What a night for television!

American Idol from 7pm-8:30pm, Supernatural from 8pm-9pm, and The Amazing Race from 8pm-10pm. Impossible to watch all of them at once!

First with American Idol...tonight was the top 10 girls performing. I have a couple favorites so far, and there were a couple that I think have some potential, but picked some songs that didn't impress me. It's amazing how one week the judges will say "We want to see more of you", then the next week when you do a song to show your personality, they say "You looked like you were having fun, but your song selection wasn't good." Sometimes you just can't win, lol. Tomorrow night is the guys turn, another 90 minute show, 2 of each to be eliminated on the Thursday results show.

Moving to The Amazing Race, in case Kerry hasn't seen the second half of it yet, I won't give anything away. Let's just say the team I was HOPING and WISHING would be eliminated wasn't. Some teams had some real struggles, with the language, with directions, even with just getting along with each other. I'm amazed with all the time they were in Sao Paolo, Brazil, going all over town in several taxis, most of the teams were trying to communicate in Spanish. Only a couple of the teams knew or figured out that Portuguese is the language of Brazil, not Spanish. And none of the taxi drivers or people they met corrected them. I know they didn't know where they were going ahead of time, but I would find someway to include a book (there has to be one somewhere) that lists the languages of every country, since they knew they would be going all over the world this time, not just in North America.

Lastly, Supernatural...which I haven't watched. I had to tape that, because obviously I couldn't watch that while I was watching two other shows at the same time, lol. I watch Supernatural because I think it's very fascinating, and it doesn't hurt that one of the lead characters is a real hottie!! Click for Jensen's website.

Anyway, off to bed. Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite!

I'm BAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!!!!

The Olympics are finally over! WTG to all the countries who participated, except maybe Austria, because of the doping problems. Now my life can get back to some normalcy, relatively speaking. I enjoyed watching the olympics, but it was hard staying up till 10:30 or 11pm every night. And the commercial breaks were so short, I didn't have enough time to run to the computer to try to write something up. So I said to heck with it, and waited till they were done and I can post when I want, and go to bed at a decent time, lol

My big news that I might be mentioning again in the future is that I joined a dating service called The Right One. I decided that I wasn't going to find anyone sitting on my ass at home, and all my friends are married, and where am I going to go to find someone worth meeting? Today in the mail, I received the first of 6 "matches" they will make for me. I should hear from him in the next couple of days. Wish me luck, if nothing else, I should meet some very nice men.

On another positive note, last week we received our performance reviews at work. I got a 5% raise retroactive to Jan 1, plus a FANTASTIC bonus! This will pay for my enrollment in the dating service, so it all worked out perfectly! And I might have some extra left over to pay off my remaining Christmas bills, lol

Kerry and I have gone nuts with the music! So many cd's we're sending back and forth to complete our collections. And so many cd's yet for us to look for at the stores. This will keep us out of trouble for quite awhile (and out of cash, lmao).

Just wanted to let everyone know that I plan on a return to blogging as soon as the Olympics are over. Since they are on from 7pm-10:30pm, and I go right to bed after, I don't have any time left to post here. I'll be back soon!

Ugly Ugly Monday Today


Ugh! Today's a nice day to stay in bed! I didn't post last night because I ended up watching something on tv that I hadn't planned on watching. My "plan" was to watch Cold Case at 7pm, then catch the rerun of Supernatural at 8pm. That would leave me with an hour to do whatever (read, blog, etc) until 10pm when I would go to bed.

The best laid plans...Cold Case started late because golf ran late during the afternoon. So when I went to switch over to Supernatural, I would miss the last 15 minutes or so. Well! The WB decided NOT to air Supernatural, instead they aired Charmed, which I'm just as happy watching, but not what I WANTED to watch. I switched back to watch the end of Cold Case and decided to watch the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie on CBS, The Water Is Wide. It was a very good movie about a teacher on an island off the coast of South Carolina. By the time that was done, it was 10:15. So much for free time, lol

I then read for a bit and went to bed. Traffic was a b*tch this morning, took me an hour and 15 minutes, and most of that was spent sitting in stop and go heavy delays on one road that has been "wide open" for weeks. There were no accidents to report, absolutely no reason why traffic was so backed up. I think I'll go send a nasty message to the Governor and to ITA (Illinois Tollway Authority) to let them know how well "Open Road Tolling" is working.

It's Friday! It's Friday! Friday Friday Friday!!!


Can you tell I'm happy?? It's finally Friday, and I finally got my cable back last night! I was SO happy! I watched CSI, then a very interesting documentary about North Korea.

Tonight I'm going out to dinner and a movie with a girlfriend! We're going to see Glory Road, definitely NOT a chick flick, but it's one we both want to see and have no one to go with, except each other. Should be a fun night!

Wednesday is over, the weekend's almost here!


This will be short since I'm posting from work. I had a dentist appt last night, went very well. No Cavaties! Got there early and chatted with the receptionist, a very nice lady. I was planning on hanging out at the local Hallmark store to pass the time, but when I got there I found out it was GONE! I haven't been there in quite a few months, but it was disappointing to see it gone. I know the owner by name, and I remember when he opened it back in maybe 1996/97? The lady at the dentist's office thinks some of the Hallmark stores are closing because more and more people are buying their cards from Target/Wal Mart or when they are at their local grocery store. They all carry cards of every kind, so it's more convenient than running out separately to a Hallmark store. Still sad to see the business leave Warrenville. I think that was the only Hallmark store in town.

So I got home and my cable was STILL out. No DooL to watch, no AI, nuttin. So I caught up on my emails, played more Chicken Invaders on the computer (lol), then watched Notting Hill again! I LOVE that movie.

No Cable In My Entire Complex


Wow, is it only Tuesday? Today went by very quickly, was very busy at work today, trying to get everything done that I didn't get done yesterday. I succeeded! On the way home I was going to stop at Target and do some shopping, but I changed my mind. I decided to do it tomorrow night after my dentist appt. Just a cleaning, so I'll be out of there in 20 minutes.

Got home, with the plan of watching American Idol. Lo and behold, no cable. I put in the tape that was supposed to have taped Days of Our Lives this afternoon from 1-2pm, and nothing but snow. So my cable has been out since before 1pm. As of right now, it's still out. I called the cable company, but they were already aware of the outage and supposedly are working on it. They said it's out in Country Lakes (me) and Greens of Naperville (some buildings that were G of N, but are now part of Country Lakes). So apparently, something major must have happened. Someone must have cut a cable when they were digging, or something. Otherwise, why would half the street be out?

So with no tv to watch tonight, I played on the computer for a bit. I've gotten hooked on a game you can play online through MSN, probably Yahoo too. It's called Chicken Invaders. It's a variation of the old Space Invaders, but instead of invading ships, there are invading chickens that you have to shoot. They fly down, they parachute down, they come down as hatching eggs, it's quite entertaining, lmao. After playing that for about an hour, I decided to watch a movie until bedtime.

Over the weekend, a couple of cable channels were playing some Julia Roberts movies, TBS was showing Erin Brockovich, and another channel was showing Pretty Woman. Well that got me in the mood to see another Julia Roberts movie, one of my absolute favorites of all time, Notting Hill. So I took the opportunity to watch it tonight. Every time I watch it, I get teary eyed, my heart breaks every time they say goodbye, even though I know they'll be together at the end. I loved it so much, I wanted to watch it again as soon as it was over. My favorite line from the movie is: I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love me.

That makes my heart break every time I hear it. It is so romantic! I'm still waiting for someone to say something like that to me. One day, maybe...

Daily Extended Horoscope (Taurus):

For the next few days, it's going to be all about relationships for you, kid. Other than feeding yourself and your critters, you'll forget about work, play, cleaning the house, and just about anything else. If you're already attached, the object of your affection -- well, let's just say they'll finally understand just how lucky they really are. If you're not, it's definitely time to resume the hunt, in earnest, for the Right One. The universe has equipped you with everything you need. Get busy.


Guess it's time for me to start looking for Mr. Right, huh?

What a Day!

I went to bed last night with a headache, woke up this morning...STILL had the headache. Took a couple Advil, went back to sleep for 30 minutes, it was still there, dozed for another hour, by then it was gone, but I was so late for work at that point, I actually thought about just calling in sick. But did I??? NOOOOOOOOO

I almost wish I had. Today was a day from hell. I was at work for 7 hours, and felt like I got nothing done all day. I mostly dealt with piddly little shit stuff, that makes you feel like you haven't done anything important. So the things I'm normally done with by 11am, never got done today. Maybe tomorrow. And hopefully I'll be able to get up on time tomorrow, lol

Watched a bit of the news tonight, supposedly today is the first day of the year our average high temp will start increasing. Meaning, between now and sometime in July, our average high will slowly get warmer and warmer, then after that July date (I can't remember what the date is), it will start decreasing and slowly start cooling off. So in my mind, spring is right around the corner. Makes sense to me!

It's Almost Friday!


Today was beautiful, mostly sunny, upper 40's, very nice weather for January. After such a cold start to winter at the beginning of December, the last month has been unseasonably warm. Wonder what that means for Spring and Summer???

I stopped on the way home to fill my car with gas, which I do about every 5 days. Gas is costing about $2.28 per gallon here. I think that's about $0.60 per litre. Kerry check my math, lmao (1 gallon is about 3.75 litres?)

I was planning on watching a rerun episode, that I had not seen, of CSI:NY at 7pm, but instead it was a rerun episode of CSI, which I had seen. So I dozed for about 15 minutes, then read some emails, then watched a new CSI episode at 8pm. ER was a rerun, so I switched over to CNN to watch Anderson Cooper 360. He is in New Orleans, still working to find out why so many people there don't have assistance from FEMA. He spoke to the President of Bernard Parrish, who bought 6500 trailers, at a savings of almost $3000 versus the FEMA trailers. Bernard Parrish doesn't have the money themselves to pay for this, and they figured FEMA would be glad to pay for them, seeing as how they're saving them so much money.

You'd think, huh?? Nope! FEMA is now stating that there are too many roadblocks, red tape, regulations, etc for them to install the trailers. $3000 per trailer savings for 6500 trailers. Do the math! That's over $18 million dollars in savings for FEMA, and they are stonewalling! Meanwhile, the ship that is currently holding several hundred New Orleans residents is set to leave port the end of February. Where are these people supposed to go? Apparently, it will be YEARS before enough trailers could be made to house everyone who needs one. Un-freaking-believeable that in this day and age, with all the technological advances, that we have a government this callous as to leave these people homeless after all these months.

Nothing rhymes with Wednesday


I couldn't think of anything funny or entertaining for this post, so that's all you get. Here's a summary of my day:

Weather: cold but sunny
Work: boring, but I'm almost done making file folders, then I can start the stacks of filing.
TV: Watched the hour of American Idol tonight, from the Mile High city, Denver, Colorado. There was this "guy" who had hair styled like a girl, wore girl clothes, and sang terribly. Of course, there was a lot of build-up to his audition. 37 people made it to Hollywood, more than the 32 from Chicago, which took 2 hours to show, as opposed to one hour for Denver. Somehow, I'm sure that's not fair, lol And because I was watching CSI: NY at 9pm, I missed Fox News at 9, who interviewed the Paris Hilton look-alike from last night, who supposedly has just had a terrible life since being told no by the judges. I was hoping their website might have something about it, but I couldn't find anything.

Tomorrow's Thursday, and the week is almost over! WoooHooo!

American Idol begins Season 5


Two hours of hilarity, stupidity, mixed in with a small amount of talent. That's how I would describe the first night of American Idol Season 5, with audtions being held right here in Chicago. I won't be voting, but I will watch, as interstingly enough, I like to see who makes it through each week, and who gets sent packing.

Brrr, it's cold out. This morning started out in the upper 30's, and the temps dropped all day. We had, supposedly, some rain turning to snow. I don't recal much rain falling, but there were some flurries this afternoon. At least I'm glad I don't live in Toronto, where there was freezing rain icing everything up this afternoon.

Looks to be another boring day at work tomorrow, so I'd best get my beauty sleep. Lord knows I need it!

It Shore Is Monday


This past weekend? Uneventful. I saw the movie Munich. It was very good, but long. Three hours to be exact. Watched football, Da Bears lost, which I kind of figured they would. Pittsburgh won, so that was cool! Hard to believe the football season is almost over. Pretty soon spring training will be starting, and I'll be getting into the baseball spirit, lol.

Another slow day at work today, more of the same. Oh how I wish traffic could everyday be like it was today. There were just enough fewer cars on the road to make my commute very easy. It's very unusual for me to make it home in less than 45 minutes. Tomorrow will be back to normal, I'm sure.

Tonights blog is brought to you by the letters C, S, I, E and R.


Pretty boring day today. Work was slow, made more file folders, I walked to the post office at lunch today. It's about 2-1/2 - 3 city blocks away, but about 6 regular blocks. And I went the long way, on the sidewalk, to the crosswalk at the intersection then down, instead of cutting through the parking garage and jaywalking across in front of the Starbucks like everyone usually does. I got these cool looking stamps that have both the flag and the Statue of Liberty on them.

After coming home tonight, I relaxed in front of the tv, pretty typical, snoozed between 6:30 and 7pm, missing the second half of CSI, then I watched CSI: Miami, CSI, and ER. Anyway, time to go to bed, it's casual Friday tomorrow! Woooo Hoooo

Today Just Seemed Long


It doesn't help that I woke up over two hours later than I should have. For some reason, when the alarm went off at 5:30am, I hit the off button instead of the snooze button. When I finally woke up, I knew just by how rested I felt that I was late. The time? 8:02am. The time I start work? 8:00am. Guess I was just a little late to work today? By the time I showered, got dressed, fixed my lunch, and left for work, it was 9:00am. You'd think traffic would be pretty good by then, most everyone would be at work, right? Nope! Huge traffic jam about one minute after I get onto the tollway. Four lanes of traffic absolutely crawled for about four miles. By the time it opened up and we all could speed again, all I could find that might have caused it were three cars on the shoulder by an on-ramp. Two were police cars, but there was no accident that I could tell, just the three cars. So everyone was rubbernecking? Being lookyloos? Gaping? At three cars doing absolutely nothing?? Talk about frustrating!

Once I finally got to work at 9:45, the day passed uneventfully and slowly. I had pretty much NOTHING to do. For most of the day, I made file folders. Whoopee! For whatever reason, even though I am salaried, the inside sales people are required to sign in and out every day. And if we come in late, we have to make up our time either that day or as soon as possible. Well, with an hour and 45 minutes to make up, I was not staying at work till almost 6pm! So, with my boss' permission, I worked through 45 minutes of my lunch, took my 15 minute constitutional, and also stayed one hour late, till 5pm, and therefore made up all my time from this morning. Tomorrow I'll try not to do that again! LMAO

What Day is it Again?


I was talking on the phone with Deb tonight, and for some reason couldn't remember that today was Monday. Like anyone ever forgets when it's Monday? I'm either getting old, or I have Alzheimers, lmao. J/K

Today was a learning day at work. I discovered that for six months I was doing something wrong when I was paying bills for coils that we had slit. It wasn't really my fault though. It was for the account I was handling while Karen was on maternity leave, and she never got a chance to tell me all the information I needed. Her leave was pretty sudden. So, when Accounting was balancing accounts for the end of the year, they noticed one account was off by $30,000. Once we realized what I was doing wrong, that accounted for about $20,000 of it. Needless to say, now I know what I should have been doing. They say you learn something new every day, and today I did!

I was soooo hungry today, after having my usual breakfast of two chewy granola bars, my pb&j sandwich for lunch, my TGIF chips for a snack, I was starving by 3:30. Normally, I don't get hungry till about 5pm. And I've had a taste for Taco Bell for several days, so I decided to stop on the way home and have some tacos and get it out of my system (so to speak). Was yummy!

Tomorrow is supposed to be about 40F, so I think I might take my daily constitutional at lunchtime. I had stopped once it got extremely cold last month. And now since it's after 11pm (I got caught up watching highlights of the 1987-88 AFC Championship game between Denver and Cleveland), I think I'll go to bed.

The Weekend's Over Already?


Well, what do you know about that? Seems like the weekend just started and it's over already. Time flies when you're having fun! NOT!

Thursday night was interesting, sorta. My aunt in California called me, because she was worried about my sister, whom several people in my family had not heard from in a while, so I volunteered to call my other aunt in Minnesota to see if she had heard from her. Lo and behold, she had. So all is calm again in California. Although she'd like to strangle my sister for worrying her so. (And wouldn't we all?)

Other than that, I had a very quiet weekend. Watched football mostly, and chatted with Kerry on Saturday for about what 8 hours in MSN? LOL I went for a quick trip to the grocery store tonight, and filled my car up with gas. Prices are going up again, what's the deal? I haven't heard of any refinery problems, or increases in the price of a barrel of oil, so why is gas going up? I also went for a walk this afternoon between football games, since it was about 43F (+6C), pretty warm for January. Felt good to get out and get a little bit of exercise, and I need it after all the gorging I did over the holidays!

I decided to relax in front of the tv tonight, watched The West Wing at 7pm CST, since it's one of the last episodes John Spencer filmed before dying of a heart attack on Dec 16. Then I watched Supernatural, a show about two brothers who are searching for their Dad by going around the country investigating paranormal/strange occurrances. Tonight's episode was a little gory, a plumber got his hand chopped off...n/m, you don't want to know. Anyway, after that, I watched CSI: NY then CSI: Miami, as both shows were delayed due to football running long.

And now that it's midnight, I need to head to bed so I can get 5 hours of sleep, lol

Last College Football game of the season!


I'm watching the Rose Bowl tonight, for the National Championship in College Football in the U.S. The granddaddy of them all, between #1 USC and #2 Texas. It's been quite a game. It started out slow, but in the second half it has picked up quite a bit and is looking to be a showdown! I hope Texas wins, only because USC has won the National Championship the last two years. I could only hope for MY team to make it to the BCS Championship game someday...sigh!

Today was slow at work, which is exactly how I expect it to be for the next few months. If anything interesting happens there, I'll tell you about it, otherwise assume same ole, same ole.


It's almost midnight, the game is finally over...Texas came from behind and won 41-38!

Normalcy at last!


Well, things are getting back to normal at work. Karen is back from her six month maternity leave, which means the one big account I was handling for her is going back to her, as of today. So...now I will have time to continue getting caught up on all the file folders I need to make, and all the filing that has piled up for four months. It will take me awhile, but I'll eventually get it all done. Then what will I do? Only the shadow knows! (Sorry, that was a line from an old time radio show called The Shadow).

Watched a movie tonight that I haven't watched in years, a Stephen King movie called Duel. There's not much to it, just a guy in a car trying to go home, and a trucker that keeps trying to kill him. Eventually he gets the better of the truck by forcing it off a cliff into a quarry. Very strange movie, but I have memories of watching it in high school with a neighbor of mine. He and I used to have a lot of fun hanging out all summer doing stuff together.

By the way, does anyone reading this know how to keep nail polish from peeling off the nail two days after they've been polished? It makes it kind of hard to strengthen and grow my nails when the stuff comes loose on the edges and starts peeling off. Any suggestions would be helpful, as long as they don't cost too much, lol.

2006


After a nice relaxing four day weekend, and now that the holidays are over, I can get back to semi-regular blogging. I hope 2006 is better than 2005 for those of you reading this. And if 2005 was good to you, I hope 2006 is even better. I have quite a bit of vacation built up from last year, so I'm hoping to take a trip out to California later this year to visit family.

Happy New Year everyone!