I'll get stuff done later

I worked a little over 4 hours yesterday. I spent about an hour and a half training Dustin. The notice by the timeclock is down but I haven't heard who got the night person position. I had fun training Dustin. He said to me, "You can't get all this done on a load day if you work 11-7." ROTFL! Young fool... Only now, at the end, do you understand

Anyway, talking for that long made my head hurt. I'm not sure how well he'll do with all that. He took a long time to find things on the computer but then he might have just been nervous because I was watching him.

I didn't really get much done yesterday. I have a box with the rest of our movies in it that I put our cds in as well. There's one more cd I didn't put in that's still in my car that I need to go get.

So far I haven't gotten anything done today either. And I probably won't for a while. I've been getting itches these past few days to play either Fallout 3 or Manhunt. Issue with Manhunt is that it kept crashing so I got Victor to fix it for me finally. Last year I spent a week getting up to this one level and I can't pass it. It's unlike the whole entire rest of the game. The whole game is about sticking to shadows and sneaking. Now suddenly in this level you're running downstairs in this apartment building or something and you have a time limit and there's people with shotguns everywhere and it takes two hits to kill you. I once made it out of the building but died just outside cause I don't think I quite understood what to do. I seriously considered just starting over cause the game is extremely fun, but I want to win it first. *sigh* I'll get there eventually if I keep at it. My favorite weapon is the crowbar. Sadly you're stuck with a machete through most of this level I'm stuck on, for your silent weapon. It gets repetitive. I believe I got fed up with this level and just went ahead and used the shot gun while working my way up the building. (yes, you go up and then you have to come back down, dunno why I couldn't just light the building on fire, seems to me that'd be way easier and get the job done just as well, but the game doesn't have any fire lighting abilities)

As for Fallout at the beginning Moriarty or whatever wanted you to pay him 100 caps for his information but I said ha, no and went exploring knowing I'd eventually stumble across it anyway, and I did. I didn't mean to, I was just having fun, but after 50 hours of exploring I found it. Bleh. Maybe I should have done it the right way  because the person I talked to made the first bit of the quest end and a new part begin and she talked like I'd been somewhere I hadn't and now I have to "go back" to this place I haven't  been. Oops. Maybe I have been there and just don't remember?

Either way, my head hurts and I need to do something to fix that before I play anything. I believe I will do Manhunt though, as Fallout makes me nauseous after an hour or two and the way my head feels today I doubt it would take more than a half hour.

panel purchase

I packed my serger. I just need to put a blanket or something around it to protect it.

I also have more buckets of clothes packed.

All board games are packed.

Most our movies are packed, but the little bit that's left will have to go in another box, I'll put our cds in the same box.

I packed a box of shoes and boots.

I took down my little thing of drawers that I keep notions in and taped the drawers shut. Did the same to my 3-drawer container for bigger notions.

All of this was done today.

We bought our solar panel and charge controller, 555.00. It will be enough to get us through for a while and later we'll buy a second panel. They're being mailed to us. Victor's been researching and that's the best he could find, even in cities nearby. Cause, yes, we could have drove to Missoula for one, but by time you add in gas and food and stuff it was cheaper to buy online.

Victor set up the batteries and inverter and stuff and tested it by running a lamp off it. He was real proud of himself for setting it up.

Also, I did start that box of papers. Instruction booklets, bills, paycheck stubs, things like that. I started that last week sometime. I also threw out quite a bit of things I didn't need.

I also have a box started of stuff we don't want anymore that people can go through and take what they want.

pictures from yesterday

 This is the knot bun.

 Bonecrusher on the towel shelf, he was chewing on the shelf paper.

still going to work a little

So Zhaun had a brilliant idea, and both Bonnie and Bret agree that it's great. We're going to keep me on the payroll and every time Bonnie goes on vacation I'm going to come down, stay with Timmy, and cover her vacation. At my current pay-rate that means 450 dollars every time Bonnie goes on vacation. Three or four times a year, and that's enough to pay all bills and then-some. She always takes the week before Thanksgiving, which doesn't bother me. And she always takes sometime in July or August, this year she wants the first week of August.

I told Nora about quitting, and she was surprised at first but was then so happy for me that she hugged me. She says she and her family play up in the woods in that area all the time. It didn't quite sink in till she'd left but sometime I should see whereabouts she usually goes to, and if it's close maybe invite her over sometime after the house is done. Nora is an Indian (or Native American), and is just a really good person. She got shuffled into service deli because she was the HR person but they got mad at her for not playing Deana's game of hiring friends and family only. But she's otherwise been in a lot of other departments, CSM, service desk, dairy, non-foods, nutrition.

Also told Wanda, who took it in a "I am totally not surprised" kinda way and said, "Finally had enough?" lol

Told the Pepsi guy, not sure how it happened but we became friendly at some point.

So far the general response is somewhat divided. A lot of people are all, "hmm... well, good luck". And some people think it's great. Robin was telling me that Zhaun's actually really sad and will miss me, but he's so tough on the outside that only people who know him will notice it. Robin (sometimes nightchecker, used to do non-foods, is the scanning coordinator backup) thinks it's great what we're doing, and at my age. I told her, "I believe that anyone can do anything they wanted. If they really wanted to do it they would find a way."

And Zhaun is whining that he'll "need to find someone else to do his work for him". Bret even said it, he saw me doing the crew sheets and went, "I don't know what Zhaun's going to do when he doesn't have to do all his work for him". Virginia said it too when I was doing the scan audit, "Doing Zhaun's work? Wonder what he'll do after you leave."

They posted a sign by the time clock asking people to sign if they wanted to get into dairy. And there are hordes of people trying to get off the front end. Addy signed, she used to work in Nutrition but quit under suspicious circumstances and is now back as a bagger. Personally she's the one I'd want to pick if I were in charge. She's fast, she's hard working, and I think out of everyone who signed she's the one who'd be able to keep up and do good. Brittany signed and I don't think she'd be able to do it. She desperately wants off the front end, but I don't think she'd make it in dairy, mainly because I don't want to see her get even more crushed. Addy's pretty strong, though, emotionally, she could probably handle it. I don't know the other people who signed but I'm pretty sure they're all front end people because I know the names of everyone else who works in the other departments.

I more or less have four days off in a row. Dustin leaves on vacation on Thursday, so they have him working Sunday-Wednesday, and me Wednesday-Saturday. But, Bonnie and I talked to Julie and got me four hours on Monday because receiving is closed on Monday but a few vendors will still try and come in and I would have needed to go in anyway to do the orders. I just hope no trucks show up or I won't get all the orders and markdowns and stuff done.

Speaking of Dustin's vacation, Julie told me she really appreciates that I'm staying till he gets back. And apparently I guess Dustin is going to be taking my job because Zhaun told me to start training him on the various reports I do. I had absolutely no time yesterday, but maybe on Monday if I get everything done fast enough we can get started on that. We also work together on Wednesday. And then not again till he gets back. But I'm writing a guide and it's nearly done. I'll print it out and bring it in and we'll go over it and see if it makes sense. Cause Dustin knows how to do pretty much everything, he can order, do shelf reviews, markdowns, audits, he knows how to get ready for P&G, corporate, CAO Audits, he knows what sells and doesn't sell, he can offload trucks. All I need to show him is how to pull reclamation, fill out the shelf review boards, fill out Zhaun's reclamation board, submit reclamation, put in credits, and a few other things. That's one other area where Addy is a good choice because she knows how to do markdowns, audits, and shelf reviews (though she'd need a refresher on shelf reviews and audits).

I got my vacation cashout check yesterday, which was way more than I'd expected due to the payraise I must have gotten at some point last year. I also got my check from last week where I'd worked nearly 48 hours. So that will buy our solar panels. Also, we got some wiring things we needed for the batteries. Now the only thing left to get are the panels themselves.

I've also got more packing done. I filled an entire bucket with old aprons from work. 0_0 I'm not throwing them away because they would make good scrap fabric. Or we can fix some of them up so they're not broken anymore, if we needed an apron for something. I also have nearly all my board games in boxes. Yes, they take up a lot of box-room, but I can cram stuff in around them, and keeps the game boxes from being damaged. Also, I have an unlimited supply of boxes. Eggs are on sale and that means I could bring home tons of boxes every day if I wanted to.

We're going to watch Avatar (super extended blu-ray version) probably today and then I'll pack our movies. I also have buckets of clothes that are nearly full. I have a sweater that I washed the other day that I will be finishing off a bucket with.

I need to clean up my sewing table.

The Neopets forums has been exploding the last few days. Sign-ups started, and I promptly joined Team Haunted Woods. The main game of the Altador Cup kinda really sucks, and I'm not the only one who thinks so! Everyone's been complaining about it. And the petition to get the game changed has nearly 3,000 NeoUsers on it. My username is #1193. Cause while I don't really think they could change it with such a limited time to do so it doesn't hurt to sign. And TNT (the neopets team) has made minimal changes, but nothing that will help greatly. The #1 biggest issue with the game is how the team members are controlled. You can control three people on the field and there's a goalie. So it's something of a soccar/hockey style game. Which team member you control depends on where the ball is. Say you're playing as Team Member #1 and you're running left towards the ball but the ball goes a fraction of an inch too far left and suddenly you're playing as Team Member #2, who was on the other side of the ball, and you suddenly find yourself running left still, but now you're running away from the ball. So you go to fix that by running right, only now that you've run far enough left you're back to controlling Team Member #1 again, who is now also running away from the ball. Meanwhile the other team has picked up the ball. Also, the other team can steal the ball from you but you can't steal from them. And you cannot control the goalie. I believe my average is 4-9, me losing. Some people are getting used to it and scoring 10-0s. I should probably go practice a little. During the week of sign-ups you get a week to practice.

Also, it's been raining almost non-stop for the last week. It's been so nice. I just wish I hadn't packed all my jackets without hoods cause I feel silly wearing my hat with a jacket that has a hood on it.

Oh, picture time. These were all taken on my mom's camera because I didn't bring mine. These are from Tuesday.

Victor and Steven work on one of Victor's rifles.

This is where the shed will be, we roped it off.

If you look real close you can see three of the stakes for where the corners of the house will be. The fourth is behind the brush pile.

 Another view of our area.

I did it

Well, it didn't go so bad. I was incredibly nervous at first. I had my notice and Zhaun was in the backroom and I handed it to him and said something about how I was telling him now so that he has a while to think about it before Bret comes in and starts freaking out at him. He was stunned, and we talked about it a bit. I later walked into the office to file some paperwork and he was in there just looking at the wall. Poor guy. I don't think I'd say we're close so much as I'd say we understand each other. We are friendly. I dunno, he can be a real jerk, but when it really comes down to it he's a good man. Almost want to start laughing at saying that, but all the things I complain about him if it really meant something to me he'd take it seriously instead of laughing it off. He's already recovered somewhat, saying he only has two more weeks to abuse me. lol He noticed how nervous I was, and I was, I was shaking. Poor Zhaun. I found out I was doing his markdowns and crew sheets because Steve (who was Zhaun's backup) was arrested, leastways that what rumor says happened to him. And the night checker just got caught stealing a week or so ago. He was saying how he'd have to work longer days and the next two months will be hell getting someone else in properly.

Either he wants to try for someone, anyone besides Dustin or if he really just doesn't know if Dustin will take it, he's going to put a notice up by the timeclock for people to sign if they want to do dairy. I'm kind of surprised at the response so far. People seem to think Dustin might not want to have my job. Which is odd. I was under the impression that Deana's been after my job for years. Maybe Dustin decided he didn't want to play that game and that's why Deana's been so nice to me this last year or so. Maybe he really is just stupid and he's not after me to sabotage me. I don't know. When we talked about it later he said he'd think about it.

Anyway, I told Nancy with Keebler who seemed a little sad. Anita was happy for me though, she was all smiles and hugs, says they don't appreciate me enough but after I quit they sure will start appreciating me, she also asked if this means we'll start having kids, which, yes, I told her we'd probably start on that sometime next year or so. Virginia'd been told by someone else before I could tell her so we talked about it. Zhaun told Dennis. Someone told Brad, cause he asked me about it. I told Don, I haven't seen Don in forever. He only brings the grocery load to our store every once in a great while. What are the odds he'd show up on the day I put in my notice. Anyway, we've known each other for almost 6 years. So he was sad.

Finally around 11 I had to get keys from Bret, but before then I was anxious and wanting to talk to him and all but not having the courage. But when I got his keys he was all, "I heard you're moving. You can't do that."
Me, "Why not?"
Bret, "You're not going to have a job."
Me, "I won't have any bills either."
Bret, "You'll get bored."
Me, "I have books, games. There's always something to do."
Bret, "I know, I envy you. We'll sure miss you, though."
He has this thing he does where he does not like to admit to something and he'll sorta turn away from you and look up and away. He did that when he said the first part of the last line, then looked back at me for the very last bit.

It is hard to remove yourself from somewhere you're engrained at. I can do it. And it is hard. Especially the questions. The questions will be the hardest. Giving the story repeatedly. Today it seems as though the news spread from one corner of the store and is working it's way outward. By tomorrow it'll probably be all across the store, spreading through the out-lying departments and finally through the front end. Front end will be slowest because they know me the least. Deana will tell the CSMs and they'll tell the checkers and baggers. I'm surprised Deana didn't know about it. She clearly didn't because I had to be the one to tell Dustin. Maybe Bret's sick of her too and wants to try to get someone besides Dustin in quick before she notices and so didn't tell her. Dustin's not pushy enough on his own and if they try to put in someone besides him Deana will be the one to throw a fit for him.

btw, Happy 34th birthday, ANH!

one big step, coming up

Took more stuff up to our new house area to store.

Wrote my notice and printed it. I am nervous. The nerves started about a month ago. Before, when I thought about telling Zhaun that I was leaving I enjoyed the scenarios I came up with. But as time wore on they got more serious, and sometimes when I thought of it I would feel thrills of nerves pass through my stomach. Now it's the night before. This is when it rings in as being totally real. So many times in my life plans have been made for one thing or another and even a few beginning steps made in that direction, then it falls apart or we change our minds. Things don't feel real until they're there. And now, tomorrow morning I'm going to hand this in. I've went over the conversation in my head so many times I could do it in my sleep. I know Zhaun well enough that I think I have his reaction right. But it's still going to be hard. I just hope they don't turn on me. Bonnie keeps telling me how when Darby put in her notice she had been the golden girl up till then and suddenly after her notice was in all they could talk about was how she'd done such a bad job at everything. And that has me scared too. And this is when a date is set, a definite date. I put June 13th on my notice, because Dustin is going to be gone till the 12th and I imagine they'll want me to to work with him for a while on the 13th. Or if that's not how they want it then they can schedule me full shifts for the 12th and 13th and call those his days off for that week. I signed my notice and I dated it for tomorrow. I also wrote that it was my intended quit date because who knows, they could choose not to have me work on the 13th at all, or have me work the 12th and 13th as full shifts then have me for an hour or two on the 14th to show Dustin stuff.

Either way it is almost 9:00 and way beyond past bedtime. btw, happy birthday to my mom!

coughing

Apparently I'm allergic to the antibiotics I was taking for the tooth infection. It irritated my breathing pathways which caused them to think I needed to cough. But being there's nothing to cough it comes out more as wheezy gasps. When I try to suppress it it's something like spasms. It gets worse when I'm moving around a lot. Like at work yesterday offloading the truck with the manual jack made me cough quite a bit.

I will be putting my notice in at work tomorrow. Me and Bonnie (who is back from vacation now) agreed it was best that way it is deffinately 2 weeks. In fact it will be something like 2 1/2 weeks. It'll be nice because hopefully that means they won't be so uptight about things. Either that or they'll go way overboard about every little thing. Either way, yesterday morning they were questioning me about my scanouts. Why aren't I doing markdowns, why do I throw so much away, I have to mark things down before I can toss them. Ok, you want me to mark down broken yogurt, leaking milk, that tub of sour cream that some customer thought should be in the bread rack overnight, the chocolate milk some customer left in with the ice cream and is now all separated and gross? A good 80% of everything I throw away is damaged. I have told them this repeatedly throughout the years and no one gets it. My markdowns sell. They really do. And I got to watch Julie and Zhaun have a wordless conversation wherein Julie suggested that Zhaun had told me that our markdown effectiveness score needs to be great but that I should be spending my time doing better markdowns instead of better scanouts, "don't you think?" *raised eyebrows and gritted teeth smile at Zhaun* I did what I thought best and shut up and let them do their thing, especially since I agree with Julie on this one. I did stick up for him later though when it looked like he would be getting in trouble for not doing the date-checking chart correctly. He has me putting in the total grocery outdated figure on the chart and he has night crew looking for dates. Last week was Jello and I said that last week while doing receiving I did reclamation and there was jello in the bin so they were indeed doing the sections. Which was stretching it, there were three boxes, maybe.

Bonnie had me check an email she'd written to see if it made sense. Yes, it made sense. But it was not grammatically correct. Not to appear as a grammar nazi the only thing I did was to point out the differences between "then" and "than". The other things she did wrong were mainly just missing hyphens. Such as in the word "pre-built". Which, hyphens could be up for speculation. Such as the second comma when you write "word, word, and word". To me it's only correct when you have the second comma, but it seems to be generally acceptable either way as I've noticed it written both ways in books. But anyway, being at work and reading Bonnie's emails (which I do when she's on vacation in case they need me to do something as my email is not set up) I noticed that any idiot can get into a corporate position. They make fun of grocery store people for being the high-school drop-outs. I guess this carries on up to the corporate level as well, if their spelling and grammar are any indication of their intelligence levels. I understand there are regional differences that might carry over into writing, but that does not excuse confusing "are" and "is", missing capitalization, missing or wrong punctuation, or any number of other things I've read wherein I grit my teeth and move on. And I admit, sometimes I get going fast and don't go back and edit what I've written. But when I try, well, if I ever did take the GED test the only section I know for sure I'd pass is the English section.

I have to make a list of people at work that I want to tell face-to-face that I'm leaving. Anita, for sure. She used to be to me how Bonnie is to me now. Wanda in meat dept, because we whine to each other about how we're the manliest people in the store because the men are worthless. For some reason I might almost want to tell Virgina, in scanning. I feel she might be a little hurt if I didn't tell her myself. And I'll probably tell Brittany the bagger, and I'll throw in some words of inspiration, like when Kyle left eons ago he left me with "There's life outside the cooler", I'll think of something good like that. And George, one of our drivers, I feel he deserves to know. I know once it starts getting gossiped about I'll have to repeat the story over and over of what's going on, and since they all know me I think what I'll do is type it all up and print it out and then whenever someone asks me I'll just hand them the paper while saying that we know I'm bad at speaking and then when they're done I'll put it back in my apron for the next person to read.

 I'm finally hungry. Been up for about 45 minutes now. It's Cinnabon cereal this morning, got it from the markdown bin at work cause the box is crushed up a bit.

back to packing

I got a lot done this morning. I finished packing a box of food, which didn't take long. Victor had packed his Amiga but there was still room on top so I put my large leather jacket on top. I also put some cans of food in one box until it was heavy-ish and then threw some coats on top; both our trenches, his leather jacket, and my grey fuzzy jacket. I also packed some buckets. Into one went a scarf, gloves, three jackets, and a hooded vest. Into another went the various christmas lights we had hanging around, and a santa hat. I also went through a bunch of paper stuff laying around and threw out a bunch of it.

I think packing will go easier once I get some of the full boxes out of here so I can have an easier time of seeing what's left. I'm kinda down to things I don't want to pack yet (movies, dishes) and things I'm not sure what to group with (toy guns, extension cords) and things that need to be sorted (various paper stuff). I suppose I could just cram the paper stuff together into one box by itself. Things like old bills, check stubs, assembly instructions. That will be my next project, I think. To go through all that and put it by itself in a box. I have a whole stack of assembly and instruction booklets. Once all that's put away the house will look much emptier.

Me and all my siblings and our mom went to see POTC4 yesterday. I really liked it. But I'm going to need to get ready for work in a moment here so a fuller review will come later.

As for how I feel, still coughing a little, still having the occasional need to blow my nose. My teeth are better, with the occasional ache for a moment once or twice a day.

I had a thought yesterday while coming home from work. Our tv is going to be wall-mounted. And we need somewhere to put our movies. So how about if I put one of our black bookshelves under the tv. Then I thought it might look nice if I stacked two bookshelves and put one stack on either side of the tv. That would mean 5 bookshelves. And, hey, we have 5 little black bookshelves! Convenient. We don't have that many movies, but we do have video games that will need shelving as well. And one can never have too much shelf space.

more tooth fun

Was up last night with bad pain from tooth. My tongue was tingling and only on one side towards the back and my cheek was tingling and I could trace the line on my face from temple to mouth down the neck and back up near the ear where I hurt. Luckily the line went around my eye so I didn't have that on top of the rest. Victor took a look and turns out what happened is a piece had broken off of the tooth and now a sharp pointy was sticking into my cheek. I swished with mouth wash and that helped a lot. Swished again this morning and was in pretty bad pain for a while. I was doing better but it feels kinda achy right now. But that's probably because I haven't mouth washed since dinner an hour or two ago. At least I've only had to take ibuprofen once today. And I can open and close my mouth easier, though I'm still not biting down all the way.

We did not see the movie today. For one thing there's my tooth and for another I'm still coughing a bit and I don't want to disrupt the movie for that. I just have to avoid spoilers somehow. Already ran into one, which I hope was more teaser than spoiler. Victor doesn't want to go because he didn't like the last two movies.

if it's not one thing it's another

My sinuses were still all blocked up today, but overall I was doing much better. I wasn't even as cold as I've been. And then this morning at some point my tooth started hurting. I took some medicine when I got home and it made the right side of my face (the side with the bad tooth) flare up all hot and I think I might be feverish. But my face being as hot as it was just means the battle against infection is waging. *sigh* This week of being sick will cost me. It's the upper tooth on the far back. I had the one before it pulled three or four years ago and I guess over the course of time that this tooth somehow rolled over (I've known about it for over a year or two) so it's bottom was facing outwards. Anyway, I think it's also split the one in front of it a bit too cause it feels like there's a seam going down it but who knows. Anyway, I can't quite tell if which of the two is infected, they both hurt and I can't close my mouth all the way and my teeth don't line up properly, which Victor says is because of the swelling from infection.

It's not fair in a way, Victor was sick for about a day and a half and he's better now. I wouldn't want him to be sick longer, but I've been sick since Saturday. Thursday, kinda, cause on Thursday my eyes started feeling weird and they felt weird through Friday too.

I do hope I feel better tomorrow, it's POTC4 day. The only showings after I get off at 1:00 are at 3:30 and then at 6:30. Eek. 3:30 it is, then. If I don't go tomorrow it'll be Saturday or Monday. I will not be going in costume. Although I absolutely love my pirate costume and it was inspired by the POTC movies I reckon I'm not big enough a fan to attend in costume. And tomorrow I'll probably still be shaking off being sick. So a logo t-shirt will suffice.

I do so love my pirate costume. I love the coat most of all. The coat is fantastic. It still has fake pockets but that's ok. That coat is amazing. I love the fabric. I had eyed that fabric for so long in the clearance at JoAnns just knowing it would disappear some day. And then I knew what it was for, it was meant to be my pirate coat. I used a pattern so it's not my own creation, I'm still proud of it. And the buttons I found for it are perfect. They came in a lot of, like, 50, so I have about 30-35 of them leftover, but it was worth it.

And now my simple-from-being-sick mind is rambling on and it's time for bed. I've been doing receiving all week. I guess I'm glad because being sick like this and in dairy would have been awful. At least in receiving I can take it easy. Dustin was upset that I didn't get more done in dairy yesterday (5 days in receiving, 1 day in dairy this week, actually), and he questioned me about it. Ooo, just you wait, you brat, you'll see. In a week when I put in my notice he'll be celebrating. But I'll wait and just after July 4th I'll ask him if it's as easy as he thought it would be. July 4th is the 4th hardest holiday there is in dairy. They are ranked, Thanksgiving *shudders and crawls into a fetal position in a corner while crying and rocking*, Christmas, Easter, July 4th. Unless his mommy-dearest has made life good for him he'll be sorry for how he treats me now.

hm, I need Fred's email address or something. While he is sometimes just a creepy old guy who hits on me all the time he's still one of the biggest friends I have and I wouldn't mind keeping in touch with him. We do have very different opinions about some things, but overall he has a general dislike of society in general and he knows a lot about all sorts of stuff. Mainly related to dairy stuff. Today we were bad-talking about the Kreameries again (they wandered in 2 hours after receiving closed down) and he was telling me about how the dairy pool of Montana kicked them out for not playing by the rules. How Darigold and Meadowgold both stopped buying from them because their milk had so much bacteria in it the only thing they could use it for was cottage cheese and that's why they started selling their milk straight to stores. It's fun. We used to bad-talk about Meadowgold occasionally too. Paula, the sales rep, is a pushy flake.

Sign-ups for the Altador Cup at Neopets starts soon. I've decided to join Team Haunted Woods. It was either that or the Lost Desert but I think I fit in better at Haunted Woods.

Way past time to go to bed.

batteries

First up are the golf cart batteries we got, and then the propane bottles. Victor got those at CostCo last night. I wasn't with him because I'm sick and didn't feel like going.

My being sick is why I haven't really been posting either. It started with coughing, moved to a sore throat, I had a runny nose yesterday, today it's still runny. All through it I've been coughing and somewhat feverish.

I work until 7 tonight and go back in at 5 tomorrow. I have to really try to get to bed as early as possible tonight. 8:00, I think, might be the earliest I could manage it. I'll try for 7:45, though. I'll have all my work stuff ready for tomorrow and I'll drink some sleepytime tea when I get home. I'm also going to try to go in a little early so I can leave a little early. 15 minutes, maybe 20. And I might leave even earlier depending on what it looks like. Considering there's been only one person a day in dairy this week it's probably pretty bad. And being sick I'll be slow today. The best I can hope for is that the trucks all show up early and Zhaun has to offload them.

For only having 3 1/2 weeks left I'm not as far along as I'd like to be. I still have so much to pack, so much to sort through. At least our purchases are more or less on schedule. And being sick right now I haven't had the energy or mental power to pack or sort anything. At least I think I'm towards the end of it.

no shed yet

For lack of pallets or alternative flooring we did not build the shed yesterday or today. Instead we covered it and will build it another time when we have flooring. We'll most likely buy more plywood (wafer board?) and make that kind of floor. We put the boxes and stuff from the truck into the camper for now.

Here is the wood pile, the truck, and the camper. Left to right are Victor, my parent's dog Odie, my mom, and my step-dad. I believe it's that spot in front of the truck and a little to the left that the shed's going into.

 This is just to the left of the wood pile. That clearing where the brush is is where the house will go.

Lastly, here's a picture of Bonecrusher:

mental beating

I finished reading TT last week (or early this week?) and am now on ROTK. I gather I'm about 20 pages in or so. For those who've read the books Beregond just sent Pippin off to find his son. I don't want to get too far into it before watching the TT movie so I did some of that this morning. I got about 2 hours in and it was back to the boring tree stuff so I shut it off. I have stuff to do. I'll finish watching it some other time.

As for the books, I don't know, I think they're growing on me. Victor compares it to your mind accepting the beating and getting used to it. I simply think the books get better as you go. Like in the first book a lot of it's filler, but by the third book it's like, "Ok, here's Gondor, they have traditions and history and stuff but we don't have time for all that".

I think I might be getting sick. Throat felt weird yesterday and it still does today and I've been coughing a lot today. I will not get sick. I have an 8-day work week coming up. I took a vitamin C earlier so I'll take another after I post this.

Then I guess I'll start loading up the truck. I'm not entirely sure how we want to do this. Either bring the camper over here and load it up or take the truck over there with stuff in it and transfer it to the camper. I know the plywood won't fit in Victor's truck so that will have to go in the camper. So we will be putting some boxes in the truck. I dunno. I guess I'll load up the truck and we'll just transfer stuff so we don't have to bring the camper over here.

Under a month to go

On Tuesday we got a lot done. We took some stuff over to the camper. I took our chainsaw, canning pan, jars, buckets of things like flour and sugar, some canned foods, nearly all my boxes of SW stuff, and the bucket with Victor's sweaters. Then we took it out for a drive to get it moving and get some gas in it. To get it going at a higher speed we went out to Wal-Mart and while there picked up some water containers since they were setting up their summer aisles. I felt kinda bad taking them since they were just being used as spacers to know where the set the shelves at but they were done with that section anyway and were just finishing up the end of the aisle before putting the rest on the shelf. Those we left in the camper. We also got a hook and eye to keep that back cabinet from swinging open.

I figure the roads are probably good enough to take it on up. So what I'm thinking is that tomorrow my mom will be down here, we can discuss shed building. Since I seem to be incapable of using google properly and all I can find are plans for building these fancy sheds with floors and joists and foundations and real walls and stuff. It's like they're miniature house plans.

I did a bit of weaseling at work and I'm pretty sure I'm getting Sunday off, so that'll be two days in a row, Saturday and Sunday. So I figure on Saturday morning we'll load up the camper with a bunch more stuff, probably almost all the boxes and buckets I  have. And either Friday or Saturday buy what we need to build the shed and stuff it in Victor's truck. Then he'll drive the camper and I'll drive his truck and we'll head on up.

We can get the shed built, prepare the driveway, and do any clearing or whatever we want and maybe spend the night depending on how long all this takes.

Then we'll dump all our stuff into the shed and come home in the truck.

If I can find free pallets somewhere I think I've got a fairly good plan. Four cheps (I'd take wood if that's all there was but I would much rather have cheps) in a rectangle (since all pallets are rectangular) with wood nailed into the bases. The back of the shed would be lower than the top and we'd lay some tin roofing on top of the walls and since the back would be lower the roof would be at an angle to where rain and snow could run off properly.

I should get out there and get some more boxes done so we have more to take up there. I have an hour before I have to start getting ready for work.

flurry of packing

This is our porch light that we got.

Cats eyes always turn out weird in pictures. Anyway, Boney decided to squeeze into this box and it was cute.

Here we are yesterday. It was raining a little. This is the place we got married at. I think it would be neat if we came back every year to take a picture here. We've done it every year so far.

Yesterday Victor made me some sorta French meal, tuna with panko breading on it. It was delicious.

As for presents, Victor got me this rechargeable shaver thing (takes very little power to charge) and I was scared of it at first but it's really nice. I got him The Princess Bride on bluray cause it's one of his favorite movies ever.

This morning I had a flurry of packing.

I got the bathroom box finished. It's got things like spare shampoo and conditioner, bandaids, kleenex, ace bandage type stuff, oxyclean, and other stuff I don't even remember now. Vitamins, pill splitter, etc.

I got another box of books packed. I underestimated the amount of books we have. I need yet another small box for the rest. At least this time I know that'll be the last book box I need. I wound up leaving out four books total for me and Victor. I left me out ROTK and Force Heretic II, and left him out The Stand (cause it appears to be one of his favorite books I guess, he's read it a bazillion times) and then whichever random book I drew from the pile of maybes which was Aliens vs Predator.

And I did a box of kitchen stuff. The pyrex cake and pie pans I found on markdown at work, the set of mixing bowls with lids I found on markdown at work, cooling racks, cutting board, a lot of wash cloths and dish towels, a screw-top container thing (that I stuffed with a sugar shaker and cloths), some scrubbies, and etc.

It's getting harder to pack because I don't want to put away something that we might need. But things that you group together are getting smaller and smaller. Like, I don't need my angel food cake pan right now. ...but it's not going into a box on it's own and it's too early to pack up cookie sheets and stuff. But I am still getting it there.

Oh, wow, it's 9:00. I need to eat something and get ready for work.

velvet flare pants

New Winnie the Pooh movie! See trailer. I'm excited. Owl's voice sounds weird. But otherwise it looks pretty good. It's got book pages and a narrator like the old movie did. So can I assume this is a sequel to that one? As long as it's got the proper theme song! I'm glad it's regular cartoon artwork and not cg. Maybe I'm just old but I prefer real artwork over cg. It comes out July 15th for the US. It seems we're among the last to get it.

You'd think I'd have more to say but I don't, really. I wasted Thursday evening on the couch watching tv. Yesterday me and Victor cleaned the bathroom super good. I worked a lot of overtime last week, I reckon I have 43-44 hours and I was only supposed to have 40.

I haven't packed anything else, but I have been slowly adding to my bathroom, etc box. I'm going to pack up the rest of the books today. Except for things we might want to read. I have two SW books I left out as well as ROTK. I might leave out one more in case I don't want to read either of those.

And speaking of LOTR, I have been reading TT off and on. They're about to enter Shelob's (sp?) lair. Faramir's still cool, but I dunno if I like him as much in the book as I did in the movie. Though, even while watching the movies I didn't really like him till ROTK, so we'll see.

So today we're celebrating our anniversary, even though we got married on the 10th. There is a good reason for that. A certain monthly event is due next week and I don't want to be bloaty, icky, and moody.

Anyway, I brought out those really neat long black velvet flare pants I got at the thrift store two years ago. I've never worn them because I've been saving them for a special event. And for a while I forgot about them. They're really comfortable and loose... but I don't really need a belt. Usually if I find pants that fit in the thigh the waist is too big and I need a belt. If the waist fits the thighs are too tight. But these are great. They're long, though, so they require heels. I do have some heels but nothing I wanted to wear with this and the only shirt I had in mind is also black and that would be too much black. It's a good thing I have a sister who wears the same size I do! I raided her closet and took home some silver heeled sandals and a green lace shirt that has a cami under it. And I borrowed some makeup to make my face pale.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with my hair.

The negg hunt at Neopets is over. We failed to reach the community goal of finding 5,000,000 neggs. We lost with about 4,170,000. I knew from the beginning we wouldn't make it. I looked for neggs anyway, but I knew we wouldn't. Not if each user who was looking found a maximum of 10 neggs a day. We got a loser's prize anyway, which I was content with.

The next event is the Altador Cup. I've never done that one either. From the sounds of it you pick which land is your favorite and play for that land and there's four games you play and even if the land you choose comes in last you can get all the prizes if you played the games enough to earn a lot of points. So I guess I need to choose a land. I think either the Lost Desert, Haunted Woods, or Kreludar are my possible choices. Maybe Shenkuu and Moltara too. Someone suggested newbies wait until the world boards are up so we can talk with other people on the various teams so we know if we want to be with those people or not. Sign ups aren't open yet though. I'm not sure when they start but it should be soon because from what I can tell sign ups are in early/middle May and the games last through till nearly the end of June.

This morning I put a lot more honey (about 1/3 cup) into my bath and it made a slight difference in my skin. It's not a big enough difference, though, so I don't think I'd do it very often, especially since honey is expensive. At best I can say it's more silky. I also added a bit of baking soda. Not sure if it made any difference. Also, since milk baths make my body creamy and pale but not my face I wanted to fix that so I tried making a milk mask. I did not use proper measurements so I can not provide an exact recipe. I used brown sugar, milk, olive oil, and honey. As far as I can tell it did nothing. My eyes feel heavy so next time I'll be more careful to keep it off my eyes. I simply smeared it all over my face and then wiped off enough to so I could breath and see. Perhaps it needs more milk. Dunno. I'll look around more and see what I can come up with. Or maybe it takes more than one time, because my face is the part of me that's always exposed so therefore it would need more work than, say, my legs, which never see the sun.

We sold the house today. Yay! We got 1,000 dollars downpayment as well as the first monthly payment. So we will get our solar setup with this. Victor figures it'll be about 700? I don't remember exactly. 7 or 8 I think. He has a friend who's an electrician and they were talking and he knows a lot more about what to do now.

Borders is having a big bargain book sale thing so we went over there and got some really good books that are normally really expensive. We got a Smithsonian Animal book, a how the body works book, and a history book. Victor says they'll be good for teaching eventual children out of. Plus those kinds of books are good to have around anyway.

Tonight dinner will be taco casserole. Yay! We had a sandwich yesterday. French bread, cheese, tuna on my half and roast beef on his, lettuce. I almost wish I'd gone the roast beef route too because it tasted nummy. (he let me have a bite) But the last time I did that I didn't really like it. Oh, well.

I haven't got any more boxes packed yet but I do have a few that are getting there.