Just wanted to let everyone know I'm still alive, lol

Idol was a joke this week. Sanjaya and his pony-mohawk? It was probably the smartest thing he could have done to keep his ass around for another week. It distracted everyone from hearing how bad he really was, and once again they voted enough times to keep him there. He wasn't even in the BOTTOM THREE!!!

Work is slow, it's an effort somedays to make the trip to work, knowing all I'll be doing that day is filing. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that things will pick up as we head into summer, but I'm not holding my breath.

I stopped at Target tonight to buy some birthday presents I needed to buy for this weekend, some toiletries and such that I needed, and of course...cd's! I was all caught up on EVERYTHING, all cd's, all music, everything to Kerry, until tonight! I bought the Elliott Yamin cd, even though it wasn't on sale anymore, it was 13.99, better than the Taylor Hicks cd, which I still haven't bought cause it's now up to 15.99 or something. I bought The Evolution of Robin Thicke, all because Kerry told me it would be good, lol. He's the son of Alan Thicke, a Canadian who was married to Gloria Loring (ex-Liz Chandler, Days of our Lives), and a sitcom star here in the U.S. back in the 80's. I bought the new Good Charlotte cd, alternative rock that I know Kerry doesn't want, lol.I bought the new Tim McGraw cd, of course!!!!! We have his whole library, all cd's, even greatest hits. And, I bought the new Jack Ingram cd that has Lips of an Angel on it. So now I have 4 cd's to send to Kerry, in between her sending me tons of music from all the cd's she's been buying, lol. Busy, busy, busy!!!!!

The weather was SO nice on Monday, why did it have to leave so soon? Now it's back in the 40's and feeling like typical March weather, lol. I just about froze my ass off Tuesday afternoon, when I didn't take a jacket to work with me and the temperature dropped in the afternoon. 50F and short sleeves don't go together too well, lol.

Have a great rest of the week everyone!

We have a missing blogger. Lainie was supposed to be around on Tuesday night to watch American Idol, but never showed. Then I thought for SURE she's show up tonight to watch the results show. Did she get snowed out of her house? I hope she's ok! Lainie...where are you???

Hungry Squirrel:

Kerry commented about the birds and bunnies coming out for Spring, and that got me thinking about the pictures I took of a hungry squirrel a few weeks ago before our last big snowfall. This was the best picture I took of it, just sitting there at the top of the tree eating leftover berries that the birds hadn't finished. The poor thing probably didn't store enough food. I wonder if that was because we had the big snowfall on December 1, then bitter cold temperatures (for December?) Whatever the reason, this little guy didn't plan well at all, lol. What the picture doesn't show, simply because it was overcast that day, was the fact that this is a red squirrel. I know what some of you are thinking. What's so unusual about a red squirrel? Well...most of the squirrels I see by me are the grey squirrels, so to see one lone red squirrel was unusual and a treat for me. Oh, and his name is Charlie too, LMAO.

Ok, I know Spring is really here for two reasons:

A red-winged blackbird I saw on my balcony over the weekend.

And an American Robin I saw this morning in the tree outside my window chirping. Both are migratory birds that start showing up when the weather warms up. Now I KNOW Spring is here! Wooooooooo Hooooooooooooooo

Tonight's American Idol, watched by myself, Kerry, and Lainie. Following are my thoughts as each performer sings.

First, Diana Ross is there to mentor, help, guide them for this week. Does this mean they will sing Diana Ross songs tonight? We'll see...

Brandon starts off first, singing Can't Hurry Love. Not bad! I liked that little dance he did in the middle, lol. Randy wasn't impressed, for sure. None of the judges were impressed. Will be interesting to see how the rest of the contestants do.

Oh goody! Melinda Doolittle is next! I love her voice, and her attitude, everything. Diana Ross gets goosebumps when Melinda sings! Singing Home (from the Wiz), this should be good! OMG, she's AWESOME! I pick Melinda to win it all this year. She's so amazed at herself, she's crying. And Paula was crying, and Simon was wowed, if that's possible, lol.

Chris Sligh doing Endless Love? This should be interesting. I like his voice, one of the better guys. Tonight's performance was interesting. He's got good vocals, but not sure about the melody. He tried to do it to Speed of Sound by Coldplay, which just came out weird. Not my favorite performance by Chris, but I think he has the vocals to stick around.

Gina Glocksen, singing Love Child. You must pronunciate every word! Randy isn't that impressed, thought it was pitchy and boring. Guess she didn't enunciate, Paula said she was shouting in parts, well she was told to project by Diana, lol.

Sanjaya is next, singing Ain't Not Mountain High Enough. This should be interesting, since he can't dance. Ok, that wasn't very good. Better than he's done in the past, but still not at the same level as the other 11 performers. Randy hated it! Simon's positive comment was Sanjaya was brave. He really really really should be gone this week.

Haley Scarnato is next, singing Missing You. I didn't know that song was about Marvin Gaye! Wow, Simon was the only one who liked her? She apparently forgot some of the lyrics, but I didn't notice it. Guess I should listen to the words closer? lmao. She was crying, all because she actually got a semi good comment from Simon? She's way too emotional.

Phil Stacey, chooses a song Diana did with Marvin Gaye, Make You Love Me. Don't think I know this song. This isn't half bad! He's showing some power with these vocals. I still don't like his bald head though, lol. Paula thinks it should have been more uptempo, but Simon disagrees, what's new?

Lakisha Jones is next up. A Billie Holiday song, God Bless The Child. She's always great! One of my favorites, toss up between her and Melinda. Randy loved it, of course! Paula loved it, of course! Simon? Loved it! Oh yeah! And no comment about her outfit this week!

Blake Lewis, after the break! You Keep Me Hangin' On...let's see how it sounds. Not too bad! Not the best vocals tonight, but he did a good job, and he's one of the better overall performers. His arrangment was better than Chris Sligh's. Again, not the best vocals, but a good performance.

Stephanie Edwards singing Love Hangover. Diana Ross thinks she has star quality. I love the vocals, she's really good! The judges didn't like her, didn't like the arrangement, blah blah blah. She's still one of the better singers in this competition.

Chris Richardson is next, without a commercial break? Wow! Singing The Buzz, there he goes to the little stage behind the judges, so he can "work the audience" lmao. Not too hot on his vocals, this isn't one of his better songs, in my opinion. Simon thought it was dreadful! I can see why Simon said that. I don't think it was that bad, but not one of his better performances.

Jordin Sparks closes tonight's show. If We Hold On Together? Don't think I know that song. She's doing a great job so far. She could be a sleeper on this show. Usually one every year, Taylor last year, could be Jordin this year. I think she did a fantastic job on this song!

Going to be very hard separating the women, so many of them are great this year! Blowing away the men this year. Can't wait to see what happens when the votes are tallied tomorrow night!

Thanks Kerry for the glitter Chicago script!!!!!!!

HOW THINGS WOULD BE DIFFERENT IF MEN GOT PREGNANT:

1. Maternity leave would last two years - with full pay.

2. There'd be a cure for stretch marks.

3. Natural childbirth would become obsolete.

4. Morning sickness would rank as the nation's number one health problem.

Thought for the day:

Keep smiling! The luscious plum forgot to - and became a wrinkled prune.

Idol Update!

Here's the singers I liked this week on American Idol:

Men - Chris R., Blake, Chris S, Phil, and even Sundance was much better than last week. I'm wondering about AJ's sexuality after his performance, lol.

Women - Gina, Jordin, Lakisha, Melinda, Stephanie, and Sabrina. I don't think any of these have changed from last week, lol.

I still think, overall, the women are stronger than the men. Will be interesting once we get to the top 12 or so...

Today's Forecast:

Partly rational with brief periods of coherent thought giving way to complete apathy by tonight.

Sherrie Weaver

I just finished watching Idol, and I must say...the women did a HELL of a lot better than the men last night. I can't remember more than one or two of the men that impressed me, but tonight...I counted FIVE or SIX women who all kicked some ass before taking names. Gotta support the hometown girl, Gina Glocksen. But she probably was the poorest performer of the ones I liked. Jordin, Lakisha, Melinda, Sabrina and Stephanie all brought the house down. The other women were all very forgettable. Of the men from last night, I liked the two Chris's and Blake. Will be interesting to see what the results are tomorrow night.

My bathroom is almost done. The tile was grouted today, so that's done. I figured out I did NOT get a new toilet. The idiots put my old toilet back down, so now I have to clean it! Grrrrrrrr. And the bottom shelf thingy under the cabinet below my sink still hasn't been replaced. I called the leasing office this evening when I got home, and left them a message about it. Guess they were all busy doing other things, and couldn't answer the phone. I asked them to call me about replacing it, maybe I'll get a call tomorrow. Oh, and I have new vertical blinds in my living room too. We have a sales meeting tomorrow, lunch is provided. Fortunately, it's for the salesmen, so us inside people only have to be there for about 30 minutes, lol. And it's so friggin' HOT at work, I'm considering wearing a tank top and shorts to work. This afternoon I was so hot, I thought I was going to pass out.

Well, guess I'll go read some more...

I'm getting a new bathroom!

Well sort of. I'm getting a new toilet and a new tile floor. Monday afternoon I received a call on my cell phone from my leasing office, alerting me that maintenance had been to my apartment because of water leaking from my toilet down to the bathroom below me. They said it would be installed today. I came home from work, and it's still in progress. I now have NO toilet in the bathroom, lmao, and the tile is down, but still needs to be grouted. This isn't the cheap stick-on square tiles that I had before. These are NICE ceramic tiles!! I'll take a picture of it once it's all done. It's a dark brown, but very nice looking. MUCH better than what I had before.

I also bought my very first mp3 player tonight. Best Buy had 2GB Sansa Scandisk c250's on sale for $69.99. I think I got the last one at the store by me. So I bring it home, plop down in front of the computer and start checking it out. I was determined that I would get the battery cover off, but couldn't. After 15 minutes of struggling with it, cussing a blue streak, and threatening to return it, I put my shoes on and went BACK to Best Buy to see if they could figure out how to get the battery cover off. The gal there told me the lithium battery inside it is very good, and will last for about a year. Also, each time I hook it up via the USB plug to my computer, it charges the battery, so I probably shouldn't ever need to worry about replacing it. At least not for quite a while.

Then I tried to put music on it. I couldn't get MusicMatch to recognize it! I put the cd in my computer that came with the player, read through some instructions, rebooted the computer and VOILA, it worked. I put a bunch of songs on the player, listened to part of one to make sure it worked. I didn't get as many on as I wanted, but still over 100. Most of my music on my computer is at 128 kbps, larger sized files that limit the number of songs that can be loaded on it. Maybe this weekend I'll work on converting some of my music down to 96 kbps.

I've done just fine without an mp3 player, I'm either at work or in my car or at home, and at any of those places I have access to either an online radio station or my computer or a radio. Why get an mp3 player? Well! My building at work is working to put in a fitness center, free to all tenants! Once that's open, I can go down there after work and get a workout, and I wanted an mp3 player to listen to while I do that. The fitness center was supposed to open this month, but due to the cold weather, it delayed some of the plumbing work, so now it won't be done until next month. But I wanted to pick up the mp3 player while it was on sale. I've been watching for a sale for a few weeks, didn't want to miss this one. Now I'm almost all set. I might need to look into getting an exercise outfit or two. Maybe next pay period, lol.

We also had our performance appraisals at work today. Overall, mine went very well! I got approximately a 3% pay increase retro-active to Jan 1. I'll take anything they will give me, to keep up with the cost of living. I also got a bonus of about $4400 (before taxes)!!!!!!! I might use part of that to buy a new bed, to replace the one I have now that's jabbing me with a spring and causing a pain in my ass, literally.

Watched Idol tonight, the men performed. Some were pretty good, some were ok. I have a couple that I'm starting to like, others that I'm not so hot on. Even though we can vote, I'm not going to until maybe the top 10 rounds. Going to go read for a bit before going to bed. It's so hot in our office at work, I'm digging out a summer outfit to wear to work tomorrow, lol.

Middle age is when you want to see how long your car will last...instead of how fast it will go.

I wish I'd received this poem a week or two ago:

Winter

SHIT! It's Cold!!

by Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre

It's going to be a looooong night...

I was watching the Grammy's, and all of a sudden I heard a whooshing sound like running water coming from the bathroom. I thought, "Oh goody, the pipes finally un-froze!" If only I were so lucky! A pipe BURST, and was seeping water into my bathroom from under the sink. I started throwing down every towel I could find, hand towels, bathtowels, a sheet, a blanket even, to try and stop the advancement of water. Half the floor was covered in wet towels, and water was coming into the bathroom below me too.

I called maintenance right away once I saw the water on the floor. While I was waiting for a callback, the man who lives below me came up and knocked on my door, wondering what was going on. We talked for a few minutes, then he went down to call maintenance himself, so they knew both bathroom were affected. He got a callback from maintenance, he would be here in 30 minutes or so. I found out later, the maintenance guy had JUST gotten home from another call when he got paged for our problem. So he had to put his shoes back on and drive all the way back here.

Turns out a pipe in the wall behind the sink burst, and that was causing the leak. He had to shut off the water to the whole building for about 45 minutes or so, until he could cut out the section of pipe and weld a new piece in. He left about 11:30pm. Now I have a mess to clean up, sopping wet towels that need to be washed and stuff thrown out from under the sink cause the water was making the bottom of the cabinet wet too. That stuff is strewn out in the hallway right now, need to get it out of the way. Plus all the water, despite my efforts to soak it up, still leaked under the wall next to the sink and got the carpeting wet in the 2nd bedroom. So once I figured that was probably happening, I had to move the stuff I had in that corner of the room.

Tomorrow first thing, Jack from maintenance (who I've talked with almost daily this past week, lol) will be here with a painter to fix the drywall under the sink. Also, the carpeting people are being called to be here first thing to soak up as much water as they can from the carpeting. From what I hear, the man downstairs from me had a LOT of water in his bathroom. I probably would have too, but I soaked most of it up.

The good news is that none of my pipes are currently frozen! But the bathrooms a mess, so I can't use it yet. I was trying to get some dishes washed this evening, I have all the towels that need to be washed and dried...gonna be a long night.

Drip...drip...drip...drip...

That's all I'm hearing right now as I type this at 7:32AM. I have a drip in my bathroom from the bathroom upstairs. Maintenance has been called, I'm just waiting for them to show up.

Let me start back at the beginning. We have had zero or sub-zero temperatures at night for the past week. My one bathroom is on a north outside wall, with little protection. I have left the sink faucets dripping to try to keep the pipes there from freezing. Last week about Wednesday or so, my hot water pipe to the shower in that bathroom froze. This didn't cause me any great concern, because I have a second full bathroom in my apartment. And there's nothing that can be done except wait until it warms up. Well, it hasn't, LOL.

The next thing to freeze was my toilet; That happened on Saturday. Again, no great concern because I still have the other bathroom. I can get by with one bathroom. Last night, however, I came home to the frozen toilet "overflowing" with water, that had backed up into the toilet. I immediately got the first thing I could think of that would fit in the toilet bowl to scoop out water. A red Solo cup. I started scooping it out into the sink, but the water level wasn't going down. WTF? So start furiously scooping water from the toilet into the shower, since I didn't have to be so careful with the water placement. Finally, the water level started going down to a normal level, but my hand was now frozen, since the water was ice cold. I ran the hot water in the sink to warm my hand up again, and the toilet started filling right back up again. WTF? I shut the water off to the sink, and again started scooping like mad from the toilet to the shower.

I dried my hand off, grabbed the phone and called the office to have maintenance come, because I didn't want to stand there all night bailing out the toilet. While I was on the phone with the office, I noticed the toilet wasn't filling back up. How observant I am! The toilet was filling up because I was running water in the sink! They suggested I shut the water off completely to my bathroom, using the shut-off valve under the toilet. Maintenance came about 10 minutes later, they tried to rod the toilet to make sure it wasn't a blockage, and when that wasn't the problem, we agreed it was the frozen pipe and they'd come back tomorrow (meaning today) to look at it. Although I tried to make the guy understand there's nothing they can do unless they want to tear all the walls apart and rip all the siding off the building. It's gonna be like this until it warms up. He leaves with the assurance that someone would be back to look at it today.

Fast forward to this morning. I wake up, take my shower, and as I go to take a pair of pants out of the dryer, I notice a drip...drip...drip...drip...coming from the bathroom. I turn the light on, and there is a steady drip of water coming from around the light/vent in the ceiling. *Sigh* I cuss a few times, then I call the office so I can get a message to maintenance about the drip. Then I call work to leave a message for my boss, letting him know I'll be out this morning because of this leak from upstairs.

While I was typing all this, my phone rang, it was maintenance, asking what kind of leak it was. Was it a "gush" or a "drip", that sort of thing, trying to determine how bad of an emergency this is. I said, "It's not a gush, it's a steady drip coming from the bathroom upstairs into my bathroom." The guy on the phone said they'd have someone there as soon as they could. I wonder how long that will be? I'll keep you posted...


Update at 11:30, while my car is warming up...Maintenance was here at about 9am, they went upstairs and determined the drip is from a backup in the bathtub above me. That may be caused by the freezing temperatures, I'm not sure. They said once the water goes away upstairs, so will my drip. So in the meantime I have a couple towels on the floor to catch the drip (and they're probably soaked by now). Nothing more I can do here, so I'm going to brave the snowy streets and try to go to work.

Chicago hasn't completely frozen over....yet!

Brrrrrrr it's COLD outside!!! And I heard it's pretty much below average temps all over the country. Gonna be even colder this weekend too! I'm going shopping, getting all my food for this weekend tomorrow night, and I'm staying in. I see no reason to go outside in 5 degree temps, except to start the car to keep the engine and gas tank from freezing. If it's going to be that cold where you are, make sure the gas tank in your car is nice and full before Saturday.

Now that I've done my public service announcement...lol. I went to the dentist tonight for my 6 month cleaning. I was ALMOST out of there when he says, "Sit back down, I want to look at something." Damn if he didn't find a small cavity! Now I get to go back in a couple weeks (on Valentine's Day) to get it filled. Good thing I never have plans for V-day, lol.

For those of you that read Kerry's blog, you know we've started sending music back and forth in email. Seems every time we try to do it over MSN, it acts up and won't transfer the files. And there seem to be so few times we're both on together and HAVE the time to transfer music. So, we're reduced to email. That's the only way we'll get caught up right now. Tonight, I will be sending her....the Kellie Pickler cd. I've only heard one song off it so far, Red High Heels. It's played all the time by the online country stations I listen to during the day at work. It's not bad.

Not much happening at work. It FINALLY slowed down for me and I'm working on getting caught up on the filing that has been accumulating for a year. Yes, I said a YEAR! Not hard, just never had time to do it, and now I do, lol. I'm thinking things will stay slow like this for me for a while. We're losing the business from one of our bigger customers in a month or so. Their slowdown in business and then the ending of that contract will keep me slow, and allow me to continue spending about half my day, on average, filing. Boring, but it's something to do.

Going to go start sending these song to Kerry so she has them in the morning when she wakes up, get something to eat, and plant myself in front of the tv at 7pm CST for Bones, then Idol.

MORE? YOU WANT MORE?? Ok, you asked for it...

This is my sister's mother-in-law, Katherine. She was in Hawaii with her son back in October. Can you believe this beautiful lady is 100 years old??? And what about that sunset!! I didn't see anything like this when I was there, it was too overcast. *pouts*

You can see part of the pool in this picture. This is the patio we sat on every morning and every evening. We ate breakfast lunch and dinner out here (when we weren't eating out.) The darker wicker chairs and table are no longer there. Instead the chaise lounger that's currently behind the pole is there with another matching one, plus a table. There's also a huge hammock just off to the left, omg so comfortable. The pool is cool because as you're in it you look out to the ocean, and the outside edge allows water to run over into an overflow area, so it looks like a waterfall from the street.

This is looking towards the front door of the house. The floor is slate, and it runs all throughout the whole house, even into the master bedroom, bathroom and outdoor shower. Yes, that's right, I said OUTDOOR shower! The bed with the white coverlet on it is one of the spare bedrooms; the other is on the left, by where the wooden steps are. Both bedrooms are up on wood floors, whereas the master bedroom has the slate floor.

Here's the kitchen, with a stainless steel refrigerator. The microwave oven is below the counter on the island. So roomy and spacious. From what I'm told, one of the ladies that owns the house loves to cook, so of course this kitchen is a dream for her, lol

Those are all the pictures of the house that my sister sent to me. I'm hoping I can get more in a couple months when she goes back. I know she has more than this on the computer there, lol.

Next I'll try to find pictures of all the colorful birds I saw there!

You wanted pictures? Ok, here's a start on some pictures.

This is the Fair Wind II, the pontoon boat we were on for the snorkel cruise.

This is the crater at Mt. Kilauea, you can see the active steam coming up from the crater, indicating the heat only 1-3 miles below the surface.

Here's the lava tube we walked through. It is about 500 years old, and the only way to get to it is to walk down the steps and incline to the bottom of a rainforest.

This is my Aunt Val, standing next to a sign warning visitors not to feed the Nene, the Hawaiian goose. Interestingly enough, during my whole week there, I didn't see one single goose.

My sister Sue and myself at the crater of Kilauea, with the steam vents behind us.

CHICAGO BEARS WIN THE NFC CHAMPIONSHIP !!!!

The Chicago Bears beat New Orleans 39-14 at snowy Soldier Field, earning the right to play the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLI Feb 4, 2007 in Miami, Florida!

Chicago Bears Fight Song!

Bear down, Chicago Bears,
Make every play clear the way to victory.
Bear down, Chicago Bears,
Put up a fight with a might so fearlessly.
We'll never forget the way you thrilled the nation,
With your T-formation.
Bear down, Chicago Bears,
And let them know why you're wearing the crown.
You're the pride and joy of Illinois,
Chicago Bears, bear down.