January 10, 2006
Migrating again!
Okay, so for the past 3 days, I've spent moving websites around to the new hosting company's server. I've managed to install MovableType on the new server, so I'll be moving my blog over there (thanks Adam for hosting this one!). :o) So to continue...here's the new link. Please update your bookmarks accordingly!
See y'all on the flip side...
Posted by alpha at 09:05 PM | Memories | Comments (0)
January 05, 2006
Hook 'em!!!
Congrats to the Texas Longhorns, who defeated USC 41-38 last night at the Rose Bowl to become the new National Champions!!!!
Posted by alpha at 08:43 AM | Memories | Comments (2)
December 27, 2005
Post-Christmas Report
Christmas was quite fun this year. We left at around 3pm on Friday to go down to San Antonio. Stopped by the Hard Eight in Stephenville for a late lunch/early dinner along the way. It was mighty tasty. The temperature was in the mid-70's, so we ate outside, which was nice. :o) Arrived at Greg's Dad's at around 9ish...Paul arrived at 10ish. We sat around and chatted a bit and went to sleep.
Saturday morning Greg's cousin Jeff came by to drop off our tickets to the Saints vs. Lions game. The game started at Noon, so we left at about 10:30 to head downtown. We parked over by the Riverwalk, then proceeded to walk over to the stadium. It took about 15 minutes to walk over (it was pretty ridiculous where they had put parking for this stadium). Jeff and Mike (and Mike's kids) joined us for the game. The game was pretty good...Detroit won with seconds left in the game with a field goal.
We went and ate at Republic of Texas at the Riverwalk after the game. We had originally wanted to go to Casa Rio, but most of the Mexican restaurants there were closed on Christmas Eve, so we didn't get to. The food at the Republic was pretty ordinary...nothing special.
Later than night, we went over to Uncle Guy and Aunt Martha's house for Christmas Eve dinner. A whole bunch of people were there (lots of people I had never met). Mike dressed up as Santa Claus and made a grand entrance after dinner. It was pretty entertaining. We got way too many boxes of chocolate.
Sunday morning we headed out to Boerne to go to Diane & John's house for Christmas. It was fun hanging out. We got to meet our niece Sarah's new fiance, Bryan. He seems nice. :p The boys went out to the driveway to play football after lunch. Only a couple of injuries this time. :o) We sat around, watched basketball/football, and called it a day.
Oh, forgot to mention...Greg got me a USA Hockey Jersey that I wanted. :o) He was sneaking around last week to try to find it, but he had to go to 5 different stores before he found the right size at the Colleyville Players Bench. Ha ha. :p
Anyway, we left Monday morning to come home...stopped by Niester's in Granbury for lunch. Mmmmmmm. Bought a loaf of their sourdough bread. It smells soooooo good. :o) Got home at around 5ish, unpacked, bummed around, watched the Stars game on HD (wheeeee!), and went to bed. :o)
My boss gave me a comp day to take tomorrow. Hee hee. She said it's for the extra hours that I've worked this year (which was actually a lot). So I'll get to run some errands. Fun stuff. :p
Posted by alpha at 01:00 PM | Family | Comments (0)
December 20, 2005
Merry Christmas!!
Merry Christmas everyone!!! :o)
I've been so insanely busy at work that I haven't gotten a chance to post all month! Goodness gracious. Can't believe it's already Christmas. Must get a groove on the wrapping of presents.
Summarizing December as briefly as possible...
On December 10, 2005, my lil sis GRADUATED from UTD!!!! :o) Yey!!! My friend Katie from my hockey team also graduated that day with a Masters degree. Hee hee.
Greg and I got a TV stand finally. It was an ongoing battle with the sales guy from the store that we bought the TV from. The stand was "on order" when we bought the TV, and we were basically told that it might be there when the TV was delivered. We kept getting a later date whenever we ask about the stand. Then finally, I got fed up with having to check up on this guy every week, that I told him if he can't guarantee a date of arrival for this stand, we'll just cancel the order and get it somewhere else. He called back and said that the date that he was given at that point was the end of December. We told him to just refund us the money, and we went to Best Buy and bought the other stand. I think I actually like this one better 'cuz there's more shelf space. :o) Plus it was on sale for $150, and I had $50 of gift cards for Best Buy from my birthday...so we paid $100 for it! Hee hee.
Oh my hockey team won our game on Sunday night against the Mantis, 2-0. Wheeee! :o)
We're leaving on Friday to go to San Antonio for Christmas. :o) Greg's cousin Jeff got a bunch of us tickets to the Saints vs. Lions game on Saturday, so we'll be going to that. Then Aunt Martha invited us over to their place for Christmas Eve dinner. We'll be going over to Diane's for Christmas, then coming back on Monday I believe. Craziness!
Then on the 30th, we're flying down to Corpus Christi to visit Diane & John at their new beach house. :o) Can't wait to see it (I've only seen pictures). I heard it's pretty awesome...and one of the first things they put in there was a pool table. Ha ha ha. Wheeeee!
Oh, and I almost forgot...I'll be getting my bonus check on Friday. :o) Yey!!!! It's a huge bonus and a huge raise. I'm happy. :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:38 AM | Family | Comments (0)
November 26, 2005
Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving *almost* went off without a hitch. :p Reason I said "almost," is that we had forgotten to pick up the smoked turkey that we had ordered from Dickey's on Wednesday night. We were so preoccupied with the cable people (who didn't show up until 7:30pm), that we had forgotten to go by to pick up the turkey. We were watching the news at around 10, when they did a story on this Honey Baked Ham store being robbed...when we remembered that we had forgotten about the turkey. Normally, it wouldn't be a big deal 'cuz Dickey's would still be open...but since it was the night before Thanksgiving, they were closing at 8pm. Greg and I sat there for a minute while we pondered what to do next...when I came up with the great idea to at least call to see if anyone was still at the restaurant. Turns out that we were lucky, and a manager was still there 'cuz one of his employees screwed up something. WHEW! :o)
The rest of Thanksgiving went well. :o) Paul came over at about 11ish, and my family came over at around 2. Everything was delicious. :o) We hung out awhile and watched the Cowboys game on HD (woooot!). Then my family left to go home for a little bit before going to Matt's parents' house for dinner. The rest of the day was spent watching various sports games. We had a good time.
Friday, Marshall came over to watch the Texas vs. A&M game. He and Laura were in town visiting Laura's Mom. I think he said that Laura and her Mom were going shopping that day, so he got to come over to hang out with us. It was pretty fun. :o) He left after the game. We went to Parma for dinner. It was tasty, except that our waitress basically ignored us after she took our order (as in that she brought us our drinks, took our order, and we never saw her again). Needless to say, she didn't get a tip. I think Greg's gonna have a word with the owner of the place the next time he goes for lunch or something.
Posted by alpha at 07:08 PM | Family | Comments (3)
November 23, 2005
1 out of 3
So yesterday the TV people came and dropped off our TV at about 10:30am. The TV stand hasn't made it to the store yet, so we probably won't get it until at least the end of the week. The screen isn't as gigantic as I had originally thought, but we can surely see it well from the other end of the house! Hee hee. I hooked up the computer to it for some 50" web surfing. Pretty fun.
The rest of yesterday was spent cleaning the house in preparation for our guests this week. Nothing unusually spectacular to report.
This morning I went and picked up Greg's Dad at Love Field, then we went to have lunch with Greg at Saltgrass. That was fun. Then his Dad and I came home and we watched some old football games on ESPN Classic, and then he went to take a nap. The Comcast guy called at 3 to tell me that someone would be out in 1.5 hours to install the cable card for HDTV. Then someone else called back half an hour later, and wanted to verify that I wanted a cable card. I told him yes...then he told me that they were out of cable cards at the warehouse that he's at, and that's all they were waiting on. Another technician had to go to the other warehouse to pick up something, and he was gonna look for a cable card while he was there. Anyway, I basically told him that I'm going to need either the card or the HD box for tomorrow 'cuz I have people coming over to watch the games and such, and that if they bring me the box today, I want it swapped out when they have a card available. More waiting ensued. I called him back about 20 minutes ago to make sure that they're still coming. He said that he had just talked to his boss, and they'll go ahead and install the box today, and come swap it out with the card when they have one (THEY BETTER!). So now he gets to go look for a guy who can come by to install the box. He did promise that someone will be out today...so we'll see.
Posted by alpha at 05:12 PM | Misc | Comments (0)
November 21, 2005
The long awaited big screen TV!
Not a whole lot went on last week...just some busy work at the office, trying to slow things down some before my vacation this week. Paul came over Saturday to watch football games. The boys must have watched like 12 hours of football. Gracious. I escaped to the bedroom after awhile to watch some movies. :o)
Sunday we slept in, watched some of the Cowboys game, and then we went to this Home Theater Expo thing that Star Power was having so we could check out some HDTVs. I had a few in mind that I wanted to look at...and we went to Star Power 'cuz I know they would have good HD connections to their TVs so we could see their full potential. We ended up liking the new Sony 50" Grand WEGA 3LCD Rear Projection HDTV (KDF-E50A10). We also got the matching stand to go with it. :o) Wheeee! Star Power is delivering the unit tomorrow...they'll unpack and set it up for us. The stand was on order...hopefully they'll get it today or tomorrow and can deliver to us.
When I got home, I called Comcast to see about the whole deal with getting HDTV...the lady on the phone wasn't so friendly, so I got online and ordered the service...and got this guy who was very friendly. :o) The lady on the phone "doesn't think" that they could come out to install the Cable Card until after Thanksgiving...while the guy on chat said that they can come on Wednesday between 2pm and 5pm. That's perfect 'cuz we'll get to play with the TV some on Tuesday before installing the Cable Card.
So...what's left for me to do today, is to get the non-essentials off of our current entertainment center. When Greg gets home tonight, we'll need to move it over to the other side of the living room until my parents come to pick it up on Thursday (hopefully it'll fit in their van). I sure hope that the two of us can move it across the room...I just remembered that it took 4 of us to tilt it up when we were building it. Bleh...
In other news...we won our hockey game last night (2-1) against the Mantis. Everybody played really well. I got a really nasty bruise from blocking a slapshot during a penalty kill towards the end of the game. Ouchie. It's nice and purple today. :o/
Posted by alpha at 03:33 PM | Hockey , Memories | Comments (0)
November 13, 2005
New Bed!!
Today we finally caved and bought a new bed!! :o) I've been looking at Tempur-Pedic beds for about 6 months now. We strolled into Mattress Firm to try them out for ourselves. The sales guy was really nice. He told us about all the differences between the beds and stuff. We took about half an hour laying on the different beds (including the Sealy Posture-pedic, which was also quite comfortable).
Anyway, we finally decided on the Tempur-Pedic Deluxe Bed with the platform foundations (kinda like box-springs equivalent). The sales guy also threw in a couple of the neck pillows along with free same-day delivery. There's also 12-month interest-free financing to go with it. Wheeee! :o)
So I'm sitting here watching TV and waiting for the delivery people to come to give us our bed! Hee hee hee. *Excited*
Posted by alpha at 02:45 PM | Memories | Comments (0)
November 09, 2005
Really just for me...wedding dates...
Okay, I know so many people who are getting married next year, that I'm starting to forget who's getting married when and where. So this is really just for me to keep track of all the weddings we're going to...
3/25 (Saturday) - Mirjam & Colby
4/8 (Saturday) - Jane & Leo (Atlanta)
4/22 6pm (Saturday) - Louisa & David (Omni Mandalay)
6/3 (Saturday) - Karen & Matt
Also...not sure of dates yet for these, or if we're invited...
Sometime in April...
- Jessica & Chris
Posted by alpha at 06:30 PM | Memories | Comments (2)
November 07, 2005
24 - Season 5
Yey yey yey yey yey!!!
4-hour Season Premiere: Sunday, 1/15, 7-9pm CT, and Monday, 1/16, 7-9pm CT.
After which, episode 5 will begin on Mondays at 8pm CT.
Posted by alpha at 05:33 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (0)
Birthday!
Yes yes, it's my birthday today. :o) Wheeee go me! :o)
I took off work Friday and today for this momentus occasion. Not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Hee hee. I can get used to hanging out with kitties all day long.
Friday I had lunch with Jo. Hadn't seen her since the reception! Goodness. We went to Celebration, and it was tasty. :o) Had a great time hanging out. We were running a little late though, so we barely missed Marina before she left for lunch. Jo very kindly brought the cake down for me.
Saturday we went over to Chris' for the party. People were all running pretty late. So we hung out awhile before anyone showed up. It was a small party, but was fun. Lots of fun were had, and big pieces of cake were had. :o) It was delicioso. Greg and I stuck around 'til about 5:30 or so...'cuz Paul had come over to watch football games, so we didn't want to ditch him. The rest of the night consisted of football and Sonic. Hee hee.
Sunday we hung out most of the day...then Greg went outside to pick up some leaves from the yard. All of a sudden he yelled for me to come out to see something. These little ones were what we had discovered! Ha ha ha. We had pretty much given up on them when we didn't see anything by mid-October. Then all of a sudden these little ones popped up. We have 5 of them. Someone(thing) had taken a bite out of the outside of one of them, so we cracked it open to see what it was like on the inside. The ripe part was actually quite sweet. :o) Hopefully the other 4 will grow bigger and more ripe before it gets cold (if it ever gets cold). Hee hee.
Today I just hung out with kitties...washed my car and stuff. Tonight we're going to Tokyo One with my family for dinner. Mmmmmmm! :o)
Oh, almost forgot, my sister and Matt had made an offer on a house in Plano! They close in December, which works out well 'cuz the lease at my sister's apartment is up in February. :o) Yey!
Posted by alpha at 04:43 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (2)
November 01, 2005
Halloween
Hee hee. Our Halloween was pretty interesting. Kids started showing up at about 6:15. At first, it was kinda slow...but kids started coming in droves at around 7:30 or so. We were out of candy by about 8 (we didn't buy all that much). Our most memorable costume was worn by this girl who looked EXACTLY like Kirsten Dunst, dressed up as Aphrodite. It was really weird. Later on, a grandma came by with her grandson (a pirate) and her baby granddaughter (a chili pepper!). They were adorable. :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:23 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (0)
October 31, 2005
Game
Beware...it's addictive. Don't tell me I didn't warn ya! :o)
Posted by alpha at 01:52 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (3)
October 13, 2005
Wheeee!
This week has been going by so quickly. I spent most of the week testing and integrating a new search engine for a couple of our sites. We launched our new Chinese mini-site for the Options Industry Council. It's pretty nifty. :o)
Yesterday Chris and I met up with Darcy at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas for their Lunch & Learn event, "You Earn What You Learn: Thriving as a Young Professional." They had a big buffet lunch, which was really cool. The President of the Dallas Fed introduced the speaker, Dr. Michael Cox, who's the Senior VP and Chief Economist. He spoke on the importance of education. Pretty cool. After the event, we went up to visit Darcy's cool desk on the 10th floor. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 06:08 PM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)
October 05, 2005
Loads of Good News
Good news seem to be abundant these days...here's the 411...
- My friend Rita (from middle school) got married back in February to Ranu, her friend for many years.
- My friend Ruth (from middle school)'s daughter turned 1 yesterday.
- Ruth's husband Kent (he's a Marine) got promoted to Captain.
- My friend Jane (from high school) just got engaged 2 days ago! Her fiance, Leo, proposed to her while they were hiking in northern Georgia and totally took her by surprise! They're looking at an April wedding in Atlanta.
Wheeeeee!!! :o)
Posted by alpha at 11:09 AM | Friends | Comments (2)
October 03, 2005
Fall BBQ Extravaganza
Our Fall BBQ Extravaganza was a great success! Greg smoked the brisket for about 10 hours, and it was done just as everyone was arriving. Paul brought over an apple pie, which was a big hit along with Luci & Austin's Coldstone ice cream. Delicioso! :o) Everybody's tummys were full, and we were very happy. Had a great time hanging out and watching football. Also got to meet Adam's new girlfriend, Jill. Hee hee. :o) Yey!
Sunday we went to church, then I guess I was really tired or something...'cuz I kept falling asleep while watching football on the couch. Hmph! Anyway, we went back to church at 7 that night to go to the Jeff Berry Band's CD Release Concert. :o) It was awesome!!! We also got to get their new CD 2 weeks before it's officially released. :o) For those who don't know, Jeff Berry and his band lead worship in our contemporary service. He's a great musician. We enjoyed ourselves very much.
Then this morning I had to wake up at 5am to be at work at 6. Was tired all day at work. Bleh. Then when I got home, my boss called and asked about this one thing that we're supposed to do by 1pm every day. We all kinda forgot about it. Oops. Hopefully I won't get into too much trouble for it.
Posted by alpha at 07:15 PM | Friends | Comments (2)
Recipe - Dirty Banana
1 ounce rum-based coffee liqueur (Tia Maria)
1 ounce rum cream
2 ounces milk
1/2 ounce simple syrup (a mixture of 1/2 water and 1/2 sugar that is simmered until sugar is dissolved)
1/2 banana
1 cup ice
Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a blender. Blend for 1 minute, or until desired consistency. Serve in a frosted mug.
Posted by alpha at 06:19 PM | Recipes | Comments (0)
Recipe - Hummingbird
1 1/2 oz. rum cream
1 1/2 oz. Tia Maria
1 1/2 oz. Grenadine
1 banana
1 oz. milk
Enough ice to make it about the consistency of a milkshake ( I use about 2 cups)
Posted by alpha at 06:19 PM | Recipes | Comments (0)
September 30, 2005
Funk
It was a pretty laid back day at work today. Did some regular updates on the sites, etc. We had a catered lunch to raise money for our charity project. Also had a movie lunch thing where we watched a part of "Matchstick Men." I wish I had gotten to watch all of it...might have to rent it some other time to watch. The afternoon was fairly uneventful in spite of being pretty busy towards the end of the day. Then all of a sudden I noticed that I was in kind of a funk. Dunno why. Nothing happened or anything. Just felt...defeated. It was kinda weird. :o/
Tonight Greg and Paul went to the Mesquite/North Mesquite game. I stayed home and straightened up a little bit in preparation for the party tomorrow. There's more cleaning to be done, but I don't really feel like doing that right now. :p
Oh, and today my boss and I signed up for the luncheon at the Dallas Fed, "You Earn What You Learn: Thriving as a Young Professional." Darcy recommended it to me, and I sent the link to my boss to see if she'd want to go with me. :o) She paid for the registration, and I get to drive. Ha ha. It'll be a good time. Can't wait. :o)
Anyway, I think it's time for bed for me. Too-da-loo! :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:46 PM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)
September 28, 2005
Follow Up
To follow up my entry from yesterday, I had my 1-on-1 with my manager this afternoon. She does this before she writes our yearly reviews. I wonder if my VP said anything to her about the whole resume thing...but she definitely hinted that they want to do whatever they can to keep me happy. She basically told me that she wouldn't be able to do her job without me, and that I'm the informal lead for the group. That's kinda cool. Then she said that she's going to try to put in a promotion for me. No promises, but I think it's still a nice gesture. Basically, she said I can get into any projects that I want to do because I had earned it. :o) And I can go find classes that I'd want to take, etc. I'm pretty excited. Things are looking up, whether this is a fallout of the resume incident or not. It's nice to know that you're valued in the company. :o)
Enough about work...we're throwing a BBQ party on Saturday. We had originally planned on going camping, but the receptionist from the campground that we were going to called and said that they wouldn't be able to accommodate us this weekend because they're hosting a bunch of evacuees. :o/ So we just decided to stay home and throw a party instead. Hee hee. Wheeee! Crazy fun times!
Posted by alpha at 06:42 PM | Friends , Fun Stuff , Work | Comments (0)
September 27, 2005
The Result of Monster
When I got my current job, I never removed my resume from Monster.com. I get job leads every once in awhile. Then yesterday, out of the blue, I got 2 calls in 1 day. I called both of them back, graciously thanking them for their interest, and asked if I could pass on the opportunities to my friends. I got to thinking that perhaps I should go ahead and update my last name and the resume in general. So I did that last night.
Little did I know, our HR (or somebody else) keeps a very close eye on Monster. This morning I got a call from my VP (!!!). She sounded worried, and she asked...are you happy with your job? Turns out she saw my resume on Monster and was worried that I was looking to leave. After reassuring her that I wasn't looking (I mainly use it as a tool to help my friends find jobs), she asked if there are things I'd like to change about my job...whether I like my boss...whether I need to be paid more (???)... It was super bizarre. Then she told me that if I ever have any issues or concerns, I can always go to her and tell her about them...that she'd keep it confidential.
I felt soooooo bad that I sent her into a frenzy just 'cuz she found my resume on Monster. :o/ I ended up making my resume unsearchable by employers 'cuz...what do ya know...I got another job lead today. It's so freakin' weird. I guess it's good to know that companies are hiring again.
Does anyone need a job?
Posted by alpha at 07:18 PM | Work | Comments (0)
September 22, 2005
Showtime!
We launched our new site tonight! Check it out. It's super-cool!
Posted by alpha at 10:10 PM | Work | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
2006 Rendevous
May 20 - 25, 2006
Couples Swept Away
Negril, Jamaica
Anyone in? We'll be there. :o) Hotel early booking sale ends 9/30/05. And AA is having a fare sale...$369 round-trip to Montego Bay from DFW. There are even direct flights now to MBJ. We booked everything through Expedia.
Darcy...FYI...we can't post comments on your blog...! :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:07 AM | Fun Stuff | Comments (1)
September 15, 2005
A/C...
...broken.
That is all.
*Ugh*
Posted by alpha at 11:47 AM | Family | Comments (2)
September 07, 2005
Nerd Books
Ever since I got Photoshop CS2, I've been really wanting to learn it properly so I could get the most use out of it. I tried reading the User Guide that came with the software, but it was pretty useless. So I went and got a new book, Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS2. Haven't gotten very far into it yet, but it looks like it has useful tips on how I can streamline the conversion and editing of my wedding pics. :o)
Anyway, I ended up buying the book from NerdBooks.com because it was cheaper than Amazon, even with sales tax added. It's a bookstore dedicated to nerd books. :o) The storefront had moved from California to Richardson this summer. I had been meaning to stop in there to check it out (it's just down the street from my house). They allow local in-store pickup if you order books via their website (you just have to put in the Comments section to not ship it). So Greg and I stopped by there on the way home last night to pick up my book, and it was a geek paradise! :o) They had a ton of big door-stopping nerd books, with some chairs and couches to sit on if you want to stick around and read! The guy at the store was really nice too. Hee hee. I'll have to plan another time to go check it out for real. *Excited*
Posted by alpha at 09:55 AM | Nerd | Comments (3)
September 06, 2005
Doing Absolutely Nothing
Last week just kinda flew by...very busy at work doing stuff for our site launch. A little recap...Friday night we went to the Plano vs. Lakeview Centennial high school football game, where Plano won (go Wildcats!). :o) Then Saturday morning Greg, Paul, and I left to go to Austin for the UT football game. We got to Austin relatively quickly, so we stopped by Johnny Carino's in Round Rock to watch the end of the OU vs. TCU game (*har har!*). After that, we headed down into town to go to Stubb's BBQ for a late lunch. Hung out in the alumni center for a little while before the game...and then went to watch Texas stomp all over Louisiana Lafayette. :p We had originally planned on going to visit Greg's sister at the lakehouse for the weekend, but we didn't end up going 'cuz we were all tired. We rolled back into Dallas at about 1:30am, and called it a night.
Didn't do much the rest of the weekend. I spent most of Sunday coming up with a mock-up for my Dad's website. I've been wanting to redesign it for awhile, but just never quite had the time. It'll be a challenge 'cuz it's an e-commerce site, and so I'd have to integrate all the scripts to make sure they work with the new layout. Sent it off to my sister for artistic comments. We'll probably bobble some ideas around before settling down on a final design.
Monday I truly did a whole lotta nothin', and it was nice. :o) Read some more of my Photoshop User Guide, which turns out to be somewhat unuseful. I'll be looking for another book to buy. Watched a good bit of the 24 marathon that was on A&E. That was pretty fun. We went and dropped off some clothes and a big pack of soap at church, where they were boxing up stuff to bring to a church in Baton Rouge.
I think I was getting a bit used to not having to much, 'cuz it sure was hard waking up this morning to go to work. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 01:06 PM | Family | Comments (0)
August 26, 2005
Shorts Day
Wednesday Greg and I were off 'cuz Greg had oral surgery. I spent most of the morning sitting at the dentist's office waiting for him to be done. I managed to get away for an hour or so to go to the DPS to get my name updated on my driver's license. Glad that's all done. :o)
Last night I went to Lavendou for Restaurant Week with Marcy, her bro Jon, Luci, Trisha, Marilee, Lisa, and Mandi. We had a great time hanging out...good thing too 'cuz the dinner itself took 2 hours! The food was pretty good, especially that seafood crèpe appetizer that I had. Mmmmmmm! I had the sirloin for the main course, and then a raspberry soufflé for dessert (the raspberry sauce was super-sweet). It was delicious.
Today is Shorts Day at work. Wheeeee! :o) So I'm freezing my butt off in my shorts instead of in my usual work attire. Hopefully this day will go by quickly, 'cuz I'm more than ready for the weekend. Tonight we've gotta clean the house in preparation for my family coming over tomorrow to celebrate my Dad's birthday. Hee hee. Tomorrow morning I'm gonna go baby-shower-gift-shopping with Katie (for Marilee's baby shower), and then probably more cleaning and cooking. Greg's gonna be smoking a brisket and a prime rib for dinner. Mmmmmmmmm!
Posted by alpha at 08:15 AM | Family , Friends , Hockey | Comments (0)
August 22, 2005
*Organized*
This past Thursday night we went to III Forks for Restaurant Week with Chris & Christine. It was a good time. :o) The place was a lot louder than I had expected. We could barely hear each other talk. The food was pretty good though...I got the Chateaubriand, which was tasty. It's probably not a place I'd go to if I had to pay full price. :p
On Friday I worked from home to cover Expiration. Fun fun. The kitties were happy that I was home. :o) Slow-cooked beans in our new crock pot. They turned out pretty good for a first try. Had lunch with Abu at Palayok...which was kinda expensive for the food that you get. Anyway, it was a pretty relaxing day, which was nice. We watched the original "Bad News Bears"...it was interesting.
Saturday we did some yard work...fixed the fence gate (it got blown over by one of the storms that we had recently). Kinda just hung out the rest of the day.
Sunday we went to church, then to Chipotle for lunch...and then we went to Central Market and Sam's to see if they have any prime rib that isn't cooked (which they didn't). Afterwards, we went to Crate & Barrel to browse for things to buy with the gift card that Luci & Austin gave us for the wedding. :o) We ended up picking up a wine rack to put all of our alcoholic goodies. :o) It looks real nice, and we now look like alcoholics. Ha ha. :p
Sunday night I had my hockey game...and we played against the Sharks. I won a couple of faceoffs against Sue, which was quite an accomplishment for me since she was the one who had taught me how to take faceoffs. :o) Wheeee! Drew kept saying how well I played last night (he said it was better than last week's game). So that was cool. :o) Hee hee.
This upcoming Thursday I'm going to Lavendou for Restaurant Week with some of my hockey teammates. Should be fun. :o) Then Saturday my family's coming over 'cuz we're throwing my Dad a birthday part (his bday is the 29th). Hee hee. Busy busy!
Posted by alpha at 12:45 PM | Family , Fun Stuff , Hockey | Comments (2)
August 17, 2005
New Fall Season
Okay here's the TV lineup for the Fall season...
Sunday
7pm - The Simpsons (9/11)
Monday
7pm - 7th Heaven (9/19)
8pm - 24 (1/15/06 and 1/16/06 - 4 new episodes)
Tuesday
7pm - Gilmore Girls (9/13)
Wednesday
7pm - One Tree Hill (10/5)
8pm - E-Ring
Thursday
7pm - Joey (9/22)
8pm - Everwood (9/29)
9pm - ER (9/22)
Posted by alpha at 06:35 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (0)
August 15, 2005
Not 1, but 2
On Friday, Greg and I both took off for the day to run errands in the morning, and then head down to the lakehouse. I had a surprisingly pleasant visit to the social security office to get my name changed on the social security card...it only took 45 minutes, which was way more efficient than I had expected. Then afterwards, I went to the post office to mail off my passport and documentation to change my name on the passport. Fun stuff.
We regrouped and left for the lakehouse at about 11:30 or so. We stopped by Niester's to pick up some sourdough bread (it's great bread...mmmmm), and then went to Hard Eight BBQ in Stephenville to have lunch. It was mightly tasty. :o) We took our time and got to the lakehouse at about 6:30 or so. Marshall & Laura showed up at about 7:30ish...and we all had dinner together. BJ & Christa showed up at about 10:30. It was a full house for the weekend.
Saturday we went up to the Guadaloupe River from the lake on the jet skis. It was a blast. It was a little rainy and windy at the beginning though, and Greg and I got tossed off the jet ski by the waves and wind. :p After much work to hop back on (rather, climb back on), we went on our way. The rest of the day was spent napping, relaxing, and hanging out. John's brother Neal and his girlfriend Sue also came over in the afternoon. We had tons of people at the house for dinner and everything. It was crazy. We called it a day after watching a part of a very unexciting Cowboys preseason game.
Sunday morning Chris came over to the lakehouse with his Dad at around 9:30. Chris helped his parents move down to New Braunfels (about half an hour away from the lake) on Saturday, and we were giving him a ride back home. We took off at about 10:30, and stopped in Lampasas for lunch. It was a relatively quick trip home and was fun. We got home at about 5:30 after dropping off Chris and checking out his new saltwater fish tank.
Sunday night I had my hockey game at 8:45. I think everyone had their game on last night. Each of our 3 lines scored a goal, and Renee and I teamed up and scored our overtime winning goal. It was freakin' awesome. I got 2 assists. :o) We won 4-3 in overtime. Anyway, it was a blast, and we had ice cream afterwards to celebrate. :o) Wheeeeee!
This week...not much planned. We're going to participate in Restaurant Week with Chris & Beta at III Forks on Thursday night. That should be fun. I've always wanted to go to III Forks. :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:51 AM | Family , Friends , Fun Stuff , Hockey | Comments (4)
August 04, 2005
Gone forever be Yellow Fever
Gain one, lose one. We just sold Yellow Fever to this guy. I think he used to ride dirt bikes or something. He said he hadn't ridden in 10 years. Anyway, he came over with his brother and brother's wife/girlfriend (I missed the introductions), handed over a wad of cash, and took it home. :o/ It was sad in a way, really...and Greg did shed a tear after they took Yellow Fever home. Poor thing.
Now he's out playing his new toy...the V-Strom. He's getting it all cleaned up and stuff. :o) We took a ride on it last night. It sure is nice. :o) Had a nice late dinner at Luna de Noche in Plano, where there were lots of loud little kids. :p Hopefully if it doesn't rain tomorrow, we'll ride it to work together. That'd be fun.
Posted by alpha at 07:12 PM | Family , Fun Stuff , Memories | Comments (0)
August 03, 2005
"Suzi"
The Stange family has increased by 1 member...and no, not by a human being. :p We went to the Suzuki dealership last night and acquired Suzi, a 2002 Suzuki V-Strom (DL1000), from its temporary owner. Sure is a big and beautiful piece of machinery. :o) Can't wait to ride it.
Cool thing was that the price of Suzi kept going down. Over the weekend, when we were first checking it out, I remembered a price tag with around $5,800 on it. When Greg called on Monday to have them put it aside for us, the guy said $5,699. Then yesterday, when we finally bought the bike, the invoice said $5,600. I wonder if we should've waited another couple of days...hee hee. :p
This morning I sent the pics to one of my co-workers, Darren, who owns a Harley. We had been talking about and looking at pictures of the V-Strom, since Greg was thinking about getting one. When Darren saw the pics, he emailed back and asked if by chance Greg was at Walmart (the one over by where we live) at about 8 last night. He said that he saw a V-Strom there while he was there, parked a spot away from his truck. He went over and looked at it, since we had been talking about it...he thought it might have been Greg's, but wasn't sure. Turns out it WAS Greg, and Greg remembered parking next to a white truck. Ha ha ha. How funny.
Posted by alpha at 09:39 AM | Family , Fun Stuff , Memories | Comments (0)
August 01, 2005
Miscellaneously Fun Weekend
Had a miscellaneously fun weekend. Ya know, one of those weekends where it was fun all around...and wasn't because of any one thing in particular. :o)
Friday I had to go into work at 6am...which ended up being an early departure for me (at 3ish). :o) Went home, vegged awhile, and took a nap while I waited for Greg to get home. We hung out, watched a movie, and then I went to watch him play pick-up at ITC. Walked over to Sonic and got myself some dinner while I watched. It was pretty fun.
Lessee...Saturday Greg got up really early, and went to the store and went to look at motorcycles, etc. He called and woke me up, and asked if I could bring him his jeans so he could test ride this motorcycle at one of the dealerships. Anyway, he ended up coming back and then brought me with him to go look at the bike. It was a Ducati Monster 620...and to me, it looked kinda beaten up (it was dropped at least once). They wanted $3,995 for it. We decided against it and went looking some more.
We stopped by Plano Suzuki...and looked at the used 2002 Suzuki V-Strom that they had. It was a really nice bike...only 1 scratch and the panel looks to be replaceable. It comes with 3 hard saddle bags/trunks, which could easily cost $500. Anyway, he went and test rode that one...and really liked it. I think that's the one that we're gonna get to replace Yellow Fever. The guy's holding it for us, and we'll stop by after work to finish the paperwork.
Saturday afternoon we went over to downtown Grapevine to check it out and to do a wine tasting. We had lunch at Big Fish Seafood Grill and it was delicious. And then we stopped by the D'Vine Winery and did a wine tasting. That was a first for me, and it was a blast. :o)
Saturday night we went to Darcy and Stephanie's house for dinner. I've never really hung out with either of them, so it was interesting. :o) Darcy made chia-xiu (Chinese BBQ pork) as the main dish. Tastiness. We had a fun time hanging out, and I think I might have recruited Steph to play ice hockey again. She had taken some classes while she was in college, and really loved it. She even has some equipment still. Hopefully she'll be able to start playing...it'd be fun.
Sunday we took those pics of Yellow Fever, so we could send them to whoever's interested in buying it. I cleaned the office a bit, so the top of the computer desk is visible once again. :o) Greg made steaks for dinner, after which we went to my hockey team's practice/mix-up game. We had tons of fun, and I scored a goal on Vicki during the scrimmage. It was a well-placed drop pass from Heather (of the Sharks). It was just gorgeous. We had tons of fun, and it was nice to play with some of the other players that I used to play with at tournaments and stuff. Very fun. :o)
Posted by alpha at 12:04 PM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Photography | Comments (2)
July 21, 2005
*Whew*
Man! I've surely been super duper busy lately at work. I don't even have time to eat or read news or anything! We found out last week that one of our contractors is leaving to take on a permanent position at GE Financial...after having been here for 2 years working to set up our WebSphere members portal. Anyway, a wee bit of panic set in within our group...and our managers quickly assigned portal management roles for some of us, so the contractor could impart his great ball of knowledge onto 3 of us. Long story short, I ended up with the Web Content Management (WCM) administration portion. We've been meeting 1-2 hours each day so I could learn about all the stuff that WCM would do. This drains serious brain power. After each meeting, I feel like someone sucked all my energy out of me. *Sigh*
Good thing is...stuff like that is hard to learn, and when you find a company that uses it, you need to take advantage of the situation and jump on the opportunity. It's a valuable skillset.
Other than that, we planted our herbs and watermelon and such in the garden over the weekend. We saw some sprouts yesterday! :o) Yey!
Note to self...need to get some cilantro seeds...
Tomorrow we're going to visit Diane and John at the lakehouse. :o) It'll be a fun time, I'm sure.
What else...oh Greg and I used our Williams-Sonoma gift card and bought a grilling book...with lots of different recipes, etc. So far, we've tried 4 recipes, and every single one of them is just awesome. He made pork chops last night, and it was just delicious. Mmmmmmmm...I think we might have created a grilling monster! :o)
Posted by alpha at 03:26 PM | Family , Work | Comments (0)
July 11, 2005
*Proud*
On Saturday, my parents stuck around after dinner with Greg's Dad and Paul...the guys went to the Rangers game. Anyway, my Dad and I put together my new computer. :o) The only thing we couldn't figure out was whether to attach one of the extra power supply cables to the ATX12V plug on the motherboard (it had all sorts of warning labels on it so we weren't sure). After checking with Chris on Sunday, I plugged it in, and everything booted up and stuff! :o) Yey!!!
Now it has XP x64 on it...and I'm installing new drivers, etc. How exciting! :o)
Posted by alpha at 01:35 PM | Nerd | Comments (1)
July 07, 2005
Life beyond the wedding...
Since it took me so long to finishing updating about the wedding and the Jamaica trip itself, I haven't gotten a chance to talk about life after the wedding. Honestly, it really isn't all that different. :p The major thing is combining finances, I think. But it's working itself out.
We had our reception in Dallas on June 4th, at the Pecan Hollow Golf Course. Of course, as expected, the people setting up the room didn't show up until an hour after they were supposed to...making us late for our set-up. We were rushed quite a bit, but everything turned out okay. The food was great, the company was great, and overall a good time. :o)
Other than that, Greg's been working in the yard a lot. Looks real nice now. :o) We cut down a dead tree that was at the corner of the house...and planted flowers. :o) Purty.
Chris and I went to the AMD/Microsoft Tech Tour a few weeks ago, and came home with lots of goodies. I sold the server bundle that I got to a guy in Florida, and kept the desktop bundle to build a new PC. Most of the parts just came in, so I'll probably begin assembling pretty soon. :p Here are the specs so far...
- AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor and retail Heatsink Fan
- ASUS A8N-E Socket 939 Motherboard
- Athena Power Space Shuttle - 500W (P4ATX55FE)
- Kingston KVR400X64C3A/1G 1GB DDR400 PC3200 Memory (x2)
- Western Digital Caviar SE SATA 250GB Hard Drive (WD2500JD)
- Western Digital SE EIDE 250GB Hard Drive (WD2500JB) (x2)
- ATI Radeon X800 XL Graphics Card
- Toshiba SD-R5372 Dual Layer DVD±RW Writer
- Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
- Microsoft Optical Desktop Elite for Bluetooth
- Samsung 930B 19" LCD Monitor
Anyways, should be an adventure trying to put this together and making it work. :p
In other news, Greg's Dad is flying up from San Antonio for the weekend, and we're gonna have a family get together on Saturday. Should be pretty fun. Hee hee. :o)
Posted by alpha at 07:55 AM | Family , Fun Stuff , Nerd , Wedding | Comments (0)
June 29, 2005
Jamaica - Days 5 - 7 (May 20, 2005 - May 22, 2005)
May 20, 2005
Things started to wind down as Greg's family departed today. :o/ We wished that they could have stayed longer, but they had to come back to go to Sarah's (Greg's niece's) high school graduation. In the morning, Jo and I met up to take a scuba refresher course. The guy that did the course (it was just for the 2 of us), Wayne, was super funny. :p Hee hee. We had a good time trying to remember how to dive. We saw everybody as they were leaving from breakfast. It was funny. My sister was like...what are you doing? Hee hee. Jo and I had breakfast after our course. It was fun times. Jo and Deanna had a dive scheduled for Friday afternoon, which didn't turn out too well for Jo...she had a panic attack when she was about 60 feet down. :o( We spent most of the day hanging out with Luci, Austin, Chris, and Beta. It was pretty fun. :o) We ate in the main dining room for dinner (the beach party was cancelled due to rain), then called it a night.
May 21, 2005
My parents, sis, and Matt all left this morning. :o/ Jo and I were gonna go diving this morning, but Jo didn't wanna go due to her experience yesterday afternoon. I decided to go anyway (might as well...I was already there). I got to the watersports area a bit early, so I hung out for a little while. Finally we got our gear together and got out to the boat...we went about 50 yards, when the guys decided to stop and check on the engine (they said something didn't sound right). The next hour was spent bobbing in the water. After awhile, they decided to call for another boat to take us back to shore while they tried to fix the boat. I got back to shore, just in time to see Greg go out sailing with Chris & Christine (Luci & Austin were on another boat) on the catamaran. I waited for awhile in the watersports area...until they got back. Then I walked over to tell them what was going on, and decided that I didn't want to hang around and wait all morning...plus it was a 2-tank dive today. Since I'm not supposed to dive 12 hours before I fly (24 hours to be safe...and we leave tomorrow morning), I would only be able to get 1 dive in even if I did go. That would mean that I'd just be sitting there, bobbing on the boat, while the others take their 2nd dive. Just didn't sound fun to me. So I had the guys take me back out to the boat to grab my stuff. :p We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with the gang. Chris wanted to take pics of us at sunset, before dinner. We scattered to get cleaned up, and then met up again at Luci & Austin's.
The sunset tonight was perfect. We got some awesome pics. Had a great time goofing around. We then went to dinner at the Lemongrass, which is the Thai restaurant. :o) It was DELICIOUS. Hee hee. They had this appetizer tray that was absolutely awesome. We all wished that we had found it sooner, 'cuz we would've eaten there more. :p Jo and Deanna came by as we were finishing up. I got to take a pic with her and her braided hair. Hee hee. Mighty fun times were had. Perfect way to spend our last night in Jamaica.
May 22, 2005
We got up super early this morning (like at 5:45) to get ready to leave. The bellhops were supposed to pick up our luggage at 6:30...but they decided to call at 6:10 to ask if they could pick up our stuff. We were like...ummmm...no? We couldn't understand why they'd say 6:30 when they really meant 6. Anyways, we quickly got ready, and set everything outside by 6:15. We saw Chris when we were walking towards the dining room to grab some breakfast. Then we ran into Jo and Deanna in the lobby area. Yuppers. Our bus left at 7am for the airport. Our return trip was way quicker than our trip to the hotel. I think it only took a little over an hour, versus 1.5 hours. The line for American Airlines was ridiculously long...so we were there for awhile. The luggages were hand-searched (barely, but they were). Immigration took awhile. After all that, we still had some time to browse around at the shops to buy liquor and other memorabilia (we got a couple of picture frames). Also got some food to eat. Mmmmm.
The flight to Miami was uneventful. We got there pretty quickly. And we managed to run through Customs relatively fast too...even with having our bags checked in the scanner. But it seemed like we had to walk miles before we found our next gate. We quickly got something to eat...and then soon after, it was time to board. Talked to my Mom briefly...she told me where they had left the car at the DFW airport for us to drive home (they were on the way out to Hong Kong...and had a short layover in Chicago). We got to ride on a 777 on the way to DFW, which was pretty fun. We each had our own screen, so we could tune in to whatever movie/show we wanted to watch. Wheeee! Hee hee.
When we got to DFW, Greg and I split up and I went to remote parking to get the car, while he stayed and waited for the luggages. Surprisingly, the luggages took a longer time to appear than me coming back with the car. Hee hee. We dropped Jo & Deanna off at Jo's apartment, then went on home. We said hi to kitties...unpacked a little, and stopped by my team's hockey game. :p
Posted by alpha at 08:24 AM | Wedding | Comments (0)
June 13, 2005
Jamaica - Day 4 (May 19, 2005)
Greg and I woke up bright and early for our big day. :p I took a quick shower, made sure Greg has everything that he needs to bring with him to the ceremony, and dashed out the door to go to my hair appointment at the salon at 8:30. I stopped by my sister's room so we could walk over together. My sister was doing my Mom's hair before our hair appointment. It was crazy hectic. Our hair turned out awesome! :o) They ran a little bit over for our appointment though, so Luci's and Jo's appointments were a bit rushed. Anyway, after they got done with our hair, my sis and I went back to her room and she helped me with my makeup...after which, I ran back to Luci and Austin's room to change...all the while very carefully avoiding any paths that lead close to the beach (in case everybody's out there hanging around). :p
I arrived at about 9:30 to Austin's room. He was looking for me and opened the door for me. Then he disappeared. :o) Diane, Laura, and Christa all wanted to come over and help me out. They helped me get dressed, etc. As I was finishing, my sister arrived all dressed nice and pretty. We took some pics...then Jo and Luci showed up, and it was time to get on with the show. :o)
Nikki led us down a backway path so we wouldn't accidentally run into anyone going to the wedding. Chris followed us with the camera and documented the exodus. :p My parents and Greg's Dad and the groomsmen were there waiting for us (we were a little bit late). We paired up, they started the processional music, and we "walked in." There were some people who stopped to watch for a little while (I later found out that this couple who came on the same bus with us watched the whole thing from their balcony). :p
The ceremony was beautiful...and was quite hot. :o) Everything went as planned. After the ceremony, we signed our marriage license, and then walked over to the area where they had set up our reception. Everyone was about melting by now, so it was nice to get some champagne and cake. :o) Hee hee. We hung out for a little while, then everyone dispersed to go change for lunch.
We met up with everyone for lunch. :o) It was pretty fun. I still had my hair all up and stuff, so I was getting some funny looks when I was walking about. After lunch, I rested for a little while, and left to go to my 1/2 hour massage appointment. Boy did it feel good! :o) After the massage, I met up with everyone at the beach (as always), until it was time to get ready for dinner.
Nikki reserved the waterfall area of the main dining room for us to have our dinner reception. :o) It was pretty there, and we had our own menu and everything. We celebrated Luci's birthday with a candle on her dessert. Fun time was had by all.
Posted by alpha at 01:26 PM | Wedding | Comments (4)
May 27, 2005
Jamaica - Day 3 (May 18, 2005)
Today we leisurely got up and joined Diane and my parents for breakfast. It's funny 'cuz Greg's Dad gets up early, so he would go and get us a big table for breakfast. People would stroll in at different times to have breakfast with various people from our group. Hee hee. The craft vendors were at the resort today. Diane went and bought a BUNCH of stuff. Hee hee. :o)
Greg and I had a meeting scheduled at 10:30am with our wedding coordinator, Nikki. I kinda wish that I knew what flowers we would be picking from beforehand so we could make a quicker informed decision. Instead we sat there looking at the pictures for the first time...and took forever. We had to go back for a 2nd meeting at 12:30pm 'cuz we weren't done finalizing the details for the wedding.
Between the 1st and 2nd wedding meetings, we went and hung out with Luci and Austin on the beach. Diane and company were coming and going. :o)
Greg got all his golf stuff ready and headed down to grab something to eat before going to play golf with his Dad. I told him to go ahead and get a cart for today 'cuz it was mega-hot. :p Luci and I met up with Greg at Nikki's office...turns out that she only had a few more things to go through. We hammered out the details that involves Greg, and sent him to go play golf with his Dad.
After the meeting, Luci and I met up with Austin for some craft shopping and lunch. I had some jerk chicken. Mmmmmm. So delicious. And I also bought about $120 worth of stuff from the vendors. Bought a necklace for Greg, a necklace each for Tony and Katie, a necklace/bracelet for myself, a wooden cat, a couple of bamboo beer mugs, and a Jamaican bag. :o) The wooden cat is pretty cool...the guy even carved "Jamaica 2005" at the bottom. Hee hee.
We hung out at the beach some that afternoon. It was fun. I think it was John, BJ, Paul, and Luci and I. We bobbed on the floats for quite awhile. Greg got back from golfing and joined us at the beach. :o) We washed up and grabbed a quick bite to eat before our scheduled dinner at Feathers (the reservations were for 9pm). We strolled up to the lobby at about 5:30 or so, went upstairs to check email real quick, and lo and behold, the bus carrying Chris, Beta, Jo, and Deanna showed up. We said hi and let them get settled in, and told them about dinner that night. :o)
Dinner at Feathers was pretty fun. We were separated into tables of 6, 6, 4, and 4. The food was delicious. I got the rack of lamb for my entree, and it was the best I've ever had. :o) Mmmmmmmm! Everyone had a great time. It was kinda like our rehearsal dinner, but we didn't actually have a rehearsal. Hee hee.
After dinner, my sister, Matt, and Luci came over to our room so we could go over the processional music for the wedding. My sister was basically in charge of getting everybody to walk at the right times. :o) She caught on pretty quickly, and so we adjourned the meeting for everyone to get some sleep before the Big Day. :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:36 AM | Wedding | Comments (1)
May 25, 2005
Jamaica - Day 2 (May 17, 2005)
I woke up super early this morning (like at 5:30am) and couldn't go back to sleep. I went out to the verandah of our 3rd floor beachfront room (#4320) to take a look at the view. It was absolutely gorgeous. We walked down to the restaurant to meet up with everyone for breakfast, which was delicious. We went and hung out on the beach in the morning with Diane & John and the rest of the gang. Greg and his Dad signed up to play golf that afternoon. I had lunch with everyone else. :o)
After lunch, when I tried to go back to my room to put my nice camera away and to change into my swimsuit, I found out that my key card didn't work. The lock wouldn't open. So the next hour and a half was spent calling and harassing the staff to come and fix my door, so I could get into my swimsuit and get snorkeling gear to go snorkeling with the gang at 3pm. We cut it pretty close...I got into my room at 2:40pm, and made it to the boat just before they left. Ugh. The snorkeling was fun though. Not a whole lot to see, but it was still fun.
When we got back from snorkeling, Greg was already back from golfing. He complained to the manager about how I was stuck outside the room for so long that afternoon...and got us a bottle of champagne! :p Ha ha. We hung out on the beach some more, and showered to get ready for dinner.
Greg and I wandered over to the lobby at about 5:30pm to see if my parents, sis, Matt, and Luci and Austin have arrived yet. I think we missed them by about 5 minutes. Greg asked one of the guys guarding the luggage if a bunch of Chinese people just showed up. Ha ha. He said 4 of them, and found out the room number for us. We went over there and said hi. They got settled in and we all went down to the beach for dinner, where we found the rest of the gang.
That night they were doing an Italian-themed dinner on the beach, so we got the waiter to save us a couple of tables so we could all have dinner together. It was a blast! :o) We called it a night shortly after 'cuz we were all exhausted. :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:35 AM | Wedding | Comments (2)
Jamaica - Day 1 (May 16, 2005)
I stayed up late last night to pack and stuff. Then this morning I got online and said hi to a few people, and off to the bank to get some cash for the trip. My parents came over at 10am to take us to the airport. The check-in line at AA's counter was horrendously long. We couldn't do curbside check-in 'cuz we were flying international. Darn. Anyway, we made it in plenty of time...got something to eat, and found Paul when he arrived.
Most of the rest of the plane rides were somewhat uneventful, except for the big fat guy that was sitting next to Greg on the Miami to Montego Bay flight. The guy had this grocery bag full of snacks on his lap and proceeded to eat all of it throughout the flight (did I mention that he was fat?). At one point, he elbowed Greg while Greg was taking a sip of his wine...wine went everywhere (thank goodness it was white wine). I swear, airlines need to enforce the 2-seat rule for people who obviously aren't able to fit in 1 seat. Geez. Anyway, the flight attendent was really nice and brought Greg another $5 bottle of wine.
Immigration at Montego Bay took forever. We were lucky too that we arrived shortly before another flight did, and got to the lines first. After immigration and customs, we were shuffled off to the Couples lounge, where we were shuffled off to this teeny bus that transported us to the resort. There wasn't much traffic (although there were plenty of crazy drivers), and our driver was a great tour guide. It was pretty fun. We got to Couples Swept Away (CSA) at about 10pm. Greg's Dad and Laura were up there waiting for us. :o) We got all checked in, and had a quick dinner on the beach at the grill...and called it a night. :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:23 AM | Wedding | Comments (0)
May 24, 2005
All Married and Stuff!
Okay okay! We're back, and all married and stuff! :o) Actually, we came back on Sunday night, and yesterday I was crazy busy trying to get pictures up. Hee hee.
Speaking of which, expect to see pictures begin to appear on our photo album. It'll take a little while to get the selected ones up there...so be patient. Hee hee.
I'll give a detailed trip report another time. Right now I need to be pretending to work. :o) Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 09:32 AM | Wedding | Comments (1)
May 16, 2005
Yey!!!!!!!
Our plane leaves in 4.5 hours!!!! :o)
I still gotta go to the bank to get some cash. Fun times. Stayed up 'til about 1 to finish up packing 'cuz I had to do laundry after my hockey game. During my hockey game, this girl wasn't paying attention and hit me from behind. So now my right knee is bruised. Ugh. I was hobblin' around last night while trying to pack. That wasn't too fun...
Anyhoot. I best get going. My parents are coming over at 10am to pick us up. :o) See y'all down there, or when I get back!
Posted by alpha at 08:48 AM | Wedding | Comments (2)
May 14, 2005
2 more sleeps!
Yey! 2 more sleeps until we leave for Jamaica!!! :o) We've started gathering things for the trip, but nothing is in the suitcases yet. Heh heh.
We went to the Byron Nelson today. It was fun (and quite sunny). :o) I think I got a tan from being outside for 3 hours. Hee hee. We did our usual thing and walked backwards on the course to catch up with the leaders. We ended up camping out at the 15th tee, and saw Jesper Parnevik, Vijah Singh, Phil Mickelson, and Nick Price come through. It was pretty cool. We were sitting about 10 feet from where they were teeing off. :o) Fun times.
On Friday, I ended up taking a half-day 'cuz I was done with all my work stuff...and went to Aqua Adventures to pick up my wetsuit. While I was there, I ran into my dive instructor, Mike. I hadn't seen him in like 4 years. He remembered me, and we chatted a little bit. He asked where I was going. Hee hee.
After picking up the wetsuit, it was about time for lunch. I called up my sister to see if she has had lunch yet. Turns out that it was the only day she didn't have lunch plans. :o) We went to First Chinese BBQ...which was completely packed even at 1pm. Craziness. It was a good time. :o)
Greg had a dentist appointment, and came home at about 3:30 or so. We hung out a bit, and he went to play golf for a little while. I continued converting my CDs in to MP3s to put on my iPod. What a time consuming process! I think I just have way too many CDs. :p
Posted by alpha at 09:28 PM | Golf , Wedding | Comments (3)
May 12, 2005
Weird Day
It's been kinda a weird day for me. Work was pretty uneventful. My boss was glad to find out that I'm not out of the office tomorrow. :p Heh heh.
Here's a rundown of events of today...
- Marina sent me pics of the cakes that she had made for my Mom. They're beautimus. 1 is going to my Mom's office tomorrow, and the other to her church fellowship on Saturday.
- My high school friend Mirjam got engaged to her boyfriend Colby. He proposed while they were vacationing in the Netherlands (that's where Mirj was from).
- My high school friend Ruth and her hubby (and the 2 kids) are moving to Monterey, CA on June 6th.
- My friend Marilee from my hockey team is pregnant and is due in October. This makes the 3rd one on my team this year. First it was Leslie (who had her baby a few weeks ago), then it's Star (who's due in August), and now Marilee. I better watch out...it's like a virus that's going around...
- My Dad got the new camera that I had helped pick out and ordered on Tuesday. It's a Canon Powershot A95. He said it's cool, and have been playing with it all day. :p
- I received the package of reception decorations. :o) Pretty quick service. Looks like everything's intact.
- My specially ordered wetsuit has arrived. I'll either go pick it up tomorrow or Saturday. :o)
- Picked up my wedding dress from Lasting Impressions after work. I had the lady put it in my garment bag so Greg doesn't see it. :p
- Greg and I trimmed some bushes in front of our house this evening. It looks 10 times better than the shagginess that was before.
- My Grandma's funeral has been scheduled for May 29th. My parents are gonna fly back on the 22nd, and come back to Dallas on June 2nd, just in time for the reception.
See? Told ya it's been a weird day...
Posted by alpha at 10:35 PM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Memories , Wedding | Comments (0)
May 11, 2005
Sad News
My Dad just told me that my Grandma passed away at about 8am Hong Kong time (on 5/12)...that was probably about 7pm Dallas time (on 5/11). My Dad seems to be okay with it. It's not really a surprise or anything...she was getting really old (I think she was 93?), and has been in a hospital/nursing home for the past 6 or so years. Anyway, we think that it's harder for our relatives there in Hong Kong, since they visited her more often and stuff. Doesn't make it any less sad, but she's in a much better place now.
When I told Greg about it, he asked what one thing I used to do with my Grandma. First thing I thought of was that she brought me to church when I was little. We went to Sunday School and stuff, and she was always so nice to everybody. It's because of her that my Dad is a Christian, and it's because of my Dad that my Mom is a Christian. It's because of my Grandma that I'm a Christian...and it's because of me that Greg goes to church.
I had kinda wished that my Grandma could see me get married. Now she can watch from Heaven. Funny how things turned out.
Posted by alpha at 09:01 PM | Family , Memories | Comments (6)
Various News Items
8 days until the wedding! :o)
Last weekend, I was looking around for the wording of a sand ceremony (similar to the lighting of a unity candle). I didn't like any of the ones that people have used in the past, so I went looking for wording of wedding ceremonies. I found this one that I really liked. Greg read it and thought it was perfect. So I sent it to the wedding coordinator at the resort to see if it would be okay for the minister to read our script at our ceremony. :o) Yesterday, I heard back from the wedding coordinator, Tamika, and she said that the minister should be okay with that, but he may want to add some traditional Jamaican vows in it. I'm excited!
A wee bit of bad news though...apparently my Grandma (my Dad's Mom) is really sick and is in the hospital in Hong Kong. She's not digesting the food that's being fed to her via a feeding tube, so her hands and feet are swollen. My aunt in Toronto is flying back within the next couple of days to see her. And my parents are going back the day after they get back from Jamaica (Sunday the 22nd) and coming back on June 2nd. Hopefully my Grandma can hang on long enough for my parents to see her. :o/ So I think the plan is for us to pick up their van when we come back from Jamaica. Yup. Then my uncle (my Mom's brother) is flying in on the 2nd from Seattle to come to the reception. I think they're all flying in at about the same time, so we can pick them up after work.
In other news...Weezer's new album, Make Believe, was released yesterday. Must acquire before trip. :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:49 AM | Family , Wedding | Comments (0)
May 10, 2005
iPods are fun!
I've been having fun with my iPod. I now have a MUCH better music selection while I'm at work. Hee hee. :p Over the course of 3 days, I've transferred about 1400 songs from CD into my lil iPod, and I've only used up a little over 5 GB for it. Sure, it's time consuming to convert the CDs into MP3s, but I've been wanting to do that for quite some time (just so I'd have them on my computer to play if I want). Killing 2 birds with 1 stone. :o)
On that note...I really haven't listened to Eve 6's "Horrorscope" in a long time. I must have gotten turned off by them after Jo and I went to their concert and they couldn't sing in tune if their lives depended on it. :p
Posted by alpha at 10:58 AM | Fun Stuff | Comments (0)
May 09, 2005
1 more week!
Oh goodness...I've been so busy that I haven't gotten a chance to write lately. Last week was bad at work, 'cuz my boss decided to pick on every single thing we were doing and insisted that I didn't work enough (even though I work on average 42-43 hours a week)...so it was a pretty miserable week on the workfront.
During my non-work time, I spent most of it ripping my CDs to put on to my iPod. :o) Very time consuming. Hopefully I'll make some headway on it this week 'cuz I'd like to have most of my CDs done by the time we leave for Jamaica.
Last Friday I had my 2nd fitting for the dress. :o) It fits! Ha ha. My parents both came for it, and then we went to have dim sum with my sister. It was a Mother's Day thing. Hee hee. Was fun. Took my parents up to Plano Centre to pay for the reception. The lady was late coming back from lunch, so we didn't have a chance to stop by the golf course. Oh well.
Saturday Greg and I stopped by the bike shop (to fix the tire on Greg's bike) and the scuba shop (so I can get a wetsuit). Yup. Then I left to go to my sister's at 12:30 to have lunch with her, and to do some reception planning. We went to the Galleria to meet up with Luci and Jodie for our make-up training class thing at Stila...only that the lady at Stila didn't bother calling us to tell us that the class was rescheduled to next weekend. Ugh. We ended up just going shopping at the Galleria. It was fun anyways. :o)
We all split for a couple of hours to run errands, and then met at 7 at the Hampton Inn in Addison for my bachelorette party. :o) Austin got us a couple of hotel rooms for the party using his hotel points (thanks Austin!!!). The party consisted of Luci, Jodie, my sis, Beta, and my friend Raechel from high school. We went to Antonio Ristorante in Addison Circle for dinner. Had a great time and some tasty foodness.
After the long dinner, we went to the Londoner for drinks. Jo exercised her assertiveness to get us drinks at the bar, since we were completely ignored by the wait staff. Not a single one of them came by to check on us the whole time we were there. It was pretty amazing. Anyways, after a couple of rounds, we went back to the hotel to hang out some more. Called it a night at about 2:30 or so.
A thunderstorm rolled through sometime that night and woke me up. Then, for some strange reason, I wasn't all that tired...and woke up at about 8. My sister got up at about 9:30 and left to go to church. I slowly got ready...called Greg to say hi, and then went over to wake Luci up. :p Hee hee. We cleaned up the room some, and loaded up the cars to go home. :o)
Greg and I went to Target to do some shopping for the trip. :o) Bought sunblock and stuff like that. Also bought food for dinner Sunday night 'cuz Katie & Tony were coming over (Katie's keeping an eye on the kitties while we're gone). We made fajitas from scratch, which ended up tasting pretty good. :o) Hee hee. Yum! We had a good time. They left at about 8 to go to the hockey game...I didn't end up going 'cuz it was too late and I had to be at work at 6am today. *Grumble*
1 more week until we leave for Jamaica!!!
Posted by alpha at 09:39 AM | Fun Stuff , Wedding , Work | Comments (4)
April 28, 2005
Super Busy
Man, I've been super busy at work this week. Monday through Wednesday, I was stuck making phone calls to people at various exchanges who post memos on our website. Had to walk them through a software token installation procedure, and show them some new screens for the new application that we're rolling out on Friday. It took 3 full days to get a hold of all these people and get them all set up. Ugh. So my week has flown by rather quickly...
Tuesday afternoon I found out that Paul had managed to snatch us 5 tickets and a parking pass to go to the Rangers game that night. I gave the 2 extra tickets to a coworker, but she didn't end up coming. Anywho, Greg and I ran home to change, and came back over this way to meet Paul. I brought my camera with me to take pictures since we got really good seats (13th row behind the owner's box, looking straight down the 3rd base line). I spent a good amount of time taking pictures...kept me busy until about the 5th inning. :o) Good thing too, 'cuz I get bored with baseball rather easily. Hee hee. The pictures turned out pretty well.
Posted by alpha at 04:25 PM | Family , Photography , Sports , Work | Comments (2)
April 24, 2005
Surprised Wedding Shower, $$, Stuff, $$
Our 1st VP, Carolyn, came down from Chicago to visit us on Thursday and Friday. :o) She's such a nice lady. I really enjoy hanging out with her. She was all asking about the wedding and stuff too. :o) We all went out to Bahama Breeze after work on Thursday night. Had a great time.
Friday we found out that Carolyn's flight back to Chicago was cancelled, so they managed to put her on an earlier flight that left at 2pm. I was going about my business...heating up food to eat, etc. etc. My boss, Cheryl, called me at around noon from one of the conference rooms out of the blue, demanding why I wasn't at the meeting. Thinking someone was amiss (there wasn't a meeting scheduled in my calendar for that time), I strolled over towards the conference room to see what was up. As I approached the conference room, Fabria, a co-worker, told me to hang on 'cuz she thought there was still a meeting going on...as she passed by with punch bowl, etc. Now, REALLY suspecting that something was going on, I hung out with Gary for a little while at his desk (who, as it turned out, was stalling for the people in the conference room). Then one of our VPs called me over and opened the conference room door. Turns out it was a surprised wedding shower for us!!! :o)
They had people in Chicago hooked up to the party via video conferencing, and there were cakes in each location...mine in Dallas was completely pink (thanks to Cheryl), and the one in Chicago was chocolate. :p Lots of people showed up. Fabria had coordinated everyone to give us marital advice, and she put them together in this little photo album. :o) Hee hee. It was a great time. We got a HUGE check (as in $430) from everyone. So touched. :o)
Saturday Greg went to see his nephew Marshall, who's in town visiting his friend Eric. Marshall and Eric have an NFL Draft party every year, so Greg goes to it to hang out with them. :p I went to Microcenter to check out some iPods 'cuz they're running a special where if you open a credit card account with them, you get $75 back in mail-in rebate when you buy an iPod. Anyways, talked to the guy in the Apple department...and ended up buying a 30GB iPod Photo. The thing is pretty awesome. :o) Also bought a case for it. Hee hee.
After the Microcenter excursion, I went up to visit my parents, and to bring my Dad the shirt that Greg had bought for him to wear at the wedding. It fitted perfectly! :o) Had lunch with the folks...we oogled over some digital cameras, then went clothes/shoes shopping with my Mom. That was pretty fun. We went to DSW, Kohl's, Best Buy (to look at the cameras in person), and then to the grocery stores to pick up something for dinner. Yep. Had dinner with my parents and then came home. :o)
Today Paul came over in the afternoon, and then we went up to the Allen outlet mall to go get him some pants for the wedding. He and Greg ended up getting new sandals too at Bass. :p And we bought Paul a new Samsonite bag to take his stuff to Jamaica (the Best Man's gift). :o) We almost bought ourselves a nice new set of suitcases, but didn't. Hee hee. Greg almost bought a new suit for the reception...they're holding it for him to decide. :o) It's an $800 Italian handmade suit that they're selling for $300 'cuz of the 50% off sale that they're running. It was beautimus. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 01:55 PM | Wedding | Comments (2)
April 19, 2005
1 more month!!!
1 more month 'til the wedding!!! :o)
Posted by alpha at 04:48 PM | Wedding | Comments (3)
April 15, 2005
Work From Home Day
Today I'm working from home. Hours are a bit funky, 10am - 7pm...'cuz I had to cover a memo that comes out later on in the evening for expiration. But that prob doesn't mean a whole lot to most of you...
So this morning, I brought my car in to get the oil changed and tires rotated. Took about an hour. Then I went over to my parents' house to pick up this present that got sent there. I called my Dad while I was there, and he mentioned that I could pick up the reception gifts that they had gotten for us. So I got those too. My sister and I can get working on them soon. :o)
Greg stayed home from work today. He wasn't feeling very well last night or this morning. So he's resting in the living room while I'm slaving away on my computer...
My sandals arrived in record time yesterday. I had ordered them at around 7:30pm on Wednesday night, and they were delivered at 11:30am Thursday morning. Ridiculously fast. They're awesome too. Very soft and comfy. I like. :o)
Posted by alpha at 12:04 PM | Family , Misc , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)
April 14, 2005
Wisdom Teeth are Evil
Yesterday I took off work to take Greg to get his wisdom teeth taken out. We got to the surgeon's office about half an hour early, so we sat in the car for a little bit before going in. The surgery itself took about an hour and a half. We got home at about 10:30. Greg was still pretty groggy from the surgery...so I spent the next hour and a half getting him all settled in. He got hungry at about 12:30, so I went out and got him a milkshake from Whataburger (and some lunch for myself). Also stopped by the store to pick up some gauze.
I crashed for a few hours after lunch. I think Greg slept and watched some soccer on TV. He was hungry again by like 4:30, so I went out and got him some KFC mashed potatoes for dinner. When he felt better later on in the night, we went to the store to pick up some food items that he could bring to work today. We came back, did some things, and went to bed.
Oh oh...last night I ordered some of these Columbia Surf Tide Sandals from Zappos last night. I've been looking at them for months, but either they don't have the color I want, or they don't have the size. Anyway, the planets aligned last night and I was able to get some in the color I want and in the size I need. :o) They even upgraded the shipping to UPS 2nd Day Air for me, so I'll get them TODAY! Amazing huh? I think I'm a Zappos fan...
Posted by alpha at 08:51 AM | Family , Wedding | Comments (4)
April 11, 2005
Long Time No Blog
So...it's been awhile since I last wrote. Plenty have happened since then...fasten your seat belts...
On April 2nd, we had our wedding shower at Jo's parents' house. It was the first time I had seen it since they remodeled everything. Looks really really nice! :o) Lots of our friends showed up, and we had a great time hanging out with everyone. Presents were opened, food was had...fun times. We got home at around 5:30ish. Paul was already over and was watching basketball games. We unpacked and organized all of our new loot. Hee hee. Yey!
We went to Chris & Beta's crawfish boil on Sunday, April 3rd. :o) It was great fun too! Their doggie Spunky looks bigger than the last time I saw her...Katrina & Trevor brought over their dog Hobie, and Mark brought over his dog Skyla. It was a doggie playground! My parents came and joined us for the boil, which was cool, since they never really come to hang out with us and our friends. I think they enjoyed themselves! I got home kinda late...prob about 8:30 or so.
Last Monday, I went to Jo's after work to pick up a cake that was made by one of her co-workers, Marina. It was delicious!! :o) Greg and I (and my sister and Matt) were all very satisfied with that. So Marina is going to make our wedding cake for our Dallas reception! It's gonna look something like this, but instead of the sugar calla lillies, we're gonna have fresh red roses and petals put on it. :o) It's gonna be so gorgeous. I can't wait. And the best thing is that she's doing all this for $150!!! She's gonna show up at around 4:30 or so on the day of the reception to put the cake together, and to put the border around the bottom layer. Yey I can't wait!!!
The rest of the week was kinda blurred...it went by really fast...and our new person was in town for training, so I had to make sure that he's okay and stuff. We all went out for dinner at Dickey's Thursday night, and that was fun. They had free beer at the Coppell location 'cuz they don't have their liquor license. Hee hee.
We went to the driving range after we got home from Dickey's...worked on my driver quite a bit since I just had the grips changed on my driver, 5-wood, and 7-wood (they were too big). I'm hitting 'em much better now. :o) When we got home, the garage door wouldn't open...turns out that the spring had snapped. :o( We decided that it was too late to worry much about it that night, so I took the info of the repair company that I had used the last time with me to work the next morning to set up an appointment.
Unfortunately, I found out that the garage door repair company that I had used went out of business. :o( It really was too bad, 'cuz they were really nice and helpful in showing me to fix the minor things. Anyway, I had to look for another company to fix the door. I ended up calling Action Garage Door 'cuz they had a good record with the BBB. They sent a guy out Saturday morning to take a look at the door...and then he gave me a quote of $259 to change out the spring!!! WTF!!! I flat out told him that I got it fixed 4 years ago for $127, and that I had a receipt to prove it. It just didn't make sense that the price could have doubled in 4 years. The repair guy disgruntally called the guy in the office to "see if there was anything he could do." The guy splattered off some sales pitch (they must do this often since it sounded rehearsed), and I told him to just give me the price. He called me on the phone and told me that they'd do it for $165.50, which is a whole lot more reasonable that $259!!! What a ripoff. I can't even imagine how much money they're making off of the unsuspecting public. Anyway, the repair guy got to work...banged around in my garage, showed me the rollers that needed to be replaced (he said it was gonna be $12/piece to change them out), and went on his way. I was so glad to get him out of my house. Later on, I looked up this company that sells garage door parts to do-it-yourselfers, and I'm buying some rollers for $1.99/piece + shipping. Good thing I didn't tell the repair guy to change them.
With garage door fixed, I quickly had lunch and then went off to meet with Luci & Jodie to go shopping. We stopped by the Stila counter, and the make-up artist there fixed me up with some make-up. I think it looks really nice...not too overly done, since I don't usually wear make-up. Anyhoot, $120 later, I think I'm pretty much all set with that for the wedding. There's 1 thing though that she had forgotten to ring up...the Sheer Color Tinted Moisturizer...I'll pick that up next time when we go for this workshop class thing on the day of my bachelorette party. :o) The workshop itself costs $35/person, but we get it back in make-up, so it's a good deal. Hee hee. It's my gift to the bridesmaids for helping out with everything. I think it'll be a blast. :o)
After the make-up adventure, we went to look for a shirt for me for the bachelorette party. We ended up finding this blue button-down one at Express. :o) It's pretty nice.
I got home at about 5:30 or so, then Greg and I went bike-riding. We went down to the (small) lake that's near my house. We rode probably about 4 miles or so. It felt nice. :o) I had to get back in shape for hockey on Sunday! Hee hee. Afterwards, Greg grilled this perfect ribeye steak for dinner. Yum!!!
Sunday we slept in, I took a shower and then started cleaning the house. We got a lot of stuff done in the kitchen...consolidated some of our duplicate spices and things...cleaned out the pantry, etc. etc. The kitchen looks much roomier now. :o) Yey! Then we watched the Masters pretty much all afternoon. It was pretty exciting! Left at 8pm to go to my hockey game. We played against the Mantis...lost 0-1. They got this new girl who's pretty good...she played in the Charity Challenge. I think we played pretty well. :o) I ended up getting the "Game MVP" award for my team. Ha ha. I didn't think that I played *that* well. Anyways, the prize was awesome...it was this pillow with "Red Hot" stitched into it. :o) Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 10:51 AM | Biking , Friends , Golf , Hockey , Wedding , Work | Comments (2)
March 30, 2005
Rings
Ah yes...pics of rings...
Posted by alpha at 01:29 PM | Wedding | Comments (8)
March 28, 2005
*Cough*
Had a pretty good long weekend. Thursday night Greg and I went to Ft. Worth for the Charity Challenge on Ice VIII game. We took a picture with the Stanley Cup after making a $10 donation to the Greyhound Adoption League of Texas. It was cool to see it up close. As for the game, as expected, the girls beat the guys good...7-2. We left in the middle of the 3rd period.
Friday morning Greg took Benny to the vet. Our vet had an extremely rude receptionist, so we aren't gonna go there anymore. He took him to this other one down the street...who manhandled Benny and subsequently got scratched (ha!). Anyway, the vet was really strange...he wouldn't listen to the medicial history and just kept saying what he *thought* was the matter. Finally Greg convinced him to prescribe this med that Benny took the last time he had stomach issues. Miraculously, Benny was feeling better after a few hours.
Anyway, in the midst of all this vet excitement, I picked up my Mom and then went for my dress fitting. It went pretty well (and quick). Afterwards, we went and picked up my sister and we had dim-sum for lunch. Mmmmmmmm. We also took a tour of my sister's workplace. It's pretty cool. I'll know who to ask to get some iron fencing! Ha ha ha.
After that, I took my Mom to get her last shot for Hep B immunization (or was it Hep A). Then I drove her up to the golf course where we're having the reception, so she could see it. She got to meet Danny and his sidekick...they were so excited to meet my Mom (or rather, just another Chinese person) that they kept on blabbing. My Mom really liked the place, so that's good. Hee hee.
We then went back to my parents' house. My Dad was already home 'cuz his office closed early on Friday. He helped me print the labels for the reception invitations. We talked a bit about the trip and stuff, and I went home at about 6ish. Greg and I tried to go to the driving range that night, but we saw lightning in the not-so-far distance, so we went to Golf Galaxy to check it out...and then went home.
Saturday was rainy. We spent some time fighting the ants in the kitchen. It was ridiculous. They just wouldn't go away, and we can't use insecticide because of the cats. They just kept coming to take "food" from the ant baits. Ugh. Anyway, we had a quick lunch and went to Dallas Gold & Silver Exchange to take a look at wedding rings. We ended up finding some that we really like. Greg's is a platinum band that's really cool (I'll post pics later), and mine is a 1/3 ct. 10-round-diamond channel set ring. It's purty. :o) We were glad that we went there, 'cuz the lady was really nice and didn't try to force anything on us. Plus we can get free resizing/polishing/cleaning there...and they'd even clean my engagement ring! Very cool deal. Anyways, since we were buying both of our rings from them, they ended up giving us a $100 discount on the total. Pretty nifty. Highly recommended.
The rest of Saturday was spent stuffing envelopes and sealing envelopes, and watching NCAA basketball. Hee hee.
Easter Sunday we went to church, which was packed. Then we went to Souper Salad for lunch. That was fun. We hung out and watched some golf, then I went over to my sister's to do some reception planning, and to see her new apartment. :o) I think we have a general idea of what we wanna do at the reception.
Posted by alpha at 10:12 AM | Family , Hockey , Kitties , Wedding | Comments (6)
March 24, 2005
PSP
Holy crap!!! My friend Matt (here at work) picked up his PlayStation Portable (PSP) during lunch today. We plugged it in, and put in "Spiderman 2" (the movie...it came with the bundle). That thing has AWESOME resolution!!!! I'm very impressed.
Posted by alpha at 12:28 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (0)
March 22, 2005
Pics from San Antonio Bridal Shower
I uploaded some pics from the bridal shower in San Antonio. :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:52 AM | Wedding | Comments (6)
March 21, 2005
1 down...
Greg and I left for San Antonio right after work Friday. We endured traffic all the way out to Ft. Worth, and then we got on 281, drove in the country for a little while, and went to Granbury for dinner at our favorite German restaurant, Niester's. The drive was somewhat uneventful, which was nice. We got to Diane's (in Boerne) a little after 11...hung out for a little while, and crashed for the night.
Saturday morning Greg went to play golf with his Dad really early. I got up kinda early and helped Diane out a little bit with the preparation for the shower. My parents called at about 2:30 and told us that they were getting on 1604 from 35...so Greg and I left to go meet up with them to bring them to the house (they woulda never found the street to turn on). We showed the house to my parents and my sister and Matt...and were outside in the yard talking when Uncle Guy, Aunt Martha, and Aunt Jane showed up. They're so funny. :o) We got some party trays from Jason's Deli and hung out for awhile...talked and watch the dogs (all 9 of them, including my sister's Yorkie!) play. Terrie came by after work at about 5:30 or so. We opened presents. :o) Greg's Dad got us the 2-tier folding dish rack, and Diane and John got us the spice rack. We got a Dillard's gift card and money from Uncle Guy, Aunt Martha, and Aunt Jane. :o) Yey!
My family left at about 7:30pm. Terrie left soon after that too. Greg and BJ went to bring my parents back to I-10 so they could find their way home. I stayed and hung out with the rest. Everybody stuck around and talked until about 11 or so. It was fun. :o)
Sunday morning I slept in...and then we left at about 11:30 to drive back to Dallas. It was a horrendous drive! Everybody and their dog were out on I-35. It was bumper to bumper from Austin to Hillsboro. Ridiculous. We didn't get home until almost 7pm (we did stop and eat for about an hour). Ugh. Then I had to leave for my hockey game at 8 (at that point I was very glad that we left SA early). Blah.
Posted by alpha at 01:03 PM | Wedding | Comments (2)
March 18, 2005
Brownie Points - Part 2
So these brownie points that I was talking about in my last entry...apparently they also come with a $10 Gift Certificate to Blockbuster. The VP printed out the "drop" on the color printer, enclosed the certificate, and sent it to me via interoffice mail. That's pretty cool. :o)
Posted by alpha at 11:17 AM | Work | Comments (2)
March 17, 2005
Brownie Points
Yesterday some people from the Project Office needed help to launch something quickly on their intranet page. I was busy with a bunch of stuff, and finally got around to it at the end of the day. It really wasn't anything complicated, but they didn't have time to work on it themselves. Anyway, I told them this morning that the updates had been done...and the VP in the Project Office was sooooo happy that he sent 2 different emails thanking me for the work. One of those emails was actually a "drop"...it corresponds with the book that we had to read for our Mentor Program last month. It's pretty cool. In it he said:
"Christine, I really appreciate how helpful you have been with the Internal Control Reporting assignment. I realize that you had many other things on your plate, but you were able to do this assignment in an expeditious manner. The turnaround was great. The results are spectacular. - Bob"
What's cool is that he also sent it to my supervisor, my Director, my VP, and the VP of Accounting. :o) Talk about major brownie points!
Posted by alpha at 10:32 AM | Work | Comments (2)
March 16, 2005
So Busy!
Man I've been so insanely busy at work lately! It's quite exhausting. After I get home I just want to lay on the couch and watch TV. :p
We're chugging along with the wedding stuff. Haven't really done much since last week. We finalized the reception guest list (which had grown quite a bit, actually), and I sent it to my parents to review to make sure they didn't forget anyone. Next up would be to go to my parents' to print the mailing labels and maps on their laser printer. Yep yep. Fun stuff.
Our new Internet Producer (ie. graphics designer) started on Monday up in Chicago. So Bettye has been busy training him to do updates and stuff. I don't think she has gotten to do much of her own work at all this week. I know I haven't. Hopefully he learns quickly and we can share some of the workload, so we can all work on the stuff we're supposed to be working on. :p
This Friday, Greg and I are leaving to go to San Antonio right after work. Diane (Greg's sister) is throwing us a wedding shower for Greg's family in San Antonio. Should be fun. :o)
Posted by alpha at 09:14 AM | Wedding , Work | Comments (2)
March 10, 2005
Kinda like a Friday!
It's kinda like a Friday for me today. :o) I'm taking tomorrow off to use up my comp day that I had gotten from last Saturday. Hee hee. Yey! It's supposed to be beautiful weather too...lower 70's. I've got some errands to run, but I think I'll stop by the driving range for a little while as well.
Yesterday was Greg's 36th birthday. Hee hee. In celebration, we went to the driving range last night (it was windy and kinda chilly) and then came home and baked chocolate chip cookies. :o) Hee hee. It was pretty fun. Greg showed me this new modification to my swing that helped me hit my drives straighter and farther. It was pretty nifty. It was against a pretty stiff north wind too. Hee hee yey!
Hmmmm what else...it's been pretty busy at work lately. It's nice 'cuz then the days go by much quicker, but then I keep feeling like I couldn't get things crossed off my to-do list fast enough. Oh well. Such is life. :o)
Greg is off work today in celebration for his birthday. He's playing golf at Castle Hills. Hope he has fun. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 09:29 AM | Family , Golf | Comments (2)
March 08, 2005
2-0
My hockey team went 2-0 this weekend for our Friday & Sunday games. Friday night we even scored 3 goals to earn us an ice cream party after the game on Sunday (it's a team thing). :o) Greg said Sunday's game (we won 1-0) was probably one of the best games he had seen us play. That's quite a compliment.
Oh, Katie, Tony, Greg, and I went out for Chinese food after the game on Friday too. It was mighty tasty. Sing Kee redid their interior so it looks much nicer now. :o) Good times...
Saturday I had to come in to work. They were running a system test so we had to come in to test and make sure that everything we need is up. Took a couple of hours. After that, I went and ran a bunch of errands...stopped by Babies 'R Us to buy some baby shower gifts for this lady on our hockey team, and went to Hobby Lobby to buy some card stock for work. Greg stayed home and waited all morning for his birthday present to be delivered. Hee hee. He was so giddy when he got it. It was funny. We tried to stop by Tom Thumb to meet with the cake decorator, but she wasn't there. So we went on to the driving range while I wait for my sister to get back from Allen (she went shopping with my parents) so we could go shopping for wedding stuff. We didn't end up going 'cuz she didn't get back until about 5...by then it was kinda late and we were hungry.
Sunday we went to church, then out to lunch at Olive Garden. I hadn't been there awhile. Tried one of their new dishes, and that was pretty good. Went to look at some rings at Jared, but Greg doesn't really wanna get his from there 'cuz of their oober-annoying commercials. Greg did find one that he liked a lot though. We'll see. Maybe he'd have to deal with contributing to those annoying commercials. :p As for me, I found one that I liked, but then found another that looked better on Bile Nile (plus it matches my ring). I'm gonna sit on it a few days to see if that's the one I want. :o)
Think that's about it for now. More updates later. :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:12 AM | Hockey , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)
March 04, 2005
TGIF!
Another week has flown by...
Today has been pretty nice. Had lunch with my mentor today...we went to this sandwich shop in the building next to us. It was really good, and it's within walkable distance. I need to go there more often. :o) Anyway, we brought the food back, grabbed a conference room, and planned out what we need to do for our presentation in the general meeting on the 18th. :o) It should be fun.
Tonight I have a hockey game. We're trying to finish up our season before Easter weekend, so we have to double-up one weekend and play both Friday night and Sunday night. :o) After the game, we're going out with some teammates for Chinese food. Mmmmmmmm...
Tomorrow I hafta be at work at 9:45am. Yuck. Hopefully it won't last more than a couple of hours. I get a full comp day for coming in to do the test. Ah well. After that, Greg and I need to go to Tom Thumb to meet with the decorator to see if she can give us a quote on our wedding cake. Then I'm off to go shopping with my sister for reception stuff. Fun fun. :o)
Sunday I think we're gonna go visit a jeweler to get Greg's ring size, so we can order a wedding ring for him. That should be interesting. I don't quite enjoy going to jewelry stores...maybe it's just too much "bling" for my liking. :p Hee hee. Then of course Sunday night I have my game. Yup...s'bout it!
Next Wednesday is Greg's birthday. His birthday present should be arriving tomorrow. :o) Yey! He's taking off next Thursday to go play golf, and then I'm taking off next Friday to use up that comp day that I'm earning tomorrow. Hee hee.
Oh, and next weekend we're going camping at Purtis Creek. We were gonna go this weekend, but all the sites were booked! Ha ha. Oh well. Next weekend is better for me anyways. :o) This will prob be the last time that we'll get to do it before it gets super hot.
Posted by alpha at 02:00 PM | Camping , Hockey , Wedding , Work | Comments (4)
March 01, 2005
Space Heater = Good
Haven't really felt like writing lately. Have had too much to do wedding-wise that I just hadn't been in the mood to write. :o)
Ended up having to work Friday night, for about half an hour at 1:30am. Yuck. It completely threw my weekend off 'cuz I didn't get enough sleep. Saturday morning I had to get up early to go cake tasting at Frosted Art with Greg, my sis, Jo, and Luci. It was a fun time, but I wish I wasn't so tired. And yes, 9am is way too early to be having cake. I spent most of the rest of the day sleeping 'cuz I was so tired. :o/ Greg went to perform at his MSO event at about 5ish. We hung out for a little while when he got home.
Sunday we went to church, then came home and chilled. I was still tired, so I was watching TV most of the afternoon. :o/ We went out to Oshman's to try to buy a birthday present for Greg's brother Paul but ended up buying some clothes for ourselves. Heh heh. Had my hockey game at 7:30. I didn't feel like I skated all that well (prob 'cuz I had been so tired all weekend. Blah.
Yesterday I had to be at work at 6am. Good thing was that there was no traffic, and I got to go home at 11:30am (that was for working Friday night). I ended up running a bunch of errands until about 1:30pm. Stopped by the dress shop to check on my dress, and the lady there said that it should arrive any day now. I scheduled my fitting for Good Friday while I was there. This way my Mom can come. :o)
Went to Tom Thumb to inquire about their wedding cake situation. The lady who was there told me that the decorator wasn't in yesterday, but that they do make wedding cakes. I need to go back to inquire about the prices, etc. No way I'm gonna spend $600+ on a wedding cake when I can probably get one for $150 that works just as well. It's all gonna be eaten anyways... :p
Also spent quite a bit of time standing in line at the post office. What I don't get is why out of the 5 available counters, only 2 people are working at them...while the line goes out the door. I never quite understood that about the post office. And then they complain that they aren't getting as much business. Well I wonder why. Duh.
Other than that, just worked on getting the files for the invitation labels and watched TV. Nothing real significant. Just the usual. Wish I wasn't so tired so I could have gone to the driving range with Greg. Oh well...
Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention...it has been FREEZING in the office the past few weeks, especially for those of us in the back corner of the office. So we've been wearing our jackets at our desks, and it apparently paid off for me, 'cuz a space heater appeared on my chair when I came in this morning. I've been much warmer today. Hee hee. Yey!
Posted by alpha at 08:58 AM | Hockey , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)
February 25, 2005
131
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Posted by alpha at 03:07 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (2)
February 24, 2005
MS Money + SP2 = No Workie
So last night I sat down to update my checking information in MS Money, since I hadn't done in ages...thought I'd get caught up while I had a little bit of time. But I kept getting this "Error 1606 - Cannot access network location" error, every time I start Money, or enter a transaction. If you click "Cancel" and "OK" a few times, the program goes on. But it'd tell you that again when you try to enter another transaction. It was pretty annoying. Then I remembered that it was having this problem after I upgraded the system to SP2 a long time ago (but never had time to fix). So I decided to just fix it and get it over with once and for all (this error also comes up after I log in to GMail).
My next 2 hours went something like this...
After much searching through the MS support center, I found this article that said to uninstall Money. I went and uninstalled it. Restarted computer, and tried to reinstall. It told me that it failed to install the Money System Pack. Fine, I go to try to uninstall the Money SP, but it wouldn't let me uninstall through Add/Remove Programs. Went and looked for another article. This one told me to go into my registry and manually delete the entries for the Money SP. Painstakingly slow process to go through all those keys to pick out the right ones. Restarted computer. Reinstalled Money, and finally got it working.
Most annoying...what a waste of 2 hours...shouldn't a service pack put out by Microsoft work with its own programs? A ton of other people had problems with this. But I'm just glad that the stupid 1606 error is gone now...
Posted by alpha at 09:35 AM | Nerd | Comments (4)
February 23, 2005
Profit Sharing Rules!
Woohoo!!! :o) We all just got a letter from HR saying that they had made a profit sharing contribution into our 401(k) accounts last week. I got a little over $2000! Pretty awesome! I didn't even know that they did profit sharing. Ha ha. :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:53 AM | Work | Comments (0)
Saga Galore
My beef with Sprint, is that the staff in their call center in India are completely clueless. I had them repeat everything I said back to me so I could know that they understood me, and yet I can still receive blatantly wrong information. Without going into much details (the story takes 10 minutes to tell in person), make sure you talk to someone from the UNITED STATES. Those people at least know what they're talking about. Better yet, just email and let the eCare people handle it for you...they apparently have the most power to actually fix a customer's problem.
Long story short, if you get a rep at Sprint that sounds Indian. Hang up and try again...
Let's see...what else...Friday night Luci came over and had BBQ and watched TV with us. Hee hee. It was a fun hang out time. :o) Saturday Greg went to rehearsal in the morning...we had a quick lunch and went over to Jo's to drop off her bridesmaid dress. Then we headed over to BB&B to work on our registry. We've filled it up quite a bit with a bigger (price range) variety of stuff. Hee hee. Fun times. Afterwards, since we were already in the area, we went to Toyko One for dinner to celebrate "3 months until wedding." Had a great time. Rented "Napolean Dynamite" (not my choice, but Greg HAD to watch it)...it had some funny moments, but definitely not the funniest movie I've ever seen. :o)
On Sunday, the weather was gorgeous. We went to the driving range, then bike riding around the Sherrill Park area, and then I had my hockey game that night. It was a fun game in spite of our loss. We actually scored more than 1 goal in the game! Ha ha. :o)
Monday's weather was gorgeous too. :o) We went out to Kohl's so I could get some shoes for the wedding, and I found some (the white ones) for $6.50 with the use of a coupon! :o) Wheeee! I'll look for other ones to match my Chinese dress for the reception. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 08:22 AM | Biking , Golf , Hockey , Wedding | Comments (2)
February 16, 2005
Bridesmaid Dresses are Here!
Yey!!!! The bridesmaid dresses have arrived!!!! :o) They turned out AWESOME!! Very pretty indeed.
All of a sudden it seems more real... :o) We'd be on a plane to Jamaica in exactly 3 months!!!
Posted by alpha at 07:57 AM | Wedding | Comments (0)
February 15, 2005
Warning: Do NOT go to Richardson Bike Mart!
Recall our experience at the Richardson Bike Mart a couple of weekends ago...we were harassed by 5 or 6 different salespeople within the first 10 minutes we were there. Well, last night, we wanted to look at some helmets and a new saddle for Greg, so we gave them the benefit of the doubt and tried it again.
We walked in to the store...were greeted by a bunch of employees just standing around. One of them asked if we needed any help...we said no and kept walking. We found the section where they had the saddles...this REALLY annoying guy came over and asked if what type of saddles we're looking for. We told him that we were just looking (which, to most people, means...go away and leave us alone). He pretended to move some of the saddles around, then proceeded to stand behind me. I gave him a "why are you still here" look. He took that as his cue to ask AGAIN what type of saddles we're looking for. WTF! Is this guy just completely clueless or what?? We began to leave, and told him that THAT was the reason why they had lost about $1000 of our business in the last week. Then the jackass salesperson responded with "well we make quite a bit of business here doing that sir." Well, you know what, Richardson Bike Mart will NOT be having ANY of my business...or my friends' business, for that matter.
What a horrible, horrible place to shop!
Posted by alpha at 11:20 AM | Biking | Comments (2)
February 14, 2005
Weekend of Exercise
Left work an hour early on Friday to go to the Charity Challenge on Ice tryouts at the Farmers Branch Starcenter. It was fun, and got to see some people I hadn't seen in ages...but I skated like crap. Prob one of the worst performances I've had in awhile. Obviously it showed 'cuz I didn't make it to the final round. Oh well...not really up for another butt-kicking anyhow...
Anyways, Greg, Katie, and I went to have pizza in Lewisville after the tryouts. That was pretty fun. Tasty pizza as always. :o)
Saturday we went to lunch with my parents, my sister, Matt, and a couple of my parents' friends from out of town (they're from Alberta). We had dim sum, and it was rather tasty. Afterwards, Greg and I went to Sun & Ski Sports to buy some bike accessories. They were having a huge winter clearance sale, and we each had a $10 off a $50 purchase coupon...so we got some pretty good deals on some stuff. We also stopped by the Bicycles Plus store in Coppell to look at helmets and things. Came home, had dinner, and watched "Office Space" on TV. Hee hee.
Sunday we went to church, then met up with my sister and Matt to look at the golf course (our reception site). My sister hadn't been there, so she wanted to go check it out to see what decorations she wants to get for the reception. It was cool. Greg and I had lunch there at the golf course...it was a pretty day out...temps in the 70's and sunny. :o) We stopped by the Sprint store on the way home to check out some phones. Went home, picked up our bikes, and went over to Katie's to go bike riding. I think we rode about 5 miles around the UTD area. It was pretty fun, and was nice to be out when it was so pretty outside. Went home at about 5:30...I ordered our new phones online, and then left for my hockey game...which was another butt-kicking for some strange reason. The team just wasn't playing well together last night. It was quite a bit frustrating.
Anyway, about the cell phones...I called Sprint Saturday night, and found out that they'd give us the same deal on the phones as all the new subscribers ($150 upgrade rebate, $30 web special if ordered online). Plus the plan that we're on, actually costs $5 less a month now...so we'd get that updated. And they'd also give us a 5% discount per month for renewing our contracts. So I figured that was probably the best and simplest things to do (since Greg's Dad and nephew are both on Sprint...so we can do PCS to PCS for free). Hence we shall be receiving our new phones some time this week. Yey! :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:12 AM | Biking , Family , Hockey | Comments (0)
February 11, 2005
Tra la la...
Hum dee dum...I'm bored...2 hours left until I leave to go to my hockey tryout. Then it's 2 hours' worth of skating my bottom off. Fun fun. :p
*Yawn* Let's see...what else...my department's Director was here visiting yesterday and today. He just left to catch his flight back to Chicago. It was nice to have him around....we all went out to Jason's Deli for lunch yesterday and that was fun. Then he had 1-on-1 meetings with each of us. Yeppers.
Tomorrow we're going out to lunch (dim sum) with my parents. One of my Dad's friends is coming into town from Calgary, so we're all going out to eat together. Afterwards, Greg and I are prob gonna go look at biking equipment (helmets, gloves, water bottles, etc.) and go to Bed Bath & Beyond to add more stuff on our registry. Yep. Bridesmaid dresses should be arriving next Tuesday. Yey! :o) My wedding dress should be in soon too. Perhaps I should call and find out.
Posted by alpha at 01:14 PM | Family , Hockey , Work | Comments (2)
February 10, 2005
Poll: Cell Phone Service
Okay, Greg and I will be finishing up our contract with Sprint at the end of the month...so we're doing some research to see what people think about their cell phone service. I'd like to get GSM service, but not at the expense of coverage.
- What cell phone company do you use?
- On a scale from 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with their customer service? Feel free to give examples.
- Have you had any dropped calls or lack of coverage within the DFW area? If so, which areas?
- Would you recommend your company to someone else?
Posted by alpha at 08:15 AM | Misc | Comments (7)
February 09, 2005
Happy Chinese New Year!
Yesterday Greg and I both took a half-day in the afternoon. :o) Greg scheduled a club fitting at the driving range to try out some of the rescue woods that he's been looking at. I left work after going out to lunch with my mentor at Chili's. Fun times.
After Greg got home from the driving range, we left to go to Bicycles Plus down near SMU to check out some bikes. Side note: There are lots of stupid people that drive in that area. Anyways, we test rode the 2005 Trek 3900, and the Specialized Hardrock Sport bikes. We both liked the Specialized better...it was a bit sturdier, and the shocks and tires were better. :o) They had both bikes at $299 (which is about $30 less than MSRP for the Trek, and $50 less than MSRP for the Specialized). We each bought one...Greg bought the yellow one, and I bought the silver one. Hopefully we'll be kicking butts (at least our own) on the trails pretty soon. :o) Yey!
We also had a more pleasant shopping experience at Bicycles Plus...the guy Matt who helped us out, was knowledgeable in all the bikes they have, and could point out the differences between each. It was great. He was very cool. Highly recommended bike shop. Plus they offer free lifetime labor for servicing the bikes when you buy from them.
After our shopping adventure, we went to my parents' house for Chinese New Year dinner. It was mighty tasty. :o) We had a great time. My parents talked a little bit about the wedding/reception and stuff. So that was cool. Mmmmmmmm...may the year of the Rooster begin!
Posted by alpha at 10:36 AM | Biking , Family | Comments (4)
February 07, 2005
Another Weekend Flown By
This year is just flying by way too fast. It's weird, 'cuz each day seems to go by slowly, but weeks would fly by. Very strange.
Friday night Greg went to the driving range for awhile, and then came home and we made steaks on the grill. It was mighty tasty. :o) Saturday we went to the driving range (it was 60 and sunny), and then went over to the Richardson Bike Mart to look at some bicycles. Got swarmed by 5 salespeople in a mere 15 minutes that we were there, so we left. It was really annoying. Someone would come by every 2 or 3 minutes to ask if we have any questions...and we were like...ummm...we told the last guy 2 minutes ago that we didn't have any...and we still don't...please go away. Anyway, because of the over-aggressive behavior of those salespeople, we won't be buying our bikes from them. Their lost of almost $700 of business.
Didn't do too much on Sunday. Greg wasn't feeling very well. We watched some golf, and then leisurely left for Chris & Beta's Super Bowl Party. It was fun. :o) Chris' projector/screen set-up was awesome. Hee hee. Chris also confirmed some good news that I'm not allowed to share just yet. Hee hee. Yey!
Posted by alpha at 09:46 AM | Family , Friends | Comments (6)
February 04, 2005
Friday Update
Okay an update on the W2 fiasco...I think Dennis and I have finally agreed on the figures for the W2. Ugh. Most annoying.
At work today, we have a "Chilithon." We get to wear t-shirts, sweatshirts, jerseys, hats (but no jeans!) for our favorite sports team. So I have my Texas sweatshirt and Rose Bowl hat on. :o) Hee hee. We also got chili (and appropriate fixin's) from Red Hot & Blue. Mmmmmm...
Posted by alpha at 01:24 PM | Work | Comments (6)
Underrated
I think paystubs are underrated. We get them, toss them in a folder in a filing cabinet, and forget about them. They're taken for granted until you don't get any, and have to rely on your bank statements to figure out how much you got paid for 3 months a year ago.
The saga with the PRE bookkeeper continues. Got a new spreadsheet from Dennis this morning. He was a little bit closer with this one. The final net pay is still off by $30 (as in, I got paid $30 less than what they said I did). What the heck. Why is it THAT difficult?
So I edited the spreadsheet, sent it back to him, and told him the exact numbers that I got. We'll see what happens. Hopefully my taxes aren't all screwed up. How annoying...
Posted by alpha at 12:29 PM | Work | Comments (0)
February 03, 2005
Oh so busy...
I've been super-busy at work this week. Ugh. They really need to hire somebody soon to replace our designer...'cuz I'm getting so much stuff to do that I don't even really have time to eat lunch. So annoying.
Well at least today I'm supposed to go to lunch with my mentor...but that also means that I'd have an hour less to do the things that I need to do. Blah.
Since I've been so busy at work, I'm just pooped when I get home. So all I've done all week is watch TV. I'm sure Greg thinks that I'm the most boring person by now. Poor guy.
Katrina suggested that we go do a cake tasting at the Black Forest Bakery off of NW Hwy. Greg knows of the place, and said that they have a really good German restaurant. So maybe we could go try it this weekend or something.
Oh, got the W2 forms from PRE yesterday. Not to my surprise, none of the number match what I had been paid. I really wish that they would quit screwing around with important stuff like that. I'm just glad that I don't have to deal with them anymore after this tax period. Ugh. Anyway, I vented my frustrations to Joe & David, and then Chris gave me Dennis' contact info (the guy who actually handled the payroll) so I could forward the email to him. He said he'd have an answer for me by morning. We'll see about that.
Okay well, that was a pretty boring post...but it's been a pretty uneventful week. Ah well. Just waiting for the work week to be over, so I can actually rest and go have fun.
Posted by alpha at 08:07 AM | Work | Comments (10)
January 31, 2005
Weekend of Fun!
Wow I had a fun weekend! :o)
Friday night I was really tired, so I vegged in front of the TV and watched a couple of movies. Greg went to play pick-up, and I worked for about half an hour at 1am and earned myself another comp day. :p Wheee! Hee hee.
Saturday morning, I got up leisurely, and packed for Austin. We left at about noon or so, and stopped in Waco for lunch. Got to Austin at around 4ish...went by a couple of the Longhorn stores to see about Rose Bowl merchandise. I found this fleece that I really wanted, but they only had L, XL, and XXL...which is too big for me in men's sizes. Bought a shirt for my sis and a hat for me. :o) I'll have to look for the fleece later. Went and checked into the hotel. It was pretty nice. We called Aunt Martha and went over to hang out with her and Uncle Guy at the Embassy Suites that they and the team are staying at. That was pretty fun. There were a lot of Soul fans that came for the game. :o) We left after about an hour to go back to our hotel to get ready for dinner.
We got all dressed up (sorry forgot to take pics), and went down to the concierge to see if she had any recommendations for nice restaurants in town. She recommended that we go to Carmelo's Ristorante Italiano, and gave us a voucher for a free appetizer. The place was AWESOME! They had a guy playing the accordian to entertain. :o) It was a romantic, candlelit, white-table-cloth type of place. Right when we first sat down, we saw the table next to us get a flambe dessert. It looked sooo cool, and so I decided that I wanna have dessert more so than dinner (plus I was still a little full from lunch). We ordered our appetizer (bruschetta with salmon), got a couple of Caesar salads, and ordered dessert. :o) We didn't end up getting the flambe, but we did have a couple of pieces of pie. I got the Chocolate Derby Truffle (it looked like a chocolate dome...hee hee), and Greg got the Lemon Tort. It was delicious!!! OMG. I was so full of chocolate. We had sooooo much fun. We'll have to go back there again next time and try the main courses! :o) Hee hee.
After dinner, we went back to the hotel to change, etc. Checked back in with Aunt Martha, and found out that Mike had returned from their team walkthrough, and he and Uncle Guy (and one of the other coaches) were at Pappasitos having dinner. So we went over there, but just missed them. We went over to the Embassy Suites, and hung out with them in the lobby for awhile. Then up walks Ron Jaworski. I, of course, didn't recognize him, but Greg did (after a couple of seconds), and had this look of awe on his face. For those of you who don't know, Ron Jaworski was the QB for the Philadephia Eagles in Super Bowl XV. He's now on ESPN, and as it turns out, is the President of the Philadelphia Soul. Anyway, we met him and his wife...they were both extremely nice and he was very funny. :p He said that they were heading out to Jacksonville for the Super Bowl right after the Soul game on Sunday. Hee hee. How cool is that?!
Sunday morning we got up and packed up our stuff...and checked out of the hotel. We walked over to the Frank Erwin Center for the Soul vs. Austin Wranglers game. The Soul fans (and family) basically had an entire section to ourselves right behind the Soul bench. It was awesome. I think Aunt Martha said that she had reserved 148 tickets for the family and the Soul fans. :o) I think that's just incredible. We were sitting 4 rows behind Ron Jaworski and his wife, and other important people in the Soul organization. It was pretty awesome. The Soul beat the Wranglers 66-35. :o)
We drove home right after the game, so I could make it back in time for my hockey game at 7:30. :o) Traffic was surprisingly smooth, in spite of the rain. We got in at about 5:30, rested a little bit, and left for my game. We lost 5-2 to the Hornets, but at least we scored more than 1 goal! Greg said that I was skating really well last night too. :o) He's been trying to get me to glide better so I don't use as much energy skating. I think it's working, 'cuz I was skating really fast, but I wasn't really sweaty or anything (a little winded, but not sweaty). :o) Yey! I had a few really good shots in front of the net, but unfortunately, none made it into the net. Oh well. I'm so close that I can feel it. :o)
Anyways, there's my weekend recap. It was a wonderful weekend. :o) Tired today though 'cuz I'm working 6-3 today and tomorrow. Yuck. Hopefully not much goes on today that I can leave at 2:30. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 07:26 AM | Family , Fun Stuff , Hockey , Memories | Comments (7)
January 28, 2005
TGIF!
This week seemed to have lasted forever. It was weird. So I surely am glad that it's finally Friday. :o)
Not a whole lot has been going on. We finally watched "Spiderman 2" the other night. It was pretty good. Hee hee. I may have to add that to my wish list. :o)
Yesterday I found out who my mentor (for our mentoring program at work) is. It's one of the Directors that we have down here. She's really cool. I'm looking forward to it. Hee hee.
Oh I found out today that one of my friends that I played hockey with a few years ago has joined my women's team. :o) Yey!!! She's a great player...we can surely use her.
Ummm...what else...still 2.5 hrs before I get to go home. Next Monday & Tuesday I'm working the 6-3 shift. Yep.
I'm not sure what all we're doing in Austin this weekend, other than dinner and the game. I'm sure we'll go hang out with the team and Greg's family a bit. Should be a good time. :o)
Posted by alpha at 02:35 PM | Family , Hockey , Work | Comments (4)
The Infinite Cat Project
(Thanks Chris!)
Here's an excerpt of the project description, taken from the Infinite Cat Project website...
"It all began innocently enough when a user on an Apple help forum posted a picture of his cat, Frankie, contemplating the beauty of a flower. Shortly afterwards another user posted a picture of his cat bristling at the image of Frankie on the monitor. I decided this was too much fun and advanced the concept as The Infinite Cat Project which is, simply, cats regarding cats regarding cats in an electronic melieu."
Posted by alpha at 09:40 AM | Fun Stuff | Comments (0)
January 26, 2005
Most interesting
I'm reading "How Full is Your Bucket?" for the mentoring program at work. It's quite an interesting book, and a quick read. I'm about halfway through it, and I just really started reading it today. It's a book that focuses on positivity and the study of the effect that positivity has on the workplace.
I highly recommend. :o)
Posted by alpha at 12:48 PM | Work | Comments (5)
January 24, 2005
For Matty :o)
I got your IM...your comments for the blog came through at least on 1 day. I see a couple from 1/14/05. Did you put in your name and the security code? :o)
Posted by alpha at 09:11 PM | Friends | Comments (0)
Weekend Getaway
(Okay, just 1 last post for today...)
Greg found out that his cousin has a couple of extra tickets to the Philadelphia Soul vs. Austin Wranglers Arena Football game this Sunday in Austin. For those of you that don't know...Greg's cousin Mike is the head coach of the Philadelphia Soul team. Mike's parents (Uncle Guy & Aunt Martha) and siblings all try to go to the games whenever Mike's team plays in town (Austin or Dallas). It's a big family affair and is quite fun. :p Last year we were a rowdy bunch of 20 at the Desperados game. Ha ha ha.
Anyway, as we were making plans to go to Austin for the game this Sunday, we decided that it would be more fun to make a weekend of it, and go down on Saturday instead. So this morning we made reservations at the Austin Marriott at the Capitol for Saturday night. We'll prob go play golf somewhere Saturday afternoon, go out to a nice restaurant Saturday night, and then go to the game on Sunday. :o) This is gonna be our Valentine's Day celebration for this year. :o) I think it'll be much fun. :o) Hee hee. *Excited*
Posted by alpha at 02:52 PM | Family | Comments (4)
Yey!
I found out today that I got accepted into the Mentoring Program at my company. What they do, is that they select a certain number of "staffers" (non-managers), and they pair the staffers up with the big-wigs of the company (ie. VPs, Directors, etc.). Throughout the year, the Mentor/Mentoree would meet on a regular basis to discuss various business/career-related topics, and the whole group gets together once a month to have a lunch/presentation/discussion on more business-related topics. It's a pretty cool program. I've heard lots of good things about it. *Excited*
So basically, if you develop a good rapport with your Mentor, chances are that it'll be very helpful career-wise down the road since all the big-wigs talk to each other. It certainly would help if they have something good to say about you. :o)
Posted by alpha at 02:46 PM | Work | Comments (2)
Weekend Recap
Not much went on this past weekend. It was really too cold to do much outside. Sounds whimpy, I know, especially to the Chicago-ans that I talked to today...they got 11 inches of snow last night. Anyway, Saturday we went to Foley's to check out their china and things, and to see what nice stuff the department stores have...didn't really find anything we liked. So we went to Bed Bath & Beyond in Addison (the one that stocks the fine china). We signed up for our registry, and started putting things on it. We picked our china pattern (which turned out to be very expensive) and several other things. We'll need to go back to finish up on the stuff that we didn't want to put on the registry without having first looked at it in person. :o)
Saturday night we went to my hockey team's practice. It was a blast. It was Drew, Vicki, John, Marcy, Katie, Kelly (and Kelly's Mom), Rose (from Relentless), and Greg and me. We worked on individual stuff for a little while...I worked on my slapshot and did some skating practice with Greg. And then for the last half hour, the girls scrimmaged against the 3 guys. We first scrimmaged with the guys playing defense...so we could practice our offense, then we switched it around. It was a lot of fun (and very tiring). :p Afterwards, we tried to go to dinner at Pappasitos, but it was packed (45-55 minute wait), so we went to Desperados over by our house instead. It was much more peaceful there, and we had a good time hanging out and talking, etc. Didn't get home until after 11.
Sunday we went to church, then hung out around the house trying to stay warm. :p I played around in the registry some, and added some appliances that I know I want. Had the hockey game at 8:45 against the Mantis. We tied 1-1, but we played a lot more aggressive than we had been. So it was a good workout. :p
Posted by alpha at 12:49 PM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Wedding | Comments (0)
January 21, 2005
Putting things back where they go
It really pisses me off when I'm looking for something, and can't find it because someone else has put it in a completely inconspicuous spot. Is that just me, or does that annoy anyone else?
Last night I was trying to wash my car in the driveway before it got dark. Lo and behold, can't find the spray gun that I usually keep by the gardening stuff in the garage. I looked 3 or 4 times in both the gardening area and the car washing stuff area. To no avail, I looked in the backyard hoping it was near the water hose or something. Nothing. I wasted half an hour (and sunlight) looking for the stupid thing. Greg strolled home on his motorcycle, saw me with my grumpy face, and asked what was wrong. I told him that I was trying to wash my car, but that I couldn't find the spray gun. And then he was like...oh, well it's over in the corner in the backyard. He parked his bike, casually walked over to where the water hose was, pulled aside the patio umbrella, and said...here ya go! I was just furious. Number 1...what was it doing in the backyard...Number 2...why was it sitting on the edge of a wooden platform that's leaned up against the house and hidden underneath the umbrella??? I not-so-nicely told him that he needed to put things back where they belong, and he got mad at me for blaming him for the fact that I didn't know where he had put it. WTF??? How the hell was I supposed to know where he had put it, if it wasn't where it was supposed to go in the first place???
*Pissed*
Posted by alpha at 07:43 AM | Misc | Comments (4)
January 19, 2005
Business Thought of the Day
Our Director decided that he's gonna start discussing various business-related articles during our staff meetings. So he sent us this article on "Managing Yourself." It was pretty interesting. Here's an interesting excerpt from it...
"Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. Knowing where one belongs can transform an ordinary person - hardworking and competent but otherwise mediocre - into an outstanding performer." - Peter F. Drucker
Posted by alpha at 01:13 PM | Work | Comments (0)
January 18, 2005
I might get published!
I was reading this article on the Dallas Morning News about collection agencies, and about how people need to know their rights when it comes to the agencies' practices. I felt that I ought to share my experience with the author of the article...so I wrote her an email about my ordeal with the stupid collection agency in Richardson that took me 3 months to convince them (with a letter threatening lawsuit) that they had the wrong number for the person that they were looking for. Anyway, the author of that article forwarded my email to the editor of the Sunday Business section, and now they're considering publishing it! We'll see if there's room to get it in, but either way, it's pretty cool!
Here's the email I got from the editor...
"Ieva Augstums forwarded your letter to me. I'm the editor of the Sunday Business section, and we're considering it for publication. May we have your permission to publish it? And if you haven't already included your mailing address and telephone number, please send them along in case we need to contact you.
No pressure, by the way. Thank you for taking the time to write.
Laura Jacobus
Assistant Editor-Business News"
Pretty nifty huh? I thought so. :o)
Continue reading "I might get published!"
Posted by alpha at 06:04 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (0)
Back to Work
Ya know, I really don't enjoy working. It's not necessarily me not enjoying my current job (although there are aspects about it that make me enjoy it less), but I don't enjoy the concept of having to work. I think my 3-day weekend spoiled me. I enjoyed waking up whenever I felt like it...doing whatever I wanted for the day... So, today I declare that work is highly overrated.
Anyway, nothing really has gone on at work today. Kinda slow. I'm pretty much in meetings all afternoon. Fun fun. Hopefully I'll get to leave on time today.
I signed up for the girls team tryout (the one on Feb. 11 in Farmers Branch) for the Charity Challenge on Ice VIII. The Ticket is holding 2 preliminary tryouts of 30 skaters and 6 goalies each. Honestly I don't think they're gonna get that many, but who knows. Should be fun though. If nothing else, it's free ice time. Hee hee. :p
I sure am mighty tired. Hopefully this afternoon will go by quickly. :o)
Posted by alpha at 01:43 PM | Hockey , Work | Comments (6)
January 17, 2005
Another Weekend Flown By...
Wow...another weekend has flown by. How come the work weeks can't fly by so fast? I kinda wish for the reverse...
Anyway, Greg left for Phoenix with his Dad Friday afternoon. They stayed at the Fairmont Princess in Scottsdale. It was a really nice hotel. They were living it up, ordering room service and all. Ha ha ha. :p Saturday they played golf at the TPC Scottsdale - Desert Course. He was actually a little bit disappointed with the way that the course was kept. I think the TPC was concentrating on making the Stadium Course ready for the PGA's Phoenix Open...so might have neglected the little course next door. They had fun nonetheless. :o)
For me, I spent most of Saturday at my parents' house. We worked on the wedding invitations and response cards. They turned out just AWESOME. My Dad was enjoying it so much (he's a professional typesetter) that he's considering going into business making invitations! :o) It took me and family about 3.5 hours on Saturday to print/emboss all 200 invitations and response cards. :o) Yey!!!
Sunday Greg and his Dad went to play at Sanctuary Golf Course, where Greg made a hole-in-one at the 12th hole!!! :o) That's so awesome. He called to tell me about it, and I reminded him that he should keep the ball so he doesn't lose it later on in the round. :o) Hee hee. I think that just made the trip for him (and his Dad). :o)
Sunday I went to run some errands at the store, etc. Then Jo came over at around 2ish, and we did some planning for the wedding shower. :o) It was a good time. I left to go to my hockey game at 6:45...and went straight from there to pick up Greg from the airport. We stopped at Whataburger on the way home 'cuz we were both a little hungry. Hee hee. We spent some time catching up...he gave me the presents he got me from Phoenix (they're way cool)...I showed him the invitations (he loved them). :o) Fun times.
Today I had lunch with Luci at First Chinese BBQ. Mmmmmmmm! We ordered so much food. Ha ha. Tonight she's coming over for dinner 'cuz I'm making ham & stew. It'll be fun. We'll watch "24". Hee hee. Yey!
Oh, and if you want to see pics from Greg's trip, including a pic of his hole-in-one...go here.
Posted by alpha at 03:07 PM | Family , Friends , Memories | Comments (2)
January 14, 2005
Quiet Weekend
As we speak, Greg and his Dad are getting ready to board the plane to Phoenix to play golf for the weekend. :o/ I hope they have fun, but it'll be a quiet weekend for me...
Tonight I'm planning on doing some cleaning and watching my "Return of the King" Extended Edition DVD that I've had for 3 weeks but still haven't watched. It was hard finding that big of a chunk of time when Greg's around.
Tomorrow morning I'm meeting up with my sister at my parents' house to work on the reception invitations. After that, I'll be going to my hockey practice at 7.
Sunday I have plans to hang out with Jo...dunno when/what yet, but I'm sure it'll be a blast! :o) Then, as usual, I'll have my hockey game Sunday night. Hopefully I'll be able to make it to at least a little bit of it before I need to pick up Greg from the airport.
Monday I don't have to go to work, so I have a lunch date with Luci at First Chinese BBQ. Yum! Can't wait! :o) Hee hee.
Well, maybe it's not going to be such a quiet weekend after all. I've got something planned every day. Hee hee. :o)
Posted by alpha at 02:28 PM | Family | Comments (4)
January 13, 2005
Yet another quiet night
Took forever to get home from work yesterday 'cuz morons were going 30mph on the highway because it had rained earlier. So irritating. Took Greg a long time to get home too. We left soon after to meet up with Chris & Beta at Players Bench to do some hockey shopping for Chris. Mainly we just showed him what he needs to get. He didn't end up getting anything, but he'll prob get skates at Oshman's this week 'cuz on Saturday, the rink where we're practicing doesn't have skate rental. After gawking at new hockey equipment, we headed over to Rockfish for some yummy seafood. :o) Mmmmmmmm...
We just relaxed awhile after we got home. I read some more of my PHP book, while Greg played Scrabble on PlayStation. It was quite nice. I was exhausted for some reason. This week seems to be lasting forever. Very weird. It felt like it ought to have been Friday like 3 days ago. Ugh. 1 more day and it'll be a 3-day weekend for me. :o) Yey!
Posted by alpha at 07:41 AM | Friends , Hockey | Comments (5)
January 12, 2005
Nerdin' it out...
Had a nice night last night, just relaxing and stuff. For some reason I was just really tired yesterday, so I wanted to just sit around and do nothing. The last half of my Amazon order arrived, with my new PHP book. I read that for a little while...and was kinda watching TV. Greg was playing on his PlayStation. It was pretty relaxing.
Tonight we're meeting up with Chris & Beta at Players Bench to show Chris some hockey equipment, etc. Then I think we're gonna go over to Rockfish for dinner. Mmmmmmmm. Fun fun! I can't wait. I wish I could make work disappear today and skip right to hockey shopping. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 07:40 AM | Hockey , Nerd | Comments (3)
January 11, 2005
A New 24 Addict
I think I have created another "24" addict. Hee hee. Greg actually watched last night's 2 episodes with me, and was quite into it. Yey! :o) The first 4 episodes have been pretty intriguing so far, so I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.
I was mighty tired this morning when I woke up. I was kinda on call for this morning's volume duties 'cuz supposedly Chicago had an ice storm last night...and Jeff didn't know if he'd be able to make it in safely. But since he didn't call at 5:30am, I assume that it was just fine. My body kept waking up all night in anticipation of the call though. It was weird. I think that's why I'm tired today.
This morning Gary brought in some chocolate chip cookies that his Mom had made. :o) His Mom makes great cookies, and she always gives some to Gary every time he goes home to visit...and he always brings them in to share with us. Mmmmmmm...
Today I think I'm gonna go out to lunch with the guys. I'm gonna need an hour-long diversion if I want to stay awake today. Hee hee.
Chatted with Chris for awhile last night. We're gonna go help him shop for hockey equipment Wednesday night. :o) Wheeeee! His first lesson went well, and he didn't fall (always a good sign). Hee hee. I'm so excited!!!
Posted by alpha at 09:37 AM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Work | Comments (2)
January 10, 2005
Day 4
I had a pretty good weekend. Friday night we met up for dinner at BJ's with Luci, Austin, Chris, Beta, some of Luci's friends, and some of Greg's friends from work. We went to their new location in Plano, and it was PACKED! Luckily Luci made reservations for us, otherwise it would have been an 1.5-hr wait. Yuck. Anyway, the food was quite good. We got a pizza...it was Chicago-style deep dish, and it was rather tasty. I think we're be going back there again (just maybe not on a Friday night).
Saturday we went to Oshman's to find some golf shoes for Greg. He and his Dad are going to Phoenix this weekend to play golf. We also went to REI, where they're having a clearance sale on the zip-off pants that I wanted a few months ago, but didn't get 'cuz they were $55. Then we went to the driving range...I hit balls for the first time in months. Did pretty good for not having practiced in so long. But boy my arms and back sure are tired...
Sunday we went to church, as usual. Then I think we watched TV and I took a nap for awhile. Greg went to play golf in the afternoon. We watched the first hour of "24" together before I had to leave to go to my hockey game. I had taped both episodes, and when I got home from hockey, he was all asking if we could watch the 2nd episode. Ha ha. I think I might have gotten him hooked on it. How funny. :p
Posted by alpha at 10:04 AM | Friends , Golf | Comments (3)
January 06, 2005
Mission Accomplished!
With much thanks to Adam, all of my old LJ entries have been imported into this blog. Now I just have to go back and categorize them. I've gone through September 2004's entries...still 371 entries to go. :p
That's enough for tonight though. *Yawn*
Posted by alpha at 09:53 PM | Misc | Comments (2)
January 05, 2005
Meet Loopy Wafflebutt!
Okay, I'm not insane...this is just a thing that Katrina (or shall we say Tootie Cootieshorts) sent me. :p
Continue reading "Meet Loopy Wafflebutt!"
Posted by alpha at 05:39 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (0)
BB Shek - July 1998 - January 4, 2005
BB Shek passed away on January 4, 2005. She lived a good doggie life, even though she had to live outside in the backyard. She was rescued from the Mesquite Animal Shelter when she was 3 months old, and was a great companion and friend for 6.5 years. Towards the end of her days, she was in much pain - she couldn't hear well, and her joints hurt...yet she would still greet my family at the door with her excited look and wagging tail whenever we come home. She's in a place now where she can run around freely without pain, and I know that she's watching over us each day, like she did everyday for years.
B, we love you, and will see you again some day.
Posted by alpha at 07:27 AM | Family , Memories | Comments (2)
January 03, 2005
4.5-Hr Trip + Rain + Traffic = 6-Hr Trip
Our Pre-NYE party was a lot of fun. Chris, Beta, Chris' brother Steven, Luci, Austin, and my sister all came over. We built our own pizza, and Greg grilled it on the smoker. It was rather tasty. Made a huge mess. :o) We sat around, drank, talked, and watched the Cal vs. Texas Tech Holiday Bowl game. Fun times were had by all.
The next morning Greg, Paul, and I drove down to San Antonio. We stopped once to have lunch, and then again in Austin to go to the UT bookstore to buy some Rose Bowl attire for Greg's Dad for his birthday. I think we spent a good hour there. Goodness gracious. :p We got down to Diane's house in Boerne at about 5:30 or so. Everybody went out for dinner at this Mexican restaurant in downtown Boerne. It was fun. We went back to the house, drank, watched football games, and some played board games. By 10:30 I was getting tired and grumpy...it took a lot to make it to midnight. Heh heh.
On Saturday, everybody came over to watch football games. We watched A&M get clobbered by Tennessee at the Cotton Bowl. Then we watched Texas won in the Rose Bowl against Michigan. Greg's Dad was calling his brother, Uncle Don (in Michigan), all throughout the game to harass him. It was hilarious. :o)
Sunday we went out to breakfast with Greg's Dad for his birthday. All of us out-of-towners couldn't stay for his birthday party, which was put at 3pm for some silly reason. Breakfast was fun and very tasty. The "Chocolate Kiss" at Le Peep's is AWESOME. Best hot chocolate I've ever had. :o) Greg, Paul, and I left to come home right after breakfast. Got stuck in pouring rain and lots of traffic. Took us 6 hours to get home. Yuck. We even had to drive through the ghetto near downtown 'cuz there were wrecks on 35. :o/ Ugh. What a mess. I skipped my hockey game last night 'cuz we got back so late, and I didn't have a chance to rest. I had to come in to work at 6 this morning. Yuck. At least I'll get to go home early. Hee hee. :o)
Posted by alpha at 07:47 AM | Family , Friends | Comments (2)
December 30, 2004
Almost Happy New Year
Happy New Year, everybody! :o) I know it's early, but I won't be in town this weekend to wish y'all a happy new year. Hee hee.
Tonight we're having some people over for a Pre-NYE party. Greg was sad that we'd miss Luci's NYE party this year, so he decided that we should have some people over beforehand anyway. We're doing a "Build Your Own Pizza" night. What happens is that we'd have our own personal sized pizza crusts, add toppings, and Greg would grill it on the smoker. It is sooooo tasty. We haven't done it in awhile, so this will be fun.
It has kinda been a quiet week...not much really happening. I'm really enjoying the drive to/from work though, since a lot of people are on vacation, etc. so I can actually save 10-15 minutes in my usual commute. Pretty nice.
This weekend we're going to San Antonio for Greg's Dad's 75th Birthday/Rose Bowl party. Should be a blast. We're staying at Diane's, and it's always a party there. Hee hee. Can't wait. :o)
7 more hours of work to go...
Posted by alpha at 09:20 AM | Family , Friends , Work | Comments (2)
December 29, 2004
New Blog!
Adam set up a new MovableType blog for me on his server! :o) So fun! I get to customize everything. I'll be slowly archiving/porting my LJ entries over there. *Grin*
Posted by alpha at 08:14 AM | Friends | Comments (0)
My First MT Post
Yey!!! :o) Thanks Adam! I shall try to import my old LJ entries into here. Hee hee!
Fun times for everyone!
Posted by alpha at 07:31 AM | Friends | Comments (4)
December 27, 2004
Christmas, et. al
Continuing on from last Wednesday's post...it started snowing at about 11am. It was no wimpy snowstorm either. Everybody was just gathering around the windows to watch it snow. Shortly thereafter, I found out that there were gonna be a bunch of late memos that I would have to post that night (last time it happened I was at work until 7pm). So in an attempt to avoid having to drive on the icy streets in the dark during rush hour, I got my boss' boss (my boss was out of town) to let me work from home in the afternoon. I left at about 1:30pm and the roads weren't too bad. Greg got to drive in the nasty traffic when he was coming home, and he said that people had to stop at the top of the High 5, wait, and then slide down the ramp. It was ridiculous. I was very glad that I got to come home early that day. Later on I heard that Galveston & Corpus Christi & Houston got a ton of snow. Ha ha. How weird is THAT!
I spent most of Thursday cleaning the house. Nothing too terribly exciting. Greg got to come home early from work, so that was cool.
Friday Greg was up early to start smoking the ham. I think he ended up smoking it like 6 hours or something. More cleaning was done. Went to the Christmas Eve service at church. Then soon after Paul arrived with their Dad. They had to make 2 trips back to the car to get everything 'cuz they had brought so many presents along with them! Ha ha. We went to Desperado's for dinner...hung out awhile, and called it a night.
Saturday everybody was up kinda early. Paul told us that Jerry was up Friday night playing with a bow that he had gotten off of one of the presents. Hee hee. We hung out for a little bit, before Greg and I started to prepare Christmas lunch. The lunch was a great success. The ham was awesome, the mashed potatoes and green beans were great...and my Dad really liked the fresh pineapple for the ham. My sister said that it was the best ham she has ever had. Hee hee. :p After lunch, we opened presents. I got my sister a coffee/cappucino/expresso maker and this Yorkshire Terrier calendar...and it just so happened that she had brought Mak along with her to the lunch. Ha ha ha. How funny. Everybody had a great time. My sister and Matt had to leave soon after 'cuz they had to go to Matt's parents' house for Christmas Dinner. My parents stuck around for a little bit...we had apple pie and cheesecake. It was pretty fun.
Sunday morning we brought Paul & their Dad to our church. It was cool. Greg's Dad really liked our church and our pastor. We took them out to Steak Kountry (in Wylie) for lunch. Then we drove around and showed their Dad Southfork Ranch...and drove by Pecan Hollow Golf Course to show him our reception site. Came home, watched some football, and then Paul took their Dad back to Laura's Mom's apartment in Oak Lawn so he could meet up with Marshall & Laura to go back to San Antonio.
Greg and I just hung out for the rest of the day...we were pretty exhausted from all the entertaining. :p But I would declare our first holiday hosting a success. :o) Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 07:38 AM | Family , Work | Comments (0)
December 22, 2004
Rain, Sleet, and Snow
It was sleeting for about 5 seconds when I was driving in this morning, then it turned into rain. Matt just got in and he said that it just started sleeting again. Yuck. Hopefully the drive home wouldn't be terrible, but who knows. The temperature is supposed to keep dropping all day, so the sleet might turn into snow. Maybe if Greg doesn't have to go anywhere Thursday night, I might think about icing down the driveway to see if we could play hockey on it. Hee hee.
We did all of our Christmas dinner shopping yesterday, so we wouldn't have to do it in the bitter cold today or tomorrow. I got off work at 3 (had the 6-3 shift yesterday), went to the store right after, and didn't get home until about 4:30. Bought like $130 worth of food/essentials. Then I chilled at home the rest of night, 'cuz I was so tired from getting up at the crack of dawn. Greg went to play basketball at church, and I cleaned up a tiny corner of my kitchen and organized the stuff above the washer/dryer. *Accomplished*
Oh wow...Greg said that sleet is starting to collect on the ground. It'll prob start snowing soon...
Goodness...I sure have been busy this morning. I best get back to work. Fun fun!
Posted by alpha at 08:34 AM | Family | Comments (0)
December 20, 2004
T-Minus-5-Days Until Christmas!
I'm actually getting quite excited about Christmas now. Last Friday I was off from work, and spent a few hours finishing up my Christmas shopping and birthday gift shopping for my friend Darcy's birthday. :o) It was mighty fun. I also stopped by the UPS Store to mail off a package to Greg's Uncle Don and Aunt Mac. It was really a 50th Wedding Anniversary gift, but it took awhile for me to get the picture frame shipped from Indonesia, that it turned into a Christmas gift. Hee hee. Yep yep. I came home and excitedly wrapped all my presents. Got a nice Christmasy tablecloth to cover Greg's coffee table, and set all the gifts on it. I have a matching tablecloth for the dining room table too. Yey!
Friday night we watched "Bourne Supremacy" on DVD. It was interesting. Then Greg left to go play pick-up. I stayed home and watched "Legally Blonde 2". Bought it along with "Mona Lisa Smile" and "The Passion" while I was at Blockbuster renting "Bourne Supremacy." They were previewed items, and I have a 30-day guarantee on them anyhow. So I just bought them the cheap way. :o) I still haven't had a nice block of time to watch the extended edition of "Return of the King." I don't really want to split up the movie to watch 2 separate times...so I'll hafta find 4 hours (+?) to watch it. Hee hee.
Saturday we waited around for a little bit for my sister to come by to pick up the old couch and all that. She was moving to a new apartment at Preston & Frankford. When she didn't come by 1, we left to go Christmas shopping. We went to Bed Bath & Beyond and Barnes & Noble. It was fun. Also went to Petsmart to get the kitties some new toys, and stopped by Michael's to check out some Christmas decorations (bought an apple-scented candle and a little wreath thing to go around it).
Saturday night we went to Darcy's birthday party at Bahama Breeze. It was fun! We had Darcy, her bro Doug, Curtis, Peter, Zoe, Adam, Amy, Chris, Beta, Danielle (Darcy's friend from work), and of course us. It was a good time. :o) Darcy was showered with gifts. Hee hee. Chris & Beta got us a wedding scrapbook kit for Christmas! Yey! I'll have to get started on it. :o)
Sunday we went to church...and went to Taco Cabana for lunch. Went to Wally World to return and buy some stuff. Yep yep. That was it. My sister and her gang came over and took some of the couch set, but they had to come back to get the couch 'cuz it wouldn't fit in her Explorer. I think they came over while we were gone at my hockey game, 'cuz when we came back from the game, the couch was gone! Hee hee. :p Now I can get some serious cleaning/rearranging done. :o)
This week I'm off on Thursday and Friday...ie. major cleaning days. Fun stuff. :o) Next weekend we're going down to San Antonio for Greg's Dad's 75th birthday. We'll have a Rose Bowl watching party probably on the 1st. :o) Hee hee. Yey!
Posted by alpha at 01:24 PM | Family , Friends | Comments (0)
December 14, 2004
Oh oh there's one!
Was busy as hell at work yesterday. I was also very tired for some reason. Maybe it was just a Monday thing. Anyway, we had Luci over for dinner last night. Made some queso and we grilled hot dogs (enhanced with chili on top) outside. Greg made a big fire in my old Charbroil grill (those round charcoal grills). It was a lot of fun! We had the food inside the house, and then came back outside to sit by the cleverly portable fire pit to watch the meteor shower. :o) Saw a few meteors streak across the sky, and called it a night. It was really fun. Wasn't all too terribly cold with a big jacket on and sitting by the fire. :o)
Kind of a slow start for me this morning. More awake than yesterday though. Hee hee. Took me like 50 minutes to get to work this morning 'cuz of a wreck that I didn't know about until I was already sitting in traffic for 10 minutes. Yuck. Hopefully it'll be a slow(er) day for me today so I can get some of the recently neglected stuff done.
Tonight we're going over to Katie's for a fajita dinner. :o) We've been talking about it forever, and now that she's done with school, we finally have time to get together. Wheeee! Mmmmmm fajitas!
Oh oh!!!! My Lord of the Rings - Return of the King Special Extended Edition DVD has already been shipped!!! I'm so excited! I wish it had shipped via UPS or something though 'cuz that usually takes less time than USPS. Oh well. What the hey. :o) Yey!!!
Posted by alpha at 08:11 AM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)
December 09, 2004
Doot doo doo
Yesterday I was hella busy at work. I had the pleasure of updating a PowerPoint presentation for one of the VPs, who just absolutely loved the end product. Kudos and brownie points were given. Made me happy.
There's also no better way of starting out your day with your boss' boss calls to give you your bonus for this year, and raise for next year. This year my bonus and raise were prorated because I started with the company at the end of March, but he said that if I had been around all year, the percentage would be at the high end. :o) So, all things considered, I'd end up making about $54k this year including the bonus and stuff. Pretty cool. Also got a 3.2% raise for next year. Wheeee! I like companies that give you a raise when they say that they're gonna give you a raise (*Ah hem!*).
Other than that, I've been pretty busy today with site updates, etc. We have our company Christmas party tonight, so I won't get home 'til late. *Yawn*
Posted by alpha at 12:52 PM | Work | Comments (0)
December 08, 2004
La Dee Dah
It's been awhile huh? Well the temperature's no longer 28 degrees...it's now getting up to 65 during the day. Pleasant. :o)
Last week I was off starting Thursday afternoon, through Monday of this week. It was kinda nice and relaxing. Didn't do too much. Ran some errands, etc. Worked on Greg's MSO site a bit...people can now log in and log out. I'll be building out the nav menus for the different groups next. Shouldn't be too difficult.
What else...Saturday had lunch with Jodie at String Bean. That was great fun. We were gonna go shopping afterwards, but called it off 'cuz we were both in food comas after lunch. :o) Greg and Paul went to Southlake Carroll's high school playoff game at Texas Stadium while I was gone. They came home not long after I did. I watched TV and looked for wedding invitations online. Paul stayed over Saturday night and went to church with us Sunday morning. That was pretty cool. :o)
Sunday night's hockey game was a lot of fun. I got to play forward again after having to fill in as defense for the past few weeks. Had quite a few shots on net, and had this beautiful pass to Katie (who was wide open). Heh heh. I was skating so fast that Drew asked if I had my Wheaties that morning or something. :p How funny. We ended up with a 1-1 tie, but lost during overtime. Still fun though.
Monday I went to lunch with my friend Louisa from high school/parents' church. It was cool. I don't think we've hung out in years. She mentioned this boy (Dave) that she's been dating for 2 years, and I had no idea. :p Ha ha. It was good catching up and all that. We went to try the Chaat Cafe upon Adam's recommendation. It was pretty tasty. :o)
Hmmm talking about food is making me mega-hungry. I think I'm gonna have some banana bread for breakfast. :o) Mmmmmmm...
Posted by alpha at 07:51 AM | Family , Friends , Hockey | Comments (0)
December 01, 2004
28 Degrees
Brrrrr! It's 28 degrees out right now. Cold...
It's been hella busy at work this week. I had to cover a 6am-3pm shift yesterday. Bleh. But it's kinda cool that by lunch time, I had already worked most of my day. The only bad thing was that I still hit traffic when I left at 3pm 'cuz there was a wreck. :o( Lame. Why can't people just be more careful...
Anyway, I ordered my camcorder on Monday. It shipped on Tuesday and will get to my house on Friday. I have a day off, so I'll be at home waiting to sign for it. :o) The new SD card that goes into it (the camcorder uses that to store still pictures) will arrive on Thursday. I'm hoping that the mini-DV tapes will ship soon today, so I'd have them by Saturday at the latest...that way I get to play with the camcorder while I have a few days off work. Hee hee.
Sarah, the person at Lasting Impressions that supposedly ordered my wedding dress, called my home phone yesterday and left a message...saying that that she had a question for me. I called back, and whoever answered the phone said that Sarah was on another call, and that she would call back in 5-10 minutes. As expected, no return call. I have a feeling that she would probably call my home phone again today and leave another message, and when I call back, she'd be on the phone or with a customer. It's so annoying when people tell you that they'd call back and they wouldn't. Now I'm all wondering about what question she could possibly have for me, when my dress was supposedly ordered 3 weeks ago. And why didn't she call my cell phone? It was listed on my sales receipt for a reason. Ugh. I'm just very annoyed at the place...I had to call 3 times before they'd call me back. That's just not good customer service. Hopefully I don't have to deal much with them anymore.
Anyway, I have a half-day tomorrow, and then am off Friday & Monday. Can't wait. It's been a long week. Then next Thursday we have a company Christmas party at Champps. Fun. :p
Posted by alpha at 08:05 AM | Wedding , Work | Comments (0)
November 29, 2004
Thanksgiving, Wedding, and a Baptism
It sure was nice to have 5 days away from work! :o) I was off Wednesday through Friday last week. Got plenty of rest (and also got a slight cold). It felt so much longer than 5 days off though...pretty weird. Wednesday I just chilled and hung out at home with the kitties. After Greg got home from work (he got off early at like 3ish), we went out to Wylie to look for Outlaws BBQ, which unfortunately had gone out of business. :o( I grabbed some pho for dinner...Paul came over at about 8ish. He stayed over so he and Greg could leave for San Antonio early Thursday morning.
They left at about 7:30, and got to San Antonio at about 11 (he said no traffic). I got up leisurely and did some vacuuming around the house. Then I left at about 11 to go over to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. It was a good time. Surprisingly, my parents weren't all stressed out like they usually are when we have company. We just kinda hung out and went through the Black Friday ads (weren't many good sales this year tho). People started showing up at about 6. The turkey turned out great...it was "Chinese style" turkey...my Mom cooked it with ginger & green onion, and it was perfectly cooked (not too dry). We also had baked salmon, potato pie, curry pastries, and sticky rice. It was sooooo good. We also had apple pie & ice cream for dessert. Everybody left with happy tummies. I hung around and helped my sister acquire her new laptop from CompUSA's Black Friday sale. She got a bunch of free stuff to go with it too...which also meant that she also gets to fill out tons of rebate forms. :p Hee hee. Didn't get home until about 1:30am...
Friday I slept in a little. Tried to work on a website, but couldn't concentrate to do it. Ended up watching football games and movies pretty much all day. Kinda fun. Greg and Paul got back from Austin at about 10pm.
Saturday I think I slept in too. Hee hee. Had some leftovers for lunch. Watched some football. Went to my friend Sinead's wedding at my parents' church. :o) Saw a bunch of my friends from there that I hadn't seen in years. Kinda cool. Not as weird as I had originally thought. They had their reception at the Omni Park West Hotel...great food, but the service was a little lacking. They had run out of the chicken entree (even though it was predetermined when we RSVP-ed), so my Mom and several at her table didn't get to eat until after we had our dessert. Then they ran out of cake by the time they were done with their food. Ah well.
Sunday morning we went to church. One of the associate pastors, David Rogers, did a sermon on baptism. This has been an ongoing "thing" (wasn't really an issue, just a "thing") with Greg, since he grew up Episcopal, and so he was baptized by sprinkling as a baby. But the Baptist church (nor my parents' non-denominational church) doesn't recognize that as baptism. We believe in baptism by immersion. Anyway, back in April or May, when I became a member of our church, Greg couldn't because he wasn't baptized by immersion. So we've talked about that a few times and I thought I'd let it alone 'cuz it really would be his decision to do something that important. On Sunday, after Pastor David did his sermon on the importance and significance of baptism, he invited anyone who feels that s/he needs to be baptized to come out front and meet with him during the invitation. All of a sudden, Greg turned to me and said, "I'm gonna go do that!" Taken by surprise, I said "Really?" He said yes, and asked if I'd come with him. We walked across the front and he met with Pastor David, and got changed in the dressing area. I waited for him by the baptismal pool. He got baptized by our senior pastor, Pastor Gary Singleton, at the end of the service! It was so cool! :o) After the service, this guy David, who came as a member of the panel we had at our premarital class, came over and told me how cool it was. He asked about our wedding, so I talked to him some about that. Then this old couple (I think they were in their late 60s or 70s) came over...the guy told me how beautiful the baptism was, and said that he started crying when he saw us coming across the front! It was neat. :p I wish Greg had gotten to hear all that!
We celebrated his baptism by having grilled steak & tator tots for "lunner" (lunch & dinner). Then we went to my team's hockey practice. There were 6 of us there...me and Greg, Mandi and her husband Chris, and Marcy and her bro John. It was fun. Each girl had her own guy coach! :o) Greg and I worked on some things that I've been needing to work on, and then at the end of the practice, we played a little bit of 2-on-2 (Greg & John against me & Marcy) for about 10 minutes. It was a lot of fun. :o)
Posted by alpha at 03:22 PM | Family , Friends , Memories | Comments (0)
November 22, 2004
Rain, rain, go away
Man traffic was horrendous this morning! This rainy weather caused 3 accidents on 635...making it virtually impossible for me to go that way and be able to make it here at a decent time. So I took the George Bush Turnpike...it didn't end up being a whole lot faster, and it cost me $1.20. Oh well.
My whole body hurts. Last night I made the mistake of eating (a steak, no less) an hour before my hockey game. We were short on players (we had 9), so there were only 3 of us on defense (hence double-shifting). By the 3rd period I was feeling my dinner (stomach hurting like hell), and my right thigh was cramping. Then I made the mistake of blocking a shot with my left thigh (see similar incident from a few months ago), so my left thigh was throbbing. Ugh. At least we made it out of the game with a 0-0 tie. :o) Makes my suffering almost worth it. Ha ha.
Looks like I'm recaping my weekend backwards here. Lessee...Sunday morning was our last pre-marital class. Yey! :o) Our facilitators brought a really nice breakfast for us. Mmmmmm. Hungry just thinking about it.
Saturday night we went to Greg's orchestra concert. It was good. :o) Lots o' fun were had. My Dad really wants to go to their holiday concert in December. He kept asking about it. Very funny.
Friday I spent a good portion of it running around, getting our reception site settled. I went up to Pecan Hollow Golf Course to take some pictures for my Mom 'cuz she wanted to see what it looks like. While I was there, I ran into the site supervisor, Danny. Apparently Danny got the run-through about my reception Friday morning, from the facilities manager (Shannon) at the Plano Centre. So when he saw me taking pictures, he came out and introduced himself. It was pretty cool. We went through the set-up together, and figured out that we could seat 150 pretty comfortably in the dining room. Yey! :o) After the picture-taking, I went up to the Plano Centre to meet with the events coordinator (Jo) and the catering manager (Anne). Jo introduced me to the wedding coordinator (Claudia). Claudia, Anne, and I sat down to talk more about the details, etc. Then Anne went and got Shannon so he could tell me what all's included in our rental/service charge. I have a feeling that this might be their biggest event there, since the clubhouse is pretty new (remodeled and opened this April). Everybody was freakishly excited about the reception. It was really strange. :p Anyway, Claudia's gonna send me an itemized list of costs this week...and I'd sign the contract and pay the $75 deposit and everything will be official. :o)
Anyway, enough about my weekend. 2-day week for me this week. Yey! :o) It's supposed to get REALLY cold over Thanksgiving...gonna get down to freezing Tuesday night. Brrrrr! I'll be celebrating Turkey Day with my parents...Greg's going down to San Antonio with Paul.
Posted by alpha at 08:18 AM | Family , Hockey , Wedding | Comments (0)
November 18, 2004
Last Day of the Week
Boy I sure am glad that today is the last work day of my week. I could surely use a break.
So I had my performance review yesterday afternoon...it went well. It was a pretty good review, actually. Apparently "Hawkeye" considers me a senior level person, a reason which she had used to justify her "salaried employees" statements to me. Whatever. Hopefully next year I'd get to do more technical stuff, moving a little bit away from the content management stuff. She told me that she just can't imagine me being happy doing content management all day long. So we'll see what happens.
Today's Matt's (my friend from work) birthday. :o)
Happy pseudo Friday!
Posted by alpha at 07:56 AM | Work | Comments (0)
November 15, 2004
Another week begins...
How exciting...it's gonna be raining all week. At least I'll be off on Friday. Wheeee! I can't believe that it's Thanksgiving already next week! Craziness. 2-day week for me next week! Yey!
Anyway, I got dumped with a HUGE project last Friday (at 11:45am, mind you). One that took a total of 10 hours to complete. Bettye, my counterpart in Chicago, took pity on me and helped out with a little bit of it. I worked on it from 11:45am to 4:45pm. Then I had another 3 hours left of work to do on it after I got home. So I went home, drained my brain a little bit, and got back to work. Greg was very nice (he knew that I was really stressed out at work) and went out to get Popeye's for dinner. :o) Worked from 8:30pm to 11:30pm. Then at 11:30pm, I had to start doing the volume stuff (for which I was previously scheduled)...until 2am. Just before I went to bed Friday night, I managed to figure out that I worked 15.5 hours that day. Ridiculous. I don't want to hear another word about having to work more just because I'm a salaried employee.
Saturday I slept in (for obvious reasons). I just kinda hung out and didn't do anything all day 'cuz I was so exhausted from the past week's drama at work. We left at about 6ish to go to the store to pick up some stuff for Chris & my combined birthday party (Chris' bday was on 11/12). :o) It was great fun. Chris' friend Judy's brother brought over the XBox and they were playing Halo 2 on the projector. It was ridiculously big. :p Great people, great food, great fun. :o) Funny cats. It had it all. :o)
Sunday we went to church. Then we hung out, and I slept for awhile. We tried to go to a pizza place for dinner, but apparently both pizza places that we usually go to (the one in Plano and the one in Lewisville) were both closed on Sundays. :o( We drove all the way to Lewisville to find that out. So we settled on going to Johnny Carino's instead. Tasty food, nonetheless. Afterwards I went to my hockey game where we lost 0-4 to the Hornets.
Posted by alpha at 01:53 PM | Friends , Hockey , Work | Comments (0)
November 12, 2004
Twas just one of those days...
Yesterday sucked.
I got to work at 6am yesterday, 'cuz the guy who usually has the early shift was off on vacation. It was busy as hell too. I got up once at 9:30 to get breakfast (they served us breakfast burritos yesterday to celebrate clearing a billion contracts this year), and then I didn't get up from my chair again until 1:30 or so. Didn't take lunch 'cuz we were so freakin' busy. So basically, I worked almost 9 hours yesterday. I signed off at 3 after I finished with all my stuff, and told my counterpart that I was sticking around until about 5 so I could go out to dinner with our director, who was in town from Chicago.
At 4:50, my boss condescending asked if I hadn't been working for the past 2 hours. Maybe she had a bad meeting or something, but I told her straight out that no, I hadn't been working for the past 2 hours. She proceeded to come over and gave me a speech about how I'm a salaried employee, and that I'm expected to work extra hours if I was around. I just glared at her in disbelief, and (as calmly as possible) told her that I was done with my stuff at 3, and that I told my counterpart to call if she needed anything. She didn't call, so I assumed that she didn't need help. My manager just looked at me and said...well, if you have a problem with that, we can discuss it at your review. I turned and looked at her, gave her the WTF look, and she left. I was soooooo pissed that I almost didn't even go to dinner, if it wasn't that I didn't want to be disrespectful to our director. I was glad though that we sat at opposite ends of the table at dinner...that made it a little bit more tolerable.
Ya know, it's just crap like this that makes me dislike my job. I like the work just fine, but I don't appreciate being treated like that for no reason. What, did she expect me to work at 11-hour day just because I wanted to be courteous and go out to dinner with the group?? I just don't think that my work ethic ought to be questioned when I'm working almost 9 hours a day already. That's just such bull. And I'm getting REALLY tired of her pulling the "salaried employee" card whenever she feels like it. Hell, you know what, if you want to make me an hourly employee, be my guest...you'd end up paying me a whole hell of a lot more money.
Posted by alpha at 07:21 AM | Work | Comments (0)
November 11, 2004
Marathon Day
It's 8:12 and it's already over 2 hours into my day...I hafta stay 'til late tonight too 'cuz our Director is in town again (this time to do reviews), so we're all going out to dinner (supposedly anyway). We'll see. I brought a couple of DVDs to kill time between 3 and 5pm. Fun stuff.
I guess I haven't updated since the weekend. My birthday was really nice (especially so since Greg and I got engaged). :o) Saturday Greg and Paul went down to College Station for the A&M/OU game, then to Austin for the Texas/OSU game. They were gone all day and got on TV coverage twice in 2 different games. How funny. Anyway, Jodie, Luci, and I went wedding/bridesmaid dress shopping. It was loads of fun. We found both a wedding dress for me and a bridesmaid dress for them. :o) Quite an accomplishment I'd say. Hee hee.
Saturday night I went over to my parents' for dinner. I requested that they make dinner this time instead of going out to celebrate. It was a great time. My sister and Matt left soon after dinner, but I stuck around and watched the Mavericks game with my Dad, then talked to them some more about the wedding and reception and stuff. :o) My Mom came up with 60 people for her guest list. Good grief. We'll see what happens with that.
Sunday (my birthday) we slept in, and then went out on a motorcycle ride to go have breakfast at Denny's. That was pretty fun, and it was a beautiful day out. We also stopped by the golf course in Plano to check out their banquet facilities for the wedding reception. Looks like they could only hold 120 people though. My hockey game was at 7:30pm...Katie finally broke our no-scoring streak! Went out to Razzoo's with Greg, Luci, Katie, and Tony after the game to celebrate my birthday. It was fun. :o)
Monday Greg and I were off work again. We tried to get a hold of the people who are in charge of event planning in the City of Plano. Found the golf course guy, who referred us to a lady at the Plano Centre, who we emailed but never heard back. I don't think we did too much else that day. Just kinda hung out and relaxed.
This upcoming Saturday, Chris and I will be hosting a birthday party at Chris & Beta's house. :o) Wheeee! Fun fun! Hopefully people will be able to make it since it's a little bit late notice. I'm sure it'll be a great time. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 08:13 AM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)
November 05, 2004
My Birthday Present
Look what I got for my birthday!
See more pictures!
Posted by alpha at 06:36 PM | Memories , Wedding | Comments (0)
November 04, 2004
Yeyeyeyeyeyeyey
3 hours 45 minutes to go, and counting...then no more work until next Tuesday!
Man I just realized that I have a lot to do before I leave today. Also am obligated to attend a lunch thing at 11:45 with a Senior VP who's in town from Chicago. I asked my manager if I should stay to go to that (otherwise I leave at 11:15 for my half-day), and she would highly recommend that I do. So I hafta stay for it. Oh well. Not that I had other plans anyway. :p
Last night Luci came over and we made "extreme nachos." It was pretty tasty. Hee hee. Then we (including the kitties) had ice cream that she brought over. Mmmmmm.
Saturday I'm going shopping with the girls for wedding dress/bridesmaid dresses. Fun stuff! Then Saturday night my parents are making me dinner for my bday. :o) Hee hee. We hadn't had dinner at home in awhile (we always celebrate at a restaurant), so it should be fun.
Posted by alpha at 07:29 AM | Family , Friends , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)
November 03, 2004
*Yawn*
*Yawn* I was definitely spoiled by my extra 45 minutes of sleep yesterday, when I worked from home. :p Plus last night Greg was watching the election coverage 'til really late when I was trying to sleep. Heh heh.
Lessee...yesterday was somewhat uneventful. It was nice to not have to drive to/from work...actually gave me an extra 1.5 hours in my day. Heh heh. :o) I used that time to run adware/spyware removal software on both the laptop and the desktop. Just a monthly maintenance thing. Fun stuff.
Last night we had a meeting with our premarital class facilitators, Cody and Georgia. We went over the test that we took awhile back. They said that we had scored in the highest category possible (yey!). :o) Hee hee. The meeting went pretty well. Cody went through the results and pointed out things that we should pay attention to in our relationship. Yep yep. :o)
Tonight Luci is coming over for dinner. :o) We're making "extreme nachos". Should be tasty and easy to handle. Hee hee.
Tomorrow I'm working a 1/2-day, which means I get to go home at about 11:15. :o) Yey! Then I'm off on Friday & Monday. Wheeee!
Posted by alpha at 07:52 AM | Friends , Wedding , Work | Comments (0)
November 01, 2004
Whew!
I feel like I did a bunch this weekend. :o) Friday night Greg and I went to the Plano/PESH game. The turnout was kinda disappointing. I remember when I was in high school, if there's 1 football game you go to, you'd go to the Plano/PESH game. But less than half of the stadium was filled. It's kinda sad. The game itself was pretty good. When we left, Plano was leading 21-14 with 3 minutes left in the 4th. I later found out that PESH somehow came back and won 31-21. :o( I guess Plano couldn't beat PESH's 8-year winning streak for the Plano/PESH rivalry game...
Also had to work late Friday night. Bleh. Was up way too late...
Slept in on Saturday, then got ready for Chris & Beta's Wedding. Chris gave me photographic duties, so I went up to the church about an hour early to set up and to scope it out. :o) The wedding was beautimus! Chris & Beta were just adorable. :o) I'm sooooo glad that it *finally* happened. Hee hee hee. Anyway, I spent about 4 hours taking pictures (all 235 pictures!), and then came home and spent another 3 hours with post-processing. Got the pictures up on my website. Sent the link to Chris 'cuz I thought he just might be checking his email before he leaves for his honeymoon. :p And sure enough, I was right...he got to look at the pics Saturday night. Hee hee hee. Gooferhead.
Sunday we went to church for our class. We had a panel to interview about marriage. They were pretty cool. Tuesday night we have a meeting with our teachers to go over the results from the test that we took awhile back. Wheeee. Heh heh. :p
Posted by alpha at 07:37 AM | Friends , Fun Stuff , Memories | Comments (0)
October 28, 2004
*Growl*
Man! I'm hungry already. Not a good sign...
Today at work, we're having a "baseball day." People are allowed to wear baseball jerseys & hats to work, but get this...NO JEANS ALLOWED. Lame. We do get fed hot dogs, chips, nachos, pretzels, popcorn, and cracker jack though. Oh well.
1 more day until the end of my last 5-day work week for the year...wheeeee!
Chris & Beta's wedding is on Saturday. :o) Yey!!!! I'm so excited. Must remember to charge up batteries for my camera...I have picture-duty at the wedding. Hee hee. :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:04 AM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)
October 26, 2004
Record Time!
29 minutes from garage to parking lot this morning. :o) I think there were a couple of stalled cars on westbound 635, east of the 635/75 intersection, so they alleviated traffic somewhat. Hee hee. Wheeee!
I think Greg and I are gonna go vote during lunch today. Hopefully there won't be a really long line or anything.
This week is my last 5-day work-week. :o) How 'bout that! We got all the vacation schedules figured out and put on a nice-looking calendar (thanks to yours truly). I'm off next Thursday afternoon, through the following Monday for my birthday. Hee hee. Greg got next Friday & the following Monday off too. Yey!
This last weekend was good. I was over at my parents' house for most of Saturday. My sister and Matt joined us for lunch, we all chatted...had a good time. Then my Dad and I took pictures of some of the wood products that he had, so he could put them up on the website. Saturday night Greg and I took my parents out to dinner at Toyko One. He officially got permission from them to marry me! Ha ha ha. :p We had a great time. It's usually not just the 4 of us that get to hang out...my sister and/or Matt is/are usually around too. So that was good. :o)
Sunday we went to church for our class, and then to the mall to get Greg some new clothes. He bought this new pair of Timberland shoes that are really nice. :o) He wore them to work yesterday and said that they're very comfortable. Hee hee.
Sunday night I had my hockey game against the Hornets. Lost 0-2. Coulda been much worse. I think for the most part we kept up pretty well. Our coach Michael's back. :o) I like having him around. I know some of my teammates don't like his aggressive coaching style, but I always enjoy learning from him. Anyway, he and Drew (our goalie Vicki's boyfriend) both know how I can improve as a player (Drew used to coach my travel team), and I appreciate them volunteering their time to help us get better. :o) Oh oh! And Michael made it on the backup squad for the Ft. Worth Brahmas!!!!! He might get called when a player gets injured, etc. That's soooooo cool. :o) And he said that he's been practicing with some Stars players at Grapevine Mills. Hee hee hee. :o) Very awesome.
Posted by alpha at 07:20 AM | Family , Hockey , Memories , Work | Comments (0)
October 22, 2004
Happy Friday!
Happy Friday everyone! :o) I'm only working a half-day today, so that makes me ultra-joyous!
Last night we went to go see "Friday Night Lights." It was pretty good. Greg had read the book so he was pointing out all the fictionalization in the movie. :p Hee hee.
Also talked to my travel agent and put down a deposit for our Jamaica trip. :o) Greg decided that he'd much rather enjoy the trip with A/C in the room, so we upgraded to the beachfront verandah suite. It has A/C, a stocked mini-bar, and satellite TV. Wheeee! See pictures of rooms.
My Mom's trying to be difficult. She sent an email (from her work email addy) to the agent yesterday afternoon (like 2:30ish). Then she emailed me at like 8:45pm asking me how they could finalize plans if the agent doesn't respond to her email. I was like...ummm...I talked to her earlier in the evening, and she got your email...she said she was getting right back to you...PERHAPS she sent an email back at your work email??? Geez.
Anyway, everything else is going as well as can be. :p Looking forward to leaving at 11:15! :o)
Posted by alpha at 07:43 AM | Wedding , Work | Comments (0)
October 21, 2004
Ah-ta-da!
Last night I went out to dinner at Saltgrass with Matt, Gary, and our department's director Dan (in town from Chicago). We had a good time. :o) Got home at around 7:30ish. Greg was on his way out to Brook Mays when I got home. :o/ So I sat down and worked on the wedding site for a couple of hours. I don't think Greg was very happy with that. But hey, I don't wanna be watching baseball either (which was what he was doing)...so...whatever.
I think tonight we're going to go see "Friday Night Lights." Greg bought the book last week and read it, and wanted to go see the movie.
Tomorrow I'm working a half-day. Yey! Have to bring my car in to get the oil changed and tires rotated. Maybe I'll get around to do some early voting too for the election. We'll see. I don't wanna plan too much for Friday night 'cuz I've been busy just about every night this week, and it's tiring me out. :p Planning on sleeping a little bit on Saturday. Then it's on to my parents' house to work on some pictures for the company's website. Saturday night we have dinner with my parents. Fun fun. Hopefully I don't have to justify myself too much more on the Jamaica thing. *Sigh*
Posted by alpha at 07:29 AM | Work | Comments (0)
October 20, 2004
Fajitas!
Yesterday went by relatively quickly. I did my fair share of goofing around, and then our Director Dan came into town from Chicago, so we went out for an 1.5-hr lunch. :o) Stopped by the store to pick up stuff for dinner...and the strangest collection of people were there. It was rather bizarre.
Luci came over at about 7:30, bearing Snickers ice cream and red wine. Greg cooked the fajita meat and the veggies (and shrimp too!) on the smoker. It was ultra delicious. I made some mexican rice that turned out great! Found the recipe on AllRecipes.com. It's also listed below if you want to quickly see what went into it...it was very simple to make.
------------------------------------------------------------
Mexican Rice II
Submitted by: Sylvia Eccles
This is a wonderful side dish for any Mexican dinner.
Servings: 4
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup uncooked long-grain rice
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup tomato sauce
2 cups chicken broth
Directions:
1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and add rice. Cook, stirring constantly, until puffed and golden. While rice is cooking, sprinkle with salt and cumin.
2. Stir in onions and cook until tender. Stir in tomato sauce and chicken broth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes. Fluff with a fork.
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Posted by alpha at 08:24 AM | Friends , Recipes , Work | Comments (0)
October 19, 2004
Long overdue
So much has happened...
Think that's about it for now. Please call Renee if you know for sure that you'll be going to our wedding. :o)
Posted by alpha at 07:55 AM | Wedding | Comments (0)
October 14, 2004
Confirmed!
Wedding date, time, location are confirmed. :o) Now to find a travel agent to harass... Hee hee.
Date: May 19, 2005
Time: 10am
Location: Couples Swept Away in Negril, Jamaica
Posted by alpha at 11:30 AM | Wedding | Comments (0)
It has been reserved...
I caved and reserved gregandchristine.com for our wedding site. :o) This way we can at least put all the links of the resort up on there, and not have to forward a bunch of links to people every time. Hee hee. There's nothing up on there right now. It took awhile for the DNS info to propagate last night...so I couldn't log in and put up at least a temp page. Now I'm at work and can't log in at all. Lame...
Oh oh oh! I talked to my Dad last night, and my parents are coming to my wedding! :o) He was actually quite excited about it. Hee hee. Yey!!! :o)
Posted by alpha at 07:34 AM | Wedding | Comments (0)
October 13, 2004
I need a nappy...
Last night I managed to sit down for about 15 minutes before Greg got home from work, after which we were off to move all the rest of his stuff from the storage room across town in Lewisville. We stopped by the U-Haul place by my house to rent a trailer, drove across town, got to the storage place 20 minutes before they closed, moved everything (huge couch, king-sized bed & box springs, table, hat hanger, bookshelf, rocking chair) out of the room in those 20 minutes, and then put everything in the trailer. It was some good and efficient work, lemme tell ya. Found some muscles that hadn't been used in awhile. :p
We stopped by our favorite pizza place, Parma Pizza & Pasta, in Lewisville on the way home. Business must have been good...they upgraded the table settings and stuff, with fresh roses (very pretty), etc. and added some decorations. It had a more intimate feel to it. On top of it all, there were a few guys there playing music for us. It was greatness. It turns out that they're there every Tuesday night from 7pm to 9pm. They were pretty good too. :o)
Afterwards, we went to Bed Bath & Beyond and used our 20% off coupons to buy some new sheets for the bed.
We hurried home and moved everything inside the house, organized (somewhat) and managed to put the bed into the room. Cats were amused. :p Threw the new sheets in the washer. Went back to the U-Haul place to drop off the trailer. And thus ended our evening at about 11pm. Late for me. :p So I'm mega-tired today. Must find something interesting to do here at work...
Posted by alpha at 08:00 AM | Family | Comments (0)
October 11, 2004
Couples Swept Away Pictures
Okay, in browsing through various message boards, I found this thread that has an amazing number of pictures of the resort...
Posted by alpha at 08:28 PM | Wedding | Comments (0)
Put this on your calendar...
May 19, 2005...the latest unofficial date...
Couples Swept Away in Negril, Jamaica is the likely destination.
Start saving up...don't worry if you can't celebrate with us in Jamaica. We'll most likely have a reception when we come back. :o)
Posted by alpha at 12:33 PM | Wedding | Comments (0)
October 06, 2004
It's been awhile
Well I made it through Thursday last week, and then had myself a 4-day weekend. It was quite nice. Friday I spent a good portion of it cleaning the house. Then Greg came home from work with Paul so we could leave in the morning for Austin. We watched TV and hung out, as usual.
Saturday we left really early to drive down to Austin to the football game. John, Diane, Greg's Dad, Laura, BJ, and Christa met us there. We didn't sit in the same place, but we met up towards the end of the game. It was pretty fun in spite of the rain. Afterwards we headed to this Mexican restaurant in New Braunfels for lunch/dinner. Then it was onwards to Greg's Dad's place to watch football for the rest of the night.
Sunday at noon we all went to pay respects to Greg's late Mom (she passed away a year ago Sunday). It was a short 15-minute stop at the cemetery, and then we went to lunch. At first we were gonna go to Le Peep's, but there was a 45-minute wait. So we went to a Mexican restaurant around the corner. By this time I was pretty tired of Mexican food...and how a bad Mexican restaurant can survive in San Antonio is beyond me. The place didn't have very good food, and the service was slow...it took us 3 hours from the time we stepped in the door to the time we left. It was ridiculous. Greg, Paul, and I had planned to stop by the German restaurant in Granbury (Niester's) on the way back, but leaving San Antonio at 3pm made that impossible. So we headed straight home after lunch, and got stuck in lots of traffic (and it was raining for parts of the drive).
Monday I slept in, and then got ready to go visit my friend Ruth and her husband Kent in the hospital 'cuz Ruth was having a baby. :o) I got there a little after 1:30, and they were in the recovery room. So Annabella Robbins was about 40 minutes old when I took these pictures of her. Annabella was born on October 4, at 1:01pm, and weighed 7 lbs 8 oz. She's ADORABLE. :o) I hung out with them for an hour and a half. It was great fun. She and the baby should be going home from the hospital today.
Yesterday was somewhat uneventful. Was busy at work after having been gone 2 days (was greeted with 115 emails). Oh, Greg and I went to lunch at Saltgrass, which was tasty. :o) Then last night we went to Tower Records, and neither of us bought anything. Ha ha. :p That's about it. Exciting huh?
This weekend we're hoping to be able to go camping, if weather would cooperate. We had reserved a campsite at Mission Tejas State Park. :o)
Posted by alpha at 05:28 AM | Family , Friends , Memories | Comments (0)
September 29, 2004
Wanted: Tape of Gilmore Girls & One Tree Hill
What a disaster!
I sat down tonight to catch up on my shows from Monday & Tuesday, when I noticed that the VCR only taped 1 hour's worth (so I thought I didn't have "One Tree Hill") last night. Disappointed, I rewound anyway and sat down to watch. Then I noticed that it had taped ABC instead of the WB. So, I ended up with a tape of "My Wife & Kids" (which I don't watch), instead of "Gilmore Girls" and "One Tree Hill." Dammit! I thought I set it properly and checked it twice, but I guess I didn't. So I'm in dire need of a tape of "Gilmore Girls" and "One Tree Hill" from last night. Can anyone help please....????
Anywho, aside from my TV-taping drama, I actually need to go to bed soon 'cuz I have to be at work at 6am tomorrow. It might not be so bad, 'cuz the first hour and a half would involve some intensive (busy) work. Can't think of a quicker way (notice I didn't say fun way) to get rid of 1.5 hours at work. Then tomorrow for lunch, our charity committee (we're supporting the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center this year) is doing a lunch fundraiser. People volunteered to make food for lunch, and the rest of us donate $5 to get lunch. Not a bad deal to me. :o) Hee hee. So that should be fun. Plus, it'd be nice to be able to leave work at 3pm (there better not be traffic!)...and then I'm off on Friday and Monday. Wheeee!
Posted by alpha at 08:32 PM | Misc , Work | Comments (0)
Posados
Went with the gang last night to Posados for dinner. It was mighty tastiness. :o) It sure was good to see Kent. He told us that he was in Fallujah and his platoon ran support for the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (something like that). I had no idea that he was in Fallujah. Goodness. Anyway, he's on vacation for a month (while Ruth has their 2nd baby), and then they're moving back to Camp Pendleton in CA (in a couple of weeks). Ruth is scheduled for a C-section on Monday at noon, so I'll go by there and see her. :o)
Oh, after Posados, we all hopped on over to the Cold Stone up the street. I didn't have any ice cream 'cuz I was too full from dinner, but it sure looked delicious.
Tomorrow I'm working 6am - 3pm. Icky. The guy that usually comes in early (and actually enjoys it) is taking a vacation day. Not that big of a deal...I just get to start my vacation earlier (I'm off on Friday & Monday). :o) Wheee!
Posted by alpha at 07:45 AM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)
September 28, 2004
Tasty Goodness
This morning I forgot to reset the alarm for Greg. :o/ He woke up just fine, but I still felt kinda bad about it.
Last night Jodie and I made "The Special" for dinner. It was mighty tasty goodness. We finished just in time to watch "Everwood." Hee hee. :o) The Camster was hyper as usual (apparently only when other people are around). Hee hee. Fun times, fun times, and lots of leftovers.
Tonight Greg and I are meeting up with Ruth, Kent, Mirjam, Coby, Bena, and Josey at Posado's for dinner. :o) I hear it's a great place. We're celebrating Kent's safe return from Iraq. Yey!
Posted by alpha at 09:36 AM | Friends | Comments (0)
September 27, 2004
LJ redid their post msg page
Hmmmm...not sure if I like this new message posting page...
Anyways, the rest of last week was somewhat insignificant at work. Was stuck in a class about diversity ALL day Thursday, and was busy as hell on Friday as a result. Saturday Jodie and I went to First Chinese BBQ for lunch, and then went to see First Daughter. OMG Marc Blucas was sooooo hot in it. Ha ha. Oh, so cute. :o) After the movie, we stopped by the Chinese bakery so Jodie could get some pastries for J.D. to try. :o) By the way, Luci, that bakery we went to last time has egg custards on the weekends. :p
Shortly after I got back from the excursion with Jodie, I left to go over to my parents' for dinner. We ended up going to Tasty China. It surely was tasty. Hee hee. Then we went back to my parents' to hang out and such. Didn't get home until about 12:30am. Greg and Paul got back soon after me (they were in Austin for the football game).
Sunday morning Greg and I went to church and took the premarital test thing that's a part of our class. Got done really early, so we got to hop in on the service. We had a guest speaker, Dr. Tim Kimmel. The guy was hilarious. :p Then in closing, this guy Jeff Berry was there, and he performed this song on the piano. He was awesome. :o)
After church, Greg and I met up with Chris & Beta at Steak Kountry for lunch. It was a fun time. We need to do that more often. :o) Hee hee. We didn't take the motorcycle out there though this week 'cuz we thought that Paul was coming along, but he didn't. It was too late to change clothes and stuff to take the bike, so we drove instead. :p
Sunday night we had our playoff game against the Hornets (the 1st place team). We managed to hold on for most of the game. It was 1-0 Hornets counting down to the final seconds of the game. Then Luci got a breakaway pass and scored with 4.7 seconds left on the clock. It was awesome. She popped up the puck and it flew over the goalie's head, dropped right behind the goalie, and into the net. Ha ha. Talk about timely. :p That bought us a 5-minute 4-on-4 run-time sudden death overtime. Nobody scored during OT, and it went to a shootout, which the Hornets won eventually. It was fun, and we had ice cream afterwards. Hee hee.
Tonight I'm going over to Jodie's place for dinner and TV watching. Then tomorrow night Greg and I are going out with my high school friends to celebrate Ruth's hubby Kent getting back from Iraq safely. :o) Wheee! Hopefully this week will go by quickly...I'm off on Friday and next Monday. Can't wait. :o)
Posted by alpha at 07:29 AM | Family , Friends , Hockey | Comments (0)
September 22, 2004
*Stretch*
Not a whole lot to report. We chilled at home this past weekend. Greg had to play an encore performance (same program as the Saturday before) at Brookhaven College Saturday night, so I went to that. Sunday we went to our class, then off to Steak Kountry again for lunch. That was fun. The restaurant is filled with the after-church crowd on Sundays. It's very entertaining. :p We came home, watched football, and then I was off to my hockey game. We played pretty well this week against the Mantis...it came out to a 0-0 tie after OT. Had a few shots but none of them went in the net. Blah.
Oh! It was Katie's birthday on Sunday and her Mom came into town to visit. I finally got to meet her. They're so alike. Ha ha.
Monday night we had Katie over for burgers and a football game. :o) Hee hee. It's been awhile since she has come over (been 3 weeks since she started dating Tony). It was fun. We had Dreyer's Longhorns Football ice cream. Yummy goodness!
Yesterday was a rest day for me. Traffic was pretty light in comparison to last week's. Came home, had dinner, and watched TV. Nothing too exciting.
Hopefully today's gonna go by quickly too (my workdays have been flying by this week). Tonight I have hockey practice at 8pm. Wheeee. :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:06 AM | Hockey | Comments (0)
September 17, 2004
Weird Day
It was a weird day yesterday. Traffic was horrendous, and I was tired...tired from driving to/from work, having to sit in traffic, etc. When I was almost home (driving on my alley), my stupid neighbor had parked his truck in the way to unload his lawn equipment (I guess he owns a lawn business)...so I had to turn around in one of the driveways (pissed at this point). When I pulled back out, not knowing that there was a cylindrical cable box(or whatever it was) there, my car ran into and subsequently ran over it. Yeah. Pleasant. There wasn't much damage to my car except a couple of really minor scratches, but the box was pretty much destroyed. Went over to the guy's house whose lawn on which the box was sitting to make sure that nothing was out (phone, cable, etc.)...the guy (Broderick) was actually really nice. He didn't think those boxes were actually in use. Well let's hope he's right. Funny thing was he asked about my car (not the box). Heh heh. We'll see what happens with that.
*Sigh*
Other than that, nothing much went on. Watched "Joey"...and found out that Shane West is gonna be a regular on ER this season (!!!!), playing the role of an intern. :o) Hee hee. Yey.
TGIF!!!
Posted by alpha at 07:25 AM | Misc | Comments (0)
September 16, 2004
Thursday
Yesterday was a day from hell at work. I won't go into details, 'cuz it'd just make me mad all over again. But I'm lucky to have a friend in Matt, who I can email with off-network and get a sanity check. :o) Anyways...
Nothing else really happened yesterday. Went to work, came home, fed cats, watched TV. Worked on my homework for the seminar. Yep. Exciting, I know. But it was a much needed brain-dump time.
Let's see...Saturday I have a bridal shower to go to for Beta. :o) Then I think Saturday night Greg has an encore concert to play at Brookhaven College. I'm not sure if I'm gonna go to that one, since I've already gone last week. We'll see. Will probably move some things around to get ready for moving Greg's furniture in. Yep. Fun fun. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 12:25 PM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)
September 14, 2004
Vacation has come to an end...
Man I just remembered that I have to go to work tomorrow. Bleh. This is gonna be a marathon update...you've been warned! :o)
My time off has been nice. Friday I had lunch with Luci at First Chinese BBQ and it was awesome. :o) We walked over to the Chinese bakery afterwards and got some pastries, etc. It was a good time. Did some cleaning when I got home (note that this will be a common theme during my vacation). Went to Central Market with Greg when he got home from work, and bought some food to make for dinner. Tastiness.
Saturday morning Greg left early to go to symphony rehearsal. I slept in a little bit, then vacuumed in preparation for Jodie's arrival. Jodie and I went over to Ft. Worth, to the Bass Performance Hall, to see "Stomp" with my coworkers. :o) It was a great time. We went to a burger joint for lunch beforehand and got to chat a bit. Good times as always. The Bass Performance Hall is AWESOME inside...it's designed like an opera house, with boxes and stuff. It was very neat. "Stomp" was great (nothing like making music out of brooms and barrels and stuff). After the performance, we skidaddled and went to Milwaukee Joe's for ice cream. It was delicious! :o) They really need to open a store in Plano or something...somewhere closer. :o) Mmmmm!
We then all went to Greg's symphony concert Saturday night. That was fun. I brought my camera 'cuz I wanted to get a pic of the orchestra members all dressed up. They had a photographer there to take a pic for their program's centerfold. He had all this awesome sophisticated (ie. EXPENSIVE) equipment set up. So Jodie and I went and sat behind him. He striked up a conversation with me, and I showed him my camera. I realized how little I knew about cameras from talking to the guy. Ha ha. But he let me borrow the trigger of the 2,000 watts worth of studio lighting (ie. VERY BRIGHT FLASH) to take a couple of pictures. That thing was freakin' ridiculously bright. It was fun though. Hee hee. The music was good, and we were entertained by this really old lady who didn't realize how loud she talked (which, included some racial comments about the saxophone soloist)...we got a big kick out of it. Hee hee.
Sunday we had our first marriage preparation class. It went pretty well. We have homework to do for the next class (which reminds me...). Anyway, then my sister and I had a "marriage session" with my parents. Apparently, whatever went wrong with my parents earlier on in the week are now all fine and dandy. Oh well. Our session went well...and when my Dad realized that Greg and I are taking a class at church, he was like...oh, well then I don't need to speak as much to you about this. Ha ha. :p Then they got all excited because we're taking a class at church...one thing led to another, we were all discussing our wedding! Ha ha. It was pretty funny. My parents were REALLY excited...I had to calm them down and tell them that it's not official yet (no ring on my finger) and we won't be making any solid plans until that happens. But I wanted to give them a heads up so they wouldn't be surprised when Greg comes a-knockin' to ask for permission. Plus, I wanted to find out what their reaction would be. So it all went well, thank goodness.
Since the session with my parents went so well (and very long), I had to rush home to pack up for hockey. We lost to Relentless 0-2. I got to skate very fast during 1 of my shifts...that was fun. I hadn't done that in awhile. Hee hee. :p I had some shots on goal, but nothing went through the goalie, unfortunately.
Monday...I don't really remember what I did. I was on the computer for a good bit, trying to get someone to get my server back up. And once it did, I started transferring stuff over to Adam's server. :p I think I spent quite a bit of time doing that. Then went to the store and bought some food. Made queso for a snack and it was ready right when Greg was arriving home from work. He was happy to see food for him when he got home. :o) Hee hee. He made some sausages for dinner, and it was great. I watched the season premieres of "7th Heaven" and "Everwood." Yep. Cleaned a bit. That was about it. :o)
Today I got up reasonably early, got on the computer for a little bit, cleaned a little bit, and went off to lunch at Texadelphia with Chris, Adam, and Katrina. It was good to have lunch with the gang again. I think that's what I miss the most at my new job...I miss hanging out with my friends. :o/ After lunch, I came home and cleaned some more. Got a lot of boxes out of the way. Just a few more piles of papers left before we can move the couch into the office, and Greg's couch from storage into the living room. At least I've accomplished something during my time off though. :o) Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 09:09 PM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Photography , Work | Comments (0)
September 09, 2004
Bored
Tick......tock......tick......tock......
Clock's not ticking fast enough. Argh. This afternoon has been going by soooo slowly. The morning went by rather quickly, but the past 2 hours have been just dragging. Ugh.
I got the tix for "Stomp" this weekend. Wheeee! :o)
Not much else is going on. Luci gave me info on the jeweler they like, and I passed on the info to Greg. A few emails later, he said we could go look after he gets his next commission check. We'll see if that happens. :p
In other news, my Dad randomly emailed me and asked me to find a time where my sister and I can have a "meeting" with him about marriage and stuff. It was really random and a little weird. I guess it wouldn't have been odd had the crap didn't happen between my Dad and my Mom earlier this week (they were pissed at each other for some weird reasons). Oh well. Hmph.
Posted by alpha at 02:25 PM | Wedding , Work | Comments (0)
September 08, 2004
Me's a updatin' me's a journal
This week has been going by relatively slowly at work. Kinda weird 'cuz it's a really short week for me. But somehow 2 days of work felt more like 4. Tomorrow's the last day this week that I'll be working...then I won't be back until next Wednesday. Yey!!! :o) Not going anywhere special...in fact, I'll prob spend most of it cleaning up the house to make room for Greg's furniture that has been sitting in storage for a year. Hee hee.
Labor Day weekend was good. I worked Saturday morning while Greg went to orchestra rehearsal. Then we left for Austin at about 11:30am. Went to Stubb's BBQ for lunch. It was REALLY tasty. We left the car parked over there and walked over to the football stadium for the game. It was a good 15 or so blocks. :p Walked off the BBQ that we just had. Ha ha. Anyway, the game was fun. Texas won 65-0 vs. UNT.
After the game, we drove down to the lakehouse. Diane & John were up when we got there. But we all turned in soon after 'cuz we were quite tired. Paul had a migraine Sunday morning so he didn't go jet skiing with Greg & John. I slept in and then helped Diane fix lunch for everybody. John's parents and brother came over in the early afternoon. Dr. & Mrs. Nau (John's parents) are so cool. Ha ha. Mrs. Nau is always so nice. :o) Marshall & Laura came over with Dr. & Mrs. Nau 'cuz I think they went shopping together or something beforehand. Anyway, Greg, Marshall, Laura, and Diane went jet skiing...John & Dr. Nau went down to sit by the lake, and Paul and I stuck around the house and talked with Mrs. Nau for awhile until John's brother Neil came over with Erin & her boyfriend Glenn. Then Paul and I went down to the cove and went swimming. Greg drove up in the jet ski just as we got there, and we skipped rocks on the lake for awhile. That was fun. The water was nice. :o)
Sunday night we grilled burgers and sausages for dinner. Greg did most of the work and it was delicious. I think John got jealous and was challenging Greg to a BBQ cookout (I think Greg would kick John's butt...and everyone agrees). Ha ha. Fun times. We watched "Starsky and Hutch" after dinner. Hee hee. Funny movie.
We left Monday morning to come home. As we were leaving, my sister called and asked if I wanted to come shopping at San Marcos with her and my parents. They're such goofballs...they left Dallas at like 6:30 in the morning to come down to go shopping. I kindly passed (I knew they wouldn't come back until late and I have to be at work early the next morning). :p The drive back was somewhat uneventful. It did rain quite a bit though, which made the temperature relatively cool. So it was pretty pleasant. We grilled pork chops for dinner. Paul stayed over again so Greg could bring him to work Tuesday morning. Yep yep. That was how my weekend went. Prob more details than you guys care to know, but oh well. :o)
Anyway, this weekend is fun-filled (laced with cleaning chores). Saturday I'll be going to see "Stomp" with Jodie at the Bass Performance Hall in Ft. Worth. It's my company's outing. :o) We're meeting at 11:30 and heading over there, run around downtown to find something eat, and then show's at 2. After the show, my company had planned a reception thing across the street from the Bass. Depending on how long the show is, we may or may not be able to stay very long at the reception. Greg has his orchestra concert Saturday night at 7 or 7:30...in Mesquite...which is WAY on the other side of town from Ft. Worth. So we'll see how it works out.
Sunday is our first premarital class thing at church. Hopefully it'll be cool. :p Fun stuff. Heh heh.
1 more day left of work this week...
Posted by alpha at 09:36 PM | Family , Friends , Fun Stuff , Work | Comments (0)
September 03, 2004
In a protesting mood...
Someone annoyed my boss this morning (before she even got to work), and she went on a tirade checking every link on a site, so I got like 20 emails from her for things that need to be changed. But right now I feel like protesting and I'll just sit here listening to my 311 CD and updating my journal. :o)
Anyway, this week has flown by, thank goodness. It has been relatively quiet at work (obviously except for today). Looking forward to a 3-day weekend even though I have to work tonight. It should be a nice and short week for me next week. Monday off, and then I'm off Thursday afternoon, Friday, and the next Monday & Tuesday. Wheeee! Hopefully I'll get some much-needed cleaning/organizing done while I'm home.
Paul stayed over last night. His car got stolen from his apartment complex last Friday night, and the Dallas Police found it on Tuesday. It was completely trashed. So a friend of his dropped him off after work last night, we watched football and had a good time, and Greg took him to work this morning. Tomorrow late morning we'll be heading down to Austin for the first UT football game...so it all works out just fine. We'll be heading on down to the lakehouse after the game for the rest of the weekend. Should be great fun.
Last night my sister came over with her dog Mak. She wanted to show me her portfolio that has her drawings in it. It was pretty neat. She can really draw. I was impressed. :o) We'd make a good team 'cuz I can program and she can draw. Ha ha. She has an interview with a lady who owns a graphics design company on Saturday. Hopefully something comes out of that.
Other than that, I don't think a whole lot is going on really. My bruise has gotten MUCH nastier. It's mostly purple now. Really, it's gross. I'm sure I'll get comments on that at the lake this weekend. Ugh.
Great...now my Director has joined in the madness in sending emails about things that need to be fixed. Argh. Guess I better go. Fun stuff. Maybe these would make the day go by quickly. Y'all have a great and safe Labor Day weekend! :o)
Posted by alpha at 09:53 AM | Family , Hockey , Work | Comments (0)
August 30, 2004
Benny & Jerry's Debut on Catster!
*Drum Roll*
Benny and Jerry are now on Catster! :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:35 PM | Kitties | Comments (0)
Black & Blue Goodness
Weekends go by way too fast nowadays. Why can't the work week go by fast like that too? Actually, maybe it does. It's already the end of August. What happened to my summer?
Got a call from Jodie Friday afternoon with some good news. :o) Hee hee. I'll let her tell you all about it. And no, it's not that Jodie and J.D. are engaged or anything juicy like that. :p
Friday night I went out to dinner with Ruth (and her daughter Lily), Bena, and Mirjam. Friends from high school. :o) Ruth is pregnant with her 2nd girl and is due at the beginning of October. We're gonna throw her a baby shower. Hee hee. Anyways, we had a good time hanging out, and got to check out Bena & Josy's new crib (they just got married in May). It's very nice. They're living in Bena's parents' old house...they completely remodeled it and it looks fantastic. There's hope yet for my little pink-carpeted house.
Saturday we were supposed to go move Greg's stuff from storage to my house, but it was rainy and we really needed some time to make room for all of it. So I ended up going over to my parents' early to have lunch with them. It was mightily tasty. Then I helped them fix up my Dad's computer so it's getting emails from the proper email addresses for the company. :p Had a great time. We met up with Greg, my sister, Matt & his bro for dinner at the buffet place. Ate too much as usual, but it was fun hanging out with my parents. Hee hee.
Oh, by the way, an update on the 1st online sale we made on our website. It turns out that my Dad tried to process the lady's credit card on Friday and it didn't go through 'cuz the security code was wrong. So my Mom tried to call several times Friday to find out what it was supposed to be. She finally got a hold of the lady Saturday morning...the lady was all apologetic, thinking that it was completely her fault (even though we didn't get her order email until Thursday night) that the order was being processed late. Ha ha. It was pretty funny. Anyway, she gave us the correct security code and it went through just fine. My Mom shipped out the package Saturday morning...so it's now official that WE MADE OUR 1ST INTERNET SALE ON OUR WEBSITE!!! :o)
And the reason why my Dad didn't get the order email in the first place was that he didn't have Outlook checking the right accounts. Just what I had suspected. It's all good and fixed now. Ha ha.
Sunday I spent most of it sleeping (other than when we were at church). I was really exhausted for some reason. Greg cleaned out the garage a bit and cleaned out some empty boxes. Sunday night we had our hockey game against the Hornets, which was frustrating at best. I also now have a huge bruise (so huge that my left thigh now looks deformed) from stopping a slapshot with my thigh. It hurts to walk. :o/ Maybe I'll take a pic of it later for your enjoyment.
This whole week at work is going to be just me...again. Bettye is off for yet another week. I can't wait 'til I can take some of my vacation days. This whole you're-the-only-person-here thing is getting annoying. I mean, really, do they really expect me to work 7:15 - 5:30 with no lunch break? I'm hoping that there aren't any late stuff that comes out this week so I can take off at 4:30. Lame, I tell ya, lame.
Posted by alpha at 09:02 AM | Family , Friends , Hockey , Memories , Work | Comments (0)
August 26, 2004
Holy bejesus!
I was cruising around online tonight, and decided to check up on my Dad's company website. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how many people have been by since the last time I checked (probably about a month ago). I saw this "Pending Order" in the admin control panel, and thought...hmmmmm...interesting. At first I really thought that it was my Dad using it to keep inventory for his offline sales (that's what he's been doing), but upon closer inspection, it was a REAL person with a REAL credit card number with a REAL out-of-state address! So I called my Dad (who obviously didn't know about it...otherwise I would have heard something) and told him. Then I found out that the order was placed on 8/16/04, with a FedEx 3-Day shipping request. I'm still not sure why my Dad isn't getting the order confirmation email. Very strange. My guess is that he didn't include that email address when he's checking his emails. But he's gonna call that person and make sure that they still want the stuff (hopefully so), and perhaps waive the shipping charge for them.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
My first e-commerce success!!!!! :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:29 PM | Family , Memories | Comments (0)
August 24, 2004
Everything's a Saga
So, the guy from Journey's called me and left me a message today. They got a pair of the shoes to replace my defective pair. I went up there to pick them up, and it turns out that both of the shoes had the same problem (the hole in the insole). The manager there said that he thought that's how they held the insole to the shoe (???). Anyway, since this was the 3rd defective pair that I got, I went ahead and got something else.
These ones are pretty darn cool, I must say. Not entirely the classic look I was after, but it has an element of trendy in it. :p I got the darker (bark grizzly) color.
Posted by alpha at 07:47 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (0)
7:45
I still think that 6:40 is entirely too early to have to be leaving for work...
Friday night we went to Adam's bday dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. It was a great time! We had Adam, Amy, Katrina, Darcy, Curtis, Peter, Zoe (Peter's daughter...so cute), Chris, Beta, Greg, and me. We hadn't gone out to dinner with such a big group of people in awhile, and it was so fun. We didn't stay to go to Dave & Buster's though 'cuz Greg had rehearsal Saturday morning.
Saturday morning I went to rehearsal with Greg to take some pics of the orchestra for the website. It was pretty fun, but I got done with everything (including loading the pics onto the laptop) with 45 minutes left of rehearsal, so the last part was a little boring. Played solitaire to kill some time. Pics turned out pretty well in spite of not being able to use a flash (hence disrupting the rehearsal tremendously).
Sunday we went to Oshman's and bought some new tennis shoes. Took advantage of their "buy 1 pair, get 50% off 2nd pair" deal. I bought a pair of Saucony...never had any of their shoes, but they sure felt nice. Plus they were cheaper than the others (not to mention that they didn't have a pair of the New Balance ones that I liked in my size). Wheeee!
We then went over to the mall to return/exchange my Dr. Martens. I had problems with my 1st pair that I had bought 3 weeks ago...where there was a hole punched in the insole of the right shoe. So I returned it and they had to direct ship another pair to me (they didn't have any in stock in my size). The 2nd pair had the same problem, but in the left shoe...and there was glue all over the inside of the right shoe. So I brought it back again and talked to the manager, who actually noticed that the 2 shoes weren't even in the same size. He was quite irked at the store that had shipped the shoes to me, and said that he would follow up on it with their home office and give me a call on Monday.
Sunday night we played a game against the Mantis...lost 0-2. We had Vicki in net for us...it's good to have her back. Marilee (our regular goalie) skated out as a D and she was good. :p
No call from the manager at Journey's on Monday. :o( I went to get Greg's car fixed (the door seal on the driver's side door was loose). The guys at Volvo of Richardson were great. I barely had a chance to get out of my car before they approached me to ask about the problem. Greg had called ahead to let them know that I was coming, and they were standing outside in the sun waiting for me. Now that's customer service. :p It was all fixed about a half hour later (they just had to glue it back on). Went grocery shopping and bought food for dinner, etc. Put gas in my car. Watched some TV...funny how time just flies when I'm not at work. :o)
For dinner we made sirloin steak on the grill, and had potatoes and green beans. It was mighty tasty goodness. :o) Fun stuff.
Posted by alpha at 07:42 AM | Family , Friends , Hockey | Comments (0)
August 20, 2004
TGIF!
This week has surely been long.
We went to the driving range Wednesday night. I wasn't hitting the ball really well, but I was physically and mentally very tired. That was probably why. We were planning on playing golf with some people from my office last night, but it got rained out. So we went and dropped off Greg's motorcycle to get a new front tire put on it. And then my Dad called and said that the wireless keyboard & mouse that I had ordered for him from Amazon (which amazingly, arrived 1 day after I placed the order) didn't have an USB adapter so he couldn't hook it up. So I went to Circuit City and found him the adapter, went over to help him set it up, etc. He's all happy now. Fun stuff. :p
I'm gonna go take pics at Greg's orchestra rehearsal Saturday morning, so I'd have something to use for the website. I decided that I'm going to have to buy an external flash for my camera so the pics won't be so underexposed. So I went ahead and bought the Sigma EF-500 DG Super...same one that I've been looking at for months, and the same one as Chris'. Waiting on the confirmation to come through email. I should have it just in time for the concert on 9/11.
Oh, tonight we're going to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with Chris & Adam & Company for Adam's birthday (it was yesterday). Mmmmmm tastiness.
*Yawn* Is it time to go home yet?
Posted by alpha at 12:57 PM | Family , Friends , Golf , Photography | Comments (0)
August 18, 2004
Salmon and Twix Ice Cream
This week has been going by rather slowly. :o/ I can't believe it's only Wednesday. It feels like it ought to be at least a Thursday. Ah well.
Not much is really going on. We had Luci over for dinner last night. It was mega-tastiness. I went and bought some fresh(er) salmon, some green beans, and some dinner rolls. Luci brought over some red wine and ice cream. Mmmmmm. Good food and good times were had. Lemme tell ya, Greg's getting pretty good with the smoker. We've had grilled food the past couple of nights, and both were exceptionally tasty.
La la...I can't wait 'til this week's over. My counterpart in Chicago is out on vacation the rest of the week, so it's one of those "come in on time and stay late" kinda situation for me. Ugh. Hopefully it won't be too terribly busy and I can get outta here having only to stay an extra 15 minutes or something. It'll still suck though having to sit here all day long...but anyways...
Oh! I now have Photoshop and Illustrator CS installed on my computer at work! I even got our PC guy to leave me with the books that come with the software. I s'pose that's what I can do when I get bored. I've always wanted to learn Photoshop properly... :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:24 AM | Friends , Work | Comments (0)
August 16, 2004
Me no likes Mondays
Ugh...the weekend went by soooo fast, even though I really didn't do anything. Greg left to go down to San Antonio Friday night at around 7. I ate dinner and lounged around...and played on the laptop (a hand-me-down from my Dad). :p Watched "Monsters, Inc." Hee hee. Saw Nemo make a cameo appearance in it. That was pretty cool.
Saturday morning I had to get up at 5:45am to do the volume stuff for work. :o( :o( It was hella early 'cuz they were running a test (which would take down the systems) at 8. I finished at 7:30ish and was exhausted. Hung out on my bed and read some articles on XHTML and XML, watched the PGA Championship on TV, and fixed the Mesquite Symphony page that I've been working on so it'll display properly in IE and FireFox. Yep. That was about it. Took a nap. Went to my parents' for dinner. Played with my Dad's new laptop...and fixed it up so it could connect to his network at home. Yep yep. It was a late night for me.
Went to church Sunday morning. Came home, watched the PGA Championship some more, and played on the laptop a little. Customized the laptop to my liking, and deleted (and backed up) a bunch of my Dad's files. :o) Yey. Greg got home at around 6ish. I left for the hockey game at 6:45. We were pretty short on people this week, but we played okay. It was a 0-0 tie, and the Relentless wanted to play overtime. Lost during overtime. Oh well. Got a puck in the left toe and left thigh...I'm nicely banged up. :o/
Posted by alpha at 11:16 AM | Family , Hockey | Comments (0)
August 13, 2004
Did you know...
...that Nemo made an appearance in Monster's Inc.???
Posted by alpha at 08:40 PM | Fun Stuff | Comments (0)
Things may get interesting...!
This doesn't require much explanation. Read this real quick...
No, nothing to announce really. Just getting ready for when it does come around. :p Hee hee hee.
Anyway, it'll be a quiet weekend with Greg gone (he's going to the lake). I have to work early early (like at 6) in the morning tomorrow so I can't go. Blah. Oh well. I think I'll get some stuff done. I'm going to be working on the prototype for the new Mesquite Symphony Orchestra website. It's moving along nicely. Need to go to rehearsal with him next weekend to take some pictures. :o) Fun stuff, I tell ya. Hopefully I'll get some side jobs from it. :o)
*Yawn*
Happy Friday the 13th! :o)
Posted by alpha at 09:46 AM | Family , Wedding | Comments (0)
Kinko's
Well, I got an email a couple of days ago from a recruiter from FedEx Kinko's. I had submitted my resume for a Web Developer job there last week 'cuz I was frustrated with my current job. Anyway, I didn't really expect to hear from them since it was a Monster.com job posting. :p
He emailed and called several times on Wednesday. When he finally left a voice mail, he said that he wanted to schedule an interview with me early next week. So I wrote him back (since I can't really call him during business hours when I'm at work), and asked him some questions about the job and the company. Here's what he said:
- the position reports to a Sr. Project Manager
- client is the internal sales team, which gets the projects from external customers
- the job description has a little bit of everything (project planning, design & layout, programming in HTML, JavaScript, and PHP)
- Kinko's is closing their CA office (after they were bought by FedEx), thus moving 300+ jobs to the Dallas office (over by the Galleria)
I tried calling the recruiter back last night, but he wasn't there...so I left a message. Bleh. I'm still not quite sure whether I want to take the interview. From my standpoint, here's what I see:
Pros:
- the Galleria is a whole lot closer than Las Colinas...I'll get to have lunch with the boys and Katrina
- potential of not having to work weird hours and/or weekends
- I'll get to be more involved with the whole project...instead of just updating content
Cons:
- unsure of salary range...it's a bit dicey since it said "4-yr degree preferred but not required"...hard to beat $50k/3-weeks vacation (and I'm likely to get a bonus at the end of the year)
- I like my job just fine...only some minor inconveniences and annoyances every once in awhile
- leaving a job after 5 months doesn't look good on the resume
- my leaving would leave the group in a bind, and I have no real good reason for it
- everybody likes me here...and I see upward potential eventually
So basically, I think my conclusion is that Kinko's has to do some serious convincing for me to go work for them. There's not enough reason (as of this point) for me to jeopardize what I have here and take the gamble with them. I'll keep you guys posted.
Posted by alpha at 09:22 AM | Work | Comments (0)
August 11, 2004
*Yawn*
7:15 is way too freakin' early to have to be at work...
Yesterday I was told that I have to start coming in at 7:15 'cuz this email that needs to go out at 7:30. Some people just couldn't wait the 15 minutes for me to come in at 7:30 (hence allowing me to carpool with Greg instead of having to drive myself). Ugh. Most annoying. So now we have to drive separately, and I have to leave between 6:30 and 6:40ish to get here. The only nice thing about this is that I'd actually get to leave when I'm supposed to (as opposed to coming in at 7:30 and then having to wait until Greg gets off work at 5 to come pick me up). But it was nice to have his company on the way to/from work. :o/ Hopefully this arrangement is just temporary.
Anyway, so I get in, checked all the numbers, and went to moderate the email to be sent...the network asked me to change my password. Okay, so I changed it to something I had never used before. *Boom* "Your login password cannot be changed." Process was repeated 5 more times. Luckily, our network security guy gets in early, so I went over to have him check out what the problem was. Apparently he had just gotten off the phone with one of the VPs who's having the exact same problem. No matter what we typed in as the password, it wouldn't take it. It took a good 20 minutes for us to figure out how to get around the system. It turns out that while it gave me the error saying that it didn't change the password, the password was in fact changed (WTF???). In the meantime, I had to ask the guy in Chicago to moderate the email for me 'cuz I can't log in to the computer. Fun. What a way to start the day...
So the lesson is...don't use NVIdentity to sync passwords on your network. It doesn't work as intended and causes huge problems. Hopefully we'll get rid of it soon.
Oh, last night I went to a New Owners Meeting at the Toyota dealership. It was pretty nice...we got Jason's Deli for dinner and got to take a tour of the shop and stuff. I had dropped off my car yesterday morning to have the little ding on my rear bumper fixed (we did it when we were unloading the smoker grill). Yep. It cost $50 to fix...and this is with the Customer Relations lady pulling a favor with the touch-up guy (he quoted $90). All car things are so expensive. Bleh.
Tonight we're dropping off Greg's car at the Volvo dealership so they could clean it up and stuff (they never got to when we got the car last week). Yep. I think that's all I've got planned. Hopefully it'll be a nice quiet day at work today.
Posted by alpha at 08:09 AM | Family , Work | Comments (0)
August 09, 2004
Is it Monday again already?
I'm really tired even though it was a pretty relaxing weekend. I ended up having to bring back the shoes that I had bought, 'cuz there was a hole (like a hole punch not punching through) in the insole of the right shoe. The mall was a zoo on Sunday afternoon. It was ridiculous. I could barely walk in and out of Journey's. Anyway, they didn't have another pair for my size, and couldn't call around to see if other stores had a pair (it ties up the phone line for credit card processing and stuff). So they ended up special ordering a pair for me, and it'll be sent to my house. :o) How 'bout that for customer service?
Sunday we went to church, and then I came home and sat around. My hockey game was at 8:45pm so it was kinda late. We lost 0-2 to the Hornets. Bleh. Then I went outside, and the Hornets were out in the parking lot hanging out. I stuck around a little bit to talk to them. Jennifer (their sub goalie) said that she enjoyed subbing for us much better than for the Hornets. Ha ha ha. :p Anyway, talked to Amber for awhile to do some catch up. Got talked into going to Austin to try out for the travel team over the weekend of August 21-22. Yep.
When I got home, I opened the garage door, and Greg came out and said to hang on a minute. He wanted to get my hockey bag and stuff out of my car before I park the car in the garage (it gets narrow in there and he didn't want to lift it over his head). :o) How sweet. Hee hee. Awwwwww...
Posted by alpha at 10:12 AM | Family , Hockey , Misc | Comments (0)
August 07, 2004
More new stuff
This weekend is the Tax Free Weekend for Texas. It's mostly supposed to benefit parents with kids to shop for back-to-school stuff, but it benefits the rest of us cheapies who would brave the crowd to save a mere $8.25 per $100 spent. :p I guess it adds up if you end up buying a lot of clothes.
Today I just kinda chilled at home...hung out with kitties, worked on the member's login portion of the Mesquite Symphony website. I'm trying to get the gig to redo the entire site. It's a volunteer thing, but I'll get some public exposure for it (maybe some contract jobs in the future). Anywho, I did that for most of the day. Greg came home from rehearsal and washed his car, etc. We went out to Razzoo's for dinner (I hadn't been there in the longest time and had a craving for some etouffee). :o) We got a 2-person Gator Punch. It was tastiness (it's really just trash can punch). Amazing how a little bit of alcohol can do to you when you don't drink regularly. Ha ha. We had a jolly good time.
After dinner, we went to the mall for a quick after-crowd shopping. We had an hour to look for all the things that we needed to find there. I bought myself a pair of Dr. Martens for work. My previous pair of brown shoes have taken quite a beating, and to be honest, is kind of an embarrassment to wear to work. :p It was most definitely time to buy a new pair. :o)
Posted by alpha at 09:52 PM | Family , Misc | Comments (0)
August 06, 2004
Car #2
Last night Greg finally bought a car. :p At first we were planning on looking at some Volvo S-40's, but once he sat in it, we figured that the car was too small for him (he was almost hitting his head on the ceiling). So we walked over to look at some S-60's. There was this 2001 one that had high-ish mileage (like 65k), that they were willing to sell for $17k. We drove it around and liked it a lot. It has a sunroof and tinted window and everything. Pretty nifty. We're bringing it back on Saturday so they can detail and clean everything, but we took it out on a spin last night after he got done with his paperwork, etc. and had pizza at the place in downtown Plano (Poppy's, I think it's called). Fun stuff!
Posted by alpha at 08:31 AM | Family , Memories | Comments (0)
August 04, 2004
And the winners are...
Okay, I'll attempt to post an update before my 2pm meeting, before which I have to make some popcorn in the microwave...
Last week was crazy busy at work. It was completely insane. I was glad to go on vacation for the weekend. Friday afternoon, I met Greg at his office, so his coworker Brenda can take us to the airport (that way we could leave Greg's car there instead of having to pay for parking). We found Greg's Dad without much problems inside the airport. Had some McDonald's for dinner, and then on to Detroit we went. We got in at about 10pm (half an hour early). Uncle Don came to pick us up (we stayed with him and Aunt Mac). We visited for awhile before going to bed at around 12:30am. :o)
Saturday we slept in a little bit. Had an elaborate breakfast that involved French toasts (Aunt Mac likes to entertain guests). Uncle Don, Greg's Dad, Greg, and I went to the driving range for a little bit to warm up for the tournament in the afternoon. I was hitting pretty well, and felt ready for the tournament. We went back to the house to pick up Aunt Mac and headed to Stony Creek Golf Course to meet up with everybody else. There were about 50 of us there for the tournament. Greg and I were paired up with Greg's cousin Mike and Mike's girlfriend Robin. I had sooooooooooooo much fun. We played a scramble (where you pick the best ball out of your group for every shot). Our group was just on a roll...I was hitting my driver *really* well that day, so they used a majority of my drives. I missed the fairway by 8 ft to win the longest drive competition. :p It was awesome. We usually got to the green in 2 shots...had a couple of eagle putts that we missed, and ended up with a -3. We tied with another group of Greg's cousins, but since they won last year, we were named the winners for this year's tournament. We get our names put on the tournament plaque. Hee hee hee. After the tournament, we went to Greg's cousin Marshall's house for a huge dinner party. I hung out with his aunts and uncles, etc. Great times.
Sunday morning we got up early to go play with Greg's cousin Mark's golf league at Oxford Hills Country Club. It was a pretty difficult and long course with lots of blind shots. I did pretty well, considering the difficulty of the course. I had a personal best of 109. I can't wait to find out how I do at some local courses that I've played at before.
Sunday night we had a BBQ. Uncle Don cooked pork tenderloins on his charcoal grill. It was mighty tastiness. Of course, that wasn't the only thing on the menu that night...the meal included salad, fruit salad, bread, and broccoli. Uncle Don & Aunt Mac's son Scott and his family stayed over for dinner too. Scott's son Hugo is just hilarious. So cute. He was all bragging about getting to shake hands with Gordie Howe (hockey great, if you don't know) Saturday morning at breakfast. Ha ha.
Monday morning we woke up early and packed up to go to the airport. Uncle Don & Aunt Mac were leaving to go on a family trip to St. Louis. So Lynn (guess...Greg's cousin) came over and took us to the airport. It was fun hanging out with her. :o) I didn't want to come home.
We didn't do much Monday afternoon when we got home. Went out to look at a couple of cars, but that was about it. I took Tuesday off from work to just chill at home and do various things. It was nice to hang with the kitties. :o) Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 01:36 PM | Family , Golf , Memories | Comments (0)
July 22, 2004
Final Episode of the 4Runner Saga
I brought my car back in to the dealership on Wednesday for the guy to fix the window tint (had bubbles and various weird scrapes on it), the rubber seal at the bottom of the window, the metal frame above the window, and the rear bumper (it needed some touching up after the last paint job). So I got to the dealership at 7am, was showing the guy all the stuff that needed fixing...when he suggested to me that they bring my car down to Pro Tint down the street for the window tinting. I thought...what the heck...at least they have the proper environment to do the tinting. I left my car with him, picked up the rental car (which they paid for...was a 2004 Camry that still had temporary tags on it), and went on my way. Took me forever to get to work. Stopped at just about every single light on Belt Line, and ended up being horribly late. *Sigh*
After work, we went to pick up my car. I think they finally fixed everything right this time! Hallelujah! Geez. I don't think I'll need to go back there until I need to get my oil changed (I get free oil changes there for the life of the factory warranty...3 yrs or 36k miles) and my tires rotated. Yep. Thank goodness. I was getting really tired of bringing it back every week or so. Blah. Anyways, we went to Home Depot & Lowe's afterwards to try to find a burner for Greg's grill. We didn't find what he was looking for, but we did find a cool looking grill there. We stood there trying to decide whether to buy it, and he finally decided to sleep on it. Today during lunch, he went to BBQ Galore to see if he could find that replacement burner, and ended up seeing this smoker that he really wanted. We made plans to go to the store in Plano to pick the smoker up tonight (it wouldn't have fitted in his Camry)...and thus began another saga...
We bought the smoker, brought it home, started the tedious assembly process, and were almost finished when we noticed that the hole for one of the screws that holds the cooking grate wasn't drilled through. In fact, it wasn't drilled at all. It looked like when you try to punch a hole in a piece of paper, and the cutter in the hole punch wasn't sharp enough to punch the hole. So here we were, almost done with the grill (which now no longer fits in my car), with a grill that wouldn't work ('cuz the grate needed that screw to sit on top of). It was pretty annoying. I have a feeling that we're going to end up having to disassemble at least most of it to get it exchanged. It's just stupid how things can't be done right the first time (see 4Runner saga). Ugh. I guess we'll spend the weekend dealing with this new annoyance.
Work has picked up again. Lots of updates. Craziness. I gotta work Saturday morning. Blah. Then next Friday we fly to Detroit for the golf tournament. I'm really looking forward to that. It'll be fun. We're flying back on 8/2, and I went ahead and took 8/3 off as well (it's always good to have recovery time). Can't wait. :o)
Speaking of Detroit, Greg's Uncle Don (Greg's Dad's younger brother) and his wife Mary Ann (we call her Mac) have their 50th wedding anniversary in October. They're having a huge party, so we might go back up there for that. We'll see how it goes with plane tickets and all. That should be neat. :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:57 PM | Family , Misc | Comments (3)
July 20, 2004
Jet skis, broken mailboxes, new cars
Friday afternoon Greg got a call from his bro-in-law, John, saying that Diane (Greg's sis) slipped and fell at the boat ramp and hurt her shoulder. They were unloading the jet skis and there was a lot of algae that had accumulated there on the ramp. Anyway, they were at the hospital gettings x-rays done to make sure that she didn't break anything...so for awhile there we weren't sure if we were going down to visit for the weekend. Finally John called at about 7:30 and said Diane was fine, and to go ahead and come down. We quickly had dinner and left for the long trip to Canyon Lake. Got in at about 1:30am...
Greg spent most of the weekend jet skiing with John and his nephew Marshall. I went Saturday afternoon with John and Greg. It was my first time on a jet ski, so I had Greg take me around once to get the feel for it. It was pretty fun. I spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with Diane and Marshall's wife Laura. It was cool and relaxing. They have a hot tub that overlooks the cove. Was pretty.
We ended up driving back Sunday evening. Stopped by this little country restaurant and had dinner. Tastiness. Got back kinda late, and promptly went to bed.
Monday morning we discovered that our mailbox got knocked over while we were gone. As we were standing there examining the damage, the daughter of the older Korean couple that live across the street drove up. She said her parents' mailbox got knocked over too on Saturday night. Apparently little things like this happen every once in awhile in my neighborhood. It's pretty irritating. Then I was on hold with the Garland police for half an hour while I tried to file a police report. I gave up and never did. Anyway, we had Luci over for lunch. Grilled salmon and had rice to go with it. Good times. Jerry even made an appearance for a little while (we coaxed him with ice cream). Heh heh.
We rested a little while, then went to the driving range. It was hotter than hell. I was hitting pretty well. :o) Should be all set for Michigan. On the way home, Greg wanted to stop by this golf shop on 75, so we were driving down the service road when he saw this black 2002 Solara convertible at one of the dealerships. We turned around and went for a test drive on it. The guy at first told us that it was selling for $13,900. We didn't really believe him 'cuz that's just way too cheap for the car. But he repeatedly told us it was that price. So we went home (to look up financing) and found out that the dealership had it listed at $22,500 on their website. We weren't expecting much, but Greg went back up there to see about it. As he was sitting at the little table (where they try to rip every penny out of you), they went back on their price (don't go to Courtesy Nissan...they're not very courteous). So no car as of yet, but we're stopping by to take a look at a few Sebring convertibles at different dealerships tonight. Wheeeee!
I've got training the rest of the afternoon. Fun fun. Hopefully it won't be too difficult staying awake. :p Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 12:14 PM | Family , Golf , Misc | Comments (0)
July 16, 2004
TGIF!!!
My goodness it's been a long week...
After my marathon day on Tuesday, I've been exhausted all week. I continue being the only one here doing site updates, so I can't make lunch plans or anything (the guys were nice and brought Chipotle back for me on Monday). I finally went grocery shopping so I have some food to bring for lunch. :p
Lessee...Tuesday night's dinner with the girls was great. We got some great hang time in. We really should do that more often. Hee hee. :o)
Wednesday night I called Community Credit Union to see if my car loan payoff check had been deposited. Found out that they never got the check (WTF??). So I called Capital One to see if the check had been cashed yet, and luckily it hasn't. I had the guy cancel that check and send me a new one. It was, all in all, a very annoying ordeal. For some strange reason lately I've been getting some mail, and not some mail (like my auto insurance policy)...it's starting to make me suspicious that someone's going through my mailbox. I'll have to keep an eye on it. Hopefully it's just a coincidence.
Anyway, the guy FedEx-ed the paperwork to me one more time. I picked it up last night, and went straight to the bank to deposit it. So now my loan at CCU is supposedly paid off, and I should get more info from Capital One soon (if they ever got my paperwork from last time). Hmph.
I'm so glad that it's finally Friday. This week seemed to have dragged on forever, even though each individual day went by relatively quickly. We're leaving tonight to go down to Diane's (Greg's sister's) lakehouse at Canyon Lake (near San Antonio). Hopefully the weekend will be funfilled with relaxation, jet skiing, and boat cruising. :o) On the way home on Monday, we'll probably stop by the German restaurant in Granbury again. :o) I want to get some sausages that we could freeze and save for later. Mmmmmm mmmmmmm! Got hungry just thinking about it!
Posted by alpha at 08:46 AM | Family , Misc , Work | Comments (0)
July 13, 2004
4:45am is WAAAAAY too early to be waking up
Ugh...it's 9am and I've already been at work 3+ hours. This sucks. Might not even get to go home early either since I'm the only one here doing site updates. Double ugh.
This morning started out somewhat unpleasantly. I got up at the ungodly hour of 4:45am, and promptly went to feed the cats so they'd leave me alone. Upon picking up Benny's bowl from the floor, I discovered that it was covered with ants. It was disgusting. I freaked (which was quite reasonable since I didn't have my contacts in and couldn't see a thing) and sprayed said ants with bug spray. Cleaned their bowls, gave them food & water, and went on my way. All in all, the ants wasted 15 minutes of my time. Got to work amazingly quickly (only took about 20 minutes). Started on the volume information gathering (which was why I was here early), then I got a call from a very confused Greg. He wanted to know what happened in the kitchen and why I used bug spray. In my morning grogginess, I didn't even think that the cats might happen to walk on the bug spray and then clean their feet. Ugh. All I wanted to do was to get rid of those stupid ants (and quite obviously I didn't have time to find and kill all the ants). So needless to say, Greg wasn't all that happy about that. Hopefully the kitties are okay.
Anyways, last weekend was good. Friday night we had dinner with my parents and the daughter of my parents' friends (Lisa) and the daughter's friend (Vivian). We went to the seafood buffet place again and it was very good. Had a good time. Lisa and Vivian were pretty funny. Saturday Greg and I went to Granbury (it's southwest of Ft. Worth) to play golf and to eat at the German restaurant that we like. Took us a little while to find the golf course, but we finally found it and the undeveloped neighborhood around it. There were a few new houses for sale, and tons of empty lots. Then we saw this really cool house that's right on the golf course, and across the street from the lake. It was really awesome, and not that expensive. I sooooo wish that I could move out there, but of course I can't 'cuz the commute to work would be horrendous. So we're devising this plan to see if we could start our own business. I dunno. It's in the planning stages. We'll see.
Oh, I digress...about golf...I played pretty well Saturday, ended up with a 48 for 9 holes. I had never broken 50 in 9 holes before this weekend. So that was pretty cool. I'm well on my way to breaking 100 for a full round. That's my goal this summer. Would be awesome if I could break 90, but that'd be icing on the cake. :p
The German restaurant (Niesters) was excellent as always. I had a prime rib with German fried potatoes, and Greg had black forest ham with fried potatoes. They were both very tasty! :o) We bought some bratwursts to cook on the grill on Sunday. Delicious. I think if we lived in Granbury, we'd be eating there all the time.
Sunday Katie came over for lunch and we grilled those sausages. We're gonna have to buy more and keep them in the freezer. They're just so good. We went shopping for a little while...Katie went home to do some stuff and to get ready for hockey. Our game pretty much sucked...the other team had 5 players + goalie and we lost 1-2. The only cool thing was that my parents (and aforementioned entourage) came to the game. Looks like they enjoyed it (they only come like once every 3 years or so). :p
Tonight I've got dinner with the girls (Jodie and Luci). Hopefully I'll be able to leave a little bit early today so I can go home and check on the cats. :o/
*Yawn*
Posted by alpha at 09:01 AM | Kitties | Comments (0)
July 07, 2004
Foil and Microwaves don't mix
Hmmm...so in the freezer at work I found some of those breakfast burritos that we've been having. Thought I'd heat up one of those for myself this morning. It, incidentally, was wrapped in foil, and after looking around for a plate (to no avail), I thought I'd test out the foil-in-microwave theory. Turns out that the theory was not a myth, and foil does burn in the microwave. Go figure. At least I was standing there watching and took it out in time. Well, me and one of the VPs here anyway...how embarrassing.
Anywho, yesterday was somewhat uneventful. I watched "Happy Gilmore" on TV, and then my sister came over with her new puppy Mak. :o) Mak is SOOOOOO cute!!! See for yourself!. And he's the quietest dog! He didn't even bark once when he was at my house. The cats (Benny, specifically), weren't quite sure what to make of Mak. It was hilarious. :p
Posted by alpha at 08:33 AM | Family , Kitties , Memories , Work | Comments (0)
July 05, 2004
*Meow!*
Silly cats woke me up every morning at about 6:30ish. Argh...
Friday night Greg and Paul left to go down to Canyon Lake to visit with their family. Their sister Diane and bro-in-law have a lakehouse out there. I was invited to go, but of course couldn't because I had to work on Saturday. :o( Oh well. It's nice to have a weekend to myself every once in awhile...
Saturday I woke up bright and early and went to work. Everything went pretty well, but it still took about 12 hours for us to finish the tests and stuff. *Sigh* At least we were fed quite well (breakfast burritos in the morning, and lasagna for lunch). I finally got home at about 9:30pm. Made myself something to eat, and went to bed (exciting huh?).
Sunday Katie and I met up for church. I invited her to come 'cuz my church was doing this huge 4th of July production. There was great music and choreography and all, not to mention the confetti that they shot from the balcony at the end of one of the songs. It was greatness. After church, we went to Katie's apartment on campus and she made fajitas for lunch. Mmmmmm! We goofed around and watched some Flash animations (deterbrown.com), and watched some ants try to carry away pieces of potato chips out on the patio (okay we were easily amused). After awhile, we gathered up our things and went over to Chris' for his party. He had made SOOOO much food! Mmmmm tastiness. We were sufficiently stuffed, as always. Watched "Fellowship of the Ring" in the new media room. It was great. :o) Heard fireworks go off in a distance, so we all piled in my car in search of a clear view of fireworks. It was kinda cool 'cuz there was this piece of land near their house where you can see out for miles...so we saw fireworks from 2 different cities at the same time. Pretty nifty. :o) It was a fun time. :o) Thanks Chris & Beta!
Today no work for me, but I intend on doing some trimming of bushes in the yard. :o) Fun fun. Greg and Paul called at about 10am and said that they were about to leave San Antonio. So they should be back relatively soon. Wheeeeeee! Hope everybody had a safe and fun-filled 4th! Off to the yard I go!
Posted by alpha at 11:32 AM | Family , Friends , Wedding | Comments (2)
July 02, 2004
Huh!
Nothing really going on this week. Everything's been kinda slow. I got my car refinanced yesterday...at 5.29% APR (vs. the 6.4% that I got at the dealership). Yah. So today I'm filling out all the paperwork and stuff that goes with that. Fun fun.
My sister got a 4 months old Yorkie! His name is Mak (stands for Matt And Karen), and he weighs 4 lbs. Craziness. She's gonna bring Mak by tonight so I can see him (and perhaps to take some pics). Hee hee.
Tomorrow I gotta get to work by 9am. :o( Not sure when we'll be done. Ick. I'm thinking that I'm prob not going to go down to San Antonio this weekend (Greg's leaving tonight with Paul)...it's not really worth it to be there a day, having to drive 12 hours back and forth. And that is assuming that everything goes fine with our cutover tomorrow. So it looks like Katie and I will be keeping each other company for the 4th (unless anyone else would like to join and/or let us tag along). :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:34 AM | Memories , Misc , Work | Comments (1)
June 29, 2004
Yey a new ramp!
So the City of Dallas surprised everybody by opening a new ramp this morning for southbound 75 to westbound 635. In theory, this ramp is supposed to alleviate traffic going in that direction (which is what we drive every morning), but there were soooooo many clueless people out this morning that it actually took us an extra 10 minutes to hack through the mess of people getting stuck in the wrong lanes (even though there were "Exit Only - 2 Right Lanes" blinking signs several miles before the ramp. Go figure. The ramp is nice though. It'll probably save us 5 minutes once everybody figures out where they need to be.
I was a human popsicle yesterday (and so far this morning). It's been so ridiculously cold over here that it's starting to give me a headache. And yesterday I was even wearing a long sleeved shirt AND my jacket. Still cold. So I gave up on the long sleeved shirt today (why bother if I'd be just as cold?). We'll see how it goes. I think some tea is in order.
*Yawn* Hopefully today isn't as boring as yesterday...had a hard time staying awake in the afternoon. *Sigh*
Is it time to go home yet?
Posted by alpha at 08:06 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
June 28, 2004
Rain rain go away...
It rained on and off for most of the weekend. No fun.
Friday night I had hockey practice at 7:30pm. They didn't kick us off the ice until about 9 (an extra 10 minutes!). It was a good practice, I think. We did some power play/penalty kill positioning. It was fun. :o)
Picked up my car from the dealership (this was for the 2nd tinting job) after practice. Didn't get a good look at anything (it was pretty dark out) when I picked it up, but I got a thorough look when I got home. I found the following disturbing items:
I was livid, as you can imagine. I've had the car 10 days at that point, and it had already spent 2 days at the dealership. Hadn't even used up the 1st tank of gas. So the General Manager got a not-so-nice email from me about the damages, and I called the service guy Jeff Saturday morning and told him about it. Brought my car in for him to look at...he was just as puzzled as I was. In addition, we found a big long scratch on my front bumper. He tried to use the detailing paint to fix some of the scratches, but they were deep enough to where they wouldn't come out. Now I have to bring my car in on Wednesday (for the 4th time since I bought it) for Jeff to show his service manager the damages. Nothing's going to be fixed on Wednesday (the parts wouldn't be in for 2 weeks), so I have to bring my car in AGAIN when the parts come in. It's so freakin' annoying.
Anyways, after the fiasco at the dealership, I went over to help Chris & Beta move to their new house. We made 1 run to the new place, and managed to unload everything before it started raining. We went out to pick up some lunch at a hamburger place, and as we were leaving the restaurant, the clouds opened up and downpour resulted. We went back to the house, ate lunch, waited for the cable guy to hook up the cable (which took a long time for some reason), and went back to the apartment to pick up some more stuff for the 2nd trip. Packed up a lot of Chris' kitchen (he has LOTS of stuff in his kitchen). Helped them load the truck, and then went home.
Sunday we went to church, made hot dogs for lunch, and then I took a nice long nap. I think Greg got tired of waiting for me to wake up from my nap, and went to the driving range. Heh heh. I cleaned a little, then went to the hockey game. We lost 1-3, and there was almost a fight at the end. That was fun. We also had an ice cream party after the game for our 6-1 victory from last week's game. Good times. :o)
I'm super tired this morning. Took me awhile to adjust to sitting at a desk. I'm STILL cold even though I wore a long sleeved shirt to work today. Brrrrrrr! The sun finally peeked out from behind the clouds...I think it's a Chipotle day with the boys for lunch. :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:37 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
June 24, 2004
I work in Antarctica!
Brrrrrr! Still cold. I brought a jacket in but haven't put it on yet...maybe I should...
This morning a co-worker went over to this little breakfast place in the next building and brought back some breakfast burritos for me and Matt. Was pretty tasty, and it's within walking distance (imagine that). Will have to remember for future reference.
I'm leaving at 3:15 today so we could bring the kitties to the vet. After that, I need to bring my car back in 'cuz they didn't do a great job at the window tinting yesterday. There's a piece of lint stuck on the driver's side window and there were little bubbles on the passenger side window. So I'm having them redo it tomorrow. Otherwise the tinting was really cool. Oh well. Maybe they'll get it right the 2nd time around...hopefully.
My manager just came by and gave us candy. Apparently our Director (in Chicago) sent some candy down here for us via interoffice mail. Pretty funny. :p
We also got invitations to "Stomp" at the Bass Performance Hall on September 11, 2004 at 2pm. It's kinda like the Blue Man Group, but they use like brooms and trash cans and hubcaps and stuff to make the rhythms. That would be interesting. I'd like to go. Hee hee.
===============
UPDATE:
Jodie will be accompanying yours truly to the "Stomp" extravaganza. It will be a fun day I'm sure. :o) We've been needing an Alph & Jo goof off day. :o)
Oh, I also forgot to mention that last night I purchased the new albums from the Beastie Boys, New Found Glory, and Lit. Got to test out the stereo on my new car with the Beastie CD. It was great. :p
Posted by alpha at 10:39 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
June 23, 2004
Friggin' Cold!
It sure has been a slow week. Things are calming down a little at work, and I'm getting a chance to catch up on things that I haven't gotten to do yet (all the low priority stuff). But now I'm just about running out of those too. Amazing. I bet things will pick up again after we switch production over to here on 4th of July weekend. Fun fun...
So yesterday we moved cubes again at work. Where we moved to the first time...it echoes like we were in a cave. It was pretty bad. But the new cubes that we moved to...they're over by the window (which is nice), but it's HELLA cold over here. The A/C vents just blow straight down on my hands as I type. Friggin'-A!
I dropped off my car at the dealership this morning to get my windows tinted and to get the environment protection stuff sprayed on it. It should be ready by 5 today. Can't wait. Then I can take/post some pics of my new ride! :o)
Not a whole lot else is going on. Last night I was so tired after work that I slept from 7 to 9ish. Craziness. Didn't really have dinner, but I wasn't really all that hungry. Prob not too much going on for the rest of the week. I've got hockey practice Friday night, and Saturday I'm going to go help Chris & Beta move into their new house. :o) How exciting! Can't wait to see it.
Is it still just Wednesday...???
Posted by alpha at 09:36 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
June 21, 2004
3 Goals to Ice Cream Party!
I had a pretty nice 3-day weekend. :o) Sure is nice being able to take time off again. Lessee...a recap...
Thursday night Greg and I went to the driving range, and he taught me this new swing that he learned from a golf pro at Cowboys Golf Club a week or so ago. It was interesting. Took me awhile to even hit the ball like I was supposed to with that swing. It's pretty cool. Hee hee.
Friday we both had the day off. We went to play pick-up hockey at the rink. Michael (my women's team's coach) was also there. He's such an incredible skater. He's going to the Ft. Worth Brahmas training camp later in the summer. I've been learning lots from him. :o) Anywho, the guys seemed to have been quite nice at pick-up. I scored a goal and skated a lot. So it was fun. :p
After pick-up, we had a quick lunch, and then it was off to Greg's golf lesson at Cowboys Golf Club. The pro there let me have some balls to hit while Greg was taking his lesson. It was at 3pm and was hot as hell. The sun was beating down like crazy. We were pretty exhausted after that, so we hopped on over to the Gaylord Texan Hotel to check it out. We walked around in there (which was mega-cool!) and went to the Texan Station (a bar) to have some drinks and an appetizer. Watched the U.S. Open on their giant TV screen (several channels are projected onto a wall). Had a great time. Stayed long enough to miss traffic, then went home and watched the rest of the Longhorns vs. Arkansas College World Series game. Fun stuff.
Saturday morning we went to the driving range to meet up with Jane, so I could give her my old golf clubs and for Greg to give her a quick lesson before she moves to Atlanta on Sunday for her residency. :o) It was a lot of fun. Then we went home and made hot dogs for lunch, and watched some more of the U.S. Open. It stormed like crazy (looked like a hurricane outside) in the early afternoon. It even hailed a little bit, and our electricity went out for an hour or so. I was very glad that I didn't go up to my parents' house early. Thank goodness the storm had passed by the time I left for my parents' for Father's Day celebration. My parents got a good look at my new car, and said it was nice but expensive (go figure). I gave my Dad his present (a Total Trolley) and he thought it was pretty cool. We all went out to dinner at Best Seafood Buffet in Plano and stuffed our faces. That was also fun. :p Good times were had by all.
Sunday morning we went to church, where I officially became a member. :p Heh heh. I took it easy in the afternoon and watched the U.S. Open and napped, while Greg took another trip to the driving range. The U.S. Open came to a great finish, and was very fun to watch. Then I went to my hockey game, where we won 6-1!!! :o) We're gonna have an ice cream party after the game next week. Hee hee. Yey! After the game, we went to have ice cream with Luci and her friends Scott & Mani and Craig, and Katie and her friend David. Good times. :o) Scott & Mani are in town from Virginia, and Craig's in town from L.A. Hee hee. Mmmmmm...
This Wednesday I gotta bring my car in for window tinting and the EPP spray for the paint. Then Friday I have hockey practice. I don't think a whole lot else. There are some things I wanna get done for my Dad's website that I didn't get to do this weekend. S'bout it! :o)
Posted by alpha at 08:43 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
June 17, 2004
Ooooooh Aaaaaaaah
I guess I forgot to mention that I got rear-ended on 635 on my way to work last Thursday. The guy (driving a Chevy Silverado) stopped and just slid into me. My rear bumper needed to be replaced, but other than that, nothing really wrong with my car. His front bumper was hanging off the car, and one set of his headlights was busted. Dunno how. But the Ford won that battle. :p
I brought in my car to the Body Shop on Monday so they could fix my bumper. It was supposed to be ready Tuesday night, but it wasn't. So I had to go get a rental car (since I was off work on Wednesday and had a doc's appointment). The guy at Enterprise offered me a 2004 Explorer for $5 more than what the other guy's insurance company would pay for. I figured that it'd be a good chance for me to test drive it to see what it was like. Turns out that I didn't like it half as much as I thought I would.
In the meantime, I've been emailing with this internet sales guy at Toyota of Plano for a couple of weeks now. Tuesday afternoon I got an email saying that they were having a 3-hour sale. I decided to go in and have a look at the 4Runner SR5 that I've been interested in, after test driving the 2004 Explorer rental. Ran around looking at various cars on the lot, and then we found a Titanium colored one that has a moonroof (just what I've always wanted). I was looking at either the dark blue or the titanium color, but they didn't have one in dark blue that had the moonroof and cloth seats. Anyway, I drove the titanium-colored from their secondary lot over to the dealership. It had 2 miles on it. :p Hee hee. Argued about the price for awhile (probably a formality since the internet sales guy had already told me that it'd be $500 over invoice price), got suckered into a couple of options and an extended warranty...and walked outta there at 10pm with a brand new 2004 4Runner. :o) Called up my sister to have her drive it to my house for me (she lives down the street from the dealership), and told her that she could have my car if my parents would agree to pay it off or take over the payments. She was so excited (her car is on its last leg). All worked out pretty good, and now I'm much poorer. :o/
Wednesday I took a comp day to get some rest from work. Had my annual checkup at the doc's downtown at UT Southwestern. Everything was well. Called Jodie to see if she had 5 minutes to come down so I could show her the car (I didn't tell her that I was showing her the car tho). It was fun to see her surprised face when she walked out of the door. Hee hee. Took her for a drive around the block. Was fun. :o)
Then it was on to lunch with the boys (Chris and Adam) at the old office. We went to Bennigan's. I didn't tell them that I got a new car either until we got downstairs to go to lunch. They got to ride in it. :p Hee hee. Fun times.
Had to wait for awhile at the AAA office to speak to an insurance agent to see how she wants to proceed with switching up the cars in my insurance policy. So that's in the works.
Came home, checked out the manual on the car and stuff for a little while. The guy at the Body Shop (where my old car is getting fixed) called at about 4:30 and said that my car would be ready at about 5:30 or so. So I went to return the rental, and they dropped me off at the dealership. Nothing too exciting on that part. Signed some forms and left. They washed my car, so that was nice. It's been needing a bath for quite some time now. :p
Came home again, took all my stuff out of the car so my sister can come by and pick it up. Put stuff in new car. Greg went to the driving range after work, and came home at about 7:30ish. We went to our favorite pizza spot in Lewisville, so Greg can ride in the new car. The pizza was tasty as usual. I let Greg drive the car home. He really liked it. :o) It was a fun evening.
My sister came by to pick up the other car at about 10. She brought Matt over to show him the new car. Then they were on their way. Thus concluded my evening. :o)
Tomorrow I'm off on another comp day. I guess Greg isn't going to San Antonio or Port Aransas anymore. So he'll be around this weekend. Yep. I think we're going to the driving range Friday afternoon. Then Saturday evening is Father's Day dinner with my parents. I'm trying not to plan too much for this weekend 'cuz I really just needed time to rest and do other things that I haven't gotten around to doing. :o)
Posted by alpha at 09:40 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
June 15, 2004
Hum dee dum...
Not much really going on lately. We got last Friday off 'cuz of the National Day of Mourning for the late President Reagan. Actually got to sleep in a little bit, then watched the 2nd Harry Potter movie. I was supposed to go see the 3rd one in the theater with Katie Friday afternoon, but I never got around to seeing the 2nd one...so we postponed that for Saturday morning. Didn't really do much else on Friday. Greg and I went shopping late Friday night for some food for camping.
Saturday morning Katie and I went to see Harry Potter at 10am. It was quite early for a movie, but at least it was cheaper and there weren't a bunch of obnoxious people in the theater. The movie was pretty good. :o) After that, I went home and packed up for camping. We ended up leaving a bit late (like at 2:30 or something), so by the time we got to the campground, there were only about 3 sites left that were open. We lucked out and one of them was actually pretty good. It was pretty hot out...but we had fun. We even got smart this time and brought an extension cord and a little fan for the tent. Hee hee.
Sunday we leisurely got up and had breakfast burritos before packing up. :o) It was quite tasty. We got back home a little before noon. Unpacked...and rested for a little bit. Then we left for a membership class at church. It was pretty fun. I applied to be a member there. Hee hee. After the membership class, I had my hockey game. Greg said that I'm skating really fast. Most interesting. I didn't even really noticed. I guess our team practices are helping. :o)
This week I'm off on Wednesday and on Friday. Yey! I'm so excited. On Friday we hope to go to the driving range so Jane can get a quick golf lesson before she moves to Atlanta for her residency. :o) Wheeee.
Posted by alpha at 08:08 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
June 07, 2004
I scored a goal!
So, urmmm...trying to remember what happened since the last time I posted. Time just flies by nowadays, it's crazy. Everything just kinda blend together. :o/ All of a sudden I feel old...
Hmmm...Thursday night Greg and I went to go play golf at Sherrill Park. It was somewhat of an odd course (with long walks between holes), and they just had their greens aerated, which made putting quite impossible. I didn't do too badly getting to the green, but once I got there, it was 3-putt city. Pretty ridiculous. I think we'll avoid that course for at least a month while the grass grow back evenly...
Friday night I was pooped...so I stayed home while Greg went to practice putting. Then we went to Taco Cabana for a late dinner. I think that was about it. Didn't I tell you that I was feeling old...?
Saturday morning I had to be up early (like 6:30am) to do the volume on the websites (for work). I was having all sorts of trouble with synching the sites and logging into systems. It was really annoying. Then I had to leave to go into work at 10:30am to do production testing. We were hoping for a smooth test like we had back in May, but we weren't so lucky. I ended up staying there until almost 4pm. Then I stopped by the grocery store to do some shopping...got home about 5:30ish. Paul came over at 6 and Katie came over at 7pm to watch the Stanley Cup Finals. It went into overtime, and I was very tired...I was struggling to stay awake.
Slept in on Sunday. It was much needed. I haven't had a nice "sleeping in" weekend for a long time. Then Greg and I went to go look at patio furniture, tiles, carpet, etc. I also got my skates sharpened. Had dinner. Left for my hockey game. Our new goalie came to play the game, but she has to go back to Denver to finish moving the next 2 weekends, so we'll have another sub until she gets back. She looks pretty decent...she can skate and play the puck, which is nice. She's just slightly rusty, but I'm sure she'll get back into the groove pretty quickly. We played pretty well, I think. Star scored a goal in the 1st period, then Relentless scored 3 goals...then I scored a goal midway through the 3rd period. It was a great play that was set up too. We were at the left faceoff circle in the offensive zone...Lisa took the faceoff and it trickled to me. I bumped it back to Wendy at left D. She passed it to Karen at right D, who whipped one of her slapshots at the goalie. The rebound came straight out to me. I took a little time getting the puck in control, and took a wrist shot along the ice that the goalie didn't even see until it was behind her in the net. It was beautiful. :o) *Sigh* That's what I'm trying to work on this season...to score more goals. I'm kicking that off nicely. :o)
Today was somewhat uneventful at work. We were all still recovering from the weekend's activities. My manager Cheryl told me that I should take a comp day soon, 'cuz she thinks that I'm working too much. So I decided on next Friday 'cuz Greg's also off that day (I think he's going to Port Aransas to hang out with his family for Father's Day). Later on in the day, we found out that the stock exchanges aren't gonna be opened this Friday because it's the National Day of Mourning (for our late former President Reagan). So if the exchanges aren't opened, we aren't opened. We were told officially in our department meeting that we're running on essential staff only on Friday...so it's a free day off for the rest of us. :o) Yey! So I'll be off this Friday, next Wednesday (a comp day that was previously planned), and next Friday. Hee hee. Wheeeee!!! I can surely use the time off.
Anywho, I should prob get to bed. I've got plenty to do before Friday at work, and tomorrow we're redoing our test from Saturday. Bleh. Thought I'd cast a shout out to ma homies real quick. :o) Y'all have a great week!
Posted by alpha at 10:49 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
June 02, 2004
Ka-Booom!
We sure had our share of storms these past couple of days. Last night we had a bunch of t-storm cells roll through DFW...blew a bunch of trees over, Arlington had a tornado touch down, hail fell from the sky...tons of people lots electricity. So today the electric company was working on restoring power to those people...when another storm rolled through tonight. It was kinda scary for awhile. My electricity kept coming on and off for over an hour. Greg made dinner out on the grill (good thing that was the plan all along), and we had dinner in the dark (with flashlights). Craziness.
My sister also dropped my dog off at my house after the storm last night. I (and Greg too) really wanted BB to be able to stay inside the house, but the kitties were terrified of her, so it's prob not a good idea just yet. They can stare at each other through the window for awhile, and then we'll reconsider. I'll have B until my parents get home from their vacation next week. :o)
Other than that...not a whole lot going on. Work has been tiring, and I have to work this Saturday for production testing. Fun fun. Sunday we're going to play golf with some people from work, and then my hockey game. Speaking of which, I think we've found a more permanent goalie for the hockey team. She supposedly played for the German national team...now, what that means exactly is another story. We'll see at the game this week. Hee hee.
Tomorrow night is dinner with the girls (Jodie and Luci). It'll be fun times. :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:46 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
June 01, 2004
Back from Port A
*Yawn* Didn't end up getting too much rest on my long weekend. :o/ Greg and I drove down to Port Aransas early early Saturday to go hang out with his sister Diane and bro-in-law John, who had rented a condo there for a few months. It turns out that Greg's Dad was also there, as well as Greg's nephew Marshall and wife Laura, and Laura's Mom Pam and brother Patrick. So it was a full house in the condo. It took us 7 hours to get to the ferry line, and then an hour to sit through the ferry line to get through to the island. I really don't see why they can't just build a bridge. It'd be so much simpler and we wouldn't have wasted so much time sitting in line. Ugh.
Anyway, when we finally got there around 3, Greg and his Dad left to go play golf. I was gonna go, but decided to stay in and hang out with Diane. Everybody else was out on the boat. Laura and Patrick came in about half an hour later, after John dropped them off at the marina. We watched "15 Minutes," which was interesting. Towards the end of the movie, John and Pam came in. Everybody got cleaned up and we went to dinner at this Mexican restaurant that was okay...nothing spectacular. The waitress was kinda rude, actually. Their credit card machine was down, and the margarita machine wasn't keeping up. It was pretty silly. After dinner, the girls went for a drive on the beach, and then back to the condo to hang out with everybody else and have margaritas.
Sunday morning we woke up early to go (watch) fishing. But by the time we actually go going, it was about 10am. And when we went to get bait, we found out that there were 7 ft - 9 ft waves offshore. So we decided to stay close and just go riding on the boat to see houses and stuff. It was pretty rough out by Rockport. We were all completely soaked by the time we got back. It was fun though.
We got back and cleaned up. The others played a board game while we tried to nap a little bit. Then we went out to Corpus to try to find some dinner, and went to Putt-Putt afterwards. It was pretty fun. I won in my group (me, Greg, Greg's Dad, Diane, and John) and beat Greg by a stroke. Hee hee. Was exhausted afterwards. I think we all pretty much went to bed when we got back.
Monday morning we got up early (I really didn't have a choice since I slept on the couch in the living room), and we got ready to leave. We gave Greg's Dad a ride back to San Antonio. The drive from Corpus to San Antonio is VERY boring. There was absolutely nothing to look at. And somehow the 150-mile trip seemed like it took forever. Ugh. Anyway, we dropped off Greg's Dad and moseyed on home. Made a stop in San Marcos to have lunch at Johnny Carino's (mmmmm!). We *were* gonna stop by the huge Golfsmith in Austin, but I guess we passed it, and we didn't feel like turning around to look for it. Hit a lot of traffic (those ones caused by stupid people who don't know how to drive, but not accidents) all the way to Waco, and then a little bit north of Waco. Storm clouds were brewing when we got to Hillsboro, but we managed to miss it. Good thing too, 'cuz later on in the evening we found out that there were tornado warnings in that area. Craziness. Glad we came home early. Whew.
Posted by alpha at 08:59 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
May 25, 2004
A Decision!
Wow okay...we've finally made a decision about the whole moving thing...
We'll use this summer to fix up the house, perhaps plan a wedding (?!), while keeping an eye on available developments and properties. Our plan right now is to get married first, and then buy a house (in order to minimize the number of if's and but's from my parents). So it might be awhile yet before we move. Hopefully there'll be more good news coming soon (cross your fingers and toes). :p
Posted by alpha at 12:08 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
May 23, 2004
Back from the Windy City
Ah! I know I haven't updated in awhile, but I have a good excuse. :o) Work sent me up to Chicago for training (IBM WebSphere Portal and Aptrix training, if you want to get specific) all last week. Yep. We stayed at the Doubletree Hotel in Downers Grove (about 20~ miles west of the city). There really wasn't much to do in Downers Grove. We were in class most of the day. Then at night my coworker Matt and I (for the most part) hung out and have dinner. Lessee...Monday night we tried to go to the Fry's across the street, but they weren't opened yet. So we drove around to try to find a Chicago Blackhawks puck for Greg (no luck), then we went to Weber Grill in Lombard (just down the road from the hotel), which was absolutely tasty! They cook everything on charcoal grills. It was awesome. We also split a pitcher of this tropical hard lemonade. It was very tasty. :o)
Tuesday night we tried to go to Fry's again (we thought the banner said "Now Open"...but it actually said "Now Hiring"...ugh). After the 2nd unsuccessful attempt to visit "Nerdvana," we drove around to try to find downtown Downers Grove. No luck again. We went to Taylor's Brewery for dinner. The food was okay. I had a couple of Hard Core Ciders on draft, and Matt got one of their brewery samplers. Nothing else too exciting. We got back to the hotel at about 7:30, and I watched "24". That was great.
Wednesday night Cheryl (my manager) was supposed to go into town to visit her Mom & best friend, but she doesn't like to drive in bad weather, and it was supposed to storm really late that night...so she cancelled her plans (don't ask) and hung out with us. We went to Oak Brook Center to do some shopping. Cheryl bought a bunch of stuff (including a new handbag that she doesn't need), and I bought a couple of things for Greg at the Discovery Store as our anniversary present (it was on Wednesday the 19th). Had dinner at Giordano's. Splitted a stuffed pizza with Matt. Mmmmm mmmmm! Very tasty. Had a Long Island Iced Tea that was made too strong, so I only got to have 1. Hee hee.
Thursday night Matt and I went into town to visit with Foster, one of the engineers in my group. We went to this Scottish pub called The Duke of Perth. They had very very tasty Fish 'n Chips. :o) They also had this great cider on tap (Strong Bow). The 3 of us hung out for awhile, it was storming outside, and then we dropped Foster off near his apartment and headed back to the 'burbs. It was a fun night. On our way to the restaurant, Matt even drove a little out of the way to show me Lake Michigan. :o) How sweet. Hee hee.
Friday our class ended really early. We were on the way to the airport at about 12:30. We decided to go into town early in order to miss Friday afternoon traffic. So we were at the airport for like 5 hours (our flight didn't leave until 6pm). We ate lunch, hung out at a restaurant in the airport, got kicked out of the restaurant (apparently some lady with a baby wanted our table...WTF), went to another bar to sit and hang out, and then finally boarded our flight home. I sure was glad to be home. When I got back to DFW at 8:30, my parents hadn't arrived at the airport yet (they were flying out at 9:45 to Seattle to go on an Alaska cruise)...I was starting to get worried when my Mom called to tell me that they had just gotten through security and everything. So I dragged my heavy 30-lb bag back across the terminal to go see them and to find out where the car was so I could drive it home. Goodness. I stopped by the office to pick up my golf clubs that were delivered there earlier. And when I got home, Greg had dinner ready for me (AWWWWWW...), and he gave me my anniversary present (the "Miracle" DVD!!). :o) We had champagne and dinner, and it was great. :o)
Saturday we went driving around to check out some houses. There was this one that we really liked just up the street, next to Sherrill Park Golf Course. We called and got to go inside to check it out. It wasn't as big as I had thought it was, but the interior design was very classy. Its backyard faces a creek. Pretty cool. And the owners were really really nice. Greg said that he got a vibe that those people wanted to sell us the house 'cuz they liked us. We'll see. We're still going to look around. We'll prob look out in Grapevine too. We didn't like the ones we found in Flower Mound...it's really no hurry. I still have to find someone to buy my house first. But that's what so great about the house that we saw...the owners have a vacation home in Galveston that they could move to once they sell the house. They wanted to move north to be closer to their grandchildren. So they're really in no hurry to move either. In fact, she told us that we could even work out a deal where we could put down some earnest money, and they'd take the house off market...and then move when we have my house sold. Pretty cool. But we'll see. There were some really neat things about that house, then there are also some things that I'd like differently. We'll definitely keep looking. :o)
Anywho, it's time for me to get ready for hockey. And then another week begins. Craziness...
Posted by alpha at 05:59 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
May 13, 2004
Stupid Parents = Stupid Kids
God I can't wait to move out of here...
I've always had a problem with those dumb little kids down the alley, the ones who don't understand the concept of cars. They would run across the alley without even looking. Then their parents would come yell at you because you almost ran over their kid (note...the kid didn't look to see if there was a car coming in the first place...how's that somebody else's fault?). And this isn't an isolated incident by any means...it's a day-to-day occurrence. It'll be a different kid every day. Some of them would be riding their bikes down the alley, see you coming, and leave the bike sitting in the middle of the alley. WTF?? Why can't these parents teach their kids to look before they cross the street?? Well, their argument was that "an alley is not a street". Come again? A street is anything that a car drives on. WEBSTER DEFINITION...ALLEY: A NARROW STREET. HELLOOOOO??? What the hell kinda world do these dumbasses live in?? Problem solved if those damn kids would look before they run across the alley. So somehow it's still the fault of whoever was driving the car. Go figure. Those kids are going to grow up to be dumber than a box of rocks.
In light of that, I think we'll be speeding up our moving process. We've been looking at listings of houses out in Keller-type area. It's much closer to work...and hopefully no ghetto neighbors that party in their backyard until 2am (don't even get me started on that one), and more educated parents. I'm looking at houses with a bigger lot so we don't have to be near our neighbors. All these uneducated people just get tiresome, and their ideologies are completely flawed...yet they always think they're right. I'm just so sick of that.
Can't wait 'til I move...
Posted by alpha at 07:04 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
May 07, 2004
*Yawn*
Good grief, I'm tired! Work has been rather taxing...but at least I'm getting something out of it. Speaking of which, it's a full day's of work for me tomorrow. We're running production tests down here, so we have to test everything to see what needs fixing. Fun fun...another comp day for me...
At least I got to take a day off on Monday this week. Greg and I went to the Cadillac Championship Clinic, hosted by Tom Watson. For those of you who don't know, he's pretty much a legend in golf. Currently he's playing on the PGA Champions Tour (and doing quite well this week too, I might add). It was quite an honor to go to a clinic hosted by him, and got to meet him and stuff. We showed up at about 7am, had breakfast and test drove a Cadillac CTS (real nice and smooth!). Then we went to test some Callaway equipment out of the driving range. The actual event started at about 8:45am. They had us divided into groups of 15-20 people, and we rotate through various stations to be taught by PGA professionals. The first one that we went to was a class on iron shots. I was hitting fairly well, and the pro there said that I had a nice swing. :o) The 2nd one was on how to drive the ball most efficiently. I got a few new pointeres that I'll have to try out later. The funny thing was that Tom Watson drove up in his golf cart as I was hitting my last shot. Ha ha ha. Imagine that. I was getting ready to hit, and all of a sudden I noticed the absence of chit-chat. I went ahead and hit my shot, turned around, and Tom Watson was standing right there. It was pretty darn cool. :o) He came up and hit a couple of drives (which was incredible...I was standing like 7 feet away from him). I got his autograph on my clinic schedule. Then the 3rd lesson was on pitching and chipping. The girl who was teaching it was really cool...we got her name and number and stuff, so we might go take a lesson from her some time. The 4th lesson was on putting...that guy was an awesome putter. He teaches out at a golf course by Cedar Creek Lake. Then the last "lesson" wasn't actually related to golf...it was a demo by some Cadillac people. We saw a demo of OnStar, which was pretty darn cool. I never thought that I'd use something like that...but it was neat.
After our group lessons, we got back together as a big group and Tom Watson gave a clinic. It was AWESOME! He was very gracious and answered everybody's questions, and stayed until everybody has gotten autographs and pictures who wanted one. After this event, I have a whole lot of respect for the guy. He was just incredible and very friendly. This is one of the coolest things I've ever done, and I definitely won't ever forget it. :o)
The rest of the week was pretty much just work, work, work. Nothing too terribly interesting to speak of. Tomorrow after work, I'm going to the Mesquite Symphony concert where Greg is playing the French Horn. :o) Should be fun.
Posted by alpha at 10:35 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
April 30, 2004
What the...
Is it the weekend again already? Geez my week sure flew by! I've been busy as hell at work as usual. My group's Director, Dan, picked me to chair our weekly group meeting this week. Granted I had only been to 3 meetings here (and still have no clue who does what), it was interesting. But Dan was nice and gave me an agenda with the names of people responsible for each item. :o) I was very grateful. The only real task for me was to come up with a "Team Activity"...which is just a quick get-to-know-you type game to keep the meeting lighthearted and fun. I had everybody tell what their dream vacation would be and why. It was cool. I have concluded that my company should organize a tour of Italy, since almost half our team wants to go to Italy for our dream vacation. :p
It seemed that everybody stepped it up a notch on web updates. Bettye and I were completely buried all week long with our site updates. I barely had time to work on my projects, one of which needed to be mostly done today. But since our site updates take precedence over anything else, it got put on the backburner this week, unfortunately. Every time I tried to start working on it, another update would come. It was kinda annoying. Today we had enough work to keep 3 people very busy, but there were just the 2 of us doing it...the load almost made us insane...
I don't think I did too much else other than work this week. Went to Pecan Hollow and practiced chipping and putting Wednesday night. Then Thursday after work, my manager Cheryl and her husband Doug (who also works in the same office) came with us to the driving range at LB Houston. Great fun was had by all. I think we're gonna schedule a golf outing with the 4 of us. That'd be cool. :o) While we were at the driving range, Doug got a call and found out that they had closed on the house that they have in Chicago. Hee hee. Doug was almost skipping back to where we were. :p
Tonight Greg made this seasoned pork shoulder thing that he got at Tom Thumb for dinner. He cooked it for 45 minutes on the grill, and it was delicious! :o) The kitties loved it too!
I gotta do the volume updates on our sites tomorrow morning. I probably have to start insanely early since we're doing system upgrades starting at 8am, which would make the sites unavailable. Bleh. At least I don't have to drive into work. I tested everything that I need to use tomorrow, and it seems to be just fine. The last thing I want is to run into some glitch at 5am. That would suck. As far as working Saturday mornings, I get half a comp day for each regular Saturday update, and a full comp day for each holiday Saturday update (like the Saturday before 4th of July or Labor Day, etc.). I counted up all my Saturday shifts, and I'm gonna get like 7 extra days off this year just from doing that. Plus we've been running production tests here in Dallas, so there'll be other Saturdays where I'd have to go into work (like next Saturday). Dang I'm gonna have over 4 weeks of days off this year. It's gonna rock. Now if only I could find good times to take these days off...(they don't carry over to the next year).
Speaking of which, I'm taking a comp day on Monday to go to a free Cadillac-sponsored golf clinic. It'll feature a half-day clinic with Tom Watson (!!!!), a Callaway equipment demo, and test driving new Cadys! :o) I've been looking forward to this for a month (when I got the invitation). The cool thing is that I get to bring a guest, so guess who is coming with me...! You guessed right! It's Greg of course! :o) It'll be a nice day off for the both of us, plus the weather is supposed to be gorgeous. Yey!!!
Okay, well, I'm getting pretty tired of staring at the computer screen...need to save some of my energy for the crack of dawn. Have a great weekend everyone! :o)
Posted by alpha at 09:34 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
April 28, 2004
College Board's 101 Greatest Works of Literature
College Board's 101 Greatest Works of Literature
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you want to read.
Underline those you started, but haven't actually finished yet.
Beowulf (a translation)
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Bront, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Bront, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger (in English AND in French)
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby (what a great book!)
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter (I think this one put me to sleep...)
Heller, Joseph - Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God (also a great book)
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream (my fav Shakespeare)
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Harrison Bergeron
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son
I'm actually quite surprised with how many I've read in this list. I guess AP English would do that to ya. All of a sudden I feel well-educated. :p
Posted by alpha at 08:18 AM | Misc | Comments (0)
April 26, 2004
Baaaaah...
My weeks are just flying by! It sure is nice to be busy at work, even though it gets kinda crazy sometimes. I worked 11 hours on Thursday, and then another 3 hours on Saturday. Craziness. I had to earn my hours so I could go to the Tom Watson clinic next Monday. Hee hee. Yey! :o)
Let's see...where did I leave off...well Thursday after my extraordinarily long day, I decided to go to the driving range with Greg and his co-worker David (didn't feel like getting stuck in traffic). We hit some balls, and then David took us out to dinner (in return for the free lessons that Greg is giving him) at Boston's. Good times, good times.
Friday was just busy, that's about it. I went ahead and bought my driver and fairway woods through this golf course pro shop in Oregon. They were offering them for $100 cheaper than it would have been had I bought them locally. Wheeeee! Greg and I went to go play golf at Pecan Hollow after work. We both kinda sucked that night (for me, prob due to my 11-hr day on Thursday). Oh well. It was okay. We managed to finish before it started storming (lightning were starting to appear as we were finishing up).
Friday night it rained...and rained and rained. Saturday morning I had to be at work at 6am to finish up my training with Bettye (in town from Chicago). We left work at about 9am. Fun stuff. I rushed home to change for my friend Bena's wedding (I've known her since 9th grade). It was a HUGE wedding! There must have been almost 1000 people there. The ceremony lasted about 2 hours and 70% of it wasn't in English. I ran into Sabine as I was leaving the church. :o) Anyways, afterwards, they had the huge reception area at the Hotel Intercontinental for the reception. Craziness. I found Sabine and asked him who pays for such a huge event (it was a 3-course sit-down lunch)...he said he didn't know, but that it's fairly typical of Indian weddings. Eeeeeek!
When I got home from the wedding festivities, I was completely exhausted. Greg said that his nephew Marshall was in town and had called to see if Greg wanted to go over to hang out. I opted for some quiet time and sleep. Greg left at about 5pm, I fell asleep at about 5:30 or so, and didn't really wake up until 8am the next morning for church. It was much needed rest after such a crazy week.
Sunday we went to church, then came home and had tuna sandwiches for lunch. Mmmmmmm. We both had a craving for it for some reason. Hee hee. Then Greg went off to go play basketball, and I stayed home and read for a little bit (don't ever have time to do that anymore). After he got home, we went to the Oshman's over at 635 & Midway to check out their golf collection (they have a special area at that particular Oshman's). Found that their golf bags were 30% off, so I bought the Ogio Exo bag. I've been looking at that bag for quite awhile, and it's pretty cheap at $120. I also threw in a nice golf umbrella for $15 (as compared to a good one for $40). Yey. I think my golf equipment collection is pretty complete at the moment.
Sunday night was our women's hockey game. We lost. :o/ Greg missed it 'cuz he couldn't find his key to the motorcycle and was all flustered about it. I guess it grew legs and walked away. He had turned the house upside down to try to find it. No luck. He wasn't a happy camper. :o(
Posted by alpha at 07:45 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
April 21, 2004
A quickie...
...because I have to get up at 5am to be at work at 6am for training. Eeek. Repeat for Saturday morning.
Only good thing with this is that I'm going to get comp time for it, so I can go to the golf clinic that is hosted by Tom Watson on May 3rd with Greg. :o) We had filled out this info form at the Cadillac booth last year at the Byron Nelson, and I got an invitation for the free clinic (it's for me and a guest). I can't wait. It'll be awesome.
It's been busy as hell at work. I don't even notice that I don't get to surf the net anymore. I barely remember to check my personal email. It's kinda scary. So, so incredibly busy.
Tomorrow we're having a "Taste of OCC" potluck type thingy. I'm bringing chicken fried rice. I hope it tastes okay. Took me long enough to make it. :p
This Saturday, other than going to work insanely early, we'll be going to my friend Bena's wedding. I've known Bean since 9th grade, so it'll be cool. Not a whole lot of other plans that I can remember. I'm still caught up on the fact that I'll be getting up at 5am on Saturday...
Anyways, speaking of which, it's waaaaaay past my bedtime. Less than 7 hours until I have to be at work. More later.
Posted by alpha at 11:09 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
April 16, 2004
Eeeeeee!
This week went by relatively quickly. Next week I have to be at work by 7:15. Bleh. But maybe I'll miss traffic...
Tuesday night I went to my friend Whitney's wedding shower. She and Willie are getting married in Hawaii the first week of May. Their parents aren't even going (they're going to hold the phone up for their parents during the ceremony). It was fun. I hadn't seen Whitney for about a year. Craziness how fast time flies.
Wednesday afternoon, I received my new golf clubs! I had them delivered to the office (they needed to be signed for), and all the boys were ooooo-aaaaahh-ing over them. Pretty funny. We went to the driving range Wednesday night to try them out. I'm hitting them okay...these clubs are slightly longer than my old ones. While I was there, I also signed up for a custom club fitting for my woods on Sunday afternoon. I'm excited. It'll be so much fun.
Went to the driving range again Thursday night. This time one of Greg's coworkers David came with us. David wanted some help on his swing so he could hit his shots straight. After Greg helped him for about half an hour, David was hitting straight (and he was ecstatic!). It was amazing. I think Greg should become a PGA Pro so he could teach people how to play golf.
Today I got my 1st paycheck from the new company! It's so awesome. Actually, I got my 1st and 2nd paychecks...they had combined the first 2 pay periods that I've been here (which means my pay for the past 3 weeks). Eeeeeeeeee! I haven't seen that much money on a check in a LONG time (I'm making almost $1000/month more than my last job). It sure is nice. Yey!!!
Tonight I think we're gonna go to Sam's to do some shopping for Jodie's birthday party, and to get Greg a membership card. :o) Then tomorrow morning I gotta go do more shopping...for Katrina's wedding shower and for Jodie's birthday present. :o) Hee hee. If it works out, I'll also purchase my friend Bena's wedding present (her wedding is next Saturday). Busy, busy, I tell ya. :o) Sunday we have church, then the club fitting at the Practice Tee, and then my hockey game. This weekend's packed!
Posted by alpha at 01:48 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
April 12, 2004
While I've got a minute...
I've got a minute in between stuff, so I figure I'd update the good ole LJ... :o)
It was nice to have a day off on Friday. :o) I went to my parents' to have lunch with my family...my Dad got to leave work early and came home to surprise us. It was fun and tasty. After lunch, both my Mom and sister needed to go to Discount Tire to fix tires, etc. So we went to the DT by Sam's, but they didn't open until 3pm on Friday. We headed over to Sam's to do some shopping and to get me a new membership card. :o) We shopped for awhile, and then I dropped my Mom and sister back off at DT just before 3.
Friday night Greg and I left to go down to San Antonio to visit Greg's Dad. We got there around midnight and were exhausted. The next morning we all went out to Brackenridge Golf Park to play golf. There was a tournament going on, so the play was really slow. We teed off at 11:45, but at 4:30 we had only finished the 15th hole. We were all playing really well that day (I had a 93 after 15). A nasty thunderstorm blew up just as we were finishing 15th. We waited for a little bit in this shed, but the wind was starting to blow from different directions, so we called it quits. It turned out being a good idea, 'cuz 5 minutes after we left, it started pouring and thundering. :p
Saturday night we went over to Greg's sister Joan's house for dinner. Joan's husband Les smoked BBQ chicken for us. It was mighty tasty. We watched the Rangers game. It was kinda fun (despite the fact that I think watching baseball is boring).
We left Sunday morning for an uneventful (thankfully) drive home. We got home in about 4.5 hours. Pretty cool. We just kinda hung out the rest of the day and watched the Masters on TV (which was GREAT).
Posted by alpha at 04:13 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
April 08, 2004
Internet Services, Producer
Hee hee. Not a whole lot to report today. Work is going well...I've screwed up a few times (on little things), but in general I'm doing pretty well. In fact, I got volunteered to do the content for the site of the Chicago financial industry's emergency response coalition. Pretty cool eh? OCC won a bid to create, host, and maintain the site. I got a draft of the requirements document (*gasp!*...a document!) from the Director of my department today. He listed me as "Internet Services, Producer." Ha ha ha. Wheeeee! I'm really excited 'cuz it's going to be my first real high-profile site. :o) I love my job. Hee hee.
Greg and I went to LB Houston to play 9 holes of golf after work. I did okay...actually not terrible for the first round of the season. After I got home, the golf shoes that I had gotten on eBay were waiting for me on my porch. They're great. I can't wait to try them Saturday.
Tomorrow I'm off work (wow an actual holiday??). My Mom invited me and my sister home to have lunch, but I have to wait for Greg's french horn to be delivered before I can leave the house (it has to be signed for). Then I think I need to go send off something for Greg at the post office or something. Tomorrow night we're leaving to go spend the weekend with Greg's Dad. We'll prob be golfing Saturday. Maybe we can get a hold of Greg's Uncle Guy to see what suggestions he has as far as my golf clubs go (he custom makes clubs). :o) Should be a fun weekend.
Posted by alpha at 10:40 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
April 07, 2004
Goodness!
My new job is crazy busy! Sorry for the lack of posting lately...no time to do it at work really.
Quick update. I just bought a pair of golf shoes and a new set of Cleveland TA7 Irons. Needless to say, I've blown enough money for the next few months. *Sigh* In addition to the $$ I spent on clothes, I think I'm about done spending money for awhile, unfortunately. *Anxiously waiting on paycheck from new job*
Anywho, I'm happy with the new stuff I got though. I think they'll really help my game. I just have to pace getting the rest of the stuff...
*Grin*
Posted by alpha at 04:56 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
April 03, 2004
First Week Survival
So I've survived the first week at my new job. It's been busy as hell. :o) It's a nice change though. I like to leave work every day knowing that I've contributed to society. Hee hee.
Other than sitting in traffic, working hard, nice people, being trained, and having to read a lot of documents, I didn't really do a whole lot this week 'cuz I'm just exhausted. :p
Yesterday we wanted to go out to dinner, so we decided to go to Poppy's Pizza again in Downtown Plano. It's a pretty good pizza place. They also have pasta and stuff too, but we've only had pizza there. :p From what I can tell, the pasta also looks pretty good too. Anyway, we decided to invite Katie along at the last minute (we were all supposed to go see a movie last night but we were all really tired). We sat out on the patio, and it was a really nice night. Pretty cool. We had a great time.
On the way home, a train was going by, so we had to wait. It turned out being a train carrying military equipment. There were hummers, jeeps, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, things of those sort. It was pretty neat. How often do you get to see those things up close (close as in within 5 yards).
This morning I slept in. Had to recover from the rigority of this week. Greg left to go to rehearsal with the Mesquite Symphony early in the morning. I woke up at about 10 and went to run errands. Found out that some post offices aren't opened on Saturdays. After driving around awhile, I finally managed to mail off some packages. Went to Family Christian Stores to pick up my copy of Glorious Appearing. Can't wait to read it. :o)
Greg got home soon after I got back from my errand-running trip. We had lunch and leisurely went to Golfsmith to check out some golf clubs. We were thinking about having Greg's Uncle Guy custom make some new clubs for me. We looked at the clubmaking material, and I wasn't too impressed with what was offered. So I went to look at the iron sets that they had there. Tried the Cleveland TA7 set and the Taylormade Rac HT set. I think I like the Cleveland set better 'cuz it doesn't bounce as high as the Taylormade set. Both of them are pretty well balanced. I can't wait to get new clubs. :o)
On another note...when I was trying out the clubs in the practice area, this woman and her husband came by and the woman wanted to try some of the clubs. So I was waiting to use the computerized hitting area (it detects how far/how fast the ball goes), this woman was hitting in the practice area. She was HORRIBLE! OMG. I don't think a new set of very expensive clubs (those were the ones she was looking at) would help much, honestly. I know it's probably not too nice to say, but good god it was hard to watch...(she hit her driver about 20 feet)...
Anyway, that was a fun afternoon. :o) I'm gonna watch for a set of the Cleveland clubs on eBay or something to see if I could get them cheaper. Hee hee. Wheeee...
Daylight savings time goes into effect tonight. Church is gonna be early tomorrow. :o) Then we'll be going to the Stars game (free tix from my manager), and then to my women's team championship game. All booked up for tomorrow! Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 08:06 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 29, 2004
The first day...
My first day at work was today. :o) It was great. It was really early. Takes sooooo long to get to work in the morning. Heh heh. But Greg and I carpooled so we could take the HOV lane on 635, and that shaves off about 10 minutes on the commute. I had fun on my first day...everybody was really nice. I spent most of my time with Richard, the PC services guy. He was setting up my computer and stuff. It's fun. I have my own cube. Hee hee. I need to find something to bring in tomorrow to decorate, but I'm really tired right now and lacking in the department of creativity. Basically I spent all day reading various documents and procedures (!!) 'cuz I didn't have email or internet access. My email should be set up completely tomorrow tho. Hee hee. Yey.
After work, we went to this guy's house to check out this French Horn that he was selling. It was pretty banged up, and the guy wanted $1150 for it. It sounded okay, but it doesn't look like it's worth that much money. We'll keep looking.
This evening I also had a good chat with Matty. It's always nice to talk to him. Always cheers me up. :o)
Also had a nice chat with Jodie. She referred me to have a week of free access to her new gym! Wheee!
My Mom also called to check on my 1st day. We talked about stuff for a little while, but I was eating so I didn't really get to talk to her much.
Last night our hockey game was a LOT of fun! We scored first, but Relentless came back and tied the game. We hacked our way through the 2nd and 3rd periods. Then we got a 5-minute sudden death overtime. But nobody scored. So it went to a shootout. Wendy, who ran a marathon yesterday morning, was the one who scored for our team to win the game. It was greatness. :o) Everybody was jumping up and down (including the players from the other game). Freaky thing is though, that Katie had dreamed this scenario Saturday night. It was really weird. She invited us over for dinner last night, and there she told me that she had a dream about our game...and that we had the game tied and went to overtime then to shootout. Ha ha. It's really strange. But she didn't know the outcome of the game 'cuz the alarm went off in her dream. Heh heh.
Anyways, I think I'm gonna go sleep now. Tired...
Posted by alpha at 10:48 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 24, 2004
Rejoice, rejoice
Yes...today is my last day at work. *Happy Dance*
I've pretty much finished everything that I needed to finish. I think I'll spend the rest of the afternoon going through the computer and delete things off of there. Fun stuff.
For lunch, Chris, Adam, Katrina, and I went to BJ's. That was a fun time. It's been somewhat of a wacky day tho (must be the weather). Chris had a couple glasses of beer so I drove us back. :p Hee hee. I'm gonna miss going out to lunch with everybody...
Oh, this morning, I was leaving for work and said bye to Jerry...but I couldn't find Benny anywhere. Turns out he was sleeping underneath a blanket that I had put on the bed. I didn't think to look there at first since Jerry is usually the one who does that. I petted Benny (while he was hiding under the blanket) and he made this soft "eee" noise. It was hilarious. Hee hee. Cats are funny.
Oh oh! Greg bought this French Horn from a company in Vegas (he saw their listing on eBay). He's been thinking about getting back into music, so this is really cool I think. They're supposed to ship it today and we should have it by Friday. Yey! :o) Greg wants it for the Mesquite Symphony rehearsal that he's observing Saturday morning, in case they need him to play. Hee hee.
This weekend we're going camping at Purtis Creek. We'll go after Greg's rehearsal thingy. I checked just now and only about half of the sites are reserved. So maybe it won't be too crowded. :o)
Hmmm I guess this entry is all out of order time-wise. Ah. :p Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 02:48 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 21, 2004
DUMBASS MANAGERS
Okay, it really takes a lot for someone to piss me off as much as my current manager has. The guy is a complete dumbass and doesn't know ANYTHING, including how to be a manager. He called me on my day off to ask about something that had already been decided to be discussed on Monday. Then today, he IM-ed, called my home phone and left a message, and called my cell phone and left a message. WHAT THE HELL! For one thing, the "problem" that he had wasn't a problem at all...it was due to his stupidity that it became a problem, for him. Everything was just fine and he freaked out over absolutely nothing, then decided to bother me on the weekend about it. I sooooooooooo want to send this email to him...
====================
David,
1. I don't appreciate being called on my vacation day over a non-emergency issue that had already been decided to be discussed on Monday. I'd also like to note that the decision was made between you and Chris, and Chris had already sent an email informing me of the issue. There was no need to call me on my vacation day.
2. Your Datalink problem wasn't a problem in the first place. I don't know why you were trying to run the data imports this weekend, other than running the add-on and active files. That was the whole point of making the process a cron...was that so YOU DON'T HAVE TO RUN IT MANUALLY. If you had been paying attention 2 weeks ago when I spent a whole hour explaining the process to you, you wouldn't be calling and IM-ing me ON THE WEEKEND. Oh, and if you had just checked the logs, it clearly states that the imports had already been run. But you probably don't remember where the logs are kept either.
3. I have other things to do on the weekends. Don't call/IM me and expect me to be there. You don't pay me for working over the weekends, so don't call me and expect me to work over the weekends. DUH.
4. Do not call me after Thursday unless I had initiated the conversation. I am not interested in working for PRE anymore, that's why I quit. Please look up the definition of quitting in the dictionary. While you're at it, look up the word "manager"...maybe you can pick up some pointers.
Sincerely,
Your soon-to-be-ex-employee (Thank GOD)
Posted by alpha at 04:27 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 20, 2004
Par-tay!
I took Friday off from work to clean & prepare for da partay that night. I basically cleaned all day. My manager annoyingly called me ON MY DAY OFF to ask me about something that Chris had already told him that we would discuss on Monday. The guy just doesn't have a clue. If nobody's dying and the system is running, I DON'T WANT TO GET A CALL FROM WORK ON MY DAY OFF! I can't wait to get out of there...
Speaking of which, our CEO is in town this week and the beginning of next week. We had this long lunch meeting Thursday, during which he actually said to me..."So, do you have 2 or 3 weeks left?" I glared at my manager and not-so-nicely said that I have precisely 3 days left in the office. Then somehow I became the most important person in the room. Later on, he asked me if I could put in 6-10 hours a week to do some part time work for them after I leave. I looked in disbelief and said that I would be very busy with other things. Honestly, I just don't think that they can afford paying me as a contractor, since I charge people $40/hr to do websites. I really don't want to do that for them anyway. I think they are too lazy to hire somebody to take over when someone quits. Darcy left 7 or so months ago, and we still don't have a Graphic Artist to replace her. Go figure. Given the way that I was taken advantage of at that place, I don't feel that I owe them anything. Maybe one of these days they'll learn to treat their employees better...or maybe not.
Oh, and get this...the CEO had the nerve to tell me..."Well, I know you're off to do bigger and better things now, but I know you'll be back. People always realize how good things were in the past and go back to them." I was like...ummmm...WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER! I highly highly highly doubt that I'll ever work for PRE again. Getting paid $20k less than your co-workers, get no benefits whatsoever, and be pissed off everyday 'cuz you have a clueless manager...I DON'T THINK SO.
Oh, and did I mention that last week I got a WELCOME GIFT from my new company??? A welcome gift! It's pretty darn cool. It's a calendar/calculator thing, accompanied by a welcome card from my recruiter saying how excited they are to have me work for them. At least I'll be appreciated there...
3 days left...3 days left...
Anyway, on to a happier note...Friday's party was to celebrate Greg's birthday and my much better new job. It was great fun! We had about 20 people come over. People brought excellent food and stuff. Greg made burgers and hot dogs on the grill. We had a great time mingling, and the evening was topped with the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream cake that Jodie and J.D. had brought over. Mmmmmmm mmmmmmmm! It was mega-tastiness! Everybody was very full, and that was the mission. :o) It was cool to have all these people from various stages of my life come and meet each other. All in all, it was a great party. Greg said we should do that more often. Hee hee. :p
Tomorrow morning we're meeting up with Marcy at an EARLY morning Stick-and-Puck session. 7am - 8:20am. Yah. Early. After that, Greg's friend Brenda and her sister (she's visiting from Hong Kong) are coming over to meet up with us for church. We'll go to the 9:30am service, have lunch here (leftovers from the party), and go out to the driving range so Brenda's sister can learn to play golf. :p Sounds like fun. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze a nap in there somewhere in the afternoon. I have a feeling that I'll need it. :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:36 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 17, 2004
I can see clearly now the rain is gone...
I like sunshine. Sunny and warm weather makes me happy. :o)
Just been finishing up some stuff this week for work...and waiting to get outta here. Yesterday we found out that somehow our paycheck this time around didn't get directly deposited into our accounts, so we got actual checks from the company. Great. I'm so glad to be getting out of here soon. All this disorganization drives me insane. Anyway, we took a nice break in the afternoon to go to each of our banks to deposit our checks. Then we played baseball awhile. That was fun. Greg decided that he was gonna come visit me at work, so he stopped by for a little while. That was also fun. I went to my parents' to discuss some company-related stuff with my Dad, and stayed for dinner. My poor doggie was dying for attention. :o/ Played with her awhile. She must be getting old 'cuz she hardly runs around anymore. :o/
Today is another gorgeous day. 82 degrees outside right now. I'd much rather be playing golf or something than be sitting here at work. Greg joined me, Adam, and Katrina for lunch at Bennigan's (go figure...on St. Patrick's Day). We had a good time. :o)
Tonight I think we're going grocery shopping to pick up stuff that we need for the party. Wheeee! Can't wait. It'll be so much fun. :o)
Posted by alpha at 02:01 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 15, 2004
129
That's supposedly my IQ. I got bored today and took the IQ test that I see on CNN's website. It says...
========================================
During the test, you answered four different types of questions — mathematical, visual-spatial, linguistic and logical. We analyzed how you did on each of those questions which reveals how your brain uniquely works.
We also compared your answers with others who have taken the test, and according to the sorts of questions you got correct, we can tell your Intellectual Type is Visual Mathematician.
This means you are gifted at spotting patterns — both in pictures and in numbers. These talents combined with your overall high intelligence make you good at understanding the big picture, which is why people trust your instincts and turn to you for direction — especially in the workplace. And that's just some of what we know about you from your test results.
========================================
Huh! :o)
Posted by alpha at 03:28 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
La la la
This weekend was relaxing. Didn't really do a whole lot. I did go shopping with Jodie though and spent about $200. :p I bought a pair of khakis and a pair of cargo khakis...some shirts, some pants...ya know, the like. I still would like to take a look around at Kohl's to see if they have any cheap shirts on sale. I found some that I like online...must go to store to try them on to see.
Sunday morning Greg and I decided to try this church nearby. I've passed by it for years. It's The Heights Baptist Church. We both liked it a LOT. The pastor was great and the people were nice. :o) I think we'll start going there from now on. Yey!
Sunday night we lost 0-2 to Relentless. We're playing really well as a team though. We're starting to know where each other is on the ice. It's great. :o) I had a lot of fun even though we lost. Marcy, Katie, Greg, and I went over to Braum's for ice cream afterwards. Those people that work there are the biggest bunch of apathetic people I've ever seen. We waited for like 10 minutes before they came to take our order. It was annoying. But it was a fun time in spite of the workers there.
Greg's off from work all this week. So this morning I set up Yahoo Messenger for him...so we could talk during the day. Hee hee yey! :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:12 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 11, 2004
La dee dah
This afternoon I had a scheduled meeting with one of the VPs in the Dallas office. My manager Cheryl and I are supposed to have a dotted-line reporting relationship with him. So I went over there, and was a little bit early in spite of an accident on 635. Hung out a little bit with the admin, Cederia...she's really cool. We chatted a little bit, and then Cheryl walked by and joined in the conversation. It was pretty cool. The VP ended up being pretty busy, so I met him and he welcomed me to OCC, and Cheryl is going to set up lunch for us 3 on my 1st day. That would be pretty neat. He seems like a nice guy. :o)
Cheryl showed me around the office a little bit. She said that they're looking to either expand in the same building, or move altogether, since they're completely maxed out on cube space. They don't even really have a place to put me. So I'll either take over the storage cube next to Cederia, or I'd have a temporary spot along a wall. If I end up in the temp spot, then I'd work 3 days there, 1 day in Cheryl's cube, and 1 day at home. Cheryl would work from home on the day that I work in her cube. Sounds like a good deal to me. I really don't care how that works out.
I got to meet this guy Matt, who's the senior developer in our group. He's pretty nice. He has been working at OCC for 4.5 months (he's a local hire), and so far he loves the company. We chatted for awhile.
After my OCC visit, I went ahead to take my drug test since it's in that end of town. It went okay...it's always somewhat weird doing stuff like that, but whatever. :p
Posted by alpha at 06:58 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 10, 2004
I QUIT!
Hee hee. Yah, I turned in my notice today. David looked slightly surprised, but honestly, he shouldn't be surprised at all. I get paid next to nothing, and there's nowhere for me to advance in the company. He did ask me if there was anything that they could do to make me stay...and I told him...not unless you can give me tuition reimbursement! So that alone pretty much throws the "idea" out the window for them. Then you count in the ~20k raise, vacation days, fully-paid benefits, bonus, merit raises, etc. etc...
Anyway, I'm glad that's done. I got the info for my drug test thing that I'll need to get done soon. Wendy (the recruiter) also told me today that they want me to go meet one of the VPs in the Dallas office tomorrow or Friday. Apparently Cheryl (my manager) and I will have a dotted reporting relationship with him. So I'm gonna do that tomorrow afternoon, and then head over to get my drug test done (it's way over by Texas Stadium) while I'm out that way. Yep. Fun.
Chris, Katrina, and I went out to lunch at Blue Goose to celebrate. It was fun, and their quesadillas are tasty as usual. After lunch, Chris and I scooted over to Fry's to take a look at a laptop that's on sale for $499 (no rebates). It's a good deal, but I don't really like it (or need it) too terribly much...Chris bought one though. :o) That was his toy for the rest of the afternoon.
Posted by alpha at 06:37 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 09, 2004
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
I GOT THE JOB I GOT THE JOB I GOT THE JOB I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm still keeping this under wraps for the time being (hence this being a "Friends Only" post), since I haven't turned in my notice to my boss yet. :o)
Anyway, this is how it went down...
The hiring manager, Cheryl, emailed me at about 4:30 and asked me to call her at home tonight at around 6:30. I sat there a little bit, and concluded that she couldn't have bad news for me if she's giving me her home phone number. So I emailed her back and told her that if it's more convenient for her, then she can go ahead and call my cell phone right then. She called about 5 minutes later. She wanted to ask me one last time whether I would have any problems learning to work on some Flash banners and things for them. Of course I didn't mind doing that (I had mentioned that before already in my interview with her). She just wanted to make sure. :o)
Cheryl couldn't make me an offer on the spot, but she told me that she's 99.9% sure that I'll get an offer...and that Wendy (the recruiter) would call today or tomorrow to give me the verbal offer. :o)
So then I went back to the office, told Chris & Adam, jumped around, and went to make my rounds of calls.
Wendy called right away. She offered me 50k/year, and I'll get 3 weeks of vacation. Medical/Dental would kick in after 30 days. :o) She said that I'll need to go take a drug test before I start, and that they'll need to complete a background check. That's all typical procedure. We figured out a start date of 3/29. It'll give me a couple of days off if I turn in my notice tomorrow. Hee hee. Then she asked me if I needed some time to think about it...and I was like...ummmm...nope!!! :o) Not only will I get paid more, I'll also save $100/month in the health insurance that I'm paying for right now. I'm so excited!!!!! I need to get crackin' on the GMAT so I can go back to school for my MBA in the Fall. :o)
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
Thanks to everybody who has been giving me so much support over the past few weeks. I really appreciate it. :o) This completely made my day, and what's even better, is that today is Greg's birthday!!! :o)
Posted by alpha at 06:34 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 08, 2004
Videoconference
Anyway, I woke up early this morning to get out to Las Colinas for my videoconference interview with some people in Chicago. It took about an hour to get there (usually probably about half an hour not in traffic). I was there 15 minutes early as I had intended, which was good. :o) I met with Carolyn (the 1st VP) and Dan (the Director) of the Internet Services division. They were both really nice. One of the first things that Carolyn told me was that they were VERY impressed with my site assessment. She said that I was very thorough with it, and Dan told me that they already had somebody working on that list. Ha ha. :p So it got off to a great start. Carolyn mentioned many times that my background is very impressive, and that she just wanted assurance from me that I wouldn't be bored doing somewhat boring updates every day. That seems to be a concern with everybody I've talked to so far. But I made sure that I told them that the duties & responsibilities at this job is very similar to what I was doing at Ericsson, and that I really would like to get away from the programming if I could.
Then Carolyn asked me what my ideal boss would be. I told her that I'm a pretty laid back person, and that I just like to have a boss who would let me do my work without feeling the need to watch over my shoulder, since that conveys to me as him not trusting what I'm doing. And she said that she appreciated my honesty with the answer, 'cuz a lot of candidates wouldn't tell them that...it helps them a lot in making sure that I would fit in with everybody else. Then she wanted to clarify on my answer, and asked if I had just meant that I don't prefer micromanagement. So I told her..."No no, I mean LITERALLY physically standing behind me and watching me work." That got some chuckles from them. :o) It's good to be able to make your interviewers laugh. Lightens the mood and entertains them.
Anyway, then they asked if I had any questions for them. I asked them what they thought about the company and how it treats its employees, how they perceive the structure of the group, and whether it bothers them to have the group located in two (Dallas & Chicago) offices. I was impressed with my own questions (not bad for thinking on-the-fly at 8:30 in the morning). Carolyn spoke first, and said that she and Dan both LOVE working at OCC and they plan on retiring with them. The company has really good benefits, and people who work there don't leave. Basically, it's a really good place to work. It turns out that Carolyn and Dan were the ones who built this group from the ground up, and they're really happy with the progress and productivity thus far. They didn't know what to expect out of the Dallas/Chicago thing at first, but it seems to be working out pretty well for them. It's just a lot of phone calls and videoconferencing, versus just walking down the hall to ask questions.
Before we finished, Carolyn mentioned again that my background is very impressive. They must really like me. :p I've never had someone at that level compliment me so many times on my background/resume. Of course, my 600-line site assessment probably helped a lot too. I told them that it was a good idea to make the candidates do that, since it makes us read everything in that site, so I learned a lot about the company and the industry while I was doing it. More chuckles from Carolyn and Dan. :p
Yah...the interview lasted about 25 minutes. :o) They asked their questions, and I asked mine. I was precise with my answers and so were they. It went really well, in my opinion. I mean, I don't want to get my hopes up, but I'm getting a lot better at reading how things are progressing in an interview, and I got some really good vibes from these two. :o) So keep crossing your fingers. I want this job. :o)
Posted by alpha at 11:04 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
:o)
A weekend recap... :o)
Friday night was nice. I stayed home and vegged (since I was still sick), and Greg went to play basketball at the gym. After he came home, he grilled salmon for dinner. It was mighty tasty. Mmmmmm. :o) We watched some shows and went to bed. Yep. Exciting.
Saturday we took the motorcycle to this BBQ place in Wylie. It's called Outlaw's BBQ. It was very tasty, and the people who run the place were really nice. They had these really tasty rolls there. Mmmmm! Anyway, since the weather was so nice out, there were plenty of motorcycles out too. 20 of them must have passed by while we were eating. It was great fun.
Then I went to my parents' house so my Dad could help me with the taxes for the company...the portion that affects my personal income tax. I should be getting about $200 back this year. I wish I got more, but at least I don't owe. :p After getting done with all the tax stuff, the whole family (including Greg and Matt) went to Tokyo One for dinner. That was fun as always. Hee hee.
I just noticed that I ate a lot this weekend...
Sunday Greg and I met up with Sinead and David for church at Asian American Baptist Church. This was the first time I've met David, even though he and Sinead have been dating for about a year. He's ummmm...interesting. He's very...inquisitive. Asked a lot of questions. Anyway, church was nice. The pastor there was nice. The 4 of us went and had pho for lunch, where David asked MORE questions and MORE questions. I'm not sure if that's just how he is, but good god the guy asked a lot of questions...to the point where it's ANNOYING. Well, Sinead told us that they're planning on getting married over Thanksgiving. WTF??? I don't know if I even like the guy...he just appears to be rather pushy and wanted to know anything and EVERYTHING about everybody. Yah. So we quickly made some excuses and made our escape from the Question Guy. Perhaps I should just call him by that from now. Mr. QG. That's it.
Anyway, we really did have things to do Sunday afternoon. Remember how I bought some clothes from Casual Corner last Tuesday. Well Saturday, when I was showing my Dad online on what I got, he noticed that it said they're having a 25% off sale over the weekend. So I called and asked if I could get the price difference back. The manager was really cool and said that I just have to come in while the sale is going on, and they'll do the price difference for me. So I had to go to CC Sunday to do that, and got almost $50 back! Craziness.
Sunday night was my hockey game. I'm impressed with how well we're playing together as a team. We're just connecting on passes and stuff. We didn't have a goalie so Leslie suited up and had her shot at playing in net. :p The 2 goals that the other team scored on her were fluke goals. Katie scored one late in the 3rd period. Wendy (the D) passed me the puck, and I bumped it over to Katie speeding up the right wing board, and she took it in and scored. It was beautiful. I love playing on a line with Katie 'cuz she makes me skate faster. :o) We were completely outskating the other team. It wouldn't be long before we start winning more games and putting more pucks in the net. *Excited*
Posted by alpha at 10:45 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
March 02, 2004
Sicky
Yep, that's right. I'm a sick freak (thanks Adam) today. Went to Tom Thumb and got me some meds. Hopefully I'd feel better soon 'cuz I hate being sick. :o/
The rest of the weekend went well. It was a lot of fun. Sunday night was our hockey game. We played against the Hornets. We lost 1-2, but I scored my team's only goal. Luci caught a pass from me in front of the goal, she shot and the goalie blocked it, but left the rebound right in front of the net. So she picked up her own rebound, lifted it, and it hit the crossbar! Ha ha. Anyway, the puck came bouncing over my way, so I found it and lifted it top corner at a zero angle (I was standing about even with the goal line at this point). The puck barely graced the inside of the far post and hit the net. I was so excited. It was probably one of the best-looking goals I've ever scored (like I wasn't falling or it didn't hit someone's skate in front or anything). :o) It was awesome. I'd never forget it.
Then again, I don't think the rink would ever get the stats right. I was wearing Margaret's #11 jersey Sunday night. Actually, I'm pretty sure that I've shown up for more than 9 games. Eck. I should just keep my own stats from now on. Far as I know, I have 2 goals and 2 assists (at least 2 assists...but I forget) this season. That's actually not bad of a season for me, since I average about 2 goals a season. Ha ha. We'll have to change that. :p
Posted by alpha at 02:45 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
Wheeee
I'm in a good mood today even though I'm sick at home. Why, you ask. Well, I heard back from my recruiter at OCC yesterday afternoon. Here's what she said in her email:
====================
Christine-
We have narrowed down our candidates to 2 people and you are one of them. I'd like to have you come back into the Dallas office and do a videoconference interview with our Director and 1st VP in Chicago. If you move onto the next step, we would fly you to Chicago to meet with more people (and then that would be it!).
So, can you let me know when you are available this week and next week? It will probably take about 1 1/2 hours.
Thanks-
Wendy
====================
I think that's pretty awesome. So after several reschedulings today, we've settled on Monday at 8:30am for my interview with the big dogs. I'm not quite sure what to expect in this interview. But I can tell you that the other person doesn't know what s/he is up against. :p Greg and I are going to Casual Corner tonight to find me another suit for this upcoming interview. Probably not a good thing to wear the same suit twice to the same office. Hee hee. :p
Oh, and they had me do this site assessment thingy for one of their websites last week. That's what I was so busy doing, but couldn't talk about in the publically accessible entries. Hee hee. :o) Guess they liked it. :p
Posted by alpha at 02:42 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 29, 2004
I've met my idol...
Yey! Saturday was Paul's (Greg's brother's) 37th birthday. He came over to watch the Texas vs. Texas Tech basketball game. And Katie (from my hockey team) also came over to watch the game 'cuz she's a Tech alum, and 'cuz she's riding with us to the Brahmas game later on in the day. It was great fun. Greg made fajitas on the grill and we had a wonderful time. We left for Ft. Worth at about 4:45pm. I brought all my camera stuff this time around. Went to a Cammi Granato VIP event, where she spoke about her hockey career and about the U.S. Women's Olympics Hockey Team (she's been the Captain for 6 or 7 years). Afterwards, she signed autographs and I had my picture taken with her. This is especially cool since she's the one who inspired me to play hockey in the first place. I had stayed up night after night to watch the U.S. Olympics Hockey Team play in their games back in the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan. So she's been my idol for at least the past 6 years. :o) And she's one of the friendliest athletes I've ever met.
After the VIP event, we attended the Brahmas vs. Laredo Bucks game. A huge fight broke out 8 seconds into the game. It was quite funny. There were a bunch of penalties during the game, including a penalty shot. I was very glad that I had brought my 70-300 telephoto lens to the game. Got some great shots and got some practice in for taking action photographs. :o)
After the game, Cammi held a clinic for us. It was cool 'cuz it was a relatively cheap ($20) clinic, and she was really enthusiastic about helping us become better players. It was incredible to watch her skate too...she's so graceful and so strong. This is probably one of the coolest things I've ever done. And I'm very grateful to have had the chance to meet my hockey idol. :o)
Oh, almost forgot...there are more pictures...
Posted by alpha at 03:23 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 27, 2004
In complete disbelief...
Well I sure am glad that the sun is back out and it's warm today. I think I've had just about enough of winter. I'm ready for some shorts/t-shirt weather!
This week I've been pretty busy with ummmmm...stuff. I just can't say exactly what it is on a publically accessible entry. :o) Anyway, that's going well, but a little slower than I'd like. I hope to have that done by today.
Anywho, Greg and I went to the symphony last night (he won tickets to it on the radio). We got excellent seats on the floor, about halfway down the section, smack in the middle of the row. :o) It turned out that his ex-mother-in-law was playing in the orchestra (they flew her in from Colorado to play this special instrument). So I was like...ok, whatever. Then just after intermission, Greg spotted his ex-wife Camilla in the audience not very far from where we were sitting. We went over to say hi after the concert. They were both really nice. I mean, it was a little bit weird, but I'm kinda glad that I finally met her. And quite honestly, I can't see them together at all.
Now, get this. I was talking to Katrina about the symphony and all that stuff. And showed her that picture of Camilla. She went "HOLY SHIT!!! I KNOW HER!!!" As it turns out, Camilla had started the church group that Katrina goes to, and Katrina has been going to that church since she was 7. Greg did a couple of things with that group, but he had always thought that they were a weird bunch, so he didn't really like hanging out with them. Anyway, so Camilla's been divorced twice now, and is single again...living in a trailer in Ennis, and has this tattoo on her shoulder. Yep. It's kinda sad, really. But what a small world!
Posted by alpha at 09:36 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 24, 2004
Rain...
I s'pose I hadn't written about my weekend. :o) Friday night Greg and I took the motorcycle up to Collin Creek Mall to see about getting Greg some prescription sunglasses. That was fun. Saturday I went to see "Return of the King" with Jodie, and we had lunch beforehand at the Cheesecake Factory. That was mighty tasty. It was a gorgeous day out. ROTK was more packed that I had expected, but it was still very awesome. :o) I'm glad I finally got to see it. Then after I got home, I helped Greg wire up the bike with the new yellow accent lights that I had gotten for him for V-Day. It looks waaaaaaaay cool. :o)
Sunday Greg and I took the motorcycle (another gorgeous day) over to Chris' for "lunner". He and Beta cooked up a storm...he made ribs, pineapple and shrimp wrapped in bacon, Red Lobster biscuits, french onion potatoes, and green beans. Everything was very tasty. We watched "Snatch" while we ate. Adam and Amy came too. It was fun. :o) Then my hockey game was at 8:45 that night. We lost 0-2. Ah well.
I'm looking forward to this weekend. We're going to the Ft. Worth Brahmas game on Saturday. Cammi Granato (from the 1998 U.S. Olympics Gold Medal women's hockey team) is going to speak at a V.I.P. event before the game, and will be conducting a clinic after the game. Can't wait. I'll have to remember to bring my camera. Hee hee. :o)
Posted by alpha at 12:49 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 23, 2004
Thing-a-ma-bobber
NOVEMBER:
Has a lot of ideas. Difficult to fathom. Thinks forward. Unique and brilliant. Extraordinary ideas. Sharp thinking. Fine and strong clairvoyance. Can become good doctors. Dynamic in personality. Secretive. Inquisitive. Knows how to dig secrets. Always thinking. Less talkative but amiable. Brave and generous. Patient. Stubborn and hard-hearted. If there is a will, there is a way. Determined. Never give up. Hardly becomes angry unless provoked. Loves to be alone. Thinks differently from others. Sharp-minded. Motivates oneself. Does not appreciate praises. High-spirited. Well-built and tough. Deep love and emotions. Romantic. Uncertain in relationships. Homely. Hardworking. High abilities. Trustworthy. Honest and keeps secrets. Not able to control emotions. Unpredictable.
...stolen from Jodie...
Posted by alpha at 10:56 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 20, 2004
:o)
Well my interview this morning went really well. The VP of HR, Carol, came out to greet me when I got there. Then the hiring manager, Cheryl, came in to meet with me as well. So instead of the 1 hour each of Carol and Cheryl separately, it was 1 hour altogether with the both of them. Carol first asked me some questions about my resume, etc. Then Cheryl took her turn to tell me more specifics of the job, and asked me a few questions. They were both really nice and stuff. Carol told me about the benefits package that they have, which is a little weird since usually companies don't tell you in detail their benefits package until you're actually hired (like during orientation or something). Anyway, we chatted awhile, and they told me that they're interviewing several other people this afternoon and early next week. They should be ready to make a decision by the end of next week. So I should find out probably the week after.
*Crossing fingers*
The company sounds really neat. I think I would learn a lot there. And I made sure that I mention that anything I don't know now, could be learned. They seem to really encourage career growth there, so it's a really good environment. Carol was also very impressed with my CS degree from UTD. Apparently one of the employees up in Chicago has a son who wanted to move down to Dallas to go to UTD for the CS program. So Carol heard ALL about the program and how good it is. She said that the guy researched various schools for their CS programs, and UTD is one of the country's best. Kinda took me by surprise 'cuz someone from outside the area knows about the school. :o) Makes me feel better too 'cuz that means that my degree is valued more to them.
Anywho, I'm trying to not get too excited about it. But I really would like to have that job. So we'll see what happens. :o)
Oh, and since I got done an hour earlier than I had originally anticipated, I went and had lunch with Greg. :o) We went to that pizza place that we love out in Lewisville. The owner Ralph was there, and he gave us a VIP card ('cuz we've been going there ever since they opened). :o) We get a free pizza every 6th time. Hee hee. Pretty awesome.
Posted by alpha at 04:22 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 19, 2004
Now on Dogster...
BB is now officially on Dogster!
Posted by alpha at 01:54 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 17, 2004
Can't believe I forgot...
Goodness! The whole point of my last post was to put a link to the pictures I took from this weekend. Ha ha. Duh...
Here 'tis...
Alpha's V-Day Pics
Enjoy!
Posted by alpha at 10:37 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
La la...
Hee hee well, the snow was gone by Sunday. :o) It was still great tho. Sunday was beautiful...the sun was out, and it was much warmer. Greg and his Dad went to the gym for a few hours. Then we went to the American Airlines Center for the Dallas Desperados arena football game. Greg's cousin Mike was coaching the opposing team, the Philadelphia Soul. 3 rows' worth of family members showed up to support. We each got Soul t-shirts to wear. It was funny. Was a great game...the Desperados won 51-47. Bon Jovi (the Soul's owner) made the trip with the team and was sitting in one of the suites not very far from us. I could see him clearly without binoculars or anything. That was kinda cool. We didn't get to hang around and visit with everybody 'cuz we had to take Greg's Dad to the airport. Oh well. Picked up some dinner on the way home and then went to my hockey game. We lost 0-1, but it was a fun game. We pulled the goalie with about 20 seconds left in the game. I hauled ass up the middle of the ice, completely undetected, and got a really good shot off with 5 seconds left. Too bad their goalie stopped it. :p After the game, Greg told me that it was the coolest play he has ever seen me make. Hee hee. *Warm Fuzzies*
Yesterday was somewhat uneventful. Greg was having a really bad day at work. :o/ His job is stupid and his supervisor (a woman) hates men. Basically, his company's management system is completely screwed with people who are incompetent (there's even a manager who's a registered sex offender). It's pretty ridiculous. Guess we'll be looking for a new job for him.
Posted by alpha at 11:20 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 14, 2004
SNOW!!!
I'm...dreaming of a white...Valentine's....!
Greg and I spent most of last night cleaning the house in preparation for Greg's Dad's arrival. We had chili for dinner, make chocolate chip cookies, and had a fire going in the fireplace. :o) It was great. Went to bed at about 2am...
Greg got up at 6:30 or so to feed the cats. He came back and was like...ummmm ya gotta come see this! EVERYTHING was already covered in 2 inches of snow. It was beautiful. Very serene.
When I got up at 9:30, there's another inch of snow. I've never seen so much snow that it starts to tumble out of the tree branches. Well, I have seen that much snow, but not here at home. :o) That's what makes it cool. I must go take pictures now. More later...
Still snowing... :o)
Posted by alpha at 09:50 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 13, 2004
Yey!!!
I talked to Wendy, the recruiter at OCC, this morning at 11:30. I had to go to the staircase of our building to be sure that David wouldn't walk in on me while I was talking to her. It was very echo-y and kinda chilly in there. Anyway, Wendy wanted to do some verification stuff on my resume so she asked me a bunch of questions. It was like another interview in itself. It went well though. She seems really cool. She explained more about what the company does, and stuff like that. OCC is the only middle-man between investment firms and the exchanges. The reason why they have a Dallas office is that since their headquarters is in Chicago, and Chicago is considered a high-profile area (for terrorist attacks), the SEC decided after 911 that OCC should be more spread out in case of such emergencies. That way business can still go on from another part of the country. So they built a new datacenter here in Dallas, and will be using Dallas as the primary processing site (while Chicago would be the back-up site). Pretty cool.
Anyway, I asked her about some high-level benefits type questions. She said that we get fully paid medical/dental insurance, 401(k), profit sharing, all that good stuff. Plus the company runs on the same holiday schedule as the exchanges (in fact, they're off on President's Day). And there's a $10,000/year maximum on tuition reimbursement. Wheeeee!!! Quite cool.
Towards the end of the conversation, Wendy said that she would call me back by the end of today or Tuesday (since it's a holiday on Monday for them) and let me know if I'm chosen for an in-person interview. So I hung up with her, walked back to the office, and was telling Chris all about it...and then...
...the phone rang...
It was Wendy again on the phone (note: this was probably about 5 minutes after the end of the first call). She said that she wants to go ahead and set up an interview for me for next Friday at 10am. She must have just called Cheryl (the hiring manager), and Cheryl told her that she wanted to see me (like what she told me on the phone Wednesday). Ha ha. How funny. So I'm excited about next Friday. :o) It'll be a 2-hour interview - the first hour with Wendy's boss (the VP of HR), and then the 2nd hour with Cheryl. I'm slightly nervous about meeting the VP of HR, but it should be okay. She's probably there to make sure that I'm not lying about my resume, and that I'm not insane. Hee hee. :o) Yey!!!!
Posted by alpha at 02:38 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 12, 2004
*Warm Fuzzies*
The receptionist out front, Lynda, called and asked that I come see her. It turns out that Greg had a dozen of red roses sent to me at work for Valentine's Day. :o) :o) So cute! Pretty flowers! Lynda had never seen flowers that comes in a box, and insisted that I open it at the front desk. Mary Anne was also there to ooooo-ahhhhh about it. It was funny. I made everybody jealous. :o) *Grin*
Posted by alpha at 01:46 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 11, 2004
Holy crapizoid!
So I had a phone interview this morning with the hiring manager at Options Clearing Corporation. It's for an Internet Content Specialist position. It requires no coding experience (there are a couple of enginerds in the group who code)...really just to update websites in a time-sensitive manner, and to help debug JSP in case it breaks. :o) She called at 8 and went through more specifics about the position. Basically she wants someone who's really anal and detail-oriented for the job, but someone who wouldn't be bored doing content updates most of the time. I fit the description quite well. Honestly, I don't mind not having to code if they're willing to pay that sort of salary (it pays up to 52k) for it.
The conversation went really well. She was really really nice. She told me that she's a hands off manager, and so is her boss. That would be a great change for me. I'm really getting tired of David coming in here and looking over our shoulders. Anyway, most of the job would be content management. However, Cheryl (the manager) has so many projects that she's in charge of that she wants to offload some of those onto the person who is hired for the job. So I'll get to do some project management along with it. It's pretty neat.
Without going into too much detail, I got a really good vibe from her. Towards the end she was answering my questions with "well, you will do this..." or "you will be doing that". That's usually a good sign. Plus she said that I could ask the recruiter Wendy about any benefits type questions. I've never had a manager mention benefits stuff to me during a phone interview. I would assume that could only be a good sign. She also asked me to send her URLs of stuff that I've done, and once she has my email address, she'll send me the 6 URLs of the sites that they manage. I sent those to her when I got to work, and she emailed back saying that she also enjoyed talking to me. Yey! Everything looks good. Wendy is going to call me at 11:30am on Friday to talk to me for 30 minutes (not sure what about). But yah, I'm very excited. In fact, I've been bouncing off the walls all morning.
Anyway, what really sold me on the job (other than the fully paid benefits and 401k and vacation time and tuition reimbursement), was that Cheryl told me that she started out at OCC 5 years ago as a call center tech. And now she's a project manager. So there's plenty of room to grow and learn. That's really what I want in a job. :o)
Posted by alpha at 11:09 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 09, 2004
Dreary Day
This weekend was fun. We met up with Katie Friday night to go see Miracle at Cinemark Legacy. We got there at 7:30, and the movie started at 8:15. It was packed, as expected, since it was opening night. Sat through fairly lame previews (PG previews suck). The movie was beautifully made. The skating/hockey was authentic, but I think that the equipment could have been a lot more authentic. The players were all wearing new Bauer skates and new CCM helmets and stuff. It was pretty funny. Kurt Russell was great. Lots of cute boys. Great movie.
Oh! I almost forgot! In the middle of the movie, a couple of punks ran in and yelled some obscenities to the audience. Quite inappropriate. Then they came in a 2nd time and did the same thing. I guess somebody went to complain 'cuz we all got a free movie pass from the theater after the movie. :o)
Saturday I was at my parents' most of the day. My Dad wanted to discuss some family business stuff. We used my camera and took some test pics of the products that we sell. They turned out pretty good even with a minimal setup. I think my parents' living room just gets really good indirect lighting. I'll have to upload when I remember to do it.
Sunday I slept in. :o) It was nice. Cleaned some. Played on the computer. Then we went to Lewisville to pick up Greg's bookshelf from storage. Tried to go get my skates sharpened, but the place closed at 4. Blah. Came home, had dinner, and then went to my hockey game. It was fun. We were shorthanded, but it was a good game. Everybody played hard. Got lots of exercise. :o)
So here we are...work again. It's a rainy day. I much more like sunny and warm days. More cheery I think.
Posted by alpha at 09:56 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 04, 2004
Moron with a Lexus
I hate stupid drivers.
So, I was on my way home from work tonight. This guy in his pretty Lexus signaled and wanted to change into my lane. I left him plenty of room to change lanes. After about 15 seconds, he still hadn't changed lanes. I pulled up 'cuz I wasn't about to wait all day for him to decide whether he's going to change lanes. The moron pulled up to the stop sign, rolled down the window, honked, and started gestering something at me. I ignored him. When he learns how to drive, he can get back to me. What a dumbass.
Well, at least when I got home, my W2 from work was waiting for me. Finally. 4 days after when I was supposed to get it. Whatever.
Tonight Greg's going to the Stars game with his friend Joe from work. I think I'll stay in and watch some of the shows that I taped this week. Wheeee...not really in the mood to go out in the rain...
Posted by alpha at 06:27 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 03, 2004
Ummmm...
So, today, February 3rd, we still don't have our W2's from our company. I believe that by law, we were supposed to have those in our hands by the last day of January. Then again, who am I kidding anyway? What does this company know about following laws...
Alas, another work day, another day for our manager to come in and annoy and watch over our shoulders. The morale in this place has disintegrated into virtually nothing.
How exciting.
Posted by alpha at 01:37 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
February 01, 2004
???
Friday night Greg, his brother Paul, and I went to the Mesquite vs. North Mesquite basketball game. It was all kinda ghetto in there. In fact, a fight broke out at the end of halftime on the North Mesquite side. We left soon after that. The boys came home and watched some sports on TV, and listened to the Texas baseball game online (they were playing in Hawaii). Yep. I fell asleep after awhile 'cuz I was so drained from work the past couple of weeks. Lame, I know, but what can ya do...
Oh, we didn't end up going to Houston this weekend. Greg's nephew BJ had something to do on Saturday (BJ's birthday), so we just didn't go down...probably a good thing 'cuz we have tons to do at the house in preparation for Greg's Dad's visit in a couple of weeks, and Super Bowl traffic would have made the driving experience horrific. So Saturday I spent a good hour or so cleaning the guest bathroom. Let's hope that it stays that way for 2 weeks. :p We gotta get the whole house cleaned...what a chore. We almost have the guest room ready. The sheets were washed and most of Greg's boxes are outta there. My computer room is still a mess. Argh. So much cleaning to do...
Saturday Greg also went to the gym to play basketball. He left his wallet in one of the lockers there, locked with a combo lock. But some kid managed to pry it open and stole his wallet. It was most annoying, and so Greg was grumpy most of the rest of the day. But he went back Sunday and the staff had found it and put it in the safe. So that was good, except that he had already cancelled his ATM and credit cards and stuff. *Sigh*
Sunday when I got on my computer, my friend Shawna (from Nova Scotia) was online. Turns out that her boyfriend had proposed to her on Saturday. She sent me an email with a pic of the ring, so I think she was waiting for me to get online to talk to me. Hee hee. :o) She and her boyfriend (also named Greg) have been together 5.5 years. Long time eh? Anyway, they're getting married in 2005 in the Dominican Republic, which got me wondering about why so many of my friends are doing off-shore weddings. Lessee...there's Katrina and Trevor in Jamaica in May this year, my friend Whitney and her fiance Willie in Hawaii on May 5th, and then Shawna and Greg in the Dominican Republic. I guess it's easier 'cuz you don't have to deal with family and all that stuff. And it sure sounds intriguing. Less planning, cheaper (in most cases), and awesome 'cuz you get to go to somewhere cool. Probably something to look into. But I dunno...always thought of having a local wedding...plus my sister wants to plan it. If I got married elsewhere, then there wouldn't be much for her to plan. Anyway, just thought that it's interesting how all of a sudden so many people are getting married elsewhere...
Posted by alpha at 10:33 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
January 29, 2004
A Fairytale Wedding...
Huh interesting!
What's Your Wedding Style?
brought to you by Quizilla
Posted by alpha at 04:58 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
January 25, 2004
60-Hour Work Week
Ummm...yeah. We rolled out our new company website yesterday. I got to work at 8:30am, came home to work some more at about 1pm, and worked until about 12:30am. Yep. 16 hours' worth for yesterday. Then worked 4 more hours today to finish some stuff up. So I worked an extra 20 hours this week just in 2 days. Sucked. But at least the site is live now...finally. Few more tweaks we gotta do, but looks good so far. Thank goodness.
Took a break and went to Waffle House with Greg for lunch. We took the motorcycle. It was a wonderful day (70 degrees and sunny) to be out riding. In fact, quite a few people were. Went to run some errands also. Just had ta get out of the house...
Tonight we played the Mantis in our hockey game. We had Vicki in net and we gave her a shutout...won 3-0. Was pretty fun. :o) I think we're playing much better as a team. It's great to see.
Anyway, I would like to get away from the computer now. I've spent way too much time with it this weekend that it's giving me a headache even though I'm not working. Greg just told me that it's gonna snow tomorrow? Quite a contrast from the beautiful day we had today. Too bad...but after all, it IS January...
Posted by alpha at 10:35 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
January 22, 2004
Just want to say real quick...
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!!!! :o)
I had tasty food, and some pocket money. :o) I sure love celebrating another new year where you're supposed to get money. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 10:55 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
Places I've been...
This is pretty cool. Thanks Luci!!
create your own visited country map
Here are the countries:
Bahamas
Belgium
Canada
China
Dominican Republic
Germany
Netherlands
Oman
Phillipines
Thailand
Uganda
United States
Posted by alpha at 11:26 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
January 20, 2004
Ah ha!
I knew I had some Switchfoot stuff from a long time ago. Just found it! :o) It's from this demo CD from '97. Ha ha. :p
In any case, I'll be making CD purchases on Amazon tonight. I'm about due on some new CDs. Here are the selections for this round:
Switchfoot - The Beautiful Letdown
Jars of Clay - Who We Are Instead
If you guys like Switchfoot, you'd most likely like Jars of Clay too. I've been listening to them ever since they started. They're excellent. :o) And Gavin Degraw, well, it seems that One Tree Hill sold me on his music. Hee hee. Listened to some samples on Amazon, and they sound cool. So new one in the mix...
Anyway, today's been pretty boring. We went to Chipotle for lunch. Yum yum. Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 09:15 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
January 19, 2004
Miracle
In theaters February 6th. :o)
Wheeeee!!! Thanks Katie! :o)
"Miracle" is the inspiring story of the team that transcended its sport and united a nation with a new feeling of hope. Based on the exciting true story of one of the greatest moments in modern history, the film captures a time and place where differences could be settled by games and a cold war could be put on ice. In 1980, the United States Ice Hockey team's coach, Herb Brooks (KURT RUSSELL), took a ragtag squad of college kids up against the legendary juggernaut from the Soviet Union at the Olympic Games. Despite the long odds, Team USA carried the pride of a nation yearning for a distraction from world events. With the world watching, the team rose to the occasion, prompting broadcaster Al Michaels' now-famous question to the millions viewing at home: "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!"
-- © Disney (taken from the official "Miracle" website)
If nothing else, lots of cute boys are in it. :o) Hee hee. Like the guy that plays Tag on "Friends"...
Posted by alpha at 11:52 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
Lar lar lar
This weekend was nice. Friday night (in the pouring rain) we went out for pizza. We were gonna try out this place up the street, but as we were walking in, the dude there somewhat rudely told us that they were closing early that night. Mind you, at this point it was 8pm on a Friday night, and they're closing early. Plus, no signs on the door or anything. So we decided that we were never going to that place again, and went out to one of our favorite pizza places out in Lewisville. Great pizza, as usual. What was interesting this time was that they had invited in a homeless guy who was walking around in the rain. They fed him dinner and stuff. Anyway, we got to talking to the waiter, and he told us that the homeless guy is married, but that his family didn't know where he was...and that he's a veteran. It was pretty sad. Greg gave the guy our leftover pizza, and he really appreciated it. *Warm fuzzies* Then we made our way home and called it a night.
Saturday we got up at a reasonable hour, and Greg took his bike in for some servicing. So I went up to Plano Honda to pick him up (and checked out the new Honda 599. It was beautiful, and I fitted surprisingly well on it. Anyway, then we went home and picked up Greg's car, and dropped off my car at City Garage for an oil change and tire rotation. Decided to try out the synthetic blend oil, and sure enough, my engine's running quite a bit smoother. Plus, I only need to change my oil every 5000 miles instead of 3000. :p Pretty cool.
Then we went to Oak Point to play basketball. Greg shot around with me for awhile, then went to play a couple of pick-up games with some of the guys that were there. I went upstairs to check out their jogging track. It was pretty cool. I wish it were a bit bigger though, 'cuz ya hafta run 15 laps on it to get a mile. It was fun. We came home and went to pick up my car and his bike, and then pretty much watched hockey the rest of the night (NHL Center Ice had a free preview this week on digital cable). :o)
Sunday I slept in. It was nice. Then we lazied around for awhile 'cuz it was cold outside. I tried (unsuccesfully) to make some ethernet cables. :p Watched football games. Then went to my hockey game. We beat the Hornets 9-1. They didn't have a goalie. I think I had a goal and an assist. It got a little boring after we were up 4-0 at the end of the 1st period 'cuz the Hornets kinda gave up. :p Oh well. We deserve a big win anyway. Plus we got some nice practice in. That's always good.
So here we are. Monday again. David came in at 9:30 and told us that he's going out to lunch (lunch at 9:30am??). Turns out that it's his kid's birthday and they're having a birthday party at an indoor soccer place. So he'll be gone awhile. Yey. :p
Posted by alpha at 09:45 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
January 13, 2004
Argh - Part II
So, David came in after Chris left for the day (I think on purpose too to avoid an argument with Chris), and said that "Since I gave Adam grief about work hours this morning, I might as well give you grief over hours too." Basically, he said that we need to make sure that we put in 40-hour work weeks, especially since we have so much stuff to do. And that company-paid lunches that we go on, aren't counted as business lunches if we weren't working through the entire thing (so it's not a business lunch even if we were talking about work the entire time at lunch). Therefore if it wasn't a "working lunch", then we'd still need to make up the extra hour that we took (even to discuss work over lunch). So here are my conclusions (other than that I really hate micro-managers):
1. Obviously our work is time-based, and not productivity-based (thanks Adam...well put).
2. I will not participate in a company-paid lunch unless it's counted as a business lunch. My time is more valuable than a $10 meal.
3. By David's perception of business lunches, taking us out to lunch for our birthdays isn't really a treat since we still have to make up the time that we were gone eating.
4. I should just ignore most of these power-trip "prep talks". It's pointless anyway and he's just saying it 'cuz he can. It doesn't do anybody any good...in fact, it just pisses everybody off.
5. Micro-managers suck.
That's all for now.
Posted by alpha at 04:08 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
Argh!
Last night my internet connection decided to go all haywire. It was fine before Greg and I left to go to Academy and Target. But when we came back, the stupid "Network Cable Disconnected" box kept popping up every other second. 2 hours and some expletives later (with the router almost spending a night out in the yard), it was narrowed down to a bad ethernet cable. Grrrrr!
Adam said that he just got the "talk" from David about all of us leaving early from work yesterday. Ummm what the hell! Chris got in at 7am and left at 4:30pm (thus staying late). Adam and I got in at around 9:30am and left at 5:45pm. David was complaining that since we went out for lunch for an hour, that we need to be making it up. But hell, it was a BUSINESS LUNCH. We talked about work AT LUNCH. Therefore it counts as work time. That's just how it works. If this is how David perceives a business lunch, then I'd rather not go out to lunch with him at all. It's just not worth a free lunch that way. So stupid.
Posted by alpha at 10:11 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
January 12, 2004
:o)
Okay okay, it's time for lazy butt to post again. :p
Last week was somewhat uneventful. Chris and Beta were gone skiing, so it was just Adam and I (well, and David) at the office. We had a good time. Went out to lunch with Katrina one of the days, and then with Katrina, Mary Anne, and Greg on another day. It was fun.
Friday night we went out shopping...went to Oshman's to try to find some boots for Greg and some exercise machine flooring for my CrossBow, and then went to St. Bernard's Sports in Highland Park to check out some of the ski stuff they have this season.
Saturday I spent most of it taking apart my huge L-shaped computer desk and then putting it back together in my sister's old room. Now I have big stacks of stuff that I took off of my desk that I'll need to organize and put back onto the desk. Fun stuff. We're also going to put the CrossBow in there. It'll be nice and pimp when we're all done with it.
Sunday I put the computer back together on the said computer desk. Then we went to the Galleria to go shopping. I had $30 in Galleria coins to spend (was a present a year or so ago from my Mom I think). We went to Wilson's Leather and they were having a Final Clearance sale (50%-70% off). Bought a new leather jacket. It's nice. It was $199 priced down to $99.99. I like it. :o) Then it was on to the hockey game, where we lost 0-1 to Relentless. Yep. That's 'bout it for the weekend.
Today has been somewhat slow. Chris is back and had vacation stories to tell. That was cool. :o) He said it was -8 at the bottom of the mountain, and about -30 (not counting wind chill) at the top. Brrrrrrrr!!! Then David took us out to Texas de Brazil for lunch (this was like a Christmas/New Year's lunch thing). It was good, and Alpha's full of meat. I think I like Fogo better though. Anywho...naptime for Alphie...
Posted by alpha at 01:51 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
January 06, 2004
Brrrrrrr
It's freakin' cold. But I guess I shouldn't be complaining, 'cuz my friends Chris and Christine are in Colorado skiing this week, and it's 3 degrees Fahrenheit at the foot of the mountain. Heh heh. That's gotta be quite an experience. Just the thought of being on a ski lift when it's that cold makes me shiver. :p
As Darcy pointed out last night, I've been neglecting my journal update duties lately. Partly it's because we've been so busy at work (and the boss walking in every hour/half hour or so...very annoying and disruptive), and partly it's just 'cuz I've been lazy. :o) My New Year's Eve was good. We went to Luci's party. It was fun. Just about everyone that I see twice a year (for Luci's birthday and then for New Year's Eve) was there. And there was the usual drama. :p Jay brought his friend Patrick from work. Patrick was hilarious...he's originally from Brooklyn, and he has a cousin who had just gone through the FBI Academy. :p Watched the Time Square ball drop twice (once for EST and a replay for CST), and Dick Clark to get another year older. Had some relaxing time with some Woodchuck and champagne. Good times, good times.
It was unseasonably warm at the end of last week...got up to almost 80 degrees Friday and Saturday. Friday I was mostly working from home to get some stuff done. Greg and I went to the driving range in shorts and t-shirts in the afternoon. It was great. Worked a little bit on Saturday too. Then I went to see "Big Fish" with my high school friends Rita, Linya, and Jane. That was an interesting movie. I think it would've been better had we not have to sit in the 2nd row to see it. Just FYI, Ewen McGregor's Cantonese isn't very good. :p Anyway, it was good reconnecting with some of my high school friends. It was funny 'cuz Linya pointed out that I'm the only completely independent one out of the group that day. Jane's in med school at UT Southwestern, Linya is getting ready to go to med school...and Rita's going to India for 6 months to see if she could find something satisfying and rewarding to do with her life (I'm still not sure what exactly what she'd be doing over there).
Saturday night after I got home from the movie, Greg was making something good for dinner...beef with peppercorn sauce. It was tastiness. We had a candlelight dinner out on the deck. It was really cute. :o)
Sunday I didn't do a whole lot. I cleaned the bathroom and installed some new hinges on the bathroom door (the old ones were getting nasty and one of them was missing the pin). It was quite an accomplishment. Greg made steak for dinner, and then I was off to my hockey game. It was a violent game...I got pushed into the boards (on my knees, feet first) on my first shift, then got beaten up just about every shift in the 1st period. After that I think the other team got tired of chasing me around. :p We won 2-1, so that was good. Not good though when I took off my helmet in the locker room after the game, and I had a headache. I had a headache most of the rest of the night. I'm guessing it was from my collision with the boards in the 1st period. *Sigh*
Yesterday was okay. Didn't want to be at work, but my new camera lens that Greg bought me for Christmas was delivered. That was way cool. Went out to lunch with Adam at Bennigan's. :o) Otherwise work was pretty insignificant. When I got home, I ventured out into the cold with my new lens and camera and tripod, and attempted to take pictures of the moon. I think some of them would turn out okay (I was experimenting with the different manual settings). I'll put up the link when I have them all fixed up and uploaded. :o)
Posted by alpha at 09:38 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
December 28, 2003
Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to the airport we go...
The summary of my Christmas vacation:
Number of trips to the airport: 4
Number of times airport security checked my vehicle: 0
Number of hours spent driving to/from the airport: 4
Number of times driven through the High Five Interchange: 3
Number of hours spent loading/unloading boxes for my Dad: 10
Number of hours spent with my best friend (it's Jodie btw): 3
Number of times the new Default CD played in my car: 6
Number of hours spent cleaning: 6
Amount of money made at the convention (my Dad's bookstore): $840
Number of hours spent with family: 23
Overall, it was a pretty good time off, even though I was busy through most of it with helping my Dad move boxes around and stuff. It was fun 'cuz I got to spend some time with my family (and got some free food). I'm mightily sore tho. That's a lot of manual labor in a short period of time. Whew. Glad that's done.
Saturday Jodie and I tried to go see the "Return of the King", but it sold out while I was standing in line to buy tickets. We ended up seeing "Paycheck" instead. It was quite good and interesting. :o) We'll catch ROTK some other time. Hee hee.
Greg and I also spend some quality time cleaning up the kitchen this weekend. We cleaned out the fridge and threw out old stuff, and got organized. I cleaned the microwave and toaster oven and stuff, and he cleaned the floor. Still more stuff to be done though. The goal is to get organized enough to where he can unpack some of his boxes into the kitchen cabinets, and the room that just got freed up from my sister moving into her own apartment. There'll be lots of rearranging to be done, but I had already moved so much stuff this weekend that I didn't feel like moving more of the big stuff just yet. :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:18 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
December 24, 2003
And it begins...
Last night sucked too. What a great trend. I did made friends with Mr. Smirnoff Triple Black. At least he doesn't throw pity parties for himself.
This morning also sucked. Took me 10 minutes to find my damn key card to get up to the 3rd floor to go to work. Then I couldn't remember the stupid code for the door to get into the offices from the reception area. Just wonderful.
Posted by alpha at 09:46 AM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
December 23, 2003
Ugh
Well, today sucked.
Got into work, we worked on some stuff. Our boss came in and bugged us for TWO WHOLE HOURS, completely interrupted what we were doing. Then instead of going out to lunch, he went and picked up pizza for us instead. By now it was like 2pm and almost 3 hours after when we usually eat lunch. I was so hungry that I couldn't think. Ugh. During when our boss was in our office, 2 people called so I got annoyed and turned off my phone. It turns out that somehow my house security alarm had gone off, so the security people were calling, and then my Mom was calling... Since by the time I got to check the messages, it was an hour after the fact, there wasn't a whole lot I coulda done about anything. So I called Greg, who was off work today (to do Christmas shopping), who turned out to have gotten home about the same time the alarm went off. He didn't hear any alarms though. *Shrug* When I tried to teach him how to use the system properly (as I have time and time again), he got all annoyed even though it really wasn't my problem in the first place. Ugh. So frustrating.
So I stayed late at work, got home, and came in. He was still mad at me (for yelling at him for setting off my house alarm...WTF???). Soon after he left to go do more Christmas shopping. What the hell ever. I don't care. I'm just going to stay home and get caught up on all the shows that I haven't gotten a chance to watch yet.
Posted by alpha at 06:35 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
December 22, 2003
Huh!
I guess I haven't updated much lately. Just been so busy and hadn't really been in the mood to write. So here's a recap...
Last week was...work work work. CEO is in town, so we all had to be on best behavior. Yep. That's about it.
We went to see La Boheme at the Music Hall last Wednesday. That was really cool, in spite of a sad story. We got really good seats, and Greg knew about a third of the orchestra. Heh heh.
Last Thursday, my sister went to sign the lease of her first apartment. I went up to the leasing office right after work, and had to wait for 30 minutes for my parents to show up. My sister was running late (busy at work), so my parents and I thought we'd save some time and go do a run-through of the apartment first (the office closed at 7, and it was about 6:30). The person in the office was incredibly unaccommodating, and wouldn't let us have the key to the apartment (and wouldn't show us the apartment) even though my Mom is a cosigner. She would only release the key to my sister (who was still stuck at work) and told us to come back on Friday to see it. My Dad yelled at the stupid girl and told her that we would never come back if we can't see the apartment before signing the lease. So we went outside and I was calling my sister...and the stupid girl came out and offered us the keys. Go figure. If she had just done that in the first place, she would've saved herself from having to listen to my Dad yell. Dummy.
So we checked out the apartment. It was okay for the price that was paid I guess. There are a few things that they need to fix. Other than that, it was okay. My sister finally escaped from work and joined us for the run-through. Then we all marched back to the office to give the girl back her keys and had my sister sign the lease. We went to First Chinese BBQ for dinner, where Greg came to meet up. And then we helped my sister move her bed and some other stuff to the new place. Yah. Busy night.
Friday night Greg and I went shopping for a little bit, then went out to try this new pizza place called Angelo & Vitto's Pizzeria over at Frankford & the Tollway. It was NY style pizza and was actually quite good. We'll probably visit there again some time.
Saturday we moseyed around a little bit, and then packed up to go to Purtis Creek to go camping. It was slightly chilly, but it wasn't bad at all. It was us, 1 other family, and the Park Host in the entire park, so it was nice and quiet. But that also made us the primary target of hungry possums. :p Hee hee. We had to scare this one away several times. We made chili and tamales over campfire, and it was mighty tasty.
Sunday we got back from Purtis Creek at about 2ish. Cops were EVERYWHERE and accidentally blew by one going about 80 in a 60 zone. Oops. He kinda got out of his Camaro and looked (for some strange reason). Anywho, I lucked out on that one.
Sunday night was my hockey game. We lost 0-3, but were grateful that Jennifer (from another team) dressed as goalie for us. :p I got to play Forward this week, and it was fun. I had a couple of good shots that I probably should've put into the net. Oh well. I hadn't skated that much in quite awhile, and it felt good (woulda been better had I not eaten so much before the game). Hee hee.
Posted by alpha at 05:27 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
December 14, 2003
Mmmmmmmm
Katie, one of my hockey team members, made us these peanut butter fudge things. Soooooooo good. Melts in your mouth, not in your hands. Note to self: must find recipe.
Friday night Greg and I went to the APO AEZ 5th Anniversary Banquet. It started late 'cuz of the rain and traffic and all that, but it was fun seeing some old faces and tons of new faces. The chapter sure has grown, and it's very exciting to see that. Took lotsa pictures. Hee hee. It was a good time.
Slept in Saturday. Greg went to Texas Stadium with his brother Paul to watch some high school football playoff games. I stayed home and watched "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers". The extended edition is excellent. :o) Then I went to hang out with my parents and sister and had dinner with them. Greg came over when he got back from the football games. He was insane and rode his bike up even though it was like 30 degrees outside (with wind chill, it's about -2 degrees going 65 mph). He came in and his face was all red, and my Mom was like..."Goodness! Your face is all red. Was it cold riding up?" Ha ha.
Today I slept in again (sleep is hard to come by nowadays). :p Hung around, got ready slowly. Went to my friend Diana and her new hubby Aaron's place for an open house party thing that they were throwing. :o) I hadn't seen her in like a year! It was fun. Aaron's cool...I had only met him once very briefly when they had first started dating last year. They just got married in mid-November. Hee hee.
The game tonight was fun. Amber (aka Buttercup) played in net for us. I miss playing with her. She always cracks me up. Hee hee. I got to go all the way down the ice with the puck a couple of times. That was fun. After the game Leslie (our team captain) asked if I wanted to switch with her and play Center sometimes. Ha ha. I guess she didn't realize how fast I *could* skate if I wanted to. Hee hee. :p And funny thing is, I was on the slower end of the totem pole on my travel team. Amazing huh? That's what was so much fun about playing on a travel team...you HAVE to haul ass every time you're on the ice, or else you get yelled at when you come off. Ha ha. :p I miss it sometimes, but there's surely no way that I could afford going to all those tournaments and having to take time off of work for that. Oh well. I had my shot at it, and glad that I at least had the chance. :o)
Posted by alpha at 11:03 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
December 09, 2003
Yey!
Yey! I thought my Staind went missing, but in fact, it was just misplaced in my supposedly (no laughing now) alphabetized CD collection. Ha ha. Yey! :o)
Tonight Greg's coworker Joe invited us to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Texas vs. Arizona game. I haven't decided if I want to go or not. It's been a long day at work, and my head is tired...plus it's cold and windy outside. And I have shows to watch. Hmmmmm...but it's 30-cent wings night...maybe...
Posted by alpha at 06:32 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
December 08, 2003
Hmph!
Saturday night my sister ventured over to my parents' to have dinner with them and to discuss her new living arrangements. She said the conversation with my parents went really well (which was somewhat surprising), and they gave her their blessing to move out into her own apartment (which was more surprising than the fact that it went well). I remember how my parents gave me hell of a hard time when I was trying to move onto campus my senior year in college. And now here's my sister who had just finished the 1st semester of her sophomore year, wanting to move out...and my parents just pretty much went "Okay!". It's annoying sometimes how easy she has it. But I digress...
Anyway, not only did my parents gave her permission, they took her apartment hunting Sunday after church. Really it was just to look at this one apartment complex that she has already picked out (she and I drove through it Thursday night). She wanted to take advantage of the "Look and Lease" deal, so she didn't want to go check it out until she's ready to make the commitment. Anyway, I think my parents are cosigning the lease and everything. Lucky duck. The apartment will be ready in 10 days. My sister's all grown up...
Which reminds me...I gotta go visit that police supply store in Plano to pick up some pepper spray for her...
Posted by alpha at 12:51 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
December 06, 2003
New Show
I think I've picked up a new show. I saw the preview a couple of weeks ago for ABC's new show Line of Fire. It said that it's pretty much an FBI show, so I figured I'd watch the premiere and see if it's worth watching. I taped it Tuesday night and watched it just now, and it looks interesting. This premiere includes a part of the new agent training at Quantico. That was interesting. I'm slightly intimidated by it, if that's how it is there. Of course it didn't help that an agent got killed at the beginning of the show either. Oh well. :p
My Tuesdays are gonna be crazy from now on...I've got Gilmore Girls, 24, One Tree Hill, AND Line of Fire. Goodness. 4 shows on 3 different networks. Ha ha.
Anyway, this morning I was up early, and got to see Jodie in the Neiman Marcus Christmas Parade on TV. :o) That was quite cool. Hee hee. Then I went to our hockey fundraiser for 4 hours, giftwrapping at Barnes & Noble. That was fun. I got to know Katie a bit better. She's pretty cool. :o) She's working on her Masters at UTD, in the same program as my sister (but my sis is doing the undergrad now). Hee hee.
Other than that, not much else. Just trying to catch up on my shows. I guess I've been busy this week. :p I've also been ripping my CDs to put on my new hard drive. Yey! I needed to do an inventory of my CDs anyway. I've probably done about 30 today. Sooooooo many more to go. Scary. :o)
Posted by alpha at 10:35 PM | LJ Archives | Comments (0)
December 05, 2003
Cha-Ching!
Yah, all too familiar of a noise lately...
Today I saw this post in a forum that Fry's is selling this Western Digital 250MB Hard Drive for $209.99 + taxes. I went to Circuit City and got a price match on it (took forever), and there's a $100 rebate on the drive. So $127.30 after taxes and rebates, etc. Not a bad deal. :o)
Okay, as Jodie pointed out, why would I need such a big hard drive?