I just booked my first flight since 2001.

My friend, Kimmer, and I are attending BlogHer Reach Out in New Orleans. Kimmer pretty much left the location up to me and it was tough deciding between locations. If we’d gone to DC, we could have seen this wonderful blogger speak and possibly run into this lovely blogger as well.

If we’d gone to Atlanta, we may have seen the woman who is still holds the “save the best for last” spot on my Bloglines list of feeds. She never disappoints me. Ever.

But ultimately, NO was the choice because it’s the only city that I’ve never visited. Sure, my experience in DC was a Train show on the 4th of July, and basically we zipped in and then zipped right back out. I’ve done the same thing in Atlanta, but I’ve at least had the opportunity to eat at a couple of restaurants beforehand.

But New Orleans is completely new. It’s also a city that Kimmer is familiar with, so it won’t be a matter of the blind leading the blind. So, on October 23rd, I board a plane at 8:10 a.m. (deargodwhatwasithinking) and fly into Birminghamalama. A place I haven’t been since… well, it’s been a few years.

Maybe I can see a familiar face or two while I’m there.

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I’m sitting in the ER with my son JL. We are in an actual room with a door that closes and everything. I like this particular hospital, having been here with JM when he had his appendix out and most recently with a friend who had a bit of a health scare. There are phones in the rooms, and TVs with cable in several of them. This room doesn’t have a TV, but it’s ok because JL is sleeping and I have my laptop. And there is free wireless that doesn’t require a password. I could move in here.

We expect to be going home soon. They did a CAT scan a few minutes ago, but they will likely just send him home with steroids. He has some paralysis on the left side of his face. It started last night, apparently, but today was the first I heard of it. Kid’s only been home two days and he’s already creating a stir.

I’m hungry. The Boyfriend is right this very minute fixing barbecued chicken and corn on the cob. On the grill. Have you had grilled corn on the cob? Oh my heavens, it is fantastic. I almost want summer to never end. I would fully want it to never end if we could have the gorgeous weather we’ve had the past two days.

Fall semester started yesterday. I have assignments due on Sunday. I’ve half started one, and tried to work on the other one during lunch, but I can’t concentrate with everyone there. I might have to start disappearing into one of the quiet areas of the library during my lunch hour.

I hope they let us go home soon. I have limited battery power left and it’s freaking cold in this place. JL almost left his jacket in the car. Wisely (for once), he listened to his mama and brought it inside with him.

I’d be a bad mom if I stole his blanket, wouldn’t I?

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Screw the hotness. Life is not being very nice to me this week and every day seems to bring a new level of suckitude.

Yes. Suckitude.

Here are some short lists.

Things that have bitten the dust at my house:

1. My deep freezer and about $200 worth of food
2. The glass patio table in my backyard (oh, it’s still there… it’s just in teeny tiny little pieces)
3. My desktop computer (since replaced, but oh how funny that I don’t have the proper cable to hook up my printer)

Things that are still working, but not quite the way they’re supposed to:

1. My car. I spent $500 getting both front wheel bearings replaced, but the accelerator still sticks in warm weather. It’s a recall issue, but GM has assured me that the recall was already fixed. Um… then it needs to be fixed again! On the advice of my mechanic, a complaint has been lodged with the NHSTA, but it will take at least two months before anyone even looks at the complaint. Who knows how long it’ll be, if at all, before the car gets looked at.
2. ILLIAD, our new computer system at work. I love what it does. It simplifies my workflow in amazing ways. Except that right now, I can’t actually scan and deliver articles electronically. I get error messages. And since delivering the articles is, you know, one of the whole points of interlibrary loan, I kind of need for it to work correctly.

Undefineable:

1. JL is coming home. JL is “surprising” me by coming home. Here’s the thing, though. He wasn’t hired back for fall camp, so basically he’s coming home because he has no job, at least until December. He also has no vehicle to drive once he’s here and oh right, there’s the little matter of him asking me to remove him from my auto insurance policy last spring, because it was “ridiculous” for him to have to pay for it monthly when he didn’t have a car. And it was an ASTRONOMICAL AMOUNT, don’t you know? A whole $55 per month for nine months of the year. For a single, 22-year old male. Who wants to wager that he’ll find something comparable now that he’s not under my umbrella?

My head hurts. I’m going to bed.

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Mom and I went down to Marion, Ohio yesterday to visit her cousin and do some genealogy research. It was rather emotional for me. It might sound silly, but after spending so much time trying to find out more about these people, I start to feel connected to them, compelled to find the stories that need to be told.

It has really been bothering me that I can’t find out information on the Briggs branch of our family. Correction: it HAD been bothering me. I’m not really any closer to knowing the crucial information on my great great grandmother, but I was given several huge gifts yesterday.

One was two pages of notes, written by my late great Aunt Grace, a woman I never had the pleasure of meeting. My mom’s cousin sent me home with about six large envelopes containing papers, most of which relate to her father’s side of her family, which is no relation. BUT… in the last envelope, at the bottom of the stack were the two pages that not only provided me with what I truly believe to be the name of my great great grandmother, Adelia Eberts, but also an accounting of each one of her children. Including (and this is the important part) the MARRIED names of her other two daughters. For months, I’ve been trying to find information on Laura Briggs. I now know that she married George Vogelman and moved to California where she had two children, a son named Jack and a daughter named Vela.

But this, perhaps, was an even greater treasure:

This is my great grandmother, Emma Briggs. I think she has a look in her eyes of someone who had better not be taken lightly. And I like it.

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Or, as it has officially been dubbed in our department, “We’re Just Trying to Get Through It Monday.” There were birthdays celebrated today. So, now it’s:

We’re Just Trying to Get Through It Monday… Now With Cake!

It was hard getting up this morning. I managed to get out the door on time, but as I was getting ready to turn off my street, there was a van coming from the opposite direction, being chased by two dogs: a Pomeranian and a Yorkie. Vicious dogs, I’m telling you.

The driver of the van and I both put our vehicles into park. By this time, the Yorkie was alongside my car, so clearly, we weren’t going to be driving anywhere until we could figure out where these dogs belonged. They were very friendly, and having a high old time with their newfound freedom. Both of their bellies were dripping wet from running through dew-covered lawns, so clearly they’d been out cavorting for a while.

We found matching tags on their collars with a phone number. I called it and got voicemail. I left a message stating that I was out on the corner of X and Y streets with two little dogs who were clearly out having a good time, and to please call me back as soon as possible. Then, another woman who lives on the corner said we could put the dogs in her back yard until the owner could get them. So, I called and left another message with the address of the house.

I wasn’t here too long before I received a voicemail message from the very grateful owner, thanking us for rescuing them. I hope she didn’t scold them too much (normally, I’m not a fan of small dogs, but these little guys were both cute and friendly), but they definitely should have a time out.

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A week or so ago, JM’s friend called him to say that Best Buy had Wii Fit in stock, so I hopped into my car and headed over to get one. Never mind that we didn’t have the Wii console yet. We’d been told by his friend at Best Buy that the Wii was easier to find than the Wii Fit. True to his word, he let JM know that they would have some in stock when they opened this morning, and suggested that I get there before the store opened to insure getting one. So, that was my plan.

But then, my friend Wendy called me yesterday, from Target. Lo and behold, they had two of them in stock. So, she bought it. I stopped by her house with the cash and picked it up. YAY!

I love it. JM loves it. Even The Boyfriend likes it, and he’s not big on video games. But he was very interested in the Wii Fit and we played around with it last night after he came home from work. I like the fact that I can break a sweat playing a video game.

Tomorrow morning, I’m taking a little hike up the hill to our Student Rec Center on campus. They’re offering all full time employees free annual memberships. And since they have a track inside and I’ve been looking for a place where I can walk while listening to my iPod without worrying about traffic or getting mugged, it’s a win win.

My doctor should be happy when I see him in two weeks.

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I wouldn’t even be mentioning this if a friend hadn’t blogged about it, which in turn led me to looking at what people on BlogHer were saying.

I guess I just don’t understand why people are so upset about this. Oh my god a guy running for president cheated on his wife. I’m sure that’s the first time THAT’S ever happened. Personally, I’m much more concerned with the liars and cheats who are actually elected; and the lies they tell to that end up affecting  the entire world.

None of us on the planet is immune from making stupid mistakes that greatly affect the course of our lives. And if you can look in the mirror and say that you haven’t screwed up something? Give it time. You will.

Just call it my agnostic version of “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

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In a day that was already… well, shit, The Boyfriend topped it all this evening.

Last night, as we were on our way to get dinner, we called another couple to see if they wanted to meet us. They couldn’t, but my friend asked me if I was going to another mutual friend’s bachelorette party tonight. I told her I hadn’t heard anything about it. She said that the maid of honor had called her just the night before. I went home and listened to all the messages on the machine, but there was nothing from the maid of honor.

I thought maybe I hadn’t been invited because they figured I’d be a no-show. In the past year, I’ve missed a three baby showers, a bridal shower, a bachelorette party and a wedding. It’s not that I wanted to miss all of these events. Most of the showers occurred on weekends when I was working. The bachelorette party, I missed because I had no money to go out. And I was sick on the day of the wedding. I felt bad about all of it.

Keep in mind that I am also not exceptionally close to any of the individuals these events were for. For example, the maid of honor and bachelorette for tonight’s shindig have grown up together, whereas I have only been on the outskirts of their circle for the past seven or eight years. And it’s not as though we get together on a regular basis; I generally only see them when someone is throwing a party that we’re all attending; or when The Boyfriend’s band is playing.

Because I had missed so many events, however, and because The Boyfriend and I didn’t even RSVP for the upcoming wedding until the very last minute (we had to wait for his work schedule to come out), I thought that there might be a chance that I was deliberately not invited. And I wouldn’t have been offended.

But because of circumstances at home tonight, and the fact that The Boyfriend took off to a Tigers game when we could have been doing something together, I guess I was chomping at the bit a tad, wanting to get out of the house.

But whatever. I started to settle in for the evening, feeling quite ok with it. And then my phone rang. I answered it and it was The Boyfriend. I thought he was calling me to let me know he’d found his cell phone, but no… he’d stopped at the maid of honor’s house (whose boyfriend happens to be the drummer of the band) and he was calling to tell me that they were going to dinner at PF Chang’s.

“Who told you that?” I asked.

“Who do you think?” he responded.

“There are two people living in that house,” I said, knowing full well that he hadn’t even seen the maid of honor.

“But only one of them is here now,” he said.

I said something about not having any details about where they were going, he repeated the restaurant and then said, “In about an hour.”

And that, my friends, was the extent of the details provided to me about tonight’s festivities. I still haven’t heard anything from anyone who is actually going. And until I do, I don’t consider myself invited.

And instead of allowing me and the maid of honor to save face by having her apologize for not calling (or not getting the message, as her boyfriend might have left a message on MY boyfriend’s voicemail - if so, it was quite vague), and me saying it’s ok because I had other things going on anyway, now it’s an entirely different situation.

Also, since The Boyfriend has told his drummer the situation, he’s basically played the part of the junior high school kid’s mom, who had to call one of the other parents to get her kid invited to the birthday party.

Thanks, Mom.

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Ok, not really all that hot of a date, but The Boyfriend and I have so little time together since I’m back on days that we had been trying to make a point of spending at least a couple of hours together on Thursday nights, before he goes to band practice. Lately, though, we’ve fallen out of even that.

Yesterday was a horrid day, hence the reason I didn’t post. It was one of those days where nothing much was going right. My emotions are a roller coaster. I can go from feeling extremely good about a situation (generally involving work, because I’m really excited about my job right now) to not even wanting to exist anymore, within mere hours. I was so bent out of shape over everything last night that I just got into my car and left. I drove across town to my friend Peg’s house and hung out with her until 9:30. It helped me settle down enough to come home and go straight to bed without screaming at anyone. Or worse.

Things are so screwed up at home. It’s utter chaos. Fall semester is going to start in about two weeks and I’m not even remotely excited about it. In fact, I’m dreading my classes. I’m dreading the weekends spent trying to catch up on the homework I don’t have time or energy to complete during the week. My house is a disaster, I have family staying here for an extended time and it’s wearing on my nerves, and I can’t even get a couple hours of peace and quiet with The Boyfriend.

So, I text-messaged him today and asked him if he wanted to go somewhere for dinner after I got home from work. His response: “YESSSSSSS!!!!!”

And so we did. We went to one of our favorite watering holes, because a Reuben sounded pretty damn good to me. I also had a blueberry margarita, which was a pretty color and not too bad tastewise. The Boyfriend ordered a Bloody Mary and the bartender suggested it with gin, which was new to us. I took a sip and oh my gosh it was awesome! The gin gives it a little more of a zing. Also, the bartender said garlic Tabasco sauce is key. I almost wanted to trade in my margarita for one, but I didn’t.

Anyway, it was an enjoyable couple of hours and I’m feeling a little more relaxed tonight. Part of that has to do with the fact that the recent heat wave finally broke. It’s dropping down to 58 tonight. Good sleeping weather! I might actually get to use a blanket.

Tomorrow is Friday, it’s going to be a gorgeous weekend. I’m crossing my fingers for some kick-ass motivation to make a dent in this disaster I call home.

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I’m starting to think it’s not a coincidence that HOT is the theme for August NaBloPoMo and a crushing heatwave is taking over the country. I’m not in Texas or Oklahoma, but it’s 79 degrees in northwest Ohio at 10:10 p.m. and my northern blood doesn’t like this at all. AT ALL.

It’s too damn hot to write anything remotely coherent. I’m going to drink some more water and try to fall asleep in front of a fan. Because there is no central AC here. Which means I’m feeling pretty damn bitchy.

*Growl*

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