Same Time Zone

Well well well - look who has decided to join us here in Colorful Colorado:

Assuming he makes it across the rest of Kansas today, of course.  He's starting the day off in some nerd airplane museum and will finish the drive this afternoon.  I don't plan to give Orca any of her meds this entire weekend.  Instead, I plan to curl up on the couch with a cup of coffee and watch him struggle through the process.

I am on the verge of death because last night was another one of those infamous wind storms.  I crashed for about an hour but then layed awake, wide-eyed, the rest of the night.  Although I'm beginning to learn that it's normal and OK, instinct kicks in and I stay super alert listening to the wind and wondering if I should move me and Orca into the bathtub.

There will be an adjustment period, what with having to share the TV with G and all.  Tonight is Thursday and that means Vampire Diaries comes on.  I'm so torn...

Food is my love language

I tried out a new (to me) restaurant last night with a friend: dbar.  The next time all of you come see me, we're going there immediately.  The "d" stands for dessert: they have a separate dessert menu for lunch and dinner.  Could there be a more perfect place for me?  I mean, honestly.

Sparkling Malbec deliciousness.  I had two.

I got there early because I wanted some time to myself to celebrate.  Not only is G almost here, but my little bro accepted a very good job offer yesterday.  He'll start a couple of weeks after he graduates in May.  This job is an answer to prayer and a solid opportunity for him to launch a career and a future after school.  He deserves it and I'm really proud of him.  I'm almost proud enough to forgive him for eating Tex Mex without me the other day w/G but let's not go all cray cray.

Also, I was celebrating my own past struggles.  My enemy at work?  Is leaving.  Permanently.  I found out a few days ago and literally sat at my desk, stared out the window at the mountains, and cackled to myself.  I took a moment, shook my head, and just relished in it.  Then I texted all of you.

I want to be careful about how I word this because God has helped me, healed me, in this particular situation.  And it happened a while ago.  As happy as I am that the enemy is leaving, I'm more happy that I have peace.  In spite of this person's very deliberate efforts to make me miserable on a daily basis, God used the opportunity to teach me some important things about Him (and me), and he kept this person in my life, in my face, long enough for me to become immune to it and for my eyes to be opened to other things.  If I had to work with this person for another 10 years, I would be A-OK, 100% whole.

But I don't.

Because they're leaving.

And it's so freakin' great.  Goodbye, thorn in my side!  Happy Trails!

And then I ordered some loaded cheese fries and reflected on another reason to celebrate.

It's also work related and it's from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.  When we first move to VA, I was just getting "established" in my career.  Since I don't even have a set career, what I mean by that is I was at a point professionally where I was in a good job, with great opportunities and benefits, and I had decided a particular path I wanted to be on.  I had a goal.

I was in a peculiar position because I was good at my job and got along with everyone, so I also got all the work.  I got noticed by the Head Honcho and began to work directly for him.  Lots of visibility!  Lots of responsibility!  Lots of recognition!

He was a troll.

He was worse than that, but God has also healed me in this area, so I'll be careful with my words once more.  Suffice it to say that this boss had anger management problems in a serious way.  I was yelled at almost every day for 3 years.  I had papers thrown at me, or in my general direction.  The straw that broke the camel's back was that I was standing talking to a coworker and he came up and shoved his blackberry in my face.  I almost fell down.  And then I almost started crying in front of everyone.

To paint the picture for you, I became depressed for about a year.  I cried in the car on the way to work and on the way home.  In the morning, I would go into a bathroom stall and cry and pray for a few minutes before I started the day.  When I got home at night, I would sit on our front steps and listen to the birds chirp and cry for a few minutes and pray before I went inside to get things prepped for the next day.

Like I said, though, that was long ago.  Another life.

But I still keep up with a few former co-workers and yesterday, out of the blue, I got the news that the Head Honcho had made a grave mistake.  He yelled at "the wrong person" and has been demoted and his career chances are now shot.  It's over for him and it's his own fault and he's managed to escape investigation after investigation in the past, but now his time is up.

And that's all I'll say about that.

With no segue, I'll talk about dessert last night because it was a sweet ending to a sweet day.  As I ate it I thought of all of you and all your prayers and the past years and all the pain, and I savored every bite.

And pretended I was on Top Chef because mine was called "d=mc2."  It was a deconstructed chocolate dessert, people!  OMG!  The bar at the top left was a chocolate mouse on a peanut brittle crust, with a seam of salted caramel on top and a piece of toffee.  Then there was chocolate ice cream atop a crust of some type of magic.  And a bar of milk chocolate served with those white crumbles.  They tasted like peanut butter air.  They just disappeared in your mouth.

I don't even care about the 5 pounds I gained last night.

It was all about the mental weight that I've shed anyways.

:)  Cheers!

When it rains, it snows

I'm developing quite a reputation at work.  Remember Halle Barry's character in those X-Men movies? She could create storms and affect the weather?  Well apparently I can, too.  When I was in VA last week, it was absolutely frigid; one of the coldest weeks they've had in a while.  Meanwhile, in Denver?  Sunny and in the sixties.

Then I come back and now it's snowing in Denver.  As karma would have it, I did walk to work yesterday and when I left, it started to rain.  About 2.5 seconds into my walk it turned to snow.

This is what the apartment looks like as soon as I walk in and take off all the wet layers.

While I'm braving the cold and making money to support our travel habit, G is hanging out with family and lazing around.  Apparently driving across Tennessee did him in and he's decided to stay in Arkansas for a while before even attempting Kansas.

Look at them.  Eating Tex Mex without me.  It is a fallen world we live in.

We made it past Monday!  I started a new book and am meeting a friend for dinner tonight at a restaurant known for its desserts.  All is well in the world.

Some Terrorism With Your Morning Coffee

And you thought I was talking about your kids.  Ha!  JK.

So this looks like a G book but it's actually a B book (read first and recommended by G of course).  Every now and then I get a wild hare and decide to read something out of my fiction/spiritual lane.  My mistake with this one was that it's a billion pages long.  So what I flippantly started back in, oh, November, has taken me this long to finish (what with the Christmas book break and several magazines catching my wandering eye).

Ghost Wars by Steve Coll

Just like the cover says, perhaps the most concise way to describe this book is "The secret history of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet invasion to September 10, 2011."  Coll did his research, I'll say that.  The book chapters follow various CIA leaders and station chiefs, as well as terrorists and Afghan/Pakistani players over the course of the past few decades, and puts the pieces together of the many complex and politically-loaded events that led to 9/11.

For someone like me, who barely grasps international affairs and the myriad of culture clashes that fuels the fire of terrorism, this book helped show that September 11 was not an isolated incident.  It was a goal that had been in the works for years and years.  The CIA knew it, too, but had a helluva time trying to convince the Presidential staffs (Clinton first, then Bush) and those in Congress (again, several administrations) of the importance and significance of what was currently going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and what was surely headed for the United States, or at the very least, its citizens abroad.

One of America's main interests in A-stan in the first place was maintaining control over the Soviets during the Cold War.  We watched the Soviet control crumble, and instead of vacating A-stan when the Soviets did, we stayed.  An interesting quote (describing the late 1980's), with the value of hindsight:

"For its part, the CIA's Near East Division, led by the Afghan task force director Frank Anderson, began to argue that the CIAs work in Afghanistan was finished.  The agency should just get out of the country when the Soviets did.  The covert action had been all about challenging Soviet power and aggression; it would be an error to try to convert the program now into some sort of reconstruction project.  There was no way to succeed with such a project, the CIA's Near East officers argued."

So, the Soviets left and America stayed.  The CIA engaged in all sorts of front door and back door handshakes, spent a crazy amount of money, developed new reconnaissance methods, and had several chances to kill UBL.  Which it never took.  America gets a bad rap for being quick to shoot first and ask questions later, but parts of this book really did amaze me, describing our hesitance to take out a known terrorist simply because of some anticipated collateral damage.  Turns out we really do care about not killing innocent bystanders.  Case in point:

"Clinton's national security and intelligence team spent many hours studying satellite photographs of Tarnak's flat-roofed, one-story residential buildings, clustered in several tiny villages behind the compound walls.  At the Pentagon, targeters with the Joint Chiefs of Staff crunched trigonometry equations and blast calculations to determine which of Tarnak's little concrete boxes - no more than sheds, by American standards - would collapse on their inhabitants if one or two or three cruise missiles slammed into the particular house where bin Laden slept.  One of the nearby sheds was a mosque.  Another was a medical clinic.  American military doctrine presumed the sanctity of such buildings.  This was the purpose of the Pentagon's missile math: to determine which available munitions would be most likely to destroy the Tarnak house where bin Laden stayed while knocking down the fewest neighboring houses.  Alone among the world's militaries, the United States had the capacity to ask and answer such questions.  It was also the fist military power in world history whose leaders argued day after day in conference rooms about the mathematical nuances of their destructive power."
(italics mine)

I recommend this book for its well-documented and well-written context of the September 11 attacks.  Coll describes the many sides involved in American politics/diplomacy with care, and because of that I can appreciate the complexity of trying to prevent terrorist attacks and maintain at least working relations with questionable foreign governments.  Especially given that the American political climate changes regularly, every 2-4 years at least.

I'm glad I read this book and now I'm glad I finished it.  If you're looking for me, I'll be watching cartoons the rest of the week.

Enjoy!

On the road (& the wagon) again

Well, G is on the road again.  He made it through VA and about half of TN yesterday.  With fuel from Sonic of course.

I do not envy him the road ahead.  I get exhausted just thinking about what a long state Tennessee is.  At least he can see out the back of his car, unlike when we made this trip together in my car, back in September.

The bad news is that if he ever makes it out of TN, Kansas is still waiting for him.  Geez.

I will spare you some boring shots of laundry, but suffice it to say that Orca and I are buried under clothes - clean and dirty - at this point.  We will finish just in time for G to arrive with his entire stash and we'll start the process all over again.  This may send us to marriage counseling.

Also, starting tomorrow I'm getting back on the wagon (that's the term, right?  Or is it 'off the wagon'? I never can remember.) and walking to work.  The entire month of January has gone by and even my fat pants are getting tight so it's time to get hardcore.

The more days I spend on the couch like this:

Then the more days I need to start off (and finish) like this:

Meanwhile, Orca spends her time like this:

I think it's totally unfair that I have to go to work tomorrow and G will spend the day driving around, listening to his tunes, eating at Sonic, and seeing his grandparents.  I may need to go see a movie today in order to build up the strength to face this week...

Home

Home is the theme du jour around here.  I just got back (for a few days anyways), a good peep just returned home from Afghanistan, and G hits the road today to start his journey out here, with a few pit stops along the way.

And most importantly, Orca came home yesterday too.

It looks like I'm going to start traveling one week a month or so, which isn't so bad.  Keeps me in touch with the majority of my coworkers.  Although I find this recent turn of events ironic for two reasons, 1) as soon as G gets here, I'll say hello, thrust Orca at him, and then leave for a week, and 2) winter season is about to totally kick in and I don't want to be stuck various places because of snow and winter storms.  **sigh**  Oh well, it is what it is.

This past week I had visions of getting up early each morning to work out.  Which of course didn't happen.  I ended up working 12-hr days and then shoveling in room service before konking out. By the end of the week I wasn't even getting up early enough to have my usual hour or so of zoning out; instead, I rolled out of bed, put on all the layers I had, and schlepped to work.  But they have Chipotle near by so it's all good.  These are first world problems, I know.

Orca and I are going to spend the weekend doing laundry (duh), working, and catching up on the 75,000 tv shows we missed last week.  It's going to be so exhausting that I think we need to just stay in our pj's all day.

TGIF, people!

The Absence of Olive Oil

It is so bizarre (and lovely) to have moisture in my skin.  No extra lotion.  No snorting olive oil.  It's a nice break.

Yesterday was so grueling I actually had to reward myself after work.

I'm not much of a shopper (unless we're talking about REI) but the word around the office was that Banana Republic was offering a "happy hour" last night between 6-8 p.m.  They were giving an additional 50% off of their sale items.  That actually reduces the cost of their clothes to a somewhat reasonable amount which I could not refuse.  I saved more than I actually spent (the math makes sense to me so I'm going with it) on a shirt and a dress.  Score!  That alone was worth the trip to VA.

The temporary blog setup:

We capped off the night with room service (it was wayyyyy to cold to go out) (says the girl who lives in Denver, but it's true), and finalizing the plans for our 2013 getaway.  It's almost official.

It's a day full of more meetings and such.  I'm like, really, people?  Again?  That's like two days in a row.

Isn't there another holiday coming up?

Well hello, humidity

Good morning from VA!

I would just like to say that I didn't roll out of bed and immediately douse my face with an entire bottle of lotion like I usually do.  As soon as the plane landed last night, my skin absorbed all the liquid in the air and my lungs enjoyed some much-needed oxygen.  If only I had slept more than 3.5 hours...

I have found the key to beating traffic in this area: drive in the middle of the night.  At 11:07 p.m. all major roads are clear, even in the middle of the inaugural parties.

Today is going to be painful and I'm going to need a lot of coffee.  Just wanted to say a quick hello!

A New Day

Quote of the weekend:

G:  "Let's get some food and go watch the cattle judging.  AND I CAN'T BELIEVE I JUST UTTERED THOSE WORDS."

See the sticks that the handlers use to gently prod the cow's feet into place?  I need one of those for Orca.  If I threatened her with a stick 400 times bigger than she is, I bet she wouldn't run around the dining room table when I'm giving her the meds.

Another quote from the weekend:

G {gazing at our miniature washing machine}:  "I can see that we're going to have a real laundry problem."

Understatement.

I'm drinking my morning coffee and staring at a pseudo-trashed apartment that must be cleaned and organized before we head off to VA today.  Where are the servants?

Then we have to board this one:

Since we have to take her to a brand new (to us) place, it's easy for me to stress out about it.  I keep telling the poor staff that she's ancient and riddled with geriatric conditions.  They're like, Yes ma'am, we do this for a living, you know...

To calm my nerves, G suggested that we reward ourselves with lunch afterwards:

Sold.

It's a new day!  No more living apart!

A Day of Food

I spend a lot of time inwardly whining because G doesn't like many of the foods that I do.  There are days when I externally whine, too.  He loves it.  But today I'm reminded, once again, of the blessing that his limited palate is to me.  It's no secret that if he enjoyed food as much as I do, I would weigh 550 pounds.  Easily.

Today is an example.

After spending yesterday at the stock show and eating my weight in greasy, sugary goodness, we woke up and went to brunch this morning.  Brunch is a thing here and most restaurants offer a special menu for it.  It's as if they knew I was moving here and they want to make me feel welcome.  It's working and I will never leave.

A coworker recommended this place to me when I was describing, in excruciating detail, the Southwest Eggs Benedict from Boulder Cafe on Pearl Street.  He knows the owners of this place (DJ's 9th Ave Cafe) and swears that theirs is better.  I call it a solid tie.  Look at those roasted chilis sticking out under the eggs!  This is how we know there IS a God, people.  And He's a fan of spicy food.

After brunch, we went home and G left to scope out a new nerd store he found.  While he was gone, Orca and I prepped for the very busy week coming up by sleeping on the couch.  When he got back we had to stop drooling and act interested in his geeky spoils.  You know what they say, A family that nerds together, stays together.  Or something like that.

Then a bunch of irrelevant stuff happened and it was time for dinner!  At a place recommended by one of G's peeps this time:

They make all of their cheeses in house.  I forget what this is called but it is cheese INSIDE another kind of cheese.  The perfect mixture of soft cheese flavor, light olive oil, and a kick of salt.

My entree was the special.  Roasted pork atop a parmesan cake, with braised brussel sprouts and wilted greens.

I am in a food coma and the only thing keeping me awake is the sound of violence coming from the living room.  That would be G on the XBox.

Tomorrow is the start of a new chapter and I'm so thankful!  When G flies back tomorrow, I'll actually be with him!  We get to stay together while I work in VA this week and when I leave to come back here, he'll start the drive out (with a couple of fun stops built in along the way).  No more living apart!  No more going weeks at a time being a single parent!  I can dig it.

The start of winter in Denver: The Stock Show

So everyone and their brother is talking about the Northwest Stock Show here in Denver.  Where I grew up, rodeos and such took place in late summer/early fall, but everyone here says the stock show kicks off the official winter season (and here I thought it would be something ski-related but what do I know).  I'm a lemming so as soon as G got here, we went.

Actually, we had to take Orca to her vet appointment first:

All is well for her and we can wait about 5 more weeks until more tests need to be run.  :)  This is good news.  :)

On to the main event of the day:

I tell myself that I appreciate rodeos, cattle judging and such because I'm from the south.  Actually I just go for the food.

And the shopping.

There was everything under the sun.  From farm equipment to educational livestock programs to petting zoos to hog shows to western art to mattresses to...falcons.  They had a bird demonstration and as soon as we saw it, of course we flocked over.  Ha!  Get it?

G wanted to leave with this beautiful bald eagle but I said no.  If I don't get to take home baby cows, he doesn't get to take home predatory birds.

We capped off the day with the rodeo.  G's first one ever!  My first one in who knows how many years (maybe since grade school?).  They had bull fighting, bull riding, bronco riding, barrel racing, steer wrestling and more food than even I - in my most gluttonous state - could enjoy.  We only had the crappy phone cameras with us, so the pics aren't the greatest, but it was a really fun time!

Caveat: this was before the rodeo.  I was suffering from a food coma.

I perked up once I drank a liter of strawberry lemonade and ate a gallon of ice cream.

Not everyone found it as interesting as we did.

This is what I feel like after all the greasy food:

Sometimes I lay my head on G's butt just like that and relax while people pass by and take pictures of me.  Speaking of, I think he's off to play X-Box which means I'm obliged to lay on the couch and "watch" with my eyes closed.

Happy, happy Saturday!

TGIF, people!

And it's still not Friday

This has been the longest week in recorded history.  HOW can today still not be Friday?  I think I'm getting lethargic from lack of exercise, since I haven't been walking to work lately.  So I decided starting next week, that's it.  Back to walking everyday.  Then I remembered I'll be working in VA next week.  **sigh**  So I'm packing my workout gear and planning early morning sessions in the gym before work every day.  It's OK to laugh.  I'm laughing too.

((But you better believe if I really DO manage to burn calories, I'm scooting back to the room to blog about it and make you eat your words.))

One thing I won't have to worry about next week is the early morning medicine routine with Orca:

She might look all docile and sweet in this picture but that's because I've manhandled her.  Usually she scrambles all around the table and attacks her towel.  I think she misses G (they are buds) and has made it her mission in life to be as difficult for me as possible.  You know, first thing in the morning and last thing at night.  It's a joy for me.  As I chase her around the dining room table I say, "WHAT bone cancer?  WHAT arthritis, Orca??"  I think it's a ruse.

I had happy hour with some new peeps last night and somehow the conversation turned to swingers.  Yeah,  I don't know how.  In general I'm fairly diplomatic and quiet (just try to imagine it, I know it's hard) with people I don't know well, but I might have made a comment or two about how creepy it is.  That's all I said!  I proceeded to get lectured by three (unmarried) women about the sacrifices and compromises necessary to make some marriages work.  Yes, really.  I opened my mouth to point out some (of the many) discrepancies in their arguments, but thought better of it and drank instead.

I'm going to chalk it up to too many of these:

And that's all I'm gonna say about that.  I can hardly wait to see what future conversations will be like.

I made plans yesterday for a SURPRISE visit to see Gama for her birthday in a couple of months.  I worked it out with my mom, and my bro is gonna come down from college that weekend.  Gama has no idea and I'm so excited about it.  I only hope we don't give her a heart attack or anything.  :)  It's gonna be hilarious.

My mom is going to have a nice cake made and I'm going to bring several presents.  My Gama is one to keep things very simple, so usually when bdays roll around, there is just a card & maybe a small gift.  She has downsized so much since Papa died that I really don't want to get her more things.  I've done the picture calendars and the albums and the framed pictures and the souvenirs from places we've visited.  This time I think I'm going to get her gift cards from every place she frequents and call it a day:  On The Border, McDonald's, Wendy's and WalMart.  Done!  Thoughts?  Ideas?

OK, the sun is coming up and I think they like expect me to go to work again today even though I was just there yesterday.  Have a good one, peeps!

On being 95 years old

Most afternoons, at some point C and I wander out of the office in search of coffee.  99.99999% of the time we end up at Starbucks.  I've had a gazillion people tell me to sign up for their rewards program and I keep forgetting.  Finally I did what any self-respecting Type A would do and listed it as a goal for January.  Well!  After that, what choice did I have?

Is it wrong to include two major coffee chains in one pic??

Here's the thing; when it comes to technology, I'm about 95 years old.  What I mean is that I approach modern advancements in the same way someone who's been around for a century might.  It's not that I can't believe in these advancements, it's that they never seem to work quite right for me.  I mess up some part of the sign-in process or the purchase process and just give up on it already.  I choose to take the high road and believe this technological handicap makes me more empathetic to older people.

Several years ago when cell phones really started to take off, G's grandparents signed up for a cell phone class at their Senior Center.  I wondered if I could sneak in with them, pretending to be their caretaker or something.  Because it's not that I think I'll break something on the phone, it's that I know I will.  You know how you have to turn off phones on planes?  There's always this moment after we land when I truly wonder if mine will ever turn back on.  When it does, I want to smack the stranger sitting next to me and say, Look!  It came back on!  Wowwwwww!

We have a wireless printer and sometimes it just stops working.  If we mess with it enough (no rhyme or reason) it eventually starts working again.  Same with the internet around here.  We've bought about every signal-enhancing gadget known to man, and are probably getting brain cancer as I write this, and I still have to sit on the floor next to the entertainment center, with my computer plugged in to ethernet lifelines, in order to really get it to work.

And it can't just be me.  I mean, does anybody truly understand technology when our main solution to a problem is to turn something off, then turn it back on again?  I wish we could do that with people.  Just sayin.

Yesterday when I asked C to help me out with signing up for the SB rewards program, she eventually got so frustrated she grabbed my phone and did it for me (saying, oh my gawwwwwwwwd).  That was the moment when I considered hiring her as my personal assistant to do things like program the DVR and manage my iPhone apps for me.  It could work, it really could.