Harvco Christmas Party

Bobby switched his visitation with Emma from Thursday to Tuesday for last week, since my Christmas party was on Thursday. I meant to go out there. Sent an email saying I needed to leave by 4. But then I decided to run updates on peoples computers here during the meeting. Little did I know that my boss' computer still didn't have Service Pack 2, so it took until 4:45 to update. So I didn't make it out to Norco. Bobby did though, then left his wallet at his parents'.

Which isn't the smartest thing to do when you are going out drinking on someone else's tab a couple days later. So Wednesday, after taking he took his final (which ended at 9:30pm), we drove out to his parents' to pick up the wallet, then stopped by my parents' to drop of presents and say hello to my brother and his wife who had just flown in from Italy. We were immediately offered wine, and since my brother had arrived - fresh olive oil too. Hard to say no. Even though it's already 10:15, we have to drive back, and Bobby has to be out the door by 5:30 or so. As we are sitting there chatting, Tania is checking her email, counting. "That's it! We're sold out. Keith, change the website NOW so no one else orders." It only took 2 weeks to sell out.

We finally made it home and into bed just before 1am. Much too late for us old people that need our sleep. Thursday morning was rough, and I'm sure Bobby didn't make it out the door until close to 6:30. Not good.

Thursday afternoon was frustrating. I left work at 3 so I could get home, and get ready by 5pm. I told Bobby the day before that 5pm is when I wanted to leave. I expected traffic. He needed to buy a tie. His brother had bought him a pinstrip suit for Christmas last year, and he just got it tailored the end of November, but the only ties he had were from when he was bartending, and they are in pretty bad shape. I was on time, getting out of the shower at 4:15, and Bobby calls. He's just left Macy's with some ties. Now he has to stop at school and pick up the book he just returned to the library so he can do some extra credit assignment in order to pass his class. What time is it? 4:20. Crap. That's ok, cocktails are at 6, dinner doesn't actually start until 7. Just hurry and we'll leave as soon as we can.

He calls again later. He was in line at the bookstore, when one of his classmates called him back, she has the book, he can borrow it. So now he has to stop by her house to pick it up, then home. (Argh) Guess what time he finally made it home? 5:45! Then he has to shower and shave and get dressed. Luckily he can be quick, so he was ready around 6:15. This is the first time he has put on the suit since it's been tailored.
"How do I look?"
"Pregnant."
"What!?!?"
They had cut the jacket wrong, so it looked like the opening in the front was bowing over a big belly. At that point I had to laugh. But it looked ok if he left all the buttons undone, so that would have to do. We get in the car and head into the traffic I expected. Then I felt like I was in Office Space. We jumped into the carpool lane right before it came to a halt and the rest of the freeway started moving. We eventually jump the line and move a bit, but then the carpool starts moving again. When we got to the interchange, we debated - carpool or no? Yes, the ramp alone is probably worth it. Except that we had some SUV in front of us that needed to drive 50 mph the whole way - even though no one is in front of them.

We pulled in front of the restaurant at 6:58. I feel better. Dinner wasn't even served for at least 20 more minutes. So it all worked out well. The Christmas party was fun.


The moment we walked in, my boss was the first to greet us. His wife mentioned something about how interested she was in my brother's olive oil, and Eric cuts in with, "Oh, yeah, I'm in trouble for not ordering any yet, is there any left?" Nope, sold out last night. She wasn't very happy about that, and let him know it. He just looks at me with this "save me" glance. I told him I would see what I could do. Bobby and I decided that I would drive home later, so I kept myself to less than 2 glasses of wine the entire night. They had a wheel set up to spin for giving away prizes. I won a shot - but Bobby took it in my place since I was already stopping (though I did try some of the port later). The next prize given was a night on the party bus. (Why wasn't that my prize?) Everyone got $200 at South Coast Plaza, though, so that was nice.

Christmas Preparations

It's 6:30. Yoga is at 7:30 (I know, I could have taken the 6:00 class, but I like the 7:30 class more). I'm trying to motivate myself to hang out the extra hour and go. But really I just want to go home. But I haven't been since last Monday night, and I probably won't go tomorrow.

My parents have embarked on this massive picture project. They've taken all the pictures from when we and they were growing up, and have been organizing and scanning each of them. The idea is to make them all available to all of us - so we all have the pictures of our childhood. It's a monster project - I can't even believe they are doing it. But they want it to be a surprise for Keith (since he's really the only one that doesn't know yet), so it needs to be DONE by the time Keith and Tania get in on Wednesday.

(It's going to be so much easier for those that are kids right now. My nephews and Emma and Bobby's neice practically have their lives documented in digital photo and video and uploaded onto the web. We won't be showing anyone's dates their baby pictures, they just need to google them.)

At the same time, my mom wanted the house to be decorated for Christmas when they got here. Keith is especially partial to Christmas. So mom asked Jessica and I to decorate on Saturday. Like always, it was fun for about 5 minutes, then it was a chore. But we did it. Have to add, that trees are cheap at Wal-Mart. As much as I hate that place, I might buy my tree there every year. We got a 5-6 ft. Noble for about $35 (they were $80 at the tree farm).

Yesterday I spent about 4 hours on Malachy's present. Printed 110 pictures and put them into an album. It's kinda hard making sure you have enough pictures of everyone, and spacing them about evenly. Suddenly realize I have very few pics of my middle brother's wife. Have to find some, trying to keep it limited to pics from the last 2 years. Barely any of my younger brother - he's been AWOL a lot.

Dream

Gma just found out that she's been having mild strokes for years. That seems to be what's causing her lapses in memory. I now am responsible for seperating her medications - she started a new medication and "forgot" the doctor had told her to stop the last one, so she started taking both... not good. Luckily they caught her early on, since she went back to the doctor the next day - if not she could have overdosed and killed herself.

It was strange - she was sitting at the dinner table with Bobby and I, telling us what the doctor said about her strokes, and that night I had a dream that really stressed me out. In my dream we were sitting at the table (just as we had been that night), and she had reached for something and strated shaking really badly. I asked if she was ok, and she fainted but woke right back up. Then she just looked off into the distance, and said, "I'm going to die." As if she were accepting it at that moment. I responded, "That's ok." as if I had also accepted. Then I started crying. That's when I woke up. It kinda stressed me out Wednesday. The company went golfing and out to dinner, but I couldn't shake it off.

How Will I Get There?

The president of my company got onto a bit of a soapbox for about 15 minutes in the meeting today. Started talking about how this time of year is a really good time to evaluate our personal goals and decide where we really want to be in not just 5 years, but in 1 year. And how are we going to get there. Mentioned how when he was younger he really wanted to be successful... more than he wanted anything else. How instead of living in Manhattan Beach where his buddies were living, he lived in Pasadena. How he skipped parties during the week, because it was more important that he get to that successful mark.

At first I thought he was trying to encourage some people to just quit, but his goal was really to motivate everyone to work harder to bring more deals, which doesn't really apply to me since I don't source deals, but I did get something out of it: I need a plan. Not just an idea about what I want, but steps and a timetable, and all that.

I got out of the meeting and wrote Bobby some long winded email about how we need to make a budget and figure out how we can cut our expenses, and I set some goals for what I want to accomplish in the next year or so. We've been doing pretty well paying off our debt, but we spend a lot too. We want to be able to start this contracting business, and we need to get on it. If that means we have to sell our cars and get something cheaper, or I have to find another job, or whatever, we need to do it. I don't want to live paycheck-to-paycheck.

Never Argue with a Woman

One morning the husband returns after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap. Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out. She motors out a short distance, anchors, and reads her book. Along comes a Game Warden in his boat. He pulls up alongside the woman and says, "Good morning, Ma'am. What are you doing?"

Reading a book," she replies, (thinking, Isn't that obvious?)
"You're in a Restricted Fishing Area," he informs her.
"I'm sorry, officer, but I'm not fishing. I'm reading."
"Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment. I'll have to take you in and write you up."
"If you do that, I'll have to charge you with sexual assault," says the woman.
"But I haven't even touched you," says the game warden.
"That's true, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment.""Have a nice day ma'am," and he left.

MORAL: Never argue with a woman who reads. It's likely she can also think.

Crazy Dream

I had a crazy dream last night that I'd run into my ex, Jason, and he was trying to show me how much he'd done to improve his life. And it was like he was trying to get back together. And I don't know why, but he had an Emma too. Not just a kid, he had a carbon copy of Emma.
I was trying to be nice, but i couldn't wait to get away, but his Emma was asking me why I'd left her. Why I never called or visited her anymore. Then suddenly we were in a house that was supposedly his across the street diagonally from my parents house (where there is actually no house, it's a street), and I was trying to tell his Emma that my parents house is right there and she could call me any time. I wanted to leave because Jason was making me feel uncomfortable with his trying to get back together, but I was having anxiety about leaving his Emma.

I told Bobby... he said it made him feel like if I ever left him that I would have anxiety about leaving his Emma. I had to agree that (not that I planned on leaving him, but) I probably would have anxiety about leaving her.

We had a little birthday party for Malachy. I have adorable nephews...


Two short videos:
Malachy opens his dinosaur
Malachy and Jonah play with the Dinosaur

He was so excited about that toy dinosaur. I wish I could have got his initial reaction on video. Jonah was stoked on it too. He'd been kinda cranky the whole time, but when that dino came out, he was suddenly very excited.

Happy Birthday to Me...

Today we did dinner at Bobby's parents' as usual, but they had an ice cream cake for me.


And here is some video of Caelyn acting very strange:
Silly Girl
Crazy Caelyn

We weren't sure what she was doing, but she wasn't crying and seemed to be having fun.

Schools

Today we went to pick Emma up, and headed to Bobby's parents', and when we got there his Nana starts telling this story about how she was driving around with her granddaughter the other day and there was crazy traffic and police with rifles and a police helicopter overhead. Then, she looked at the paper on this morning, and there had been a race riot at Fontana High School. 500 students. Started between a black girl and a latino girl, ended with the police shooting bean bags and smoking the kids out. Madness. There had been another scuffle involving 100 students on the same day at some high school in San Bernadino.

In the same paper, there was a little comic strip. An old man was standing next to a kid saying, "When I was your age, I had to walk 10 miles to school, uphill in the snow." The kid next to him responds, "Wow. You had it easy." Next to them is one of those newspaper dispensers showing the headline to be "SCHOOL SHOOTINGS!" Oddly true...

Some Random Thoughts

I've had some random thoughts about recent news that I've been dying to tell someone:
I read this article, and thought to myself, "really, why would anyone even participate?"
Now that N. Korea has tested nuclear weapons, does Team America: World Police seem oddly prophetic? (If you haven't seen that movie, I can't stress enough how funny and worth a rent it is)
With this whole Mark Foley - underage page issue: It seems to me this issue is more about homophobia than pedophelia. People are outraged that he was harassing these unerage pages, but the kids are like 16. If he were hitting on some 16 year old female pages, do you people would be panicing this badly? (By no means am I saying he didn't do anything wrong) Sure they'd be upset about the sexual harassment, but would they still be screaming pedo or are they just screaming pedo because it isn't pc to scream homo?
I heard a professor of Islamic studies in an interview last night claiming that Muslim society is the only one that western culture makes fun of? Has no one seen South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut? I'm fairly sure rednecks and jews and black people and asian people are adequately assailed.