Holy, Creepy bugs, Batman!!!

Hello!!! I am away, on travel again. I am writing this from my room, excuse me, my suite, at The Double Tree Suites hotel. It is pretty nice. I have a bedroom, a bathroom, and a lounge area. Very nice. The beds don't even have bugs in them. Two nights ago (that would be Monday night), my first night on travel this week. I fly into Cleveland (on Southwest, a nice flight, I carried my bag on, so I had a bag with me, good), my co-worker landed 40 minutes previous so he had the rental and we zip off to the hotel. We arrive at the hotel, I won't say the name because if I do, I may lose my right to write my evil letter later on. Anyway, I get checked in (just rest assured that this is a NICE hotel, in the 200-300 USD per night type hotel), go up to my room, get unpacked, check my email, fritter around, then meet my co-workers for dinner. It was a late dinner, so I made it back to my room around 11:30 by the time we got finished setting up and what-not. I potter around, cleaning my face, etc. I crawl into bed. I read for a bit, then turn the light out. I watch about 30 minutes of TV, then turn that off. It is probably midnight or so. I am dozing off, and I hear chittering in my ear. Like there is a BUG in it. So I jump up, turn on the light and THERE ARE BUGS ON MY PILLOW. OKAY. I am exhausted, I have my jammies on, my crap is all over the room, I am exhausted. I reason the bugs are only in the pillows, so I throw them on the floor and try to go back to sleep. With the light on. Just in case. More bugs. I flick them onto the floor. I doze off, 20 minutes later I open my eyes. More bugs. I lay there, awake. Finally at 3 AM, in the words of Popeye, I have all I can stands and I can't stands no more. I put on a bra, packed up my shit, go down to the desk. Here I am, a large pregnant woman, who had bugs in her bed, angry as hell. They move me into another room (which I checked for bugs) but I am so freaked out it is well after 4 AM before I fall asleep. They did "take care of the room" charge, BUT STILL. So every night since, I have fastidiously checked my bed for critters. That is just F****** ridiculous. I had no bugs last night at the Residence Inn in Kentucky, but housekeeping did walk in on me as I got out of the shower. I guess that was my fault since I didn't have all the locks, locked. So I have been very careful to do that from now on. Stay tuned for part two of my exciting trip to Ohio.

I'm going (have gone) mad

I'm packing the bags, the kid, the cat and the husband ad going off to live on another planet. I swear, can aliens be as introverted as we are? Life is truly not for the living. Here I am, in the lovely city of....Cleveland. Actually, I was here about a month ago and it was LOVELY. We had the seminar in the middle of downtown, at the downtown renaissance hotel, and it was attached to a MALL, and during my co-workers talks, I went out and bought Martin some onesies at Gymboree and a lipgloss (oh, SORRY, a lipglass) at MAC. Speaking of self absorbed bitches....what the hell am I? The BLACK kettle calling the pot black? Anyway. Let me off the bus already, I am fed up.

Damn mosquitoes

I must have delicious blood now (that I am knocked up) for mosquitoes usually do not bother me, but I sustained two bites that are now itching to high heaven. Alas. I am in the great city/suburb of Laval, Montreal, Quebec. On business. My bag was "misplaced", so when we got in last night, My co-worker and I, we were bag-less. This meant several things. 1. I had to get a ghetto hotel toothbrush 2. I did get a new small tube of toothpaste 3. I had to wash my face with the hotel soap 4. I had to put my hand lotion on my face afterwards 5. I had to braid my hair with no comb 6. I had to sleep in my clothes, because I can't sleep naked by myself (what is the point?) 7. I slept like crap because I had nightmares of my bag never showing up, then I would have had to do the seminar dressed in day old and wrinkled clothes, which were smelly because I evidently forgot to use deodorant after my last shower, and I had no make-up except for my powder and some lip gloss. And no comb. The bag was indeed delivered in the wee hours of the morning, apparently at 1:30, for they called my co-worker. So I was able to shower and put on clean clothes and make-up and comb my hair. Ahhhh. I am exhausted though. We had software issues last night, plus a late arrival and a late dinner. I got to my room after 11:00, and I was up at 6am. This is piggy-backed on two straight nights of Martin demonstrating to us the power and volume his nighttime cries can reach. I. Am. Exhausted. I took a short nap, but as soon as I publish this section, I am off to the bathroom, and then off to bed. Which reminds me that I need to also update my other blog, arrgh. I'll never get to sleep. Never. How do you eat tiramisu without a fork? I am just asking. I have a serving of tiramisu and no fork. I am also full and have no immediate desire to eat the cake anyway. It is an interesting conundrum. Damn, sorry. I have to go. I have more writing to do, and I forgot what was so damn important I was going to tell you anyway.

Finally, Friday

Mmmmm, it's Friday. The only thing better than waking up on Friday morning and realizing it is Friday morning, is the feeling of waking up on Saturday morning. I am full of junk food. I was driving to work this morning and I decided I wanted a hot, caffienated beverage. Yes, I still drink caffiene, even though I am 23 weeks gone. Get over it. So I was going to go to Starbuck's, but I went to Dunkin Donuts instead and got a BEC bagel, and a coffee and a donut. Well, I think the coffee tastes like pond scum, but the sandwich and donut were nice. Yummy. That is in addition to the bowl of apple cinnamon Cherios I had for breakfast. So, obviously, my stomach is back to normal again. Wheee. Speaking of stomach distress. We love sausages in my house. We must eat them at least once a week. So I had gotten a package of italian sausages over the Labor day weekend, and there were two left. I just cooked them last night. I cooked sausages that had been sitting in my fridge for almost 2 weeks. Yuk. They looked okay. It was so hot I really wasn't hungry and I decided not to play russian roulette by eating sausages that old. Jason had one and said it was a bit "funny", so we will see how he feels. Of course, he hasn't pooped since he returned from France, so he is probably overjoyed at the thought of loose bowels. Anyway. I am toying with the idea of buying maternity clothes, but I know I really won't. I can still squeeze into regular clothes, of course it helps if they are stretchy to begin with. SO I have been wearign skirts all week, becasue I am sick and tired of my pants, which don't really fit anymore. I have that cool belly belt thing, but to use it I also need a long shirt. With my ever-expanding waistline, I don't have an "regular" shirts that long, and I am really not ready to wear maternity shirts yet. Blech. Things to do: 1. Name the baby 2. Buy little pink things 3. Finish my bathroom 4. There was something else, really. I have been toying with the idea of telling my friends about this blog. SO far, no-one knows about it. Jason does, but I won't let him read it. I talk about him way too much in it. My friends, I am not sure. They all know what a wack-o I already am.

Oh, the pain

I was out sick Monday and Tuesday. I came into work like usual on Monday morning. I don't remember exactly what I had for breakfast, but by 10:30 I was STARVING, so I decided to make a lemon tea, ate half of a bounty bar, and also had a slice of cheese on a roll. Approximately 15 minutes later, it felt like my stomach was going to implode. It was awful. Like someone had an ice pick, and they were just stabbing my stomach. I had this awful feeling of wanting to both pass-out and vomit, but couldn't really do either. SO I decided to throw in the towel and go home. It was literally the worse ride of my life. Much worse that the two car trips I had to make while in labor for Martin. Worse because I had to drive myself instead of curling up and letting the pain wash over me, and I already have a long commute (on the average of 45 minutes), and of course there was an accident. So I finally make it home, stumble out of my van, somehow make it up the five steps to my door, open the door. My mom is there, I think she asked if I was feeling okay. I mumbled something back, walked into my room, stripped off my clothes, fell into bed, and woke up 4 hours later, sans cramps. I also felt the baby kicking around, so I knew that she was okay. I am still all squiffy down there, but hopefully I will be able to eat some actual food today. But I am staying away from lemon tea, and buns. I had cheese yesterday and it was fine, and I don't think I can resist the Bounty bar. I took yesterday off as insurance,and I am back today. I had about a million voice and e-mails, but I am now mostly caught up, now I just have a lot of other things to do.

This just in...

People are morons. In the movie, MIB, there was a scene at the beginning where K was talking to not-yet-J. K remarked that people were stupid, etc I can't remember the rest of it. Not-yet-J replied that people weren't any of those things. K then stated that individuals are smart, etc, but PEOPLE are stupid. How true it is. It was just verified by something that just actually happened. I was sitting here, typing this entry, eating a cookie. No sooner had I taken my first bite, when the back door ringer went off, indicating a delivery. A big delivery. Likely an instrument. I happen to know that we weren't expecting anything, so I got up and went back there. Opened the back door (not the big door, the side door), and there is a guy there from ConWay transportation, not our usual BAX guy. I like our BAX guy. He is very polite. I don't deal with him very often, as my co-worker deals with all that inventory crap. This guy, never seen him before. So I am just looking at him, like, can I help you? Then he hands me the shipping doc, and I look at it. Oh yeah, THAT system. THAT system is technically not OURS, but it is a long story. Anyhow, I go over to the loading dock door and open that while he stands there and watches, but I am not complaining, women's lib, right? So, I notice right away the box. All the way in the back. Behind what looks like some huge side-of-road ditch pipes. You know, the ones that are like 3 feet in diameter. And then there are also some other, flat metal, gate-looking things, except they are bundled together at the side of the truck. When our BAX guy makes a delivery, and our box is is the back, he simply moves the other stuff in his way out into our loading area, out of his way. DO you think the new guy did this? No way. He grunts and groans, gives himself a hernia moving the large drainage pipes out of the way (and NO, I AIN'T helping, I'm 22 weeks along, so screw you if you think that is pahetic). Then he finally gets a space that is, say 4.5 feet wide, and the box is 5 feet wide. So then he struggles some more, moving the large drainage pipes this way and that way, then finally squeezes the box through. Interesting. What would I have wriitten about if that had not happened? Oh yeah, I still haven't started on my bathroom yet. As Scarlett says, tomorrow is another day.

Real quick

I must get this report finished today. I just want to say, I am happy to be boring and normal and middle class. Very happy. My mom does not comprehend. She wants me to remember growing up poor. I don't want to. This is why I learned how to speak boring english (I don't axe anybody, anything), learned to read, kept my legs crossed in high school, got the f*** out of dodge the minute I graduated high school, then attended about a bazillion years of college. I also studied seating diagrams and place settings because I didn't want to end up looking like some kind of moron in front of my future-rich-husband's family at dinner time. Jason's family is not rich, and I have never had to manuever around a fancy place setting eating at my in-laws, but it is still good info, I think. I have purged all memory of poor-ness from my memory. I am one cheap mother-f***** though. The End.

Office is crap, but I already knew that

I have been experimenting with the new Blogger for Word plug-in. While it is a nice tool for writing one's blog offline then directly uploading it into Blogger, it is rubbish. I used to write my blogs off-line in Word, then do the old cut and paste trick to get it into blogger, that way all the HTML tags I put in would be there and tables, etc, would work. Using the plug-in is a right pain-in-the-ass because you are using Word in a way that Bill Gates does not approve of. So I have a huge delay during the uploading process, then my blog uploads. I go and look at it and it looks like shit. So sorry for the weird fonts and font sizes. And my HTML tags and tables also get all f***** up. So, I am no longer using the plug-in as it is a POS. Sorry Blogger, I know you tried, but there is no denying the evil force of MicroCrap. Speaking of MicroCrap. I have this old HP Omnibook 4150. I know, I know. I should just scrap it and get a new computer. I usually use my work computer (a sweet ass-kicking (for a PC) Dell Latitude D800) for everything, but the IT department is getting pretty militant of what they will and will not allow installed, so. Back to the old HP. Which is a POS. It came with NT which doesn't support USB, so I loaded 98, then 2000. Well, somewhere along the way there were these partitions set up (thank you NT), and the, uh, I'll call it the IMPORTANT partition (because my brain is fried) where I had 2000 installed was rapidly becoming full, even though I had everything else on the other partition (I must mention that I also has a tiny hard drive 6GB, with a 2GB and a 4GB partition, and a small ~500MB). Anyhow, I really f***** things up when I tried to "fix" things. I know enough about computers (collectively hardware and software) to screw things up. Occasionally I willl fix things, but an equal number of times I will make them worse. The problem is that I try to gain info, but it is all written in a foreign language. Now, I am a geek. I am a geek by nature, by education, by trade, and by practice. I cannot understand one friggin' thing these sources of information attempt to tell me, and I get incredibly bored even looking at it (which is yet another reason I still don't know CSS and have not altered my template yet). So I managed to really screw things up. This is what I see when I attempt *snigger* to start her up. NTLDR is missing Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to restart Bad. Very bad. And to makes matters even worse, I cannot remember the admin password after the 15 minute reboot from the floppy disks to repair said install and reconstruct my boot.ini file using the recovery console. Bastards. Anyway, So instead of chucking the archaic, large paperweight into the trash and buying a new computer, (hey, money is tight, don't even get me started on how I was listening to NPR yesterday and The Computer Guys said you could buy a Dell computer with a 17" flat panel display for 399, because I went there and it's more like 599) I have decided to install Linux and salvage it. So, since Linux downloads are huge, and I don't currently have any blank DVD's, and I am also lazy, I forked over 2.49 USD for a disk, that should be arriving soon and I will attempt the Linux install. I promise this will be the last mention of the Linux SAGA on this blog, I will post the continuing saga on my Geek Blog. Now onto more trivial matters. I will be at 22 weeks this Thursday. I had my last appt a week ago, and I had gained a total of 12 pounds. I was a bit under my "normal" weight, so I am trying not to panic. I just keep thinking, "it's the second that destroys your body". So we shall see. And it could be all the cookies and chocolate I'm eating. I have kept up with the refusal to buy proper maternity clothes. I use my belly belt A LOT, but some of my pants no longer fit comfortably over my thighs, they have that "sprayed-on" look, not quite the look I want at work. So I am now reduced to 2 pairs of khaki pants, and a pair of low-rise black pants that are beginning to feel the strain. I can really only fit into stretchy tops, but even these have a tendency to creep upwards. I found all my cute little elastic and tie-waisted skirts and I have begun wearing these. I have no idea of what I will do once winter gets here, but I am holding well right now. I have a few more rants, but I feel like this post has gone on long enough. Except for one thing, oh yes. Thank you to all the lovely people leaving me comments. You are super. But I did, unfortunately, notice a few spam comments so I am afraid I will have to turn on that annoying number thing. I do apologize. I realize that we live in a free country, but this is my blog and I don't want any comment spam.

Like Sands in the Hourglass...

These are the days of my life. How exciting are they. Yeh. So, some may have noticed that I have another blog up, but there are no entries on it. As of yet. Well, the plan was for me to update that blog every week or so, but I have yet to write a single word. But keep posted. My Labor Day weekend. I had family visiting, my nephew, whom I haven’t seen in years, and my ex-brother-in-law. It was okay, we just mainly sat around, and doing nothing so it was no stress for me. We went into Baltimore’s Inner harbor and had a nice walk around and lunch. My nephew played x-box, and we watched the Bourne saga. It was very relaxing. I finally washed my hair last night. I wanted to re-color it, so I need to do that with-in a few days. Those pesky gray hairs are rearing their ugly heads, yet again. Jason is in France. I recall there was talk about taking me as well, but then he was a big slacker, and by the time we looked at airfare, it was like 1800 USD to fly over there, so. He’ll be home on Sunday, though. Me mammy is already driving me mad. When Jason is gone, she just all invades my privacy. She usually won’t come back into our room when he is home, but I have been half-naked and in the process of getting dressed and she will just barge on in. This bothers me on several different levels. One is that I am a very modest person. The only people who I don’t mind seeing me naked or half naked are Jason and Martin (and he because he is too young to even have a clue about naked mommy). Granted, I will shower at the gym, but that is different. But in my own home I would prefer not to be standing in front of my mirror, putting on mascara wearing bra and pants, and have me mammy come barging in, saying “where’s the mayo” like it couldn’t wait until I was dressed. Two, she can’t take a hint. Just because Jason is gone, does not mean I crave human companionship. Just the opposite in fact. I love being ALONE when Jason is gone. Just sitting there, alone. Watching TV, alone. Reading, alone. ETC. But she will stay out in the family room late. Jason, Martin and I will usually head down there for an hour after dinner, before Martin’s beddie-bye time. Just a nice hour of family time. She usually goes into her room. When Jason is gone, she stays out in the family room. This is so annoying. Especially since she watches Law and Order, which I am not a fan of. OK, enough complaints about me mammy. I hate our master bath. The décor is horrible, and my personal hygeine products stacked everywhere does not help. I think while Jason is gone I will: 1. Find alternate places to store my facial products and my make-up brushes besides the vanity top 2. $Get a panel or scarf for the window$ 3. $Get some fake, heat safe plants for the top of the medicine cabinet$ 4. Scrub the shower and throw out all unused containers of shower products 5. Wash the shower curtain, rugs and towels 6. Finish painting the trim 7. Replace the trash basket 8. $Possibly buy some new vanity items. A toothbrush holder, and a soap dish$ That’s the plan. So, I am not sure about the items that require an expenditure of cash. But I think the importance is item 2, 8 then 3. I think I have a few bucks left on a Linens and things gift card, so we shall see. Oh yeah. I also won a coup. I will be allowed to buy some furniture for the kid’s room. Whee. Go, me. So now, I have a few thoughts on the hurricane situation in New Orleans. So if you are easily offended, stop here and stay happy. And if you do read it, and you don’t agree with my points, I only ask two things of you. Please, by all means contact me if I have gotten a fact wrong and correct me. But DO NOT flame me. These are my opinions, and I know that I have a right to free speech. I haven’t said anything yet, because I really wanted to get my thoughts in order, before I went shooting my mouth off, half-cocked. These are my feelings on the situation. Americans are way too complacent. Even our poor are complacent. The comparisons between this hurricane and the Tsunami in Indonesia boggle my mind. Here, I’ll make a table.

Hurricane Katrina	Indonesian Tsunami
A few days notice	No notice
Corruption-infested region	Corruption-infested region
Poverty and tourism	Poverty and tourism
The poor were the hardest hit	The poor and the rich were equally affected (immediate)
New Orleans was in a bad location, unfortunate enough to be in a hurricane prone region	The region was just another coastal area, unfortunate enough to be in the path of a tsunami
Guns	No guns

So, those are some quick observations I made. basically I don't even fully undertand how you can even compare the two diasters. In one case, people had NO warning. I mean, they were people sun-bathing on the beach and this huge wave comes and washes them out to sea. On the other hand, I don't think anyone in NO was blissfully relaxing in the middle of a hurricane. They knew about it DAYS in advance. Damn! Stop comparing the two. Both are terrible, but please stop saying, "It's our tsunami" because it isn't. I can’t really comment on the difference between the reaction time between the two disasters. I do recall help rolling out for the tsunami, I just don’t recall how soon it happened. In the case of NO, I think the rescuers were probably scared off initially by the crazy, gun-wielding folk there. Everyone makes it sounds like there should have been all this help the day after the ‘cane hit. Well, in a perfect world, sure. But I think we all know we don’t live in a perfect world. So help took a few days. And by the time it got down there, some people had really makes a nice, big, lawless mess of it all, which took even longer to sort out. So what do I mean by the complacency issue? Well, in Indonesia, the majority of poor people probably would have left if they knew of the tsunami. Why? Well, you don’t have to evacuate quite as far in the case of a tsunami. If they had the kind of warning they get in the pacific, I think there would have been very little loss of life there. Some would have stayed, surely, but for different reasons, I think. I was reading stories about some poor people in NO. This one guy who was living month-to-month sat down and figured the cost of his flight from NO would be several thousand dollars between airfare, rental cars, etc. OKAY. I can appreciate the fact that he didn’t have a car, but did all public transportation systems stop functioning before the storm hit? Did Greyhound stop their buses? Were his legs broken? I would think would be a lot easier for someone who had begun the evac and ended up stuck in some random spot in the middle of nowhere with a few bucks in their pocket, a few suitcases of their belongings, than for someone who had to run up to their attic when the waters started rising and have NOTHING. Nothing. These people have nothing. Not to even mention access to running water and sewage. Maybe I have just been on the other side too long. But people in this country just DO NOT GET IT. If they can’t evacuate in a comfortable manner, they just won’t. I invite people to read stories of WWII, when people in Europe had to evacuate their homes. Guess how they started? On foot. I don’t think a typical American walks more than 200 yards a day. Even poor Americans who don’t own a car. So, those are a few of my thoughts. Please don’t take this the wrong way. I feel terrible for the people of NO. I just wish that more of them had really exhausted every avenue before giving up.

It's a GIRL

It’s a GIRL!!! We’ve just found out, the little critter is indeed a girl. Now we shall have a set. One Boy, check. One girl, check. One Mommy, check. One daddy, check. One household pet, check. The American dream family.h Sorry for the long delay. I was away, on business, yet again. This time I was too cheap to pay the 13/day for the internet, so I didn’t. The meeting was in D.C., so I popped home once and checked my e-mail there (for free). Besides, I had Jason and Martin with me, so I really didn’t have the time to blog and surf anyhow. The meeting was super. The American Chemical Society meeting. I had a great time. I saw some old pals from graduate schools, attended a few good talks, saw a lot of interesting posters. In between all that, I also managed to score some cool stuff from the exhibit ( 4 pens, a Nalgene bottle, 2 Godiva chocolate bars, and 2 stress relief balls, a globe and a soccer ball, for Martin), and managed to do a bit of work as well. So now I am back here at my office, trying to garner the energy to do some actual work. Ugh. I was answering e-mail and phone messages yesterday, so I have some actual work to do today. Sorry for the short update, but I really have nothing new to report here, I am just a boring person.