Yesterday was absolutely lovely and today as completely exhausting. I’m going to have to remember to take photos of these amazing carved end tables and coffee table, to show off how incredible they are. But back to the story-telling.

I left work early on Friday, to do this truck project, and when I arrived home my roomie Mel was already there. Bless her heart, I love how reliable she is! I really ought to spend more time with her, because she is so darn cool.

The weather, however, was not cool and there’s nothing like being stuck in LA Friday get-away traffic in the heat. But we drove up in her car, used the A/C a bit when we were actually traveling at a good clip, and just stuck it out while we were, well, stuck. She’s doing a sword-teaching and demo thing at the Ren Faire with friends tomorrow, so while I drove, she was hand-stiching another new doublet. She’s doing some amazing things with “slash-and-puff” techniques, in preparation for teaching a class this fall, and it’s fun to also admire her skill and creativity with a needle and thread.

Thankfully picking up the U-Haul was non-eventful, and all we needed to do was fill up her tank and send her on her way.

I got over to Mom’s and Larry’s, and he helped me pack everything into the truck. Mom had survived the Northridge earthquake, years ago, and gained a healthy dose of CA earthquake paranoia. I say a “healthy dose” because it means she does those things you’re *supposed* to do in California—strap your bookcases to walls, use earthquake-hold on your breakables, etc. Unfortunately, this means that one of my end tables currently has a lamp affixed to the glass top so securely that we can’t remove it. The goo hasn’t exactly hardened, but the ceramic is pressed so tightly that we can’t get *to* the goo to break its suction-hold on the glass. This, of course, complicated wrapping and packing the glass table tops for the move. Let’s say I drove with a bit of trepidation of jarring and breaking things.

I’d forgotten to get rope or ties, to secure everything in the back of the truck. But my step-brother had ties to loan me, which solved the problem.

Since Mom and Larry are headed out on vacation, and won’t be here for Mother’s Day, my step-sister threw a big Mom’s-Day-bash for all the family mommies Friday night. So after we finished packing the truck, I went over with Mom and Larry to Petula’s house, and we had a great dinner and visit with everyone. Pet is also a hair-stylist, by trade, and she’s created this really *lovely* studio in her garage at her home. Since she was coloring my Mom’s roots and trimming her dad’s hair, I managed to stand in line and get a trim while I was there. I was highly complimented that she didn’t think my hair looked like I had been the one to cut it (I had, twice), but it was nice to get a real trim and the correct shaping done to the back of the hair. I have to admit, it feels really weird to have the neckline shaved/trimmed so close, but I’m sure I’ll be glad for it later. Right now I just keep playing with it, kind of like when guys get their heads shaved and they play with the stubble afterwards.

Finally, I had to decide to just crash on Mom’s couch since I was too tired to drive home yet. It was disorienting to be stranded somewhere without my car, since I have all my overnight supplies always packed—pajamas, toothbrush, hairbrush, contact solution and case, etc. But I managed and had a lovely sleep in before getting my contacts back in and a huge latte for the road.

The drive was uneventful, and unpacking was exhausting. But now I have three bookcases in my room, a coffee table and two end tables (and a stuck lamp!) in the living room, and the house is really starting to look grown-up and adult. Not quite like a make-over show on cable, but not quite so college.

And we had our last rehearsal of the month at the studio, since all the guys are taking one week vacations one week after another all month long. This should afford me some extra time to compose lyrics for the third CD, and take some time to get organized and motivated again in several other projects. I like to joke that I’m “single-and-bored-bored-bored” but I’m not really bored in life in general. When friends say I wouldn’t have time to date anyways, I know I’d be likely to change my schedule for someone special, but then again I wonder what projects would I really drop? I *do* enjoy my hectic full life, and I’m quite thankful for it.

I had a lovely time yesterday enduring Southern CA traffic (hmm, lovely?) for the benefit of getting to see friends at a business meeting for that historical club that I do. Now that I’m finally in a job with some flexibility, slightly further north than the last job, with more money, I can finally afford to go to the monthly business meetings and more fully participate in my northern group. Although I live about an hour and 20 minutes south of them, I still think of them as my “home.”

We even had a really large group head out for dinner afterwards (TGIFriday’s), and had a great time catching up, telling stories, and general mayhem and goodness. I missed this, and I’m glad it’s back in my life again. [And I had a scrumptious veggie grilled dish that I will have to remember to order again sometime.]

The drive home was mostly uneventful, although I have to laugh at myself when I find cute neighborhoods to catch a quick nap when I’m having trouble staying awake for the entire drive home. And I was fortunate to miss being out in the heavy rains, but I did get to see some amazingly beautiful lightning on the last leg of the trip. California doesn’t get nearly the lightning that I grew up with in Ohio, and I miss the lightning storms sometimes too.

This morning I also lucked out with the rain. It was pouring in sheets when I first parked my car at the office, and then just as suddenly as it started, it stopped as soon as I had my bags organized and ready to walk inside. I *did* forget to buy more soymilk for my latte at work, but I’ll survive.

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Supposedly I’ll get to finally move the bookcases, end tables, and coffee table from my Mom’s tonight. *AND* there’s supposed to be a last-minute almost-surprise Mother’s Day dinner at my step-sister’s house. So hopefully with the rental truck, the roomie, the siblings, the parental units, the traffic, and the rain… hopefully I’ll have an enjoyable afternoon and evening today. I’m a little nervous, but we’ll see what happens.

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Finally, a topic of some frustration and sadness. A dear friend of mine at work—her best friend died two weeks ago. He and his partner were together 27 years, three kids, several grandkids—and now they’re having problems putting together a memorial service because the local churches can’t get past the fact that they were a gay couple.

It’s sad and frustrating to see a source of comfort in their lives (the church) give them no comfort in their time of grief (in his death and now the family’s grieving process). Hopefully I’ve been able to hook her up with some loving and caring ministers in the gay churches in the area, to bring them love and comfort and blessing in this time of struggle and loss. But it saddens me to see her hurt by the loss of her best friend, and the family’s grief trying to find a spiritual celebration of his life.

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Recently Listened to: Tori Amos, “To Venus and Back” (Disc 1: Live and Orbiting)

First, my Mom sent this amazing California wildflowers graphic to me at work today. I’ve put the original large file up on a separate webpage for you, in case you’d like to download it yourself. There’s three different file formats—JPG, BMP, and PNG. If you plan to save the photo for your Windows Desktop, you need the BMP version. But it’s huge, so it loads more slowly. If you just want to look at the larger picture, click on the one for the JPG version. It loads quickly and you can enjoy the original photo. It’s quite impressive, as you can see from this small thumbnail:

Click on the thumbnail to go see the larger links.

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Last night I got to see some old friends from my last job, sorta. You see, the last month or so before I left, there was a huge push to fix some problems on the contract. We started involving some other people across the country on phone conferences, and I made friends with a gal named Courtney. She and I hit it off well on the phone, and she was really bummed when I left the contract. She has family in Southern CA and she wished she could have met me someday when she was out visiting. Then LuAnn was hired after I left, and she and I have also hit it off really well since she came on the project. I’d met her in person one other time, over dinner and drinks on a Friday night, and we’d done some serious training over the phone and email to get her up to speed.

Well, Courtney was out in CA for both work and family-related things, and whined to LuAnn that she wished she could have met me after all. LuAnn rang me up, we all made dinner plans, and I went down to Benihana’s for dinner and drinks after work last night. Now, since I had a good 90 minute drive home, obviously I wasn’t drinking alcohol over dinner. But the restaurant was a block from Courtney’s hotel, so let’s say she had maybe a few more glasses of wine than typical for a work night.

Gee, I haven’t been around drunk people in a long while!

We had a great meal, and earlier the Happy Hour specials while we were waiting were great too—Wednesday Happy Hour sushi deal was three handrolls for only $5, so we had a Philadelphia roll, a Benihana special (crab, avocado, and veggies), and a Shrimp roll. Our chef was fun, although maybe not quite as flashy as some, and made the fried rice into a heart shape (for the Anniversary couple at the table) and then into Mickey Mouse (for the tourist Japanese folks at the table, and the Disneyland Anniversary this week). I had some very yummy chicken and shrimp, although next time I may get the scallops because they looked amazing.

Courtney’s husband hates mushrooms, so she kept saying she felt like she was cheating on him by eating mushrooms.

We finally had to convince her to let us drive her the block home to her hotel, but she relented after a little peer pressure. What is it about alcohol that makes people think they’re fine to drive? *she rolls her eyes*

So then I got home without incident, and I have some fun photos to send to both gals in memory of our spiffy dinner.

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Recently Listened to: Tori Amos, “To Venus and Back” (Disc 1: Live and Orbiting)

Although everyone else seemed to always use Mapquest for directions and maps, I had always been a fan of http://maps.yahoo.com. Lately I’ve become completely addicted to http://maps.google.com, and just this afternoon I noticed the Satellite imagery that goes with their maps.

I zoomed in on the house I grew up in, on my elementary school, my high school, my college dorm, my college apartment, my current apartment, and the house I shared with Dayle and Ken (you can see the pool!). I’m just astonished at the functionality. I’m dizzy with satellite imagery.

Plus I just love the slide-around-on-the-map way to move the maps in google. I’ll probably never use anyone else’s maps ever again.

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We had our quarterly “state of the business” meeting at work this morning, and I’m just thrilled to be part of a company that’s such a leader in their industry. It makes me think about ways I can keep improving as an individual member of the team, and to be here for a long time to come. It’s almost enough to make me consider this area of Southern CA my “permanent home” … although that’s going to take a lot of soul-searching. I’m still connected to my “old” county where I still go to church, see friends, pick up my mail, and all that. But I love where I work, and I still feel centrally located to much of what I go to. I just feel the tug of a good employer, and that’s a good thing.

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Recently Listened to: Kate Bush, “The Dreaming”
Tori Amos, “To Venus and Back” (Disc 1: Live and Orbiting)

The boss looked over my files and liked them. Thought I did a great job of doing almost everything needed, had only a few edits, and wanted to make sure I felt proud of my accomplishment and that I wasn’t beating myself up at all for missing anything. Yippee me!

So now I have a short list of all the edits I need to throw in there today (didn’t get some of the appendix and intro data put together, but then again didn’t know it was required) and learned about another finishing step for posting the files to the shared drives, but all in all a good/great first project! Now I just wish I’d been through the Advanced class on this software, so that when I did the cut/paste from the advanced book I’d feel more comfortable that the materials were correct.

Another great thing about this job—lots of free food. I hadn’t had time to cook on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday so I’d come to work with just coffee and Balance bars yesterday morning. But after the classes have all eaten, the leftovers are free for the employees and yesterday was fajitas. So I not only had a yummy lunch, but I was able to wrap up some chicken, tortillas, and salad for dinner and make it through my marathon work evening without spending any money (or time away from my desk).

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Back on the topic of the moving truck fiasco, since I came in slightly late this morning, I’m pushing off the furniture reschedule to Thursday afternoon. Can I just say how much I really *Really* love this job? The boss also said it’s totally fine for me to leave early on Thursday to run up to my mom’s, rent the truck, and move furniture. And hopefully Geoff won’t be too exhausted from his 4 am shift at the Brewery to drive me up there to get the truck—especially since this directly helps him out, too. The more bookcases I get from my Mom, the less stuff I’ll have taking up space in the garage. Which means in another 3 weeks when he finally moves everything in from his house in Sacramento, he’ll have lots of space in the garage.

It’s funny having a boy roomie in the house again. It never really dawned on me how many boy roomies I’ve had lately, but I did live with two married couples, one right after the other, before getting this apartment with Mer and Mel. And Mel and I are always the out-and-about roomies, so I think having Geoff living there won’t take up any more people space since we almost never have all four of us home at the same time. And it’s so fun to see Geoff’s kitty cats peek around the corner when I’m home. They’re still a little skitish, but they’re settling in nicely and they are fun to be around. I’ve missed having kitties, and this is really nice.

Well, it’s almost free-food-for-leftover-lunch time, so time to see what’s in the kitchen. Later!

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Recently Listened to: Kate Bush, “The Dreaming”