He couldn't purchase a car until he was able to get a US drivers license, so for the last two months, he's been driving the company car. Anyway, I found out from other people that he was getting his own car last night, and would be turning in the company car this morning. So I waited this morning, patiently, for him to come in to the office. At about 9:10, I go down where the logbook is kept for scheduling the car, and where the keys are kept, and no keys. I go ask him if he is using the car. He says he is turning it in today, and asks if I need it. I say yes. He asks when, I say now! lol. One of the requirements of using the car, is you can't return it without gas. It apparently was at half a tank, and he thought he'd be nice and go fill it up for me. It's now 9:20. He says, "I'll be back in 10 minutes." I say ok, I will wait. Patiently I wait at my desk. 10 minutes pass...15 minutes pass...20 minutes pass...I'm starting to think I should just take my own damn car and worry about reimbursement for the miles later. Keep in mind, the gas station is less than a block away! Another five minutes pass, and finally he walks in with the keys. I stand up, expecting him to walk towards me to hand me the keys. No, he wants to go talk to our HR person, I guess to let her know he was turning the car in and that I was using it. After another minute that seems like five, he finally brings me the keys, and I'm out the door like I'm being chased by bees. Oh yeah, he also had to explain to me, in detail, where the car was located in the parking garage.

I go out to the car, climb in, adjust the seat, adjust the mirrors, pull out, and get on my way. I needed an hour 15 minutes to get there. And I turned on the wrong street. I couldn't remember if it was the first light or the second light. So as I'm sitting at the light waiting to turn left, I'm calling a co-worker to get the salesman's cell phone number so I can call him and find out where to turn. As I tell her where I am, she says, "Doug said to turn at the Culver's." Hooray, I was only a block away. The light changes and I head to the correct street where the customer is located. We talk in his office for a few minutes, then head to lunch. I had the most delicious pulled-pork sandwich. We were there about an hour or so, we go back to the customer's office, and off I head back to work, while the saleman goes to another customer for the afternoon. 4pm never came so fast, lol.

So I got home this evening, I finished cleaning the bathroom floor, cleaned the toilet, and discovered I need to have maintenance come fix it. I'll talk to them tomorrow when I drop off my rent, they should come on Friday when I'm home from work doing other stuff. I noticed that most of the seal around the base of the toilet is gone, and will ask them to caulk that, hopefully that will help curb my ant problem next spring. I will also, hopefully, have them fix or replace the blinds in my bedroom. The pole that you twist to open and close them broke, and I've just kept them closed all summer, no need to open them when the room will stay cooler with them closed. Now that I will want to start having sunlight in to warm the room, I need them to open, lol. Oh yeah, will also ask if they can pull the dryer out so the air vent going outside can be re-attached. It's on the floor behind the dryer, and it's letting the warm air out and lint is collecting on the wall and the shelf above it, lol. Once they fix all that, I'll talk to them about renewing my lease. I got a note from them today, asking me to stop by before September 15th, to sign a new lease, since my current one will expire on November 30. And I have no problem signing it this early, unless I get let go from my job right afterwards, lol. That happened to me in 2003.

Ok, enough of this rambling, I still have to go watch DooL, and get to bed, I've been staying up WAY too late all week, and it's getting hard to get up in the mornings, lol.

Oh, Lainie? You were in one of my dreams last night. I can't remember now what it was about, but you were in it, that much I remember, lmao.

Wow, where to start! It seems like forever since I posted last. Oh wait! It HAS been forever, lol.

As some of you know, I am having visitors this weekend. My bestest friend (and her husband) is coming to visit me! I am SO excited!!! We have Saturday and Sunday to go...go...go! Saturday morning, bright and early, I'm going to pick up her up and we are headed downtown for some SHOPPING! I'm taking her to Marshall Fields (it's SO Chicago), and Tower Records (she insists on buying a TON of music while she's here), and for lunch I'm thinking Ed Debevick's. While we do that, her husband is going to go see a Chicago Cubs baseball game. Even if they lose, I still think it's a great opportunity for him to visit Wrigley Field. There's no other baseball field like it, with the Ivy, and the bricks, and the bleachers, and the rooftop fans.

After all that exhausting shopping, we're coming back out here to rest for a bit, and hopefully meet up with her husband in the late afternoon, but unless he leaves the game early, we'll probably miss him. And he might just go from the game straight downtown to do some sightseeing...Sears Tower, Buckingham Fountain, Navy Pier, etc. After our rest, my friend and I are going to see Kenny Chesney in concert! *jumps up and down* What are the odds that he's in town for a concert the SAME weekend she's coming into town, and there were actually tickets available????? It's fate I tell ya! His opening acts are Carrie Underwood and Dierks Bentley. I've heard Dierks does a really great job, as does Kenny.

By the time we get back to her hotel after that, we should be REALLY exhausted, and I'm going to drag them out of bed early the next morning so we can go up to Wisconsin, about 2 hours away, and go to The House On The Rock. It's like a museum, but it's in this HUGE house, and it's this amazing collection of things you wouldn't believe were collected, including the worlds largest carousel. It's truly a once in a lifetime experience. We should be done early afternoon, will head back down to the Chicago area to eat at Fogo de Chao. It's a Brazilian Steakhouse, and my friend's husband says the food is to die for! I'll have to bust open my piggy bank to eat dinner, lmao.

After all that, after dinner, we're going to drive a few hours to go visit another friend who lives in the general sort of vicinity of me, lol. It's been a few years since they've seen each other, so it will be a nice visit. We're all going to collapse in bed that night, and whenever my friend drags her ass out of bed the next morning (will probably be 4am, lmao) they'll start their trek home.

In the meantime, I've started some cleaning, want the place to look nice when they see my apartment. It certainly won't be perfect, but I'm trying to get a few things done that needed to be done before. Like my bathroom floor. No matter how much I mopped it, vacuumed it, mopped it, scrubbed it, it just wouldn't look clean. It will be now! I realized that the only thing that would get it clean would be a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser! Boy howdy is it clean now! The only hard part is being down on my hands and knees to scrub, lol...even with a cushion to kneel on. I did a third last night, a third tonight, and the other third tomorrow night. And when I was at Target tonight, I wanted to get some heavy duty Magic Erasers, and I FORGOT! I knew there was something not on my list that I wanted but I couldn't remember. Once I got home, I remembered, of course!

Speaking of Target...I bought more cd's (said in a sing song voice, lmao). I got the one last Kenny Chesney cd that we (Kerry and I) were missing for our collection. Now we have every cd he's released, lmao! I got the new cd by Crossfade, and alternative rock band. And, I got a cd of the soundtrack to a movie called Broken Bridges. It's a CMT Films and Paramount Home Entertainment Picture. I'm assuming it will be coming to theatres soon. Anyway, Toby Keith is on the cover, and he does almost half the songs on the soundtrack! He's in the movie too! I don't know what the movie is about, but with Toby singing the songs, the music at least should be good.

Tomorrow at work, I'm going to lunch with one of our salesman and a customer. So I get to leave the office about 9:30, and I won't be back till about 2pm, lol. Makes a nice short day in the office. Good thing I'm not swamped with work right now. And I took Friday off so I can be all set when my friend and her husband arrive after dinner, barring any unforeseen delays at the Canada border, lmao. Since it's only going to be 73F tomorrow, I don't want to wear a summer outfit and freeze all day, so I have to go decide what to wear tomorrow! It's hump day!

Yesterday I went to see the movie World Trade Center. I cried through at least half of it, and I forgot tissues. It wasn't a movie so much about the buildings and what happened on September 11, 2001; it was more about two Port Authority Police Officers that were trapped when the buildings collapsed. A very emotional movie! Since I knew I was going to see it on Sunday, Saturday night I watched United Flight 93 on A&E. I would like to think that I would have shown just some of the bravery those men and women had in trying to take the plane back before it hit another building.

On a lighter note, I've been having some strange things going on at work that I wish I could attribute to a full moon. Alas, that is not to be; the moon was full about two weeks ago. First, let me give a brief explanation about what I do and where I work.

I work at a steel trading company. We buy steel coils. Think about a roll of toilet paper, and we buy those in steel, about 4-6 feet (1-2 meters) wide. They weigh anywhere from 10,000 lbs to 45,000 lbs each. We have customers located all over the east coast, south and midwest of the U.S., and my department purchases steel from mills located in the midwest, west coast, and east coast of the U.S. My particular story has to do with a steel mill located in West Virginia (in the tiny narrow point that is smushed between Ohio and Pennsylvania) and a customer located in Alabama. There are three ways for us to ship these steel coils from WV to AL. We can load them on trucks, we can put them on railcars, or we can put them on barges and they would go down the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers to a barge terminal in AL where it would be unloaded. As for cost, trucking the material is currently the most expensive method, then rail, then barge. So to save the customer some money due to high steel costs, we agreed to barge several of his orders down there. Now, the other thing you have to understand is that these orders total several hundred thousand pounds.

We had some of the material ready for a barge that left the mill the end of July. On that barge we loaded about 827,000 pounds of steel coils (I'm not even going to TRY to convert for ya Kerry, lmao). While on the Tennessee River, after entering Alabama, the barge has to go through a series of locks. I'm sure this is due to different water levels in that area of the river. Apparently, sometime before our barge was to enter the locks, another barge hit one of the doors to the locks, and jammed it. Because of this, the door couldn't open and close normally, so they had to bring the barges in to the locks one at a time instead of several at once. They may have also wanted to get them fixed. All I really know for sure is that our barge would be delayed by at least another 4-7 days, on top of the approximately 2 weeks it had already been on the water.

Another mill, which had originally contracted for the barge, and who also had material on the barge, needed their material delivered or a customer would be shut down. So, unbeknownst to us, they diverted the barge over to the Yellow Creek Port Authority in Iuka, Mississippi, about 65 miles further away than the original destination. We did not find out about this until after the barge was completely unloaded, not that we would have had any say in the matter, but we could have started discussions about costs with the necessary parties. So now, we've been scrambling to figure out who will pay the extra costs for our customer to truck freight the coils 65 miles instead of 20 miles, plus storage costs since the coils were unloaded without telling us. Storage costs are $.90 per ton for a minimum of 30 days, so for 413.6 tons that $372 or so. Not a lot, but it's extra cost our customer shouldn't have to pay. Then there's the freight costs. That's a difference of about $12.60 per ton, or just over $5000. That's a chunk of change!

Here's a picture of a barge being unloaded, that's what our coils sorta look like, except ours are not rusty, they are wrapped in paper, and the barge is covered. But it at least gives you an idea of what I'm talking about.

Fast-forward to today. I get an email from the same mill that produced the material that was on the barge. They had 40 more coils, totaling about a million pounds, that were supposed to go on another barge down to THE SAME CUSTOMER. Any guesses on what happened? You'll never get it, lol. The mill loads the coils into rail cars to go up to the other mill that contracted the barge (and where they buy the bare coils that they coat), but instead of the coils being unloaded off the rail cars and loaded onto the barge, they continue on their merry way down to Alabama! That million pounds of steel, would have cost about $15,700 total in freight to go down by barge. By rail it's almost double that, $26,000. I'm told that to bring the railcars back to the mill and wait to go on another barge would be difficult, because they don't know for sure if or when the next barge will be going down to Alabama. My first question was, what freight are we being charged? The answer: the barge rate. Whew! So our only solution is to let the rail cars continue on their merry way down to Alabama, we'll alert the customer that he'll be receiving A LOT of railcars in a week or two, but that he's paying the cheaper barge rate, lol.

All this while we're trying to renegotiate the new contract with that customer, lmao.

Ok, I tried posting a picture here at the end of my long-winded tale. I wanted it at the end, not the beginning. Well, I didn't think it worked the first time, so I did it a second time. Then I had two pictures at the top of the same thing. I tried to cut and paste, but it didn't work. So I deleted the two pictures, saved my post, went to help to see what it said about placement of pictures within your text (first vs last...not just centered, left or right). It didn't help, so I figured I'd come back, put the picture in again, and try moving the text around instead. Well I tried that three times, now I can't get the darn picture to post at all, lmao! Ok, while I still had this open, I went and deleted all my cookies and temp internet files, and now the picture shows up! *rolls eyes* Let me try this. I think it worked!

Ok, here's my story about my car and tires. It's not much of a story, might leave you kind of flat when it's done, but here goes:

Monday morning I was driving to work. I sort of sensed that something was not quite right, as most drivers do when they are in their cars a lot. You just know when it's not handling right. So I was thinking to myself, I should really check my tires when I get home tonight to make sure one isn't low on pressure. (Can ya see where I'm headed with this?)

After work, I walk out to my car, climb in, and begin my drive home. Once again, I notice that something just isn't right with the car, it feels weird when I go over a bump. Still thinking I have a low tire pressure somewhere, I figure I'll look when I get home and if I need air in the tires, I'll run over to the gas station and fill it.

I'm about two blocks from my apartment, and as I'm slowing down to stop at an intersection, I hear "thump thump thump." Uh oh, that don't sound good! It was coming from the back of my car, but my car wasn't handling badly, so I still wasn't sure what was going on. But I figured it just HAD to be a tire problem. So with the noise continuing, "thump thump thump" I nursed my car at 5mph for the two blocks to my parking lot.

I pulled in very very slowly, got out, sure enough my right rear tire was flat as a pancake. I mean, there was NO air left in it at all. Who knows how long I was driving on it like that! So dejected and disgusted, I get my mail and go inside. Obviously, I needed to do something about it that night, since I had to go to work the next day, and I had very few options without my car. I called my aunt to moan to her about my bad luck, she offered to call her son who works sort of nearby and drives almost right by my place to go home. He could stop and put the spare on so I could go either fix the tire or get a new one.

While I waited for Michael to come, I went outside, got the spare out, got the jack out, got the directions out (women are good with directions). I jacked the car up, it's actually quite easy, and had it all ready for Michael to change tires when he got there. At 6pm, he finally shows up. Traffic was lousy, and I certainly understand what he was saying. He's there no more than 15 minutes, he has the tire off, the spare on, the lugnuts tightened, car unjacked (is that a word?) and tightens the lugnuts once more.

He goes on his merry way, and I head to the tire store. Since my car is only a year old, and I bought it new, I called them right away too, after getting off the phone with my aunt. The referred me to a place called Just Tires. Now, I was there once before a few years ago, when I had a previous flat, and I wasn't too impressed with the place. All they do is tires, but they didn't have any good tire brands for my car (when I was there before). I ended up going to NTB (National Tire & Battery). But the dealer said they refer all their customers to Just Tires, so I figure they'll have a matching tire for my other three in stock. I arrive, go inside tell the guy what happened, he goes outside, looks at the flat tire, gets the specifics on my tires, comes back in, and proceeds to tell me the sidewall is damaged, the chords are showing, so I have to buy a new tire.

I'm cool with that. New tire is better than a plugged tire anyday. He checks his inventory, no tire to match mine. He could offer me a tire by a different mfr. but then I'd have a mismatched tire. Ain't no way in hell I'm gonna do that! He then offers to check other Just Tires locations to see if another local store has that tire. He tries one, he tries two, he tries one that's not local...nope, nothing, nada, zip, no one has this tire! It's a freaking Goodyear Eagle! How hard can it be to stock a Goodyear tire? He says it will be Thursday before he can get one in. Like I can wait that long? My only other choice is to see if another tire place has my tire in stock. So he writes down the info on my tire, and away I go, once again disappointed with my experience at Just Tires.

Now, this location of Just Tires, is on the outside of a mall. Not even half way around the mall is the NTB I mentioned above. So I drive my car over to NTB, go in ask about my tire, he looks and says, "Yes, I have one in stock." Be still my heart! It will be 45 minutes, they're busy with some other orders at the time (it's now 7pm), and they close at 8. Boy did I get there just in time! Instead of sitting there for 45 minutes bored to tears, I wander over to the mall and walk around half of the main floor, window shopping. And btw Kerry, what I didn't tell you was that I went into The Build-A-Bear Workshop! It's right next to the Disney Store. They have a lot of cute bears and other animals that you can build. I bet kids LOVE that place! Anyway, about 7:35 or so I start heading back over to NTB. There are a couple people being helped, so I wait for them to finish, then the man behind the counter says they're just starting to work on my car (it's now 7:50).

My car finally is finished about 8:10pm, and $219 later (Ugh) I head home with one new tire, and three one year old tires, that all match! I put everything back where it belongs in my trunk, come inside, sit down at the computer and tell Kerry what happened. My credit card bill did NOT like the new addition, but what can you do? I kind of needed four tires on my car, right? I still hadn't even eaten any dinner, and fortunately I had enough for lunch to tide me over. I think I ended up eating a slice of canteloupe before I went to bed.

Anyway, that was my tire story. Glad you waited? Glad I told you? LMAO

Awww heck, it's too late to post what I wanted to post. Don't let me forget I have to tell you all about my adventure on Monday with my car and one of it's tires.

This is my great-nephew Sam. The picture was taken last summer when I was visiting over the Independence Day holiday. He was just over a year old then. I really miss him, and his big sister, and his mommy and daddy. Maybe I'll get back out to Colorado this fall.

This is, I believe, a young Cooper's Hawk, that was being treated in the veterinary care area at The Raptor Center. Since I can't see the legs, I had to guess based on the other markings and coloring. Either way, it's beautiful!

Here is a beautiful female bald eagle I saw when I visited The Raptor Center the day before the wedding. I never knew it, but female bald eagles are larger than the males! My tour guide, Sharon, gave me the best tour ever! She even opened up LOCKED cage doors so I could get clear pictures of the magnificent raptors.

This is the bride, Jacki, and her new husband, Zack, dancing the first dance at the reception. They were flying to Mexico two days later for their honeymoon. I hope they got back before the terror alert.

This is my first picture ever posted in my blog! It's my 2nd cousin and her dad dancing at the reception. I chose this pictures first, because it gives you the best view of her dress. It was hard to get good pictures at the reception, because there were about 200 people all crammed into this little room. There was barely room to move between tables. I'll slowly post other pictures from my weekend in Minnesota. There are some pictures still in my camera, and I need to use up the film so I can get them developed. I just haven't figured out what to take pictures of, lol.

I'm not competing with Ladystyx for who writes a longer blog, I'm not I'm not I'm not! LMAO

I don't normally post on the weekends, mostly because my weekends are so boring. But tonight I had the most interesting experience. And those of you that read this will all understand (AK you heard this yourself, so you already know what I'm talking about.)

After NTT was done at the chat site I stream at, another streamer volunteered to take over (and no it wasn't me.) Without naming names, this is a relatively new streamer to this site, and I'm not sure how much streaming he's done at other sites. I had never heard him stream before, but had heard good things about him, so thought I'd tune in and hear for myself. To back up a minute, during NTT, the host was getting some encouragement from the room to sing. After singing along with a couple songs, basically soft enough that we couldn't hear him very well anyway, I determined that I still didn't know whether he was a good singer or not. So now it's after NTT, and we have this other streamer going, and he decides that he too will share his singing abilities with the listeners. After all, he boasts, he did karaoke for 8 yrs. Correct me if I'm wrong AK, but he was flat out awful. I actually tortured myself by listening to him sing 4 songs. Then before my brain completely oozed out through my ears, I turned the stream off.

He was also singing along to the songs, but he was either very, very off key, or he was trying to harmonize and failing. I'm not one to normally make fun of streamers, I know how hard and nerve-wracking it can be, and it's not polite, but this was really bad. Most people that I've heard sing along, like Kerry, sing in tune, and you enjoying hearing them. Not this guy. Even the site owner agreed with me that he was bad. Of course neither of us said a WORD to him. And to top it all off, when he was singing, he was not enunciating very well, so the words were slurred and very hard to understand. It sort of ruined the rest of my evening in chat, when I didn't listen to the current streamer. So after listening to my own music for awhile, and reading some emails and blogs, I'm here posting this before heading off to read for a bit before sleeping.

Has anyone else had a situation like this? If so, what, if anything, was done about it?

I'm finally home from my vacation! I got home Tuesday night about 7pm. It took me an hour to delete all my spam emails, and sort through all the valid ones and read some of them. Yesterday I was busier than heck at work. I only had one day to get all my July stuff done. Fortunately, my boss was helping me out, and I was able to get everything done, but just barely. Today was more normal, not as busy, and I easily got everything done. I even had time around lunch to talk to Kerry, who needed a good ear, and I got caught up on making file folders for orders that I entered right before my vacation.

The wedding was beautiful! I didn't have the best seat in the house. I was in the third row, waaaaayyyyyy over on the left side, so some of my view was blocked by her five bridesmaids/maid-of-honor. But it was a beautiful ceremony, and thankfully only about 30 minutes long. Minnesota was just as hot and humid, if not more so, than here in Chicago. I think Sunday it got up to 99.5F, before the heat index.

I'm really glad I went, I got to visit with my cousins for a bit, and I now have a new and happy memory for July 29. You see, it's the date my mother died, and I was feeling a little melancholy about it all day. I didn't want to mention it to anyone, especially my aunt, since it was a special day to them. But at the reception, my persistant cousin and mother of the bride, got me to tell her why I wasn't up dancing and having a good time. She is the one that pointed out that now I have a new, happy memory for that day, gave me a big hug, and moved onto another table, lol.

One reason I love visiting my aunt and uncle is that my aunt loves to talk, and she loves to tell stories about family history. She took courses on geneaology, and did a complete family history, discovering that we are related to William the Conqueror. She put together a whole three-ring binder, which I have somewhere in my apartment. She also has been working on typing up family history, regarding more informal references regarding who was married to whom, and who raised other people's kids, which parents died in car crashes, etc. Stories that if aren't put in writing will be lost forever. I will get a copy of it once she's done typing it all up. And she still types on her electric typewriter. My aunt will be 79 in December, and still gets around quite well.

My uncle suffers from alzheimers, as I mentioned in a previous post. I was able to notice the progression while I was there. He is very quiet, even more so than he was before. He doesn't do much, he reads the paper each morning, and then he basically sits in his chair or on the couch much of the day doing not much. He sort of follows my aunt around like a lost puppy. One day while I was there, he and I were sitting in the living room quietly, my aunt was downstairs taking laundry out of the dryer, and after being gone only a few minutes, my uncle got up and went downstairs to see what she was doing; as if he knew she was downstairs, but didn't remember why.

They have their three meals each day at pretty regular times. My aunt makes quilts in the winter, she has a book club at church that she participates in monthly, and she works to keep the garden watered and weeded (sort of). She's not the best housekeeper, but who would be at 78? She had someone coming every other week to clean, but I think there were problems with her reliability, so that arrangement ended. My second oldest cousin, Don, is the most attentive of the four children. He stops by a couple times a week, and calls her almost every day (and he lives the furthest away.) He was the one that convinced my aunt to get a new stove top when one of them wasn't working anymore, and since they don't make stovetops that size anymore, she needed new countertops, and since they'd have to pull out the sink to put the countertops in, they might as well replace the sink she never liked in the first place. Don was also able to finally convince my aunt to replace her old worn out couch and loveseat, and the new ones are very nice. They are a dark green with these flower sort of patterns on them. Now if he could just convince her to get rid of the shag carpeting, lmao.

I was able to take pictures at the reception, which I'll post once I receive them back from Target next week. I also took pictures at The Raptor Center, on Friday July 28. My tour was guided by Sharon, who is an avid birdwatcher. (Scroll down at her blog, there's a picture of me holding a dried bird head.) I am a faithful reader of her blog, and was anxious to see some of the birds up close that she mentions frequently. I received the special treatment while there. I received a tour unlike most other tours. Sharon took my down to the veterinary area, where they were working on a rough-necked hawk, and a couple of cooper's hawks. I was able to take pictures which I'll post next week also. Then I went outside to the cages where the education birds are kept. I saw bald eagles, golden eagles, hawks, owls...plus a couple others I can't remember. I should have taken notes of what I was seeing, or taken pictures of the little signs on the outside of the cages identifying the birds. Of course, that was all hindsight! And since The Raptor Center, which is part of the University of Minnesota relies on donations from visitors, and the volunteers who work so hard, they request a donation. I was happy to oblige, and after the tour I received, I willingly doubled my intended donation! Sharon was a great guide, and is SO knowledgeable about all the birds of prey at the raptor center.

Wow, I don't blog in a week, and look how I've gone on and on! And now it's past my bedtime! I better hurry to bed or I might turn into a pumpkin.