laura705

Yay for Friday.  And it’s sunny!! 

Not too much to report.  It’s nice I could get into the blogs right away today.  Yesterday was okay at work.  Bf picked me up from the train, and later we went out to eat.  I had salad and pasta, and took about 2/3 of the pasta home.  Very large portion. 

I didn’t exercise, except to pull my fitness ball out of the closet and do some crunches on it while I was watching some tv.  I can tell I need to fill the ball w/ air - I didn’t have to struggle to get the ball through the closet doorway to get it in and out of there. 

The only firm plans this weekend are my hair appointment on Saturday morning and a christening on Sunday.   Tonight bf and I will likely watch a dvd from the library - The Changeling, with Angelina Jolie, which neither of us ever saw last year. 

I might do some more raking on Saturday.  Now we have to bag the leaves, so that’ll be a big pain, but I like getting outside, and I want to keep up with it.  Our big oak still has leaves to drop.  Maybe I should nag bf to do the final mowing.  He knows it needs it, but the last time he went to use the mower, he broke the cord that you pull to start it.  I just phoned to remind him that he needs to look in the manual to see if it’s something he can fix himself. 

I also want to find a recipe for a veggie for Thanksgiving.  Tawnya suggested a yam souffle, but bf’s mom is already making mashed sweet potatoes, so the yam/sweet potato area is covered.  And bf’s mother is a sweet potato connoisseur of sorts - she scouts a few stores to find the best, lol.  Which I can’t really disagree with, because I have ended up buying sweet potatoes that weren’t sweet!  I love the idea of a corn souffle, but then that would be too many starchy veggies.  If it were just me and bf, I wouldn’t care about that…  We may end up doing the Greek style green beans again (in a tomato sauce w/ seasonings) because everyone liked those and bf wants to improve on last year’s version.

I also have to decide on the desserts.  Something w/ pumpkin, and maybe something w/ cranberries.  There will only be 4 of us, so it would be nice to make some mini versions of desserts and have 2 or 3.  Because it would be nice to have something chocolate too…

Okay, getting myself hungry.  And today’s not a good day to do that.  I didn’t bring any snacks today, or lunch.  Lunch was intentional - I’ll eat out - but forgetting the snacks was accidental.  I had a very filling breakfast (raisin bread toast w/ peanut butter, a half banana, and milk), so I should be okay w/o a snack this morning. 

Okay, I have a meeting in 5 min. so I’ll publish.  Have a great Friday and a great weekend everyone!

I’m trying to get into the blogs, but there’s been no connection yet, so I’m typing this in Word.

It’s overcast and misty today.  Ugh.  Was sort of drizzily yesterday too, but bf totally surprised me and did haul all the leaves piled in the backyard out to the curb, and the village did pick them up.  Glad for that, even though there’s still more leaves on the lawn to be raked.  I think it might dry out this weekend.  Crossing my fingers.

Yesterday was alright at work.  I still have a very messy pile on my desk, but that’s about it.  Things have calmed down after our department’s busy time.  It’s a good time to catch up on things.  I’m looking forward to getting my desk cleared.  I don’t know what I’m waiting for though, lol.

In the evening I didn’t exercise.  Instead I finally made the Italian veggie soup.  We had that for dinner, late, but it still needed a bit of simmering to get the flavors melded together.  I watched part of the show Glee.  It was sort of interesting, but nothing I’d watch regularly. 

Nothing special today at work, but I do have a couple meetings.  The countdown for the lead admin’s departure is 2 more days.  She’ll be on vacation all next week and that following Monday, and after that, she’ll be in her new position.  The boss asked if she wanted a farewell lunch and she declined.  Goes along w/ her recent bad attitude.  Which is odd because when we’ve been meeting w/ her to go over the transition tasks, she’s perfectly helpful.  It’s when she’s in meetings w/ the whole department that she acts really obstinate and pissy.  I think she likes being in the position of knowing how to do those tasks and imparting her knowledge to us.  After the first meeting w/ the new admin and I, which I scheduled, we had another meeting yesterday and have one more scheduled for today, both of which the lead scheduled.  It either makes her feel powerful, or she plans on totally ignoring us if we go to her with questions after her move to her new position.  We shall see. 

Well, nothing much else to report.  I brought some of the homemade veggie soup for lunch today, and my snacks – apple, banana, granola bar.  I wasn’t tracking food very well since last Thursday, and I’ve not been totally on track the past couple days, but even so, my weight was down a pound from last week. 

Well, I finished writing this before 10 am and now it’s almost 4 pm and I finally managed to connect to the blogs here at 3fc.  So I’m publishing. 

It’s rainy today.  It rained yesterday, but I didn’t know that til I left the office at the end of the day and saw some puddles on the ground.  (I ate lunch at my desk.)  Today is our usual curbside leaf pickup day (the LAST one of the season), but I don’t know if they’ll do it today.  I wouldn’t think those machines they use to sweep or suck up the leaves would work so well with wet leaves.  Not that our leaves are at the curb today.  Bf couldn’t be bothered to do it over the mild, dry weekend or Monday.  So the piles are still in the backyard.  He will have to bag all of them.  On his own, and I will raise holy hell to make sure he does it.  Being Mrs. Nice Guy hasn’t worked w/ bf.

Yesterday was okay.  Our meeting w/ the lead admin went well.  I complimented her on some of the improvements she’d made to her tasks, because they definitely made them easier, and because a little honey couldn’t hurt, right? 

Food went off the rails late yesterday afternoon and evening.  But I’m back to it today.  I didn’t bring my lunch today, but I brought my snacks. 

I did a couple loads of laundry and watched some tv last night.  I also caught the last day of a Lands End outerwear sale and a free shipping offer and ordered myself a new pair of snow boots.  I also ordered a fleece hat, scarf, and earwarmer to wear w/ my winter jacket and my long down coat.  They didn’t have the matching gloves in my size, darn it.  I actually prefer mittens, but they didn’t have those in fleece.  LL Bean has fleece mittens, but not the right color in my size.  They did have the fleece gloves in my color and size.  I might order those.  But first I might check other sources for mittens. 

I actually might try and find a pair of those glove/mitten combos because it’ll be easier to use my iPod w/ that.  I have to say I don’t understand why I can’t work the clickwheel with my gloves on.  Well, the click part works, but not the other things you do with it.  Is that some sort of science thing, like body warmth, or an electrical current, or what?  Like our bedroom lamps, for instance.  We have the ones that are mounted on the wall, above the nightstand, and they swing out over the bed for reading.  So that it’s easier to shut them off, we installed some sort of thingy on each of them that turns them into touch lamps, and they turn off just by touching a metal part.  But you can’t turn them off by, say, reaching up w/ your book and touching the book to the lamp to shut it off.  It doesn’t work that way.  I might have to look this up on the internet.  Anyway, it would be good to have those glove/mittens for my iPod.  Most people would find them handy for their cell phones too, but I rarely use my cell phone, so it would mostly be for my iPod. 

I also ordered a pair of casual shoes, originally in green, but then I decided that color was not me (and I prefer not to call attention to my size 9 feet), and went back and changed my order to black.  Boring black. 

I had a lot of soreness yesterday evening because of my exercise that morning, and it’s still there this morning.  That’s what I get for not exercising in so long.  But I need to get back to it.  I don’t like feeling weak, and I felt that way when I was raking the other day.  I didn’t exercise this morning, but I’ll probably do something tonight.  

Today I’m off all the cold meds, so we’ll see how that goes.  Feeling generally okay.  I’ll probably still need some cough drops when I need to talk. 

That’s about it for today, so I’ll publish.

Today’s pretty much like yesterday in terms of the weather.  I wore my wool jacket and my new scarf and gloves.  I need to buy a hat to match, as I didn’t see anything at Kohl’s on Sunday. 

Yesterday dragged for me at work.  I need to get back into the groove at the office.  This cold has depressed me - I hate being sick.  Feeling better today, and I’m sure I’ll shake this thing sooner or later. 

Food went off track at night, but not too badly.  Until I logged in all the cough drops I had throughout the day.  Boo.  Today I will see if I can get by w/ fewer cough drops and my water and tea.  I didn’t exercise last night.

This morning I woke up a bit before 5:30 and tried to get back to sleep, but couldn’t.  So I got up and did a Body Electric workout.  Just one 30 min. show - biceps, triceps, hamstrings, inner thighs and obliques.  It’s somehow more palatable to exercise upstairs in front of the living room TV instead of in the basement, but then the furnace kicked on right after I started and I soon got really warm.  So now I’ve decided it’s probably better to do the exercise in the basement.  It’s cool when I start, but once I get warmed up it’s fine.

Today the new admin and I will meet w/ the lead admin to have her show us several of the tasks that she currently does that will transition to the new admin once the lead is gone.  I’m not looking forward to it, but it needs to be done.  The lead has been acting very pissy - you wouldn’t think she was voluntarily leaving this job to go to a new job in a new department.  The boss thinks it’s because we’re not all upset about her going and worrying how we’ll live without her.  That’s for sure.  I’ll be happy when she’s gone, I just wish we still wouldn’t have to see her on our floor. 

Tonight’s the movies.  I voted for Law Abiding Citizen again, but again another movie was picked.  The Box, which seems to be getting bad reviews.  I’m thinking of skipping the movie tonight.  Lately it just seems like we’re not seeing such great movies.  Or maybe I’m tired of seeing a mix of both mediocre and good movies and now prefer to spend my valuable time only seeing the ones I’m interested in.  So I might just tell our leader that I won’t vote anymore, but she can still e-mail me to tell me what they’ve chosen and I’ll join them if I want to see what they chose.  I miss going to the movies w/ bf, so maybe I’ll see if he wants to start going to the movies together on Tuesday nights.  We’ll see.  I think it would be fun to plan a night for us like that, regardless of whether we go out to a theater or watch a Netflix movie. 

I think tomorrow I’ll try and get up early and exercise in the morning again.  I like the idea of getting exercise done in the morning.  It’s idea is appealing, but the reality is more difficult. 

Okay, I’ll publish this and get back to work.

Monday, ho hum. 

Food has been so-so the past few days.  I haven’t logged my food since Thursday, so I don’t know exactly how good or bad.  I haven’t been overdoing the snacking because we didn’t have all that much in the house.  I discovered that bf stored his leftover Halloween candy in the downstairs fridge.  Now I’ll have to try and forget that I saw it. 

I didn’t end up making the soup yesterday.  Turns out we didn’t have a couple things I needed for the soup, so I ended taking doggy for a walk and then going shopping. 

I went to Kohl’s and bought my brown socks, as well as a scarf & gloves to match my wool coat (only had it 2+ years, it’s about time) and two bras.  I used my $10 coupon, also got 20% off, and also earned $10 in Kohl’s cash.  Not bad.  After that I bought gas, and then went to two grocery stores.  I knew that would happen because one store has a good selection of brands and the other has lower prices on deli and produce items.  Finally, I stopped at the dairy store for milk. 

In the evening, I watched some tv and had leftover pasta for dinner. 

Nothing much going on today.  It was chilly and windy this morning and I wore my hooded jacket.  Sort of casual for work commuting, but I was running behind (as usual) and didn’t have time to de-tag my new scarf and gloves that go w/ my wool jacket.  First thing this morning at work I responded to a request from Thursday, and right after lunch I listened to a 30 min webinar.  I don’t feel like doing much else, but there’s certainly work to be done. 

Nothing planned for tonight.  I feel okay today, so I think I should exercise tonight.  I’ll do a Body Electric workout, maybe two, tonight.  I DVR’d the two shows in the series that I was missing, so I might hook our DVD player/recorder up to our cable company DVR box so I can get the shows onto our hard drive and then copy them onto a DVD.  Neither bf or I are quite sure how to do this, so we’ll have to figure it out.  We also have some VCR tapes and some camcorder recordings we want to put onto dvd too, so that should be fun to figure out. 

Okay, better get back to work.  Publishing now.  

Just popping in for a short post.  Stayed home from work Friday because I was tired of all the coughing.  I’m still congested and that’s causing the coughing, but otherwise I feel okay, in spite of bf bugging me to get an rx from the doc because I’m not getting better (his opinion). 

I raked a lot yesterday because it was a beautiful day and there were a lot of leaves in the back.  I see more fell since then, so more raking is needed.  Bf will have to do that,  and before Wed, which is our last day for curbside leaf pickup.  After this week, we’ll need to bag the leaves - a lot more work.  In back, our maple is almost done dropping its leaves, but the oak is mostly hanging on.  It’s always the holdout. 

I went to Walmart to shop yesterday and have decided it’s not worth it for grocery shopping.  They don’t have nearly the variety of brands that other markets have.  So I still need to grocery shop some more today.  I also want to get to Kohl’s and use a $10 coupon I have - it expires today.  I’ve been wanting to buy some socks to match a pair of brown mary jane shoes I bought a couple months ago.  I need all kinds of other clothes, but I’ll just focus on the socks and maybe I’ll come across something else I like without scouring the racks.  I think I still have money on a Kohl’s gift card I can use…

Right now though, I think I’ll make some veggie soup with a recipe that has it going in the crockpot after sauteeing the veggies.  Bf won’t want it because it has no meat, but too bad.  I  want it.  I’ll thaw some ground beef and tomorrow he can either make the Italian veggie soup which has ground beef in it, or he can make something else w/ the beef. 

Okay, time to publish and get cooking. 

Feeling slightly better today.  Yes, I’m at work.  Maybe yesterday was pushing it to be back at work, but that morning before work I did actually think it would be better than it ended up being.  I switched up the cold medicine I’m taking today and I think it’s working better. 

I didn’t do anything after work except go through the mail and watch TV.  I finally watched an episode of TBL this season.  As usual, lots of tears and drama.  I kept flipping back and forth between that and other shows especially during all the commercial breaks.   For anyone who didn’t see it…here’s your spoiler warning.  Just wondering why they didn’t show how Shay looks today.  Now that I think about it, did they show how Daniel looked?   Hmmm.  My memory is going, but I don’t think they did.  What’s that about?

Nothing special going on today.  I thought the lead admin was taking a vacation day today, but no, it’s tomorrow and Friday.  She’s taking a lot of vacation time this month before she moves to her new department in December.  I once worked for her boss-to-be and I know he’s always had a bug up his you-know-what about people carrying over vacation days, so I’m sure that’s why she’s scrambling to take it before year end and before she moves to his dept. Fine by me, except the rest of us are also trying to meet w/ her to make sure the transition of her duties to the new admin happens smoothly.  And we’re all making sure we sit in on the meetings with the new admin so that the lead won’t give her a hard time.  Sigh. 

Nothing else to report, so I’ll publish.

Still feeling sucky, but I went to work anyway because why be miserable at home when I can be miserable at work?  Actually, after doing nothing but reading and watching bad tv all day and evening yesterday, I was bored stiff.  My tv taste was running to soaps and other fluff like the movie “13 Going on 30″, and some Hallmark movie about an American college girl who ends up marrying a Danish prince.  I was just killing time until I could take my nyquil and conk out.

A couple other people are sick on the floor because I hear coughing other than my own, and I think the guy whose cube is kitty-corner from mine went home early.  He sounded worse than me, and I think I heard him trying to record an out of office phone message and kept hacking away through it.  Poor guy. 

Anyway, last night I took nyquil and again slept soundly.  I showered this morning and felt semi-human for a short time.  I’m taking a daytime cold medicine, and was taking cough drops too until I finished the last one about 15 min ago.  Everyone in the dept has gone to our fundraising finale, but I stayed at my desk because who the heck wants to be near someone sick?  I might run out real quick to the Walgreen’s down the block and buy a new bag of cough drops. 

Food hasn’t been very good the past few days.  Strangely enough I can still taste food.  Today I used up a free lunch pass to the caf that I had sitting in my wallet that expired a couple days ago.  Sloppy Joe and tater tots.  Tasty and filling.  Not light or healthy though. 

Not going to the movie tonight, because, again, who wants to be around a sickie?  So I’ll just stay home.  No idea what I’ll eat for dinner. 

Not much else to report, so I’ll publish and go buy my cough drops. 

Ugh.  Feeling awful. 

Weekend.  Friday after work bf met me at the train stop near our friends w/ the new baby and we visited and had sandwiches with them for dinner.  Saturday I woke up too early again, 2nd day in a row, and felt lousy.  Just general tiredness - I thought.  Bf went with his mother to drop off her car for service and then had breakfast w/ her and visited with his aunt.  I dozed a bit and then puttered around all morning and finally got out of the house and did some yard cleanup.  It was a beautiful mild sunny day to do that. 

Later in the afternoon I took a shower, took a nap, and woke up w/ a sore throat.  Yup, a cold was on it’s way.  I skipped the book club, which I wasn’t all that enthused about anyway.  Dinner was a smart ones entree and I had popcorn and watched tv.  Sunday I still had the sore throat.  I puttered around in the morning and drank hot tea for my throat.  Took doggy for a walk by the creek because it was another nice day.  Did some laundry.  More throat gave way to the cold that evening and I took Nyquil.  I slept okay. 

I stayed home from work today because I felt lousy - sinus pressure and congestion.  And now my face and mouth ache.  I think part of that is keeping my mouth open to breathe through it, but I can’t figure out why the left half of my mouth/face aches.  I suppose that’s more of the sinus aspect of this cold.  Just took some ibuprofen to see if that helps. 

Food’s been off track all weekend, but I’ve been trying to drink a lot of water.  Don’t want to think about work tomorrow.  I could stay home again, or I can drug myself up and go.  I don’t know.  I’m sick of both tv and reading.  I kink of wish I could sleep through the next three days or so while this cold runs its course.  Reminds, me, I might need bf to run out for some more nyquil.  I don’t know if there’s enough for a full dose tonight.  It’s only 6:35.  The day feels like it’s gone on forever. 

Okay, I’m going to stop typing because all I’m doing is whining. 

Well, Friday.  I’m usually happier about it, but I dunno.  Pretty blah today.  I guess I just want the day to be over.  The work day, that is. 

We had a company meeting that was not very happy.  Tough times, and more tough times ahead.  No guarantees there won’t be more cuts. 

I’m working on a budget update, oh fun.  And we’re meeting this afternoon about transitioning the tasks that the lead admin does to the new admin, and eliminating what we can.  Like maintaining a lot of paper files will go bye-bye.  Which is fine by me.  I like to think that most of the time I have what I need either in e-mail and/or in the network computer drive.  That means that most of my “desk files” can be tossed after a while.  Yay.

Yesterday at work was generally okay.  Bf made chicken stir fry for dinner last night.  He didn’t start until well after 7:30, and I complained about that and was really irritated when he was finally going out to buy veggies for the stir fry because I knew it would take forever if he bought fresh veggies and chopped them himself.  I told him to buy a bag of frozen stir fry veggies, so he did, except for some fresh shiitake mushrooms.  He didn’t want help, so he did it all himself. 

We finally ate, and it was really disappointing.  Truth be told, bf loves to stir fry, but I hate bf’s stir fry.  He usually overloads our little wok and things tend to steam rather than fry.  This one was no different, in fact it was worse than usual.  Because we didn’t have enough white rice, he made brown rice.  We rarely eat rice at home, and usually never brown rice.  The box sitting in the cabinet was really old.  But I don’t think it goes bad, so I just think that brown rice is just something I don’t like and I’d forgotten because it had been so long since I ate it.  We’d just bought a package of jasmine rice and I wish he’d used that, but he thought it would be good to use up the opened box.  He didn’t use enough veggies, and they weren’t all that great anyway, for which I take the blame, because I told him to buy the frozen ones.  The whole dish was bland; I have no idea what kind of sauce he used.  And I even hated the shape he cut the chicken into.  I know I’m being horrible about this, but it was a pretty sucky dinner.  And I know he wasn’t thrilled with it either.  Overall, I really just wish I’d eaten a frozen diet entree instead. 

This weekend.  Nothing planned tonight.  We have another pound of chicken breast tenders to use up (I thawed a 2-lb package).  I should probably cook them tonight because Saturday we’re spending the day w/ bf’s mother and aunt, and then in the evening is book club.  There probably won’t be time for a proper dinner, and there’s always a lot of food at book club anyway.  I haven’t decided on what to bring to book club for a snack, let alone shopped or prepared anything yet.  Not super excited about this book club.  I read the book a couple years ago and didn’t bother re-reading it.  I did like the book, so I’m sure I’ll enjoy the discussion.  I guess it’ll be difficult trying to avoid overeating all the snacks people bring, so that sort of takes some of the enjoyment out of it.  Hopefully we actually discuss the book and not everyone’s kids and their friends, teachers, soccer teams, etc. 

Sunday I hope the weather is good enough to let me get out in the yard to get things cleaned up for the winter. 

That’s about all, so I’ll publish.