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!!!!!

Here's the new tile on the main floor of my building. I stood with the front door open and took a close up picture to try to give a better idea of what the pattern is. I'm calling it a sort of "sandstone" look.

Here's what the whole floor looks like, and yes it really is about that dark in person. Good thing the side walls stayed white, or it would be REALLY dark in the hall.

Here's a close-up of the new carpeting the put on the stairs and the landings on floors 2 and 3. It has rows of blue and green weaved together, and rows of tan and maroon weaved together. The colors match what they did with the walls, but to me it's just too dark for an aparment building that has one little window by the door on the first floor, and three windows directly above the door that you can't even reach from the landings. I'll try to take a picture of those to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about. And of course, with the tile on the first floor now, every time the door closes it echos in the hall area, which I knew it would do when they decided to put tile in. Even with the carpet on the stairs and landings, it's not enough to absorb the noise from the door closing. Now if they would just add one more light in the parking lot like I mentioned they should do...

I FINISHED HARRY POTTER!!!!! OMG IT WAS SOOOO GOOD! I can't wait for the whole series to be released in September as a complete set. Only $195, all in hardback and they come in a trunk!

Now I can go finish the other book I have that needs to be returned to the library tomorrow, First Into Nagasaki by George Weller.

Supposed to be 83F tomorrow (Tuesday). Guess I should dress for winter again so I don't freeze at work. Been busy messing with winamp the last couple nights. I have pictures to post from this past weekend, hopefully I'll get to them in tomorrow, because in a few more days I will have the new Harry Potter book, and will be on a deadline to get it read and returned to the library.

Have a great day/night/today/tomorrow, whatever it is when you read this.

This is my last racing picture, I promise, lol.

One of the men at Track Time handed me this picture and a marker, so I could have Bill sign it. Just so you know I'm not making him up!

On the way back from my adventure in the car, we went past this sign as we were looking for some Longhorns. I was told that the owner of this property often enforces the sign with a shotgun, lmao. And we didn't see the Longhorns, they weren't out by the road. :-( I did see a few on the drive to Michigan, messed me up good to see Longhorns there. Thought I went the wrong way and was in Texas instead, lmao

Thanks Kerry, for reminding me that I have a program on my computer to edit pictures! Here's the picture of me in the car with Bill Eversole.


And here's a picture of a car that Jamie McMurray drove before he switched race teams.

Yup, that's me! If you aren't familiar with NASCAR or racing, I'm sitting in a former stock car that is now used for driving school and ride-alongs at a place called Track Time. I got the surprise of my life this weekend in Michigan. The friend I was visiting set it up with her step-mom, who knows the guy who runs Track Time, and he used to drive in the ARCA series, which is two levels below the top-tier of the Nextel Cup series.

I'm really disappointed the pictures came out so dark. They looked much better on the camera! I also have one of Bill Eversole, the driver/owner of Track Time, standing next to the car with me in it.

This is a Kasey Kahne car, a display version of the car he drives in the Nextel Cup Series.

This is a Busch Series car (the level between ARCA and Nextel Cup), currently driven by Greg Biffle, but I think this car has the signature of a different driver on it. If you look closely, just above the window opening is a yellow squiggly line. In person, it's actually the driver's signature.

Here's the guys loading up the Kasey Kahne car to take it to an event in Akron, OH. You can't see him that well, but that's Bill Eversole by the drivers side. He even signed a photo for me!

It takes three of them to push it up into the trailer, then they secure it in place with locking cinch straps to keep it from moving forward or backward.

I picked up a brochure, and next time I go to Michigan, I'm going to sign up for the 3 lap ride-along, it's only $99! I would get to sit in a real race car and go around Michigan International Speedway for three laps! OMG, how cool is that???

Just a couple photos that will have to hold you over until next week. I'm heading to Michigan in the morning and won't be back until late afternoon on Monday. These two pictures are looking down from my balcony, at a couple chipmunks that live under the patio below me. The guys above me were eating Ritz crackers, and dropped several down to the ground. The next day, I went outside and saw the chipmunks nibbling on them. So I came back inside, grabbed my camera, and took a couple photos of them, lol. Bet they had full bellies after eating all that!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Not sure if I mentioned it or not, but along with the "fantastic" paint job on the doors and walls, the carpeting is also being replaced. The main floor of each building will be tile, with the stairs, 2nd floor, and 3rd floor remaining carpeted. This picture is of the main floor after the carpeting had been ripped out. The dark part at the bottom is a mat that used to sit just inside the door, for you to stand on when you came in with wet/dirty feet, I guess to protect the carpeting. It also subbed as a door stop when you needed it held open for long periods of time. The tile has now been laid and grouted. Now if we would just have a sunny afternoon, I could take a picture of it. It looks to be more of a "sandstone" pattern, as opposed to my bathroom tile which looks more marble like.

I forgot to post this picture when I mentioned the trip to the Memphis Art Museum. It was about 95F outside, but I wanted to take a moment before going in to get a picture of the outside. I thought it was an interestingly shaped building. Plus there are the three statues on the outside. I'm not sure what they are of, like I said, it was very hot, and we didn't want to stand outside in the sun for very long. Of course, once we were inside, it was quite cold, and I ended up being eager to get back out into the heat. I know, museums need to keep it cool to protect the art. But this was a spur of the moment decision, so I didn't have the opportunity to change into pants and bring a jacket.

Where was I? Ah yes, the excitement of Memphis.

Turns out Saturday was the most interesting day of the weekend, lol. Sunday, Cathy got up early and went into work for a few hours before church to write up all the medical charts she didn't get to on Friday. She wanted to do it before she forgot everything, which I think was a pretty good idea, lol. So I got to sleep in, sort of. I just needed to be ready to go by 9:15, so we could make the 30 minute drive to church in time for 10am service.

She attends a church called Fellowship Memphis, held at a local college. I don't think it's any specific denomination, at least that I could tell. They have a band and some singers up on stage, and that lasts for maybe the first 30 minutes or so. There are three pastors that rotate and take turns with the weekly message. This week, however, they had a guest speaker. He was very good, his message was about "complacency." Part way through, they have everyone say hello and introduce themselves to the people around them. Seated in front of us was a nice looking "young" man (probably mid 20's?) from Little Rock, Arkansas who was a friend of the guest speaker. When I told him I was from Chicago, he started asking me questions about it, lol. He asked me to name one good thing and one bad thing about Chicago. The bad was easy, it was the good thing I had a hard time with, there are so many! LMAO. My answers were...bad was the traffic, good was the food, museums, (didn't want to say nightlife because after all, we WERE in church, lmao). He seemed satisfied with my answers, lol. Then at the end, before we left, as we were shaking hands goodbye, he asked me to name one thing to see in Chicago that most people don't know about. First thing that popped into my mind was a place I didn't even know about until May when Kerry and Michael were here...The Historical Museum of Chicago. I told him it was the perfect place to go to get a complete overview of the entire history of Chicago, and everything that has happened in and influenced the city.

After church it was almost lunchtime, so we stopped at a little deli nearby, bought sandwiches, and headed over to a nearby park to eat outside. The rain had stopped and it hadn't quite gotten super hot yet. Then we headed to borders, just to wander around and look at books. I had no intention of buying any books, and I was successful in walking out without making a purchase. Cathy however, discovered a nice little paperback that she started reading, then decided to buy. It was about Corrie Ten Boom, a young woman who entered the prison camps in Germany to try to help the Jewish prisoners. It sounded like a good book. I tried looking for it at my Borders once I was home, but didn't know exactly where she found it, and after an unsuccesful search in their database, gave up.

The only other thing Cathy thought I might be interested in, was going back downtown so she could show me "mud island." It's an area along the riverfront that have some very nice houses, sort of a private little community, but we were able to drive around in it looking at the houses. We also parked and walked along the river's edge, to a bench that was in the shade so we could sit, relax and just talk for a bit. A very relaxing afternoon.

Another reason to come downtown, was the other bbq restaurant she wanted to take me to was supposed to be downtown. That turned out to be an adventure. Since she's only been in Memphis for about 6 months, Cathy's still learning her way around. She thought she knew what street the restaurant was on, but after driving around for over 30 minutes, she gave up and declared she must not have remembered the address correctly. So we headed to an alternate location, same family chain, further out of the downtown area, more on the way home. Unfortunately, we got the bottom of the barrel ribs, mine didn't have a lot of meat on them, and there was a lot of gristle. But the flavor was good, lol. The restaurant is called Neely's, we went to the first location listed in the link, on Mt. Moriah. We had been driving around trying to find the Jefferson location, and finally gave up.

The interesting part of the story, is that Neely's is owned and run by the nephews of Jim Neely, who owns and runs Jim Neely's Interstate Bar-B-Que. There's a lot of competition in Memphis as to which is better. Cathy has tried both and her opinion is that Neely's has a better tasting sauce, so that's where we went. Too bad I was disappointed with the quality of meat. Would have been interesting to have the two side-by-side and done my own taste test, lol.

After the rib dinner, Cathy and I went back to her place and we very quickly crashed, as it would be an early morning for both of us. She was going to work, and I was packing up and heading home. The drive home was longer than the drive down, I was more tired, for some reason, and had to stop at a rest area just to close my eyes for a few minutes to rest. I also had rain for about an hour as soon as I crossed into Illinois. I was so exhausted when I got home, I had to sit and relax for a bit before I could even think about unpacking, lol.

All in all, a very nice trip! I'm so glad I went. Cathy and I both agreed that 18 years is WAY too long to go between visits. Sorry there aren't more pictures, but there just wasn't anything interesting to take pictures of.

My day is not starting out too good. With the sunshine I sent to Ladystyx, I now get all the rain! We need it, so it's not all bad. But most of the lightning and thunder came when I would have "wanted" to go to bed last night. I decided to stay up for a while, to see if it would eventually let up enough to allow me to fall asleep. Finally, about 1:30AM, the storm let up enough for me to try to get to sleep.

As I was turning out the lights to head to bed, the guys in the building across from me, decided to come out onto their balcony and start talking very loudly, laughing, having a good time. Since my windows were still open, I could hear them very well. I went to bed anyway, hoping I could block them out, or they'd go back inside, and I'd get to sleep quickly. Fortunately, they weren't out that long, and I was able to fall asleep.

It only lasted about 2 hours. They came back onto the balcony about 3:40AM and were talking and laughing so loudly, they woke me up! I was having none of that. In my nighshirt (that went down to my knees) I went out onto my balcony and hollared over at them to please keep it down, people are trying to sleep. At first they were sort of rude, like why should they have to keep it quiet, and who was I to ask them to do it. But my mission was accomplished, they were quiet and I was able to get back to sleep. Until about 6:10AM.

That's when the guy started mowing the grass of the fairway outside my building. With him going back and forth, lengthwise, cutting the whole fairway, there was no way I could block him out on my own. I had to resort to tougher methods. Closing my bedroom window and turning on the fan portion of my a/c would work. Ah, sweet bliss, I was able to fall asleep AGAIN. Until my alarm went off at 9:30 to complete my intended eight hour sleep cycle.

Needless to say I'm not feeling that rested after being woken up from a sound sleep TWICE. I might need a nap before heading out for what I hope will be fireworks tonight.

Happy Independence Day to all my American friends!

Update at 10:08AM. If my alarm hadn't woken me up at 9:30, I'd be up by now anyway, I forgot about the parade that started at 10 today and goes through the neighborhood behind my building. Of course, they are running their sirens to let everyone know what they sound like and to know they are there. It's bad enough here, I can't imagine if it was right outside my house.

Scroll down and read the earlier entries first.

Here's a shot of the sign outside BB King's when we were leaving. Each letter would light up individually, and I learned that I had to wait for it all to be lit before taking the picture, or you wouldn't see a thing, lol. The live band was very good. We stayed for one set, had some chicken fingers, had someone take our picture, I had a shot so I could keep the shotglass, and we made our way back to the car. Getting out of the city was the hard part, lol. The streets are all one way, and with many of them blocked off, you really have to know where you're going to get back to the highways, lol. Eventually we did, and arrived back at Cathy's apartment safe and sound. We both crashed right away, because Cathy was getting up about 6AM to go into work for a couple hours to get charts done, coming back to pick me up to go to church. A full and fun day!

Scroll down and read the earlier entry first, lol.

Here's a shot of Beale Street before it got dark. They barricade it off so no cars can drive down it, so people walk basically wherever they want, lol. Lots of stores and restaurants, but mostly clubs to hear live music. There was a group of gymnasts right outside BB Kings, who had a large group of onlookers cirlcing them. As we walked up Beale Street, there was a four-man group on the sidewalk playing, and just as we stopped to listen, they started up with Sweet Home Chicago. Of COURSE I had to tip them and tell them I was from Chicago, lol.

The continuing adventures of Denise...

Saturday morning dawned early for both myself and Cathy. She had a hair appointment, and I learned that I was in for a day at a spa. Cathy felt bad about abandoning me for her weekly hair appointment, so she wanted me to be treated and pampered Saturday morning.

She dropped me off at the spa for a full-body massage, a vichy shower, a facial and a manicure. For those not familiar with a vichy shower, click the link for a picture. You lay on a bed with a pad, they rub a sea-salt and oil mixture all over your body then rinse you off. A true vichy shower has the top thing with the shower heads spray the water all over you. But since I can't lay on my stomach, she used the hand sprayer to rinse me off. Your skin feels so soft and smooth when you're done. And after the full body massage, I was RE-LAXED!

Then it was time for the facial. All sorts of stuff massaged into my face, wiped off, a hot towel over my eyes, a hot steam to clean out my nasal passages, I think I could have fallen asleep in there given a few more minutes, lol.

I then got dressed, went downstairs and had my manicure done. I asked the girl to suprise me, I didn't want to pick the same old neutral color I would always look for. What did she pick? A very very pale pink, very neutral color, lmao. I think she hadn't been doing it long. I had some really nice nails and she trimmed them all down so they didn't even reach my finger tips. And I don't like my nails squared off the way she did it. But oh well, they'll grow back, lol.

About the time I was finishing the manicure, Cathy showed up with her hair done for the week, and we went to eat some RIBS! We went to a place called Corky's for some dry rub bbq ribs. OMG were they GOOD!!! I've never had the dry rub before, and it was so tasty, and you don't have as much as a mess like with the wet ribs. You still have messy fingers, just not so bad. We each got a 1/2 slab, with beans and cole slaw, and neither one of us could finish it all.

Afterwards, we went to a local art museum, where we saw some very interesting art pieces that really grabbed our attention. Before going downtown for the night, we went back to Cathy's to change into long pants and rest for a bit. I napped on the couch for maybe an hour, changed into slacks, and we headed to Beale Street for some blues!