Friday, June 15, 2007

Chocolate Cake

Chocolate Cake

A daughter is telling her Mother how everything is going wrong, She's failing algebra, her boyfriend broke up with her and her best friend is moving away. Meanwhile her Mother is baking a cake and asks if her daughter would like a snack, the daughter says,

"Absolutely Mom, I love your cake".

"Here, have some cooking oil," her Mother offers.

"Yuck" says daughter.

"How about a couple raw eggs?"

"Gross" Mom!"

"Would you like some flour then? Or maybe baking soda?"

"Mom, those are all yucky!"

The mother replies: "Yes, all those things seem bad all by themselves. But when they are put together in the right way, they make a wonderfully delicious cake!"

God works the same. Many times we wonder why He would let us go through such bad and difficult times. But God knows that when He puts these things all in His order, they always work for good! We just have to trust Him and, eventually they will make something wonderful!

God is crazy about you. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, He'll listen. He can live anywhere in the universe, and He chose your heart.

I hope your day is a "Piece of Cake" my friend.

Stars are like friends. You may not Always see them. But they are Always there!

In Everything, Give Thanks!

Thursday, June 14, 2007

update on my computer and painting woes... and then some

The painters did come on Tuesday and fix my wall. Not that red was ugly or anything, It was actually a very nice color. It just DID NOT GO with my entire living room! LOL So now it is the nice medium blue color it was supposed to be. And it's amazing how much different the room looks now! I get to spend this weekend re-hanging curtains and pictures and stuff. :-)

My computer at work seemed to be working OK again Wednesday morning, but crashed again mid afternoon and I couldn't get it to come back. Spent several hours dealing with that this morning only to find out it's either the OS is corrupted or the hard drive went bad. Fixable if it's just the OS, not so easily fixable if it's the drive. So my boss found me a spare computer in Little Rock he's having delivered to me for temporary use while we get mine fixed. Dropped mine off today at a place that does data recovery (and did for me when my old laptop crashed a few years ago and couldn't be fixed) and am now waiting to find out how much it will cost. It could be anywhere from $600 to $1600. Fortunately the boss is paying for it!

But it gets even better... My home computer crashed last night. Fortunately it was working again almost immediately but now I need to do a back up to be safe. My printer at home hasn't worked in three weeks and I have no clue why. I've even uninstalled and reinstalled the blasted thing!

Oh and as if I needed something else, I realized I HAVE to get my car inspected tomorrow or I won't get a chance to do it before it expires the end of this month. My brake light has been coming on at random for a couple months, but never stayed on. Well this week, it's on and staying on. My car is 6 years old and I think it's still the original brakes. So I've got a sneaking suspicion they are going to tell me tomorrow that I need new brakes.

16 days till I leave for Spain! I keep reminding myself of that. Vacation is coming!!! I'm thrilled to pieces it's coming up so quick but at the same time I'm stressing hugely over it. I've never been to Europe without Dad to pave the way and know what to do in every eventuality. L has never been there not on a tour group. So I'm stressing that it's just the two of us and will everything work out OK. We got in to a big argument on the phone the other night over the trip too. We've calmed down significantly and are completely fine again but I think that just shows the stress of planning it is getting to both of us.

Fortunately Dad has a friend in Barcelona who gave me his phone number in case we have an emergency and need to reach someone. His friend also called me today so I could ask some questions and get some ideas. And he told me to e-mail him anything I need to ask. He said e-mail him 100 times with different questions if I need to and he'll do his best to answer all of them. :-) So it's nice to know I have a "wingman" over there to help out if something comes up L and I don't know how to handle.

Oh and one more thing, very minor compared to the rest but hey, this has been the week from hell! LOL I got clawed pretty bad (completely by accident) by one of my cats last night. He was pouncing to do something he's not supposed to do. I reached out and caught his hind leg. But of course that was painful for him so he's reaching out with the other hind leg trying to ease the pressure of being caught mid-leap by a foot. Well he got me right across the chin with his other leg. I could tell when it happened it was deep and long. Felt like a knife slice. I've been clawed accidentally before but usually minor. It was just the wrong angle and I got it good. So I have this beautiful deep scratch across my chin and up the jaw line a bit where he got me. I was in the bathroom at 1 AM loading on the peroxide and antibacterial ointment in the hopes it won't get infected.

Now I need to go make sure I have everything I need off the computer for my trip to San Antonio next week (directions, reservations, etc) since I couldn't do it at work.

So how was your week? LOL

P.S. Oh yeah I forgot. Also somehow today I got some blue powder or dye or something all over my clothes at work and I have no idea what it is or where it came from! So I have blue spots scattered on my fingers and all over my skirt (I hope it washes out!)

Monday, June 11, 2007

computer dilemmas and painting fiascos

What do they have in common you ask? Nothing really. Except that both happened to me today.
 
It is lease renewal time. Or would be in about 6 weeks. But if I renewed it now, I got a free $25 gas card. Not much of a perk, no, but with gas prices like they are I'll take free gas! We were also given the option to have our carpets cleaned professionally with our renewals. Last year, we had a choice of a ceiling fan in a bedroom, carpet cleaning or an accent wall painted in the room of our choice from their assortment of available colors. This year it was just carpet cleaning offered.
 
But I've been here four years and they all know I'm a very good tenant, always pay my rent on time (Actually I usually pay a few weeks early) and never cause any problems. So I asked them if I could have an accent wall instead of the carpet cleaning (my carpet DOES need cleaned and badly but I wouldn't torture anyone by making them move my heavy book cases and furniture and I'm not about to move it myself until I move out. LOL)
 
They agreed and we scheduled the date for tomorrow (Tuesday) and to paint the wall I designated in my living room and really nice medium blue color. (My curtains are blue, my furniture covers have blue in them and most of my wall art is predominantly blue.) I was told I had to take everything down off the walls (duh) but they'd spackle the holes and I had to move all of my furniture away from the wall to be painted. I picked Tuesday because I was going to Seagoville for the day and wouldn't be back till probably dinner time so they'd have all day long. I was going to close the fur balls up in my bedroom so they'd be out of the way too.
 
I did take all the pictures down off the walls and everything off the fireplace mantel this weekend. And I had taken the curtain rods down but hadn't gotten the brackets out yet. I planned to take down the brackets and move the furniture out of the way tonight (I did move a couple smaller things out of the way over the weekend as well.)
 
I came home today to quite a surprise. My wall was a lovely shade of... deep red? I had my hands full and dropped everything on the couch in a heap and stood there a moment in complete shock. After I recovered enough to move I went and called the office to explain the problem. The person I had scheduled with was not there just then (had a doctor's appt) and the person I talked to on the phone didn't even know we had arranged to have the painting done. Last he heard I still had to talk to the manager to see if she'd allow me to have the painting done instead of the carpet cleaning.
 
The only thing they had gotten right was the wall to be done. And they were probably cussing me out for making them move the furniture and not taking down the curtain rod brackets (which they painted around quite nicely actually so I guess I won't bother to take them down when it's fixed.) So now I'm waiting for K to call me back so we can straighten it all out and reschedule the painting for the correct color. Which will be quite difficult since this red is really deep! It'll take several coats of paint to cover it. I was in the office and sat there as she wrote everything down about when, which wall and which color. So she had it all correct but somehow everything got mixed up. Now I don't know if they're going to try to fix tomorrow and I still have to move furniture tonight or if they'll reschedule for next week.
 
Where do computers come into play? Well that's the reason I'm home at 3:30 instead of 6:00 today. I was in the office, working away on the PC, which was running slow but I thought nothing of it since it ALWAYS runs slow and it was making a weird chirping/beeping sound periodically (which is not normal but I didn't think much of it. Then all of a sudden the thing goes kaflooey and I got, yep, you guessed... "THE DREADED BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!" So I tried to reboot, and reboot gain, and still another time, but kept getting an error message. So I let it sit an hour or so and tried again. Still got an error. Tried again an hour later and got another error screen, but a different one. Still no booting up. This comes just oh, two weeks I guess, after I had no computer for three weeks since it wouldn't accept my new ID card to log in. Fortunately I was out of town two of those three weeks but still...
 
So I called my boss about 1:30 or so. When he answered I said "guess who has no computer again." To which he had a few choice words to say. I told him R (another person in my office) was having problems with his computer on Friday (though different problems then mine) but today when he expected to spend the whole day on the phone with the computer help desk, his computer was working perfectly. So I told my boss I was going to be out of the office tomorrow already but I'd try again Wednesday. I said that way (hopefully) it's just a fluke like with R's computer. If not I'd put a help ticket in then. My boss had a few more choice words to say then we hung p the phone. I hung around the office another hour or so but then decided I couldn't do anything so I was going home. I figured that would give me that much more time to get everything out of the way for the painting tomorrow....
 
And you already saw my story about that. So that my friends is how computer dilemmas and painting fiascos go hand in hand in the crazy little world called Kelleyopolis.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Got my new passport yesterday...

Finally! I was really starting to get worried. I know they Passport office is extremely backed up with the new requirements but I was getting very very nervous.
 
I leave June 30 for Spain with my good friend L and I can't wait! Now that I have my new passport in my hot little hands, it's feeling even more real that this trip is coming up. What an adventure it will be! I've been to Europe before (twice actually) but I was always with my Dad who is an international traveling pro as many years as he did it before retiring. This is the first time I'm going completely on my own. (Well not completely since L will be there but you know what I mean.)
 
I'm so excited but so nervous too. My biggest worry is we won't be able to communicate easily since my Spanish is from my high school days and I've forgotten most of it. I can read it OK. Well I can usually figure out the gist of what been written if not totally know what it says but speaking is another thing entirely. And as we get closer to the date we leave I'll get even more excited... and even more nervous.
 
I'm going to be SOOOO broke after this trip even with all the money we're saving on the hotels. (Between the two of us we have enough hotel points that we only have to pay for one of our eight nights in a hotel.) But I knew if I didn't take advantage of the chance to go, I'd forever be kicking myself. So I decided to go far it and I'll worry about the rest of it when I get back.
 


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