Where did the weekend go?

Well we spent all Saturaday afternoon at the car dealer. I'd forgotten how long it takes to buy a car. Especially when you're trying to get a good deal! We did really like the car after driving it. It isn't quite as peppy as the Mini, but it's certainly peppy enough. Being a 4-door makes it easy for the three of us to go places and it can carry a whole lot with the seats down. They also fold up vertically so you can put something tall in behind the front seats. It also has a very nice iPod interface to the navigation system display. This is going to be great since I am giving up my XM radio. We're going to look at what it would take to put one in.

While we were waiting for them to look at our van for the trade in were drove it home (with the saleman) to pick up an iPod cable so I could se how it worked. I came around the corner into our neighborhood and there was a dead opposum in the street right as I came arount the corner. I didn't even see it, but I sure felt the BUMP when I drove over it! ICK!

We talked them down $2000 from their initial offer. We're not the best at negotiating, but I'm happy with the deal we got.

After we got home from the dealer Mike was freaking out because he had homework that had to be submitted by midnight. And the worst part was it was a bunch of Math, so I helped him with it for about 2.5 hours. I think he (well we) did OK on it. :-)

I don't know where the day went today. I took Sadie on a long walk before breakfast. After breakfast we stopped by the car dealer to drop some paperwork and then went to Target. After lunch I sent into work for the afternoon. I really needed to go back tonight but I didn't. After dinner I helped Mom with her shower and then went and got frozen yogurt. Mike has been working on a paper with he team that's due tonight at midnight. He was really freaking out about it early, but it sounds like things are going well now.

My book group at the library is meeting tomorrow night, but I'm not even 1/2 way done with the book yet so I'm going to skip it. I'll probably need to work tomorrow night anyway.

Sounds like Mom had a good conversation on the phone with you today. I was just heading out to work when she called and heard that you picked up.

I saw in your blog that JD has headed back from his leave. I hope things go well for him.

Weather: On Sat while you guys were having warm (hot!) weather we were freezing. Well not really, but there was a cold wind which made it unpleasant to be outside. Today was warmer, but still windy and cool.

Birds: The Cooper's Hawk was in the neighbor's tree yesterday. I hadn't seen it in a while and am glad to see it's still around although I'm sure the other birds aren't. Oh and I don't think I mentioned this. With the oaks dropping their leaves from last yet (they stay on the tree until the new ones come out in the spring!) a small nest also fell down too. It's from last year so I'm going to watch the tree to see if I see a nest in it this year.

It's the weekend!

No blog entry yesterday. I was so exhausted when I got home I just got in a hot tub and then went to bed.

I slept in a little on Friday then took Sadie on a pretty long walk before heading in to work. I was supposed to have the day off based on our "Alternate Work Schedule" system (work 9 hours M-Th and 8 hours every other friday with the opposite one off) but I had so much to do I went in. From 2:00 to 5:00 I helped sort through and pack up the books that didn't sell from the Women's Association book sale. The sales total for Mon - Wed was $1500 with Thu and Fri sales still to be totaled, so we made quite a bit of money for the scholarship fund. Then it was home to get Mom's dinner and then Mike and I headed off to the book sale at the Pleasanton Library. It was mobbed with people when it opened so we did some looking and decided to come back after dinner when it wasn't so crazy. We ate at TGI Fridays which was OK, the music was so load and distorted that it was really distracting. Back at the book sale it was a lot nicer and we were able to move the boxes around to see what was in the ones underneath. All this book lifting and packing is was made me so tired!

Now it's Sat and we had a nice breakfast at the Railroad Cafe before going grocery shopping. I helped Mike some with his homework. One of his classes this time is going to have lots of math. I think he's already regretting it! It's time for lunch and then we're going to the Honda dealer to test drive the Fit.

Ugh, Mom just went out to the mailbox and used the front door with the steps without her cane. She also started to go through the ditch instead of the slightly longer route down the driveway. I opened the window and remained her not to go that way. It helped this time, but probably won't stick. :-(

Almost Friday here too!

It's been a really long week here too. No blog yesterday because I got home from work, helped Mom with her shower, had dinner and then went back to work. Three of my people where still there working on some scheduled technical work. I spent the evening catching up on email and other things I hadn't gotten to and got all the interview sessions scheduled for the candidate we have coming in on 5/1.

I left work at 10:30 and my guys where heading out to get something to eat since they'd run into some problems and had at least 2 more hours of work to do. This morning I found out they were there until 2am. I have some dedicated people!

It was an early morning especially given out late I got home. I got up around 6:15 and took Sadie for a short walk. Then came home, showered, ate and to in for an 8:00 am meeting. After the meeting I had about 20 minutes in my office before I headed home to take Mom to Pleasanton for her weekly lunch and card game at the Senior Center. On the way I stopped by the Pleasanton Library to become a "Friend of the Library" so I can get in early to the book sale tomorrow night. I'll be looking for some Jodi P books for you Ame. The only ones they had at the Lab sale were ones you already had.

I made it back to work for the 11:00 Love 'em or Lose 'em meeting which went well. Hopefully some people got some good ideas from it. The afternoon flew by with one meeting and working with my admin on scheduling the travel for the interview candidate. I left work around 5:00 since I was exhausted.

Mom said she had a good day in Pleasanton. She said, "the one lady I don't really care for wasn't there". Then later in the evening she said the same thing and remarked that she couldn't really remember why she didn't care for her. Be both commented that that was a good thing, and both laughed. She was in really good spirits tonight. Mike came down there stairs with some glasses that were clinking together and she said something like, what's that sound, oh you've been hitting the bottle again and laughed. There was something else she said to Mike at dinner that was really funny, but now neither of us can remember what it was.

After dinner Mike and I went by the Honda dealer to look at the Blackberry Pearl colored Honda Fit before it got dark. It sure is pretty! After that we went to Safeway to get a card and gift card for my admin since it's was Admin day on Wed. I got her a $30 gift card for Coldstone so she can go there with her husband and two little boys.

When we got home it was time for Survivor. WHAT AN AWESOME SHOW! I was so happy to see Tyson go. I think I was actually happier to see him go than I would have been to see Coach go since now we get to see Coach scramble! I'm not a bid Sierra fan, but sure loved the look of relief when she was saved. Next week is going to be awesome. I sure hope that JT, Steven and Taj can last 'til the end. I think the one big threat to Steven and JT is the women teaming together. It's certainly possible, but they'd need Taj to split off and I'm not sure she'd do it. Especially if Steven still holds the idol. Only time will tell! Oh, just one last thing, I was SO AFRAID that JT was going to cave in and stick with Tyson and Coach. I really wonder if Coach would have stuck with the warrior alliance or not. He can't seem to win anything so I wonder if he and Tyson would have turned on JT and Steven before the final 4? This we never will know.

Weather: Much cooler today. It didn't warm up until afternoon when the low clouds burned off and the cold ocean breeze forced me to bring a jacket when we went out after dinner.

Birds: We found what looks like a humming bird nest from last year on the lawn today. It was up in one of the oak trees. I'm going to watch that tree closely this year since they could very well build another nest in the same place this year. Also saw a Scrub Jay that was hanging onto a window screen in the building next to mine and picking at something on the building. Oh and one last bird thing that I saw last week at work (before I was blogging). I was meeting with my manager and she looked out her window and there was a family of Canada Geese walking across the sidewalk outside our building. The babies were only a day or two old. Then about 15 minutes later we saw a coyote come loping across the parking lot going in the same directly the geese had gone. I've never seen a coyote at the Lab before. I've seen a number of foxes, but no coyotes.

Tues, another hectic day at work

Meetings all morning but one of them was a good discussion with one of my employees. Came home for lunch with Mom and then went to pick up her prescriptions and vitamins at Kaiser. On the way I called Tootie to wish her a Happy Birthday. As always she had a hard time hearing me, but she did know who it was. It didn't sound like they did anything special for her birthday. She said she can't get out of the house so all she can do is "sit here hating herself". It was so depressing. She also said she was 77, but she's really 87. She knew what year she was born, so I don't know if she was doing the math wrong or didn't know what year it is now.

After I picked up Mom's pills I called Buzz to make sure he remembered it was her birthday. We talked for a little bit and he said that she seemed like she was having some memory issues. She's lucky to be this old and not have much of that yet. I think the statistics say that 50% of people that make it to 85 have Alzheimer's so she is very lucky indeed!

Back at work this afternoon I met with the group of people I'm working with on a panel discussion for Thursday that focuses on what we as managers can do to help retain our people. Even in these bad economic times we're still losing people and the estimate is it takes between 1 and 2 years for a new person to get totally up to speed such that they are as productive as the person who left. So anything we can do to keep our good people is worth it. All the managers in our department will be invited to the panel and we'll be giving them a book called "Love 'em or Lose 'em" which was a very interesting read.

After this meeting I had a phone interview with a person who sounds like a really good candidate for my one opening. We're going to bring him in for an on-site interview and I hope it goes really well.

Mike started thinking about a new car given that we have to spend so much on replacing the tires on the van. The fact is I just love driving the Mini Clubman and am really thinking that I'd like to have a small car myself. In reality we almost never need all the space the van has. I started looking at the Honda Fit. It sounds very similar to the Mini that we have but significantly cheaper. Tonight when we went out to the store we stopped by the Honda dealer and looked at a couple. We'll see. We need to do something soon since I can't keep driving on these tires for much longer.

After the Honda dealer we stopped for frozen yogurt and got Mom her favorite, chocolate with mixed nuts. When we got home we took Sadie out for a walk and since then I've been doodling around on the computer and reading reviews of the Honda Fit.

Weather:
Hot again and a little humid, but there was a dry wind from the desert so it wasn't too bad.

Birds:
Cedar Waxwings were outside my window again this morning. The new growth on the oak trees don't have any leaves yet and they prefer those branchs to ones with leaves. I love the quiet muffled peeping sounds they make.

4/20/09 Back to work

Well it was Monday and that means back to work. I was up for about two hours during the night so I slept in and didn't have time to take Sadie for a walk before work. But I did walk to a couple of meetings so I got a little exercise. It was a hectic day with a lot of meetings. At lunch Mike and I went by the Livermore Lab Women's Association book sale and found a few good bargains. We had lunch at the cafe on site (pretty good salmon sandwich) and then I went back to work at the book sale before heading off to more meetings.

Our Honda van was in for new tires today. The factory tires are K-PAX run-flats which cost ~$400 each!! (we had no idea when we bought the car that they were this much). We worked with the local tire store to find out if we could put regular tires on it. They thought it would be no problem so we had them order new wheels and tires. We had to get new wheels since the wheels for the K-PAX are special. Well it all looked good until they realized they couldn't hook up the tire pressure sensors with the new wheels and tires. Mike says he's going to continue to look at options since he read that others have done this replacement. Actually there was a lawsuit on these tires. Lots of people seemed to have trouble with needing to replace them much sooner than normal. The other big issue with them is only Honda dealers and Michelin tire dealers have the equipment to work on them. What a pain. I think I'll just leave this all to Mike to deal with. Aren't tires a guy thing anyway!

When I got home Mom wasn't watching the baseball game that was on. I'd called her during the day to tell her there was one on at 4pm and I thought she'd written it down. If she did she couldn't find the note. She got to watch a little of it before dinner. We played cards during dinner as always and she had more trouble remembering the rules so it just wasn't a good day for her.

I went back to work around 8pm and now I'm home and going to bed!

Have to remember to call Tootie tomorrow since it's her birthday, 88 years!

Weather: Really hot, over 90. I love it!

Well let's get started!

My sister-in-law suggested I start a blog to help the two if us stay in touch. I've always been one of those people who wished I'd kept a diary, but never took the time to do it. Maybe this will fill that niche since typing is much easier than writing in some little book. :-)

I got up fairly early this morning and took Sadie for a walk. I was hoping to see the cat with the poodle hair cut, although I still forgot to bring my camera phone. Only the work phone has a camera since until recently we couldn't bring cameras into the office so my personal phone doesn't have one. Anyway I did see that cat, but it was curled up sleeping on the door mat on the porch so a picture wouldn't have done it justice anyway. Tonight when I took Sadie out again I remembered to take the camera, but didn't see the cat. Figures...

Today we signed up for fruit and veggie delivery from Farm Fresh To You, "Organic Produce Delivered Fresh From the Farm", www.farmfreshtoyou.com. I learned about them at my Book Club on wed night where we were discussing "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" and "In Defense of Food". The farm is own by the duaghter of a friend of mine and her husband. We signed up for the Mostly Fruit box plus Sweet Corn when it's in season (I can't wait!). This week we're going to get 4 mangos, 4 avocados, 2 lbs pink lady apples, 1.5 lbs blood oranges, 1 pnt Strawberries, 1 pnt mixed cherry tomatoes, 1 lbs snap peas and 1 head of romaine lettuce. This weekend they're doing their spring farm tour, they do them each season. I think we're going to make the drive up to check it out. We'll get to pick some strawberries and Sweet Pea flowers to bring home.

This afternoon I went to pick Mike up at the airport. He'd been up in Portland for his MBA class. He's got a 30 page paper due at the end of the week for this class which is going to be keeping him busy. One of the reasons he's interested in going up to the farm is he'll get lots of studying done on the drive. There's less distractions in the car then at home!

On the way home from the airport we stopped and eat at Elephant Bar. We love this place!

It's getting late and I have some bills to pay and work I need to do to get ready for tomorrow.

Weather:
Really nice today. High 80's.

Birds:
Saw the flock of Cedar Waxwings again this morning. Also saw the Kite and Cooper's Hawk in the neighborhood.

Books:

• Currently reading: "Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America". It's a non-fiction book about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and focuses on two men, the architect responsible for the fair's construction and a serial killer who is believed to be responsible for a large number of murders around the time of the fair.
• Current Audio Book: "At Home in Mitford". A light-hearted fiction book (vs. the heavy non-fiction!) about Father Tim, a bachelor rector and all the interesting people in his town of Mitford. It's the first book in the Mitford series and I'm really enjoying it. I has me laughing out loud sometimes.