a goodbye

Earlier this week one of my long-time online friends died, and I'm sad. Turquoise [Blog= Still Life With Idiots -- link over there on the right, under True Loves] had all the excellent qualities everyone wishes they had. She was kind, confident, extremely funny, smart, beautiful, tall (well, I'D like to be tall), and stylish, plus a lot of other good things. I was fortunate to meet her and spend a weekend in her company, with a load of other broads, and she was everything I knew she would be, from our online friendship. Her death was not unexpected, given that her liver cancer treatment had utterly failed, but MAN, you guys. It is hard when someone awesome dies, especially when you know a lot of assholes who've never done one good thing in their whole lives and who should be the ones dying, if there was any justice. Turquoise, I'm so sorry you had to leave early, and I hope you get reincarnated as a rich lady's pampered cat, because I think you would really like that lifestyle. I will miss you.

 

Love,

Eva

She can reach the handle, you guys. Time for those doorknob covers

three

1) I've just had 5 days off work and we got so much done in the yard/garden! All the garden beds are planted and there are peppers in pots on the south side of the house (a recommendation from a gardening dude that might make them grow better) and Chris put up a contraption to contain the raspberries and there are new plants in the front beds and new bark, and etc etc I'm happy with the way everything looks.

2) Today we hired a new housecleaning service. It's called Dutch Girl Cleaning, which made me hope very much that it was actually run by a Dutch person and I'm not disappointed. Her name is Esther [good omen!] and she is super beautiful--very tall and thin and blonde and pretty. Dutch, basically. She won't be doing most of the actual cleaning, but it's her business and she seems very competent and trustworthy, and plus the rates are significantly lower than the cleaning service that didn't clean very well, so I'm hoping for the best. We decided to do this recently when my job got more chaotic and the yard started needing more attention--it'll be easier and less stressful to get everything done when we don't have to think about cleaning.

3) We're watching the A&E Pride and Prejudice as a reward for all our hard work, and every time I watch it I'm struck all over again at how fantastic the actress playing Mrs. Bennett is -- truly wonderful.

Laters,
Eva

haters

Something's bothering me. A couple days ago, someone made a comment in Chris' presence about all the mixed-race couples he was being forced to look at on tv. Chris is going to talk to him about this [didn't feel that he could, at the time, for a couple of reasons], and I'm glad, but it really bothers me that he not only holds that opinion but feels he can freely express his ignorant-ass opinion in a room full of people. So that's the first thing that bothers me about the incident, but I'm also bothered that my mixed race daughter-in-law and granddaughter have to walk around in a world where ignorant assholes such as that dude still exist. I believe that racism is less prevalent in the younger generation, but it's not gone, and the thought that at some point my sweet little Milli will be confronted with the idea that she's lesser because she has an African American grandfather makes me want to go on a very specific killing spree. Milli has very fair skin so far, and if she stays fair, people will assume she's all Caucasian and that will surely make it more likely that racist opinions will be expressed in front of her, right? It's making me crazy.

 

GRRRRR!

Eva

Just a couple things

I had a 4 day weekend last weekend, and this weekend will be 5 days. I'm looking forward to all the things I can do during my days off, but last Friday when I wasn't at work, ANOTHER of my coworkers quit, and I hope that doesn't happen again because we really can't spare anyone else. This weekend I was going to be visiting my beloved friends, Catie and Kimberly [Kimmy to me], but Catie's father-in-law died suddenly and she and her husband had to go to Bulgaria. I'm so sorry for them and for her mother-in-law and family and I hope they're okay. We'll reschedule our fun girl weekend, but I'm keeping the days off because Chris has them off too, and I need to use the vacation hours. So now instead of being in San Jose, I'll be in our garden and yard on the days it isn't raining. Lots and lots of weeding and planting to do. I will also wedge as much reading as I can into the weekend -- I"m on the 4th Game of Thrones book, and the only thing I really want to do right now is read. Then I want to talk about what I read and how amazing it is, so it's fortunate Chris has already read through book 5. Then when I go to sleep I dream about it all night long because my brain is tiresome. It's all Game of Thrones all the time, over here, is what I'm saying.

Monday morning I asked our acting boss (he's got the highest title in the office right now, though he's technically IT) if I get fired, will he let me work for him as an unpaid intern and learn how to do IT things? He said yes [with a smile that says he doesn't expect to have to make good on it] and I stuck out my hand and he shook it. SUCKER! I don't want to get fired, but it's nice to have a backup plan.

Love,
Eva

4 day weekend

Ongoing attempts to become a stay-at-home wife go as follows:

Chris: It's so nice having you home.
Me: It could be like this always!

Chris: This is good; thanks for making dinner.
Me: It could be like this always!

Etc.

Yesterday I got rid of everything that was too big, and my side of the closet is so nice and bare. I need more warm weather clothes, though--oh well, guess I HAVE to go shopping. Today I think I'll do some much needed cleaning and tomorrow morning a trip to Yakima.

I wrote this on my phone; hence the brevity.

Love,
Eva

Waiting for lunch to arrive, Saturday

downtime

Today I'm wearing a garish shirt I got at a secondhand store for $12. It's a cowboy style shirt; black, with hot pink patterned shoulders, placket, cuffs, and those awesome arrow insert things (the main reason I bought it--I've always loved those chest arrows). I had a whole different outfit planned, but the pants were too big and I couldn't make them work, so I decided today was a day to cowboy it up. I have to say, it's making my Friday even better.

 

The computer system we do all our work on was taken down yesterday at 5 (planned outage) for a major upgrade. It'll be down until Wednesday morning, so for the next 3 business days, there's very little work we can do. So far I've updated (meaning, I had one of our computer dudes update, because I don't have Adobe) a couple forms, I've watered my plants, and thrown out a plant that I could not make happy no matter what I did. I'd threatened to do it before, but my supervisor with the extremely soft heart for plants talked me out of it. Now that she quit all of a sudden, that plant had no one to protect it, and its life has come to a tragic end. I feel no remorse. At 10:00 I went to coffee with one of my coworker friends, and at noon I'm having lunch with my friend, Jason, who works in a different department on campus and who I don't see often enough. It's shaping up to be a pretty decent day.

 

I lifted weights this morning, lighter than I'd been lifting, and gingerly, and though it made my hip/butt/lower back twinge, it doesn't seem to have really aggravated it. I'll be so happy when I can get back to lifting for real. I miss it!

 

Last night Chris and I went to the "talent show" at our nieces' school, because they were both performing. Franny played drums (she hit them randomly) while her friend, Grady, sang a Hannah Montana song, and Lu performed with the school choir. They were great, but on the whole the show was grievously miscategorized. It was funny, though, and therefore well worth seeing.

 

I need to go and pretend to work now.

 

Love,

Eva

happenings

Well, this has been a weird week. First of all, I've been dealing with low back and ass pain, brought on by a weightlifting muscle strain (caused by deadlift, aggravated by power clean). It's been unpleasant and I hate not being able to really exercise. It feels a lot better today, so I did a little bit of running this morning, and it seems okay so far. I'm not great at being patient with this kind of thing, but clearly my life could be a lot worse, so I'll suck it up and deal.

 

Something bizarre happened yesterday morning: My supervisor announced she was quitting and that yesterday was her last day. This was a huge shock to me and my coworkers, because we had no idea she was considering quitting, but her options were to either stay and be screwed over by the administration, or take retirement. I think she chose correctly for herself, but she was more or less the core of our office, so it's very weird to have her gone. The Mouth is happy she's gone, because our supervisor was totally onto The Mouth's bullshit and wouldn't let her get away with it, but what The Mouth probably doesn't realize is she's not going to get away with her bullshit now, either. She's being super annoying today and I'm imagining stabbing her in the neck with a letter opener. I had a blissful couple of months where I was magically not being irritated by her, but that's OVER.

 

Last weekend, as a part of trying to get totally 100% organized, I started going through all the photos on the desktop iPhoto and deleting ones that are unimportant. The only photos I'm keeping are ones of family (including cats), ones that inspire happy memories, and ones that I think are particularly good. Shockingly (not shockingly) most photos do not fall into these categories and are getting the heave-ho. It's a really big job, though, and I'm having to do it in installments because I keep getting overwhelmed. I'm going to do the same with the iTunes music, but that will be less deleting and more categorizing and making playlists. There will be SOME deleting, because J downloaded some crap music onto that computer, but not nearly as much as with the photos. Once these things are completed, I'll want to do iPhone syncing and whatnot, and at that point the angels will sing and the planets will align and crafts will complete themselves and I won't have a care in the world. Or at least that's how I'm imagining it--nobody correct me!

 

This week I've requested, and been granted, a total of 11 days off over the next 3 months, and I'm so glad I did this. I was prompted to do it when I checked how many vacation hours I have saved up and it was 265. I need to get that below 240 by the beginning of August, which would be less difficult if I wasn't being given almost 2 full vacation days per month. This is not a complaint; just a logistical thing to figure out, though it is definitely a first world problem. If I don't get the hours down to or below 240, I will lose whatever is above 240 at the beginning of August, and that is NOT going to happen. I'm looking forward to my days off; I hope to spend them gardening or making things or reading frivolous books.

 

No more time for this today.

Love,

Eva

On right, my husband, Chris, deputy of the year. On the left, the sheriff