Kitty #2

No, I promise I'm not turning into a cat lady. But when a friend at work told me her daughter had a cat that she had to get rid of and then showed me the picture, I was sold. She's so cute, and probably about 8 months so very playful. I tried introducing her to my old cat, but that didn't go so well. Now I have to do the slow route: let them get used to each other's scent by swapping them between rooms, keep the door slightly open so they can smell each other but not claw at each other, and then go for the kill. I really hope it works out, the new kitten is slow friendly. They named her Angel, but I think I'm going to change it and go with the greek god theme (the other one is Athena). Yay!! :)

Success!

My computer is now in the basement! Saturday night I put the trim around the walls and then started arranging things down here. I'm getting a loveseat and two chairs from Stef, so I arranged that to go around where I'll have a TV. I decided not to get cable down here (probably, at least for winter) but I'll put the DVD/VCR as well as the stereo down here. That means once I get a TV I'll have to swap entertainment centers. So one end of the room is the entertainment area and the other end is the office. Today I moved out a book shelf and filled it up (wow, I have lots of books) and also went through the storage room and pulled out a bunch of pictures I'll eventually hang up. It looks so good! :)

Then the morbid me... I've been watching all this coverage about Hurricane Katrina all day. Earlier they were talking about people in Mississippi and Alabama probably losing their crops due to the amount of rainfall they were expecting. That really makes me sad; they're struggling to get by in the first place, and then something this devastating happens. But the disaster freak in me is really excited (well, excited may not be the right word for it...) to see what happens to New Orleans. Last year when I think Ivan almost hit it directly, I really wanted to see how bad the flooding was and if it was really going to be as bad as they made it sound. Now it's about to happen. I know so many people are going to lose their homes and livelihoods...but I'm curious.

Bad Day Already...

...and it's only 6:30 a.m. One of my functions (well, my group's function) is to be a liaison between a group of people who are off-site and our people here. My group alternates carrying an on-call pager so we can continue with this function (and for other stuff) 24/7. My week ended yesterday, but I had my backup take it from me for one night, so I kept it for him until today. Of course that means I'll get paged...what was I thinking? So it goes off at 5:30 this morning. I call them, they give me an acronym and tell me to call the person in charge of that, who they admit is probably really obscure. I can't find it in my phone book, so I come in to work and look it up in the acronym spreadsheet. Nothing. I call them back, they give me two names. So I spend some time calling people (probably waking them up), calling back the people who paged me, and finally just getting someone to volunteer to come in and see what the heck they're talking about. Oh, and in the course of the calling, I find out that I misunderstood the acronyms...who knew A and E sounded so much alike when you just get out of bed in the morning? I'm sure everyone now thinks I'm an idiot. This is the second time I've gotten paged where something like this happened (not the misunderstanding part, but just something that makes them think I'm an idiot). Grrr... So now I don't really need to be here, but I figured I'd stay another half hour or so in case they need something else. And I'm sure they're going to talk to my boss on Monday and tell them how stupid I am and he should fire me, blah, blah, blah. What a good way to start the three-day weekend. Jeff, next time I volunteer to keep the pager an extra day for you, remind me of this story and do anything you have to to take it away. Oh, wait. There won't be a next time.

Ok, the person I thought was coming in just called and tried to get out of it. The people who paged me gave me two names, his and another guy who is on vacation. They specifically said those two people, not the second guy's backup, not anyone else. So I tried to tell him that, he sounded really irritated and then said fine, he'd come in. I'm sorry, I'm doing my best!!! Grrrr!

Friday Night

Kelly, Stef, and I went out Friday night. Kelly and Stef were in a "Men are bastards, but lets find some cute ones to hit on" mood, and I was their DD. Kelly broke up with her boyfriend the night before, and Friday would have been Stef's 11 year wedding anniversary, so they were kind of justified to feel that way. We started at Croc's in downtown Denver, which is a bar/restaurant with a dance floor. We were standing around with our drinks when this guy walks by, taps me on the shoulder, and says, "You're one of those shy girls, aren't you?" I didn't really hear what he said, so Kelly answered, "Yeah, she is." He said "that's cute" or something then walked away. A few minutes later, he walked back over, grabbed my hand, and made me go dance with him. He was fairly good-looking, but he admitted he was a marketing major and could usually get what he wanted. So after about 20 minutes of dancing, I walked back to Kelly and Stef.

We stayed for another or so, then went to Polyester's. I really like Polyester's, it has a 70's floor, and 80's floor, and a current music floor. Toward the end of the night, Kelly and I were on the 70's floor when a guy asked me to dance. We danced a few songs then sat down to talk. He seemed like a really nice guy and gave me his phone number at the end of the night. Then him and the guy Stef met walked us to our car. I haven't called him yet and don't think I'm going to. I'm not really into going out with guys I meet at bars (ok, so this is the first time this has happened, lol). It did make me feel good to have guys tell me I was cute, and as many times as they said I had a nice smile, I could be a walking advertisement for Invisalign. Both Kelly and Stef had fun, but Kelly still thinks men are bastards. She got hit on by a guy who was there on a date with another girl!!

I discovered one thing on this night out - I'm getting old. I much prefer to be the DD (in fact, the smell of some of the alcohol my friends were drinking was kind of nauseating), and I'd also rather go out to a place where I can sit and talk to friends or play pool or something. Dancing is fun, but it seems like more of a contest to see which girl can dress the sluttiest and which guy can "hump" dance with the most girls. It's just too fake.

More work on the Shag Room

My basement floor is now black...well, most of it. I waffled back and forth between gray/silver and black, and after my horrible day yesterday I felt black was more appropriate. Today was a much better day...and luckily, the black still looks cool. :-) I have all of it painted except for the corner I stood the couch up in, but I still need to do a couple more layers. The end is in sight!!!

Finally back to the basement...

Yesterday I finally started working on my basement again. I wiped the walls down with a damp sponge to remove the drywall dust, then I mopped the floor several times and even used the sponge to hand-clean it. Then on a whim I picked a lavendar color for the walls and primed them and put on one coat of paint. I was a little worried because the color was light and looked like a little kids barbie room, but it turned out really well! I put the second coat on today and am now painting the trim white. The next step is to figure out what color I want to paint the concrete floor. I'm not sure I want to go black anymore, because it's already pretty dark down there (only one of the overhead lights is working, though). I want to put white Christmas lights up in the floor studs and then hang black fabric under that to give the illusion of stars, so that's already a lot of black. I'm going to try to finish the floor this week so I can start moving stuff back in there this weekend and finally get the computer out of the kitchen! So any paint color ideas would be greatly appreciated...

Well, we got my sister married off last weekend. It was a really stressful week, but it turned out really well. Not as many people showed up for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding as we were expecting, so we had a lot of food and cake left over. I also bought four 30-packs of beer for the dance, and we probably had about 3 left over. I donated them to my new brother-in-law and his brother. My DJ'ing went very well except for when the best man showed his true asshole self and messed up the CD's. That combined with everything else that was going on pushed me over the edge and I started bawling. Harold, the groom, saw me and finally got me to tell him what was wrong (I hated crying in front of him, he was supposed to be enjoying the day). So he had some words with the best man, who later apologized. I didn't like him in the first place, and that only proved why. Oh, and I also surprised Bonnie and Harold by putting flower petals on their bed and the floor leading to their bedroom (their house is right behind the hall we had the dance in). :-)

Being at home for a week made me realize how much I miss Kansas. We drove around with the windows open and you could really smell the milo growing, the alfalfa flowering, and the dirt being plowed. That's pretty cheesy, I know, but I really miss that. I'm kind of jealous of my sister for getting to stay there and be close to our parents and the rest of the family. If there were more jobs around there, I would probably move back in a heartbeat. I'm sure the really nice weather we had (mild temperatures and low humidity) aided in making me homesick. The day after the wedding, my last full day there, it finally got hot and really humid, making me remember one of the reasons I like Colorado. But I still do miss Kansas.

T minus 2 days...

...until my sister's wedding! Yes, I'm back here in Kansas (meaning I survived my backpacking trip, but more on that later). I haven't been on the internet much because it's dialup and I'm too impatient. Plus, this is a vacation, and I don't really want to work much on the computer. Most things are pretty well planned for the wedding, but there are some small things (such as inviting people to the rehearsal!) that Bonnie hasn't really done. Whenever we bring these things up, she either says "Whatever" or "It'll work out." Grrr!!! No, it won't just work out! But it isn't my wedding so I guess if things go wrong, they go wrong. I tried to help out. The only thing I really have left to do is finish getting the songs in order and burning CD's. We're getting the reception/dance hall tonight, so I'm going to try out the stereo.

Another perk of being at home - field corn! I love corn on the cob, and since moving to Colorado I haven't been able to eat much. Sure, you can buy sweet corn on the cob at the store, but it's too expensive for one, and secondly I actually prefer the more hearty field corn, especially when it's almost too done to eat. It's free because I can just go out into a field and pick it, and it fills me up so much faster.

Ok, for the backpacking trip. We drove for about 5 hours to the Flat Tops region north of Rifle, CO, car camped one night (with the three guys and me in one tent, talk about crowded!), then hiked the six miles in the next day. I was fine until the last mile or so. It was getting hot and I was pretty dehydrated, so I was suffering. After we set up camp, I layed outside and took a nap while the others fished. Another couple joined us later that night and we had some trout and other food and smores. Saturday, two of the guys (Rod and Todd) and I hiked about 10 miles while Jeff and his friends fished. When we got back to camp around 2, I took another nap and we had another slow night around the fire. Sunday morning we got up early and left camp around 8:30. We made it back to the truck by around 11:30 then drove into Meeker and had a nice big hamburger with french fries. Of course, since we were driving back to Denver on I-70 on a Sunday afternoon, we got stuck in traffic. It took about two hours to get from just west of the Eisenhower tunnel to Idaho Springs. It was a really good trip, though, and I think I'd be up for going again sometime!