MMP - Bright & Early, Front & Center

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Is it too early? I couldn’t sleep so I’ve been sitting here playing solitaire and waiting until 6:00 a.m. because I know once I crawl back into bed, I’ll be there until noon at least (Monday off and all). But I can’t wait any more so please forgive me for posting so early.

Friday night and all day Saturday, we had rehearsal with our coach in preparation for our upcoming competition. She comes in once or twice a year and works us hard. But we always learn and get better. We even went up last year from a C to C+. This year we’re aiming for a B-. But I have to work on my stand stamina. Because of my arthritis, most rehearsals I sit on the side of the risers and sing from there. I’d bought a high kitchen chair for shows and stuff so I could see the director by looking over the shoulder of the gal in front of me. But that won’t be allowed for competition and I need to be up on the risers and sort of near the middle, since I sing Bass and that’s the best place for us.
Our coach placed us today for best sound. She put me on the first riser, right smack in the middle for all the world to see. Especially when the front row steps out with choreography. Yikes. Gotta lose more weight. Gotta be able to stand for more than 3 minutes at a time. Gotta do all this before the end of March.
INCENTIVE!!!

Smokey has developed an odd habit of wanting attention at 3 in the morning. Usually she sleeps on my lap (I sleep on a back wedge, with my knees propped up on pillows - I really ought to get me a Craftmatic®.) In the middle of the night, she wakes up, walks up my chest and starts purring and nuzzling my face. If I doze off will petting her, she nudges me awake again. This usually goes on for a half hour or more. No wonder I drink so much coffee at work.

I’ve been with my company over 24 years (I think I get a prize this September) and have stayed happily on the bottom rung. Every time I get antsy, I start looking at the internal postings. Then I see my supervisor pulling her hair out over some minutia demanded by a VP in a cushy office. I don’t need that kind of stress. So, I quietly work my numbers and create my invoices every day. The nice thing is, because of how long I’ve been there, and because of the quality of my work, I am not constantly being watched and reviewed. And the benefits and perks are really wonderful. So I’ll probably be there another 25 years until I retire. Unless I win the lottery.

When I win the lottery, I think I will become a professional poker player and join the WPT. I play in a floating game a few times a year, and I do fairly well. I have no delusions of being able to unseat Phil Ivey, but I believe I’m good enough to make it to the final table, and be the first one out. That’d be a good start. I enjoy gambling: black jack, craps, poker; but I’m not addicted to it. It’s too expensive to stay at the hotels with the good poker rooms. But I might be going to Vegas this fall. I hope to be able to finagle it into my travel budget for the year.

I’m in the process of scanning in some old photos from the 60’s. Here I am at age 2 and these are the kitties I had in grade school. Their names were Si and Am (later lengthened to Simon and Ambrose). I think Si is on top of the box and Am inside it. They were identical - so we gave them different color collars - but darned if I can remember who wore which.

Now, as promised:
When my brother was in senior high, my dad was giving him mock grief about a date he was getting ready for. My brother got more and more agitated, which amused my dad and prompted him to push further. My brother turned and hit the wall in frustration…
…and punched a hole thru the plaster. So my mom decided it was time to change the wall paper. She found a pink and silver mottled pattern (yes, that’s me with one of the kitties). Having finished that part of the hallway, she decided to do the rest of the main floor. The pink and silver wallpaper now stretched all the way to the master bedroom at the end of the hall. For the master bedroom, she chose red flocked wallpaper with some sort of mock regal pattern. She then painted that pattern onto the bedroom door. On my bedroom door, she painted two of my favorite stuffies on a starfield. Then she went outside and with the proper medium, painted little flowers on the back of our Volvo 144S.

I think that’s enough for an OP. Embellishments upon request.

2

Holy cow… I think I’m first. In all my spastic posting to the MMP, I never thought I’d be first. And the reason I’m first? It’s because I’m playing poker in an online tournament at 3am, which ties in nicely to the OP. Go me!

3

Bravo, Rosie. Work issues, performing arts, kiddie pics, cats, and home repair all in one post. You’re a real MMPer now. :wink: :slight_smile:

Swampy, stop sending Sean and me your tornadoes, especially at 4 AM on a Friday night/Saturday morning, when we’re too trashed to find shelter.

4

It’s never too early for an MMP, unless it’s still Sunday, so ya done good, anyrose! And no offense to your mom, but that wallpaper is scary. I don’t think I could live surrounded by it (says the woman who still has 45 gold-veined mirror tiles on the wall behind her bed…)

Speaking of kitties, and for the benefit of those who didn’t see my last post or so yesterday, here’s our kitty on her new tower. She didn’t seem to like it in the dining room, but by the living room window, she can look outside, and be close enough to hear the TV and our conversation in the family room. Last night, she fell asleep up there, although she did join us beneath the mirrored tiles a little after we turned out the lights.

Today’s plans - at least my plans - involve cleaning the basement storage area. My kid was supposed to help me with that when she was here, but we got involved in other stuff. I was going to attack it bit by bit every afternoon after work, but that didn’t happen. So today, at least for a few hours, we’re going to start. Then I can finish it bit by bit after work. No really. I will. Stop sniggering, dammit!!!

In other non-news, it’s very cold outside, but this week is supposed to mostly be about 10 degrees above average. Which keeps my heating bills down. Which is way good. It’s also supposed to rain a bit Tues and Weds, which means I need to get outside and cover up the firewood that the big winds uncovered this weekend.

That’s all I’ve got.

Who wants to buy me breakfast?

5

Dag, that’s early for a post. Very cute pix, I must say. Now get some sleep, woman!

My Obsession over the last month has finally come to a close. I am one of the lucky ones who got tickets to follow the USA in Germany this summer at the World Cup Finals. Woot! I have tickets to our game against Czech Republic in Gelsenkirchen and against Ghana in Nuremburg, but wasn’t fortunate to get a ticket to the middle game in Kaiserslautern. I also got one for the next round assuming we make it, which is a big assumption. Now I’m scrambling to fill some of the space in between, see if I can beat out several million Italians to get a ticket to the Italy game, requested some other match tickets. I also have to figure out how to get there, where to stay, and how to pay for it. But at least I’m not waiting on pins and needles to hear if I even got tickets.

6

Great OP anyrose. The wallpaper scared me though. :eek: Please tell me your father got to drive that car into work everyday for everybody to see the flowers. The thought of that makes me <snerk>.

Bobbio those weren’t my tornadoes. At least if they were, I didn’t know it cause it was not tornadoey here on Saturday. Matter of fact it was quite cool and breezy all day Saturday. I fried chicken Saturday. We had smashed taters (nut N.O.T.), corn, green beans, biscuits, deviled eggs and apple pie (I cheated it was a Mrs. Smith’s) also. It was good. We had the leftovers for lunch yesterday. Yesterday was also our annual Parish meeting after church. That went on for an hour and a half. All kinds of committee and organizational reports as well as electing three new members for the Vestry. We’re also starting site work on the new building. YAY! Maybe the dang thing will be finished in about a year.

Today, I am going shopping for a sofa bed. At least I think I’m gonna buy a sleeper sofa . See, the futon in my study has just about had it, poor thing. I need to replace it with either another futon or a sleeper sofa , cause it’s a good thing to have for when I need extra space for people to sleep. I measured and a full sized sleeper sofa would fit quite nicely in the space. I’d have to move my puter chair to pull it out but that’s no biggie. Plus I want a full size sofa as opposed to a love seat type cause I want something I can lay on to take naps. That’s important. So, Ima go clean up and drag ACBG along with me to furniture stores today. He’s so excited. You should see him walking around yawning and scratching. I can tell just by how he’s doin’ it he can’t wait. :smiley:

BBL with tales of sleeper sofa shopping.

7

I’m still up, it’s too late now to go to sleep and still be able to shake it off and get the kidlets up for school, so here I am, online again.

We are having the freakiest winter I have experienced since moving here 17 years ago. Okay, so we had a big snowfall in November, but since then, nothing but rain, rain, some wind, and more rain. Here it is, 4:34 am, the coldest hour of the night, and it’s freaking 39 degrees!!!

My big plan for the day includes attacking the never-ending laundry pile before it attacks me, (I swear I heard it growl at me when I bushed my teeth last night!) and I am starting a crockpot of stew using a nice chunk of moose a friend sent home with my boy tonight. I’ll throw the required ingedients into my bread machine as well, so supper is taken care of. Maybe I’ll even bake a pie, I have a big bag of granny smiths in the fridge, my favorite baking apple!

I don’t remember responding to an MMP before, even though they are a fun to read, so hi all of you regulars, I hope you all have a good Monday out there in the real world!

8

This weekend we planted Ivylad’s anniversary gift.. I also spent my $50 Michael’s gift card and got those interchangeable knitting needles, you know, where you can mix and match and make all the sizes you need. We also bought two desk chairs for the kidlets. They had outgrown their desks, so Ivylad found these huge walnut craft tables at Home Depot for $75 each…they were trying to get rid of them. Problem is, they’re craft tables, not desks, so the chairs were too short. I hit on the idea of bar stools, and we got two very nice swivel bar stools with arms.

TMI for swampbear My 13 year old daughter got her second period over the weekend.

:smiley:

Also, I’m off work, but the kids are in school. That means Ivylad and I have a day to ourselves!

9

This is not going to be a good day. I got in to work - bad start already since it should be a holiday - and managed to print out a whole report backwards and upside down. For some unknown reason Word defaults to printing two-sided pages, but it always prints them upside down unless I change the setting, which I forgot to do. Bleh. I think I’m feeling a 1/2 sick day coming on… leaving early today would be a good thing.

10

FCD is awake and showered, so we’re heading out for a late breakfast. Then to the basement - I’m serious! We have got to get started on those boxes o’crap. Goodwill should do well when we’re done. Plus I’ll do laundry. Oh yeah, I have a good time on my days off!

:smiley:

11

Kids have school on Martin Luther King Day? :confused:
I am back after a long weekend, in which I found that my job might be in jeopardy due to a conversation I had in a closed committee meeting, which someone took (out of context and with malice aforethought) back to the parties mentioned in the conversation.

If anyone could follow that, it means that I am sitting here, not quite comfortable until I see the higher ups on Wednesday–and see which way the wind is blowing.

this is an odd position for me to be in–I have never had to worry about my job before. And all because of gossip. Another party involved may quit all together because she is so appalled at the unprofessionalism.

Sorry, not so mundane, but it’s on my mind today…

As to that wallpaper! anyrose -I am not sure if it is scarey or if it’s coolly retro–fashion being what it is. For me, it’s the red and pink-ness–neither are a fav color of mine.

But you are tooo cute in your lil outfit! I wore similiar things, so it’s like looking at myself, but with brown curls and brown eyes. I think kiddie pics are universal–I have pics of my kids “kissing” the daffodils as well.

Another nice day–WHERE is winter? It is nice to see the sun.

Today we have to give my daughter time with driving (she needs to build her hours), haircuts, eyeglasses fixed, and SDMB (oh, and clean a bathroom)–see how we celebrate a National Figure’s Federal Holiday…

12

Egads, ar! That wallpaper is giving me bad flashbacks! (But the little coat and matching hat are keee-ute!) :wink:

No kitties in my lap but I did have a chihuahua till she started CHASING the cat.

This tragedy was way too close to home for comfort. It’s where both my kids went to middle school and isn’t even a mile from my house. Strangely, I missed the whole thing on Friday which was weird since I normally drive right by the school on my way to and from work. Very sad.

I got all my work done yesterday so today is total goof off day. Yay! Might even go to the movies with Lil Lestat[sup]TM[/sup] later. Narnia, I think.

Knife of Dreams IS really really good so far. I am going to have to go back and reread all the books after this I think.

Barbacued country ribs for dinner tonight. Cause I feel like em. Nummy.

On preview, I see rigg’s post and I am p.o.'d for her. Isn’t that against the law or sumpin?
Tupug

13

Private school.

14

Great OP, anyrose. I admire your incentive with the choir, with your job, and the poker ambitions. Poker? I hardly know her!

rigs, I know I had school on MLK day in my public school district. It was really annoying, but it was the least of what the administration there did. One of our teachers used to hold an all-purpose anyone-who-wants-to-come field trip to an MLK memorial service in a nearby town.

My weekend was interesting. On saturday, I woke up at 7 am. I went into Manhattan with my father (who had to go into work), arriving at the Port Authority at 8:30 am. I walked to the Waldorf Astoria hotel, arriving there at 9:30 am, where I was supposed to meet my friend Amy, who is from Australia, and her fiancee Ryan, at 10 am. So I waited. And I waited.

10 am came and went. I kept waiting.

And I waited some more. (This is the story of my life here, folks. I hope you’re taking notes.)

Insert more waiting here. Then insert a trip to the Starbucks in the lobby, and then some more waiting.

For four fucking hours I waited. I sent text messages. I tried calling her, but the number I have for her is Australian, and I can’t dial that. I tried getting operator assistance to pay extra to dial that. I tried calling up to her room, which turned out to not to be in her name. Finally I ascertained that - get this - she wasn’t in the hotel at all. Ever. My only running theory is that she somehow managed to fuck up the name of the hotel and was in a different hotel, and her cell phone completely didn’t work (which would mean that she couldn’t get my text messages, or call me, or even access my cell number to call on a land line). Beyond that, I have no idea what happened.

Fortunately, my awesome friend Mary, who is awesomed with awesomely awesome awesomeness, saved me from my Waldorfian exile. I hopped a subway down to Astor Place and Mary and I commenced with the awesome. Can I get away with one more awesome? Good. Awesome. We went to The Strand bookstore, which I had never been to, and wherein I purchased some Neal Stephenson books. Then we went to see A History of Violence, which I really liked. I’m glad I got the chance to see it in a theater this late. After that, Mary and I went over to the new domicile of our mutual friend Pantea.

It turns out that, even though Pantea and I are very close friends, she didn’t know that I’m a vegetarian. So. I had tacos with refried beans, and Pantea’s friend Simon showed up with cookies, and Mary left after a little while, because she had some awesoming to do somewhere else or something, and Pantea and Simon and I rearranged her side of her new room, and we chatted and told dead baby jokes and it was fun. I zipped uptown to the Port Authority in record time, and caught a bus home.

Sunday was rather more tame. I lollygagged, spent time with the family, then grudgingly packed all my stuff up. We went out for dinner, and then soon enough it was time for me to get on a bus and come back to RPI, which is where I arrived at a little bit after 11 pm last night. It’s weird being back in my dorm room after a whole month. In some ways it’s like I never left, in other ways it’s like a whole new room again. I think I might rearrange it.

15

I slept in till after 9:00 a.m.!!! (For the two of you who haven’t been following my sleeping habits closely: that’s a miraculous length of time.) I woke up about a jillion times, but I was able to fall asleep every darn time. I heard part of the 7:00 a.m. news and then heard news again followed by music, which didn’t make sense. I figured it must be the 8:00 news followed by broadcast problems, but when I turned around and looked it was 9:11 a.m. Yay!

Great post, Rosie. What are you rehearsing for? Love the pictures, though I must agree with others that the wallpaper is scary (although I’m sure it was highly fashionable at the time). Of course, I’m the one who is too cheap to ditch the harvest gold fridge and stove that came with my house (the walnut cabinets were immediately painted white and the antique brass hardware (featuring ornate 4-inch wide medallions) were replaced with white ceramic handles posthaste. Is it wrong of me to wish that my fridge and stove would FINALLY give up the ghost?

rigs, that stinks. Yet another reason to go to grad school? (Will you be in the same job while you’re in school?)

Puggy, I heard about that shooting on the news. Very sad.

Hey, Rifty! Sounds like you had an awesome time anyway…

So now I have to be semi-productive. Laundry, miscellaneous clean-up, groceries for the week, etc. I’m having coffee with the MMP. Hmmmm…What to have for brunch?

GT

16

Ooh! MAJOR pet peeve o’ mine–I don’t mind 10 minutes late–but to not show?!? OR call?

I have an aquaitance, used to be friend, whom I would STILL be waiting for at Baker’s Square (restaurant), 5 years later.

I loathe being stood up. I would never stand up my math buddy!
I thought of private school as soon as I posted. I am a tad slow this MM.
Pug --I doubt it’s illegal–I work in an at-will state, so they can can me at any point. Thing is, I’m an excellent nurse (really) and they are somewhat scarce on the ground. So, I doubt I’ll be fired.

but this gives boss’s boss ammo (she doesn’t like me–but she doesn’t like anyone). Plus, I sit on 3 committees, orient newbies, and am in “charge” every day I work. They effing need me.

It makes for an uneasy work environment; one that was already strained. I know, I know–but I’m gonna go to grad school and then get out, 'member?

Enough about me. (sorry Cool Kids)

17

Today is supposed to be a holiday? Right, I won’t do any work.

Morning, everyone. Thans for the great OP, rosie.

I survived the weekend, my FIL and step-MIL are WONDERFUL and my future SIL was much, much less aggravating than she has been previously. She’s still not my favourite person but I can now stand being related to her. We got our Christmas presents. I got

A KitchenAid mixer!

Fear me! I will be turning out baked goods like nobody’s business! It’s white, and I think I keep it and not get a trendy colour. I have to name it. Any suggestions? All big pieces of equipment and stuffed animals get named here. I’ve got to rearrange my kitchen so I can have it out permanently. I love it. I love it.

Mr. Lissar got a leather coat. We also got a bunch of gift cards and ginger infused icewine. I love my inlaws. I love them.

18

Sir Mix-A-Lot?

19

Aww, thanks. I wouldn’t stand you (or anyone else, for that matter) up either. :slight_smile:

20

Sorry to hear about your job problems, riggs. That really sucks. :frowning: