at last

The car has returned to us. A long 54 days later, and it once again graces its appointed parking spot behind our house. We actually parked the other car in the spot during the day, so that our neighbor would get the hint not to straddle the line anymore. It worked, although their car is now parked perilously close to our $7,360.75 repair job.

The happy news is that the long delays by both the insurance company and the repair shop resulted in reductions of our $1000 deductible by $765.52. Basically, that accident cost us $234.48 (+ 54 days, a killer bruise, and some emotional turmoil).

what's in a phrase?

I am listening to Morning Edition on NPR this morning, and Carl Kassel just said "less devastation." I don't want to talk about the news stories that were compared in those two words. I'm just thinking about that phrase for a minute.

Less devastation.

fun for nerds and wannabees alike

Give this a try.




My favorite question is the third one that has a picture. Ah, lunchtime amusements.

reality check

Sometimes, money is tight. It seems like the bills arrive only nanoseconds after the paychecks, and it's easy to wish for more. But sometimes it's important to remember that, despite the tightness, we're incredibly fortunate. This calculator certainly drives that home.

I'm the 48,034,065 richest person on earth! Discover how rich you are! >>

So, I'm glad for everything we have and will celebrate our $2.00 Lotto win (matching THREE numbers out of six!) instead of bemoaning an $11 million Lotto loss. :-)

Man, it's time to go to bed. This late night stuff doesn't help my cold.

achoo!

Still sick. Having my performance review at work today. It should be interesting having a two-hour conversation in a closed room with my Vice President, while I sneeze and blow my nose. Then there are three meetings to attend, four and a half hours in total for those. Oh yeah, and then maybe do some work. Supposed to get the car back tonight. Where have I heard that before? Must run away and start the day now. Wish me luck.

hi, my name is kelly, and i'm a wysiwyg blogger

OK, so I'm not quite done yet tonight.

I tried to get adventurous with my blog and fiddled with the HTML. Although I was able to add a couple things I wanted to add (like a new counter and the fun mood detector, and headers for them) and delete one thing I wanted to delete (the old, non-working counter), in the process, I shifted the whole blog to the left. I feel certain it is the gray footer sitting squarely right on the bottom that has caused this, but I can't figure out how to rectify it. Any expert bloggers with suggestions, please add a comment to this post!

Thank you, and good night.

what in the sam hill...?

Forty-six days ago, I was in an accident. As of today, we still don't have the car back from the repair shop. Every three days, I call to make sure it's ready, and they apologize, tell me there's been a delay, and that it will be ready in three days. So, three days later, I call to make sure it's ready... . Saturday, I went to the shop in person without any notice. I walked into the garage and under our car (not a good sign, it was on the lift). The guy said "Monday. It'll definitely be done on Monday." Today (Monday), I pulled out my secret weapon -- Ted.

First, I asked him to call them around noon to verify that the car would be ready and find out a definite time we could pick it up. They told him 5:00pm. So, at 4:30pm, I picked up Ted from work, we drove to the shop, and at 5:04pm, walked in the door. It would be kind of funny if we walked under the car on the lift, like I did Saturday, but in fact, it was sitting in a different corner (and on the floor) of the garage. As we walked back toward the office, the guy appeared and said, "I'm afraid I have some terrible news... the part never came in today."

And I might as well have yanked a cork out of Ted's head. He went bananas on the guy -- in a non-psychotic way -- but with much emphasis and volume. He pointed out the obvious like "you keeping telling us this thing is going to be ready," and "when I called at noon today, you said we could pick it up at 5:00pm tonight," and "you could have picked up the phone and called this afternoon so we didn't make the trip here," and "the car has been here for 34 days... ."

34 days.

That doesn't include the 12 days it sat in storage while the insurance company didn't get around to appraising it. We've made two car payments (and insurance payments) on the thing in the time we haven't had that car. Our neighbor is so confident that we are now a one-car family that she is basically parking her car in our space.

I can't talk about this anymore. Besides, my throat is sore, and I'm starting to lose my voice.

thirteen days since

I haven't blogged since the 5th. I have barely breathed since then. I have prepared for, run, and followed up on a major corporate conference. The upside? A tremendous outpouring of positive feedback. The downside? No life. And the subsequent illness that stopped me in my tracks yesterday. A couple 80-hour work weeks will inevitably lead to one day of complete nothingness, although it would have been better had it not fallen on a Friday.

But I'm back. In my office (that is, my space at the company headquarters), working on a Saturday morning. I'd like for things to calm down a bit, now that the massive effort of last week's conference is behind me. But, alas, it is not calm. And I don't have the time to bemoan it in my journals, public or private. I just wanted to drop in, and note a weird coincidence.

I haven't watched the news in the last few weeks. Read the paper. Listened to NPR. Heck, I didn't even check the forecast. I've been a work hermit. So, I don't know what's been going on in the world. That said, here's my weird little story.

As I was driving into work this morning, I passed this house. It's a nice house, cedar shingled, the kind that populates Northeastern sea shores (although this one is about a mile from Long Island Sound). Years ago, when I first starting driving by this house, I had the crazy idea in my head that it belonged to Rosie O'Donnell. Other than the fact that I knew she owned a house in the same town, I'm not sure why I thought that this particular house was hers. At the time, she was very much in the spotlight with her show and magazine and celebrityness. Of course, I doubted that she would live in this particular house, given its ease of access (I imagine her actual dwelling to be a bit more remote and secure than this house plunked down right in the middle of a fairly dense neighborhood). Despite the rationale, and even though I know it's not hers, I still associate this house with Rosie O'Donnell.

So, it had been a while since I took the road on which this house sits, and consequently I hadn't thought of Rosie O'Donnell recently. Today, I took the route and did. I thought, "it's been a long time since I've heard anything about Rosie O'Donnell. I heard that she married her partner in San Francisco last year, but other than that, it's been quiet. She must have retreated into family life and out of the limelight." Really. I put that much thought into it, just driving past this house. My brain is fried (see previous reference to 80-hour work weeks).

When I got to the office (and after piling through some email accumulation), I flipped through some of the old news in my mailbox. Lo and behold, there was an article about Rosie O'Donnell, blasting Kirstie Alley for lying about her weight. I find this funny on so many levels, but I won't go into that now. Anyway, in the process of reading the article, I discovered that Rosie is a Blogger! Contrary to my little thought process this morning, Rosie's not completely out of the public eye. And I think it's kinda' cool that she's using the same tool I am to rant and rave about stuff... even if she gets more comments on one post than I get traffic in five months! :-) Blog on, RO!

no bugs bunny for me

It's Saturday morning, and as Saturday mornings go, it's early. I'm an official grown-up now, so it shouldn't be of any consequence that I didn't sleep in on this Saturday morning. Where even the official grown-up in me has gone psycho, though, is where by 7:45am, I have already been working for nearly an hour and a half at my office. No, not my home office. My office at my company's headquarters.

When I left the office yesterday, I was planning to put in a solid six hours of work today: I have a ton of things to do. Somehow, the plan shifted from me -- outfitted with lounge pants and sweatshirt -- working in the comfort of my home office with the cats close by for the occasional distraction, to me getting showered and dressed and driving 11 miles to the office where I work five days a week (excepting the occasional telecommuting day).

If you haven't already astutely noted, I am currently not working... I'm blogging! This is a minor diversion, however, as I really do have a boatload of things to do.

But the desire to attend to at least a few things in my personal life has drawn me into the Blogosphere. Maybe someday soon, I'll actually be able to vacuum our house, reorganize our garage, finish our taxes, file year-old paperwork, or address any of the hundred undone chores at home. So alluring is the concept of relaxing personal time (because it's way at the bottom of the pigpile of things to do), that I found myself reading a book at midnight -- despite the fact that I knew I had to get up at 5:15am this morning.

That's enough random chat for now. I must get back to my warehouse of things to do. Perhaps I'll return for more scintillating blogging later.

feeling so smoochie... *cough*

Things to distract my little brain once I returned home from work today:

1. Putting away a few different items purchased at Costco.
2. Feeding the kids*.
3. Making dinner, mmm yum.
4. Taking a nap.
5. Watching two guilty pleasure television shows.
6. Logging on. Swooning about a concert we'll be going to. Finding some mindless things to do (and one useful thing). Oh yeah, and coming here.

Nothing more constructive than that. And now it's time to go to bed. Past time, really. Poor hubby's still sick. Coughing somethin' awful. Good thing there are some aromas I don't mind. Might shake me out of bed with that coughing, though. The poor dear.

* If you haven't seen any previous entries indicating such, the kids are cats, FYI. Please don't call the Department of Child Safety thinking that I'm feeding cat food to children! :-)