Morning all,
Back at work - rainy Monday. Well at least it stayed more or less fine over the weekend so I could get the laundry done and some work in the garden. We have a crop of weeds growing everywhere. No doubt the seeds came during the floods and are now loving the good soil etc. I will try to get out to poison this week, but wouldn't bet the bank on it.

Haven't heard from Mel or Jen, so don't know whether that is good or bad news. I think Jen would have sent an e-mail if there was anything drastic.

Happy - I can only suspect as far as the paint goes that the green negates the pink in the paint even with the primer and who knows whether they watered that down or not to make it go further. If they also primed the inside room that would now have more than the two coats of primer and therefore the colour will be slightly different. Also, the smaller the room, the more intense the colour - assuming of course that no one pulled a swifty and substitued an inferior paint tinted the same colour as the superior paint. You gets what you pay for.

Annie - your brother could be my brother. Lives 5 miles down the road and I never see or hear from him unless he wants something. Always me that has to ring to see if he is alive or not. We do not speak often.

Ceejay - I don't know how it works over there, but unless you have a communal area for a block of flats, here you are expected to trim trees, keep the yard tidy and mow lawns etc. When I rented, I tended to take or buy baskets of flowers with me, that I could take with me when I left rather than put in a garden and shrubs and improve the landlords property for him.

Ellen, good to see you back on deck. A good nights sleep is essential for wellbeing and even weightloss.

Hope you are all having a good weekend. to Laura and Michelle and Mel wherever she may be.

Good evening ladies (morning Shad)

Left work last night went home and visited with my sister, borther and SIL. we playd some games, then I headed off for bed. Work today had been hit or miss. Slow morning until just b4 the big storm then super quiet, at least we finally got word that we can close the office early. Just waiting for one of the plumbers to finish up at an emergency call.

Looking forward to having the day off tomorrow. Supposed to be nice and warm (hot) hoping to get outside with everyone and maybe play some catch. Hope everyone has a great week.

Luv and hugs!!

Shad
As the saying goes no news is good news. I'd still like to hear from Mel. And as far as the land lord goes, he does some properties, but not ours. Oh well I don't mind but my allergies do. Haven't thought about basket's of flowers. That would fill in some gaps.

Ellen
I'm glad you are getting to be off today. Get out and enjoy the sunshine. Wish I could and still may. I'm at work but that doesn't mean I can't get outside for a few minutes.

I may speak to soon but I'm hoping that all the complainer's have had enough and will not bother men. I'm expecting phone calls today. Maybe they will realize that the main office is closed.

Still bobbing along. Sometimes I doubt that progress is made but maybe it is as I delivered most of another course this morning and am now onto the reporting one. Not making a lot of sense right now. I'll be back with something interesting to say later.

Good morning ladies,

Gee, still no word from Mel? I do hope all is right with you girl - sending love and good thoughts to you

I am not firing on all pistons today. Kept trying to power through "just one more thing" yesterday - got to bed way too late and I probably got 4 to 4 and a half hours of sleep. I am dead this morning. It was a very busy weekend. No rest for the wicked. This moving reminds me of vacation - you have to work super hard before you can earn a pass for a few days off. Same with this. Wouldn't be so bad if I could see some progress but quite often I don't have enough time to finish a task in one hit and it looks like all I am doing is making a bigger mess.

The heat has hit too. I hear it's going to get to near 100 degrees this week. Got to get DH to call the pool guy and schedule the opening. A nice swim is reward for a hot day's work.

And Mom is coming in 10 days and counting so there is the prep work for her visit too.

I am too tired and foggy to think straight so forgive me the lack of personals at the moment. Will try and get back at lunch time if I'm not head clunking on the desk.

Good Morning all.............Tuesday and did NOT want to come to work. I actually had a fabulous 4 days off.

To all enquiring minds about the date...it went well. We had dinner at Applebees then to Starbucks for coffee. Spend a lot of time talking and getting to know one another. We had another date yesterday. We went for a ride on his motorcycle to Brown County/Nashville, Indiana..had lunch at the Ordinary, a yummy spinach salad, then headed back. All and all it was a great day. We are supposed to go to the Indians baseball game this Friday nite. I think I kinda like this guy.

I got soooooo much accomplished this weekend around the house also. Garden hoed, mild radishes and green onions planted. Lawn cut, sprayed for weeds, painted the mailbox, potted some flowers, grilled out twice, chased Hella B around the yard with the hose, spraying her off...she didn't like it much but was spry as heck afterward.

MELLIE...time to check in, we are worried about you.

Shaddie...glad you got a bit of down time, you certainly deserve it.

Ellen...hope you enjoyed your Monday off!! It feels like Monday to me today.

Ceejay....sounds like the bushes were bugging you so you wacked them off...lol

Happy...the bathroom sounds pretty. Too bad about the paint being off, altho, pink IS my favorite color...haha.

CHELLE....hope you short vacay went well. Fill us in.

Laura...hot and steamy up there too? Goes from drowning in water to hot and steamy drought. Go figure.

Not much else going on, better get my bunz buzy!

Hugs to all,

Morning all.

Annie - Glad you had a nice weekend off. LOL chasing Hella with the hose! I tried to brush doggy in the yard on Friday, but of course he had the whole yard available for his escape, so there he was all the way on the far side of the yard, sitting like a sphinx, master of his domain. Glad you had a nice date and you (sorta) like the guy!

Happy - Sorry you're so tired today - all that work catches up with you. Don't worry about the mess - you know that saying - it's gonna get worse before it gets better... A pool sounds good about now. Sorry the paint color is giving you pains in that bathroom. Went to visit my friend and she chose lighter and deeper shades of peach for a room she painted and the lighter is nice, but the deeper looks pink and not peach. She's not happy with that.

Ceejay - We've got some shrubs that need trimming - c'mon over! I feel bad about those shrubs because we tend to ignore them. Then they start growing into the neighbor's driveway and he ends up trimming them - but only the side that's facing his driveway. Of all the nerve, LOL. I have to get out there and do that, but I'll only do it if we still have our old electric trimmer. Bf bought a gas powered one a couple years ago and I refuse to use it. Too loud and polluting.

Ellen - Nice you had the day off. Did you play catch with the kids? It was pretty darn warm yesterday - I'd have left it to the kids, LOL. They don't seem to mind the heat much.

Shad - Glad you had a good weekend. You're sounding crazy busy right now! I'll be eagerly waiting for your "something interesting" later.

Hello Michelle!! Hope your weekend in the UP MI was wonderful.

The weather ran the gamut this past weekend - typical Chicago. Friday was sunny but cool. By early evening it had clouded up and I actually wore my light winter jacket (hood up) and gloves on Coal's dogwalk. Saturday was mild, Sunday was mild and very rainy for half the day (thank goodness it didn't rain the whole day long), and yesterday was hot and steamy - upper 80's.

Had a nice time out by my friend's house. Mostly lots of chat. In the evening, we went to a bar that had a karoake night run by an old bf of hers - she's been reconnecting w/ a lot of old friends (and BFs!) ever since her husband passed. We met up w/ another HS friend who lives close to the bar. We didn't sing, but we played some pool. Fun night.

Sunday was very rainy - I ate breakfast out w/ my friend before getting the train home. Didn't do much of anything except a dog walk after that once the rain stopped. There was so much rain saturating the soil - we had some seepage in two spots of the basement where we've never had it before. I'm not too worried about recurrences, but it might be smart to seal those spots. It's around the big sewage pipe where it enters/leaves the house, and it was dripping from the corners of one window frame by the window well. I think caulk of some sort will be good enough.

Yesterday I got out and worked in the yard. Figuring it was too wet to work much in the soil (i.e., tilling the veg garden), I decided to finally do a shovel edge on the one long flower border since grass has been growing into the flower bed for a couple years now and we'd been meaning to do it for quite a while. Glad that's done - it was pretty laborious removing those wet chunks of grass. There are a couple more areas that need to be edged yet. The previous owner of the house had these big softball-sized rocks serving as edging all over the place and I hated that look, so we removed that not long after moving in. Bf doesn't care for the plastic edging, but having done this shovel edge and knowing it will need to be maintained, I'm warming up to the idea of that store-bought edging.

Bf got the new mower belt installed and the self-propelling bits figured out. Today he'll mow and hopefully he'll be running along behind the mower to keep up with it now that it's working properly again.

Very warm again today. Wearing my ugly Birkenstock's and unless my toes get cold, I'll probably not change into proper business casual shoes.

Okay, better get back to work. Looking forward to the end of the week because the boss will be out of the office!

Morning all,
Didn't get back yesterday and really there was nothing interesting about it apart from the fact that my manager and my business person are having a bit of an argument about training and the personnel who will do it. Seems that there is only one senior trainer on PM (me) and the other two have a knowledge base somewhere south of zero. So in the next two days I have to fill their heads with information and make it stick. Mel come back I need the cattle prod.

On Saturday, I am off on my Tiki Tour of Central Queensland. With a bit of luck there will be enough time off to make things worthwhile. However I am not counting on it.

So today is more reporting training and sorting the information. Checking with the managers at sites to see that things are all arranged and how they want to run them and tarting up the other course I just sent over. Let the politics stay at the next level, I am too busy to get involved.

Laura
Give me the pruner and I'll get started. I was getting aggravated with the bushes. They were to tall and over grown. I could not see out the living room window. I can now. It looks a whole lot better.

Annie
I'm glad that you are "liking" this new guy. And he has a motorcycle. Sounds like you have done a lot of yard work as well.

Happy
I have had plenty of sleep but still not firing on all pistons in the mornings. I'm alright in the afternoon's.

Shad
You deserve some down time. I wish I were there to help you explore Queensland.

I sure hope Mel is doing okay.

We've been getting ready for the Health department inspection which is tomorrow. He's supposed to be here by 9 a.m. Tomorrow I'm headed toward Springfield. I need to call my sis to let her know that all things are still "go". I would like to do a couple of loads of clothes before I leave. I'm debating on whether to come back on Saturday afternoon. Since my sis has to work on Saturday night--unless she's taken Saturday off.

We just got home from our vacay in the U.P. We had so much fun! And as Annie told ya', Mischief's blood test came back much better. Not quite as good as the doc would like, so a higher dose of medicine is needed, but the doc is pleased with her improvement, and so are we.

Has anyone heard from Mel? Last I heard she was seeing a doc about back pain.

I've got some unpacking and laundry, and try and relax a bit since 3:30 am will come way too quickly.

I will be back in the morning for personals and stuff.

Love and hugs to all,

Okay, just had two messages from Mel via Jen.
joy....i'm soooo SORRY....i've been running back & forth...i completely forgot..keep getting home LATE..they let late with her. she had 10 different diagnoses..finally it's massive intestinal infection...from "where it came from they don't know". They are keeping her a few more day's...I should know more on tuesday afternoon...I PROMISE TO EMAIL U AS SOON AS I GET HOME tuesday....sorry if i worried you....i feel like a jerk...my mind has been in a fog...LOL....WE MISS U!!! Richard say's "HELLO>> & when are you coming back...so we can a have a DRINK!...LOL ICan you get in touch with Carol?? can't find her in here...lol Mom would appreciate that...thanks.... WE LOVE YOU!!! "Talk to you tuesday... ;0)
TA TA FOR NOW...Jennifer


joy
i am much calmer now cause mom is coming home. the final diagnosis is she has a massive infection that spread.. it's in the intestines and the appendix but the doctors say they think they can save her from an operation. richard and i hope so. she is rundown and filled with lots of antibiotics. they have not ruled out possible diverticulitis ??
she cannot do anything but bedrest for the next 3-4 weeks and that includes moving her arms. the doctors had her in a room by herself with her own airconditioner. no phone and no visitors now. one man from here went to see her with work problems.
but you know mom she is in a good mood and laughs a little bit. we cannot talk much without her having really bad pain and being tired. it seems like everything you do moves the stomach! she is bored but full of morphine and torradol. hope i am spelling all this right. a nurse wrote it down for me. i promise to do a better job of writing. jennifer ;0)

And here was my reply
Thanks Jen. We have been getting a bit worried about her. I will spread the message as I understand it. And yes I can talk to Carol as well. No problem.

Tell her that we are thinking of her, we won’t send flowers since she is sensitive to perfume, but I will think of something we can do for her. Thank her for the card also which arrived this week. If there is anything you think she might need let me know.

Look after yourself, this must be very hard for you. Tell Richie that I will be back one day, hopefully soon, I just have to save the pennies. We will have champagne and probably pretzels since by that time we probably can’t afford caviar.



So if you have any ideas on what we might do for her, let me know - cards, letters, all that sort of thing we can do or send her emails that Jen can print off and read. Not sure if I can ring her or not. I'll check it out when I know she is home for good and is feeling okay.

Look after yourselves and go hug someone you love.

OMGoodness Shad...poor Mellie. I will put my thinking cap on for ideas for her. God Love her, Jen and Richie.

June thread is needed.

Worldlies Jitterbug through June....but don't know how to start it.

Love and hugs

Joy - thank you so much for the update on Mel.

If any of the chicks want to write a message to Mel, I will cut and paste them into a get well card for her.

I will have to get back with updates later - I went to bed early last night to catch up on some sleep and spent this morning doing the pick up the house things I would have normally done before bed.

Joy - have you heard from Redballon? How is she holding up? I guess Japan fell out of the hot news items...