Sunday, April 9, 2000

Mission Accomplished!

As hoped for, I've completed everything that I wanted to do this weekend!!  Yeah!!!  That so rarely happens with me, y'know?  I'll get started on something and get distracted-- easy thing to do for me.  I've finished re-arranging my clothes closet and the bathroom closet.  I've sorted through my shoes and yes, Brian's face did drop when he saw a bag of shoes going toward the door.  At the time, Brian was on the phone with Tom, who said he'd take the Fifth Amendment if asked as a witness whether I was disposing of shoes.  (I didn't have the heart to tell him that the Fifth Amendment won't help him no matter what-- he's Canadian!!!)  I have, indeed, bagged about 20 pairs of shoes to bring to Goodwill-- I'm officially out of the running to replace Imelda Marcos but, that's okay-- I can't believe it myself.  I'm soooo disappointed . . . maybe I need replacements?  I'll think on it.

I've also straightened out and set up the bathroom closet and gone through old OTC medicine that we didn't know was old until I looked at the labels today.  Guest linens are all in one place and our sheet sets are in another place on the shelves and dish towels, hand towels, and bath towels yet another.  We're soooo organized!!  It'll last about two weeks-- maybe . . . if I'm lucky!

Gardening Report

Well, what can I say?  The lettuce has never recovered from the squirrels tearing through it but, it is still trying.  I sacrificed one of the pots to Brian to start another tomato plant in today.  I took the Conestoga wagon tops off of the herb boxes so you can now see them-- no the dirt is not exposed!!  There's chicken wire over the top of the boxes with a slit down the middle for the plants to grow through.  Earl has too good of a time digging through all of that dirt to leave it exposed.  Mark Smith from Missouri wrote in with some advice about the tomatoes that I've forwarded on to Brian.

And, for flowers?  Well, the two out of three of the hyacinth have finally taken off but the tulips and crocus were killed off on one of Earl's rampages.  The birds took the asparagas fern that we recently purchased as nesting material.  I bought another plant last week and potted it today to keep inside.  I'm thinking of getting some impatience flowers for the hanging pot-- Brian really liked them last year and, as long as they "shed" their petals on the garden below, I'm fine with having them again.  It'd be nice to add a touch of color up here-- so far, we've only got green to deal with the exception of the lavender sage blossoms.

Two Thumbs Up!

Apparently, the movie "Rules of Engagement" has been panned by all of the reviewers-- I liked it!!  Wanna have a shock?  Watch "Men in Black" and then, go see "Rules"-- you'll see what I mean!!  I don't know if its too early to nominate him but, I definitely think Tommy Lee Jones should get at least a nomination for Best Actor-- one of his best performances, I firmly believe!  Thanks to my friend, Kathy, too, for going with me-- it is always great to see her!!

And on that note . . .

Weekend chores are done and a little fun was had . . . that must mean its time to go back to work tomorrow.  Bummer!

Mundane!

Talk about boring and mundane!!  That's all I've done today are these stupid little errands!!  Okay, so I've got my shampoo, conditioner and conditioning pack (pre-perm stuff to make healthier hair) from Linda. Then, I went to Trader Joe's and picked up the blueberry muffins that everyone at Weight Watchers raves about (they're "okay" tasting-- I can't taste that much blueberry stuff tho).  Then to Michael's to get the cross-stitch racks that I wanted and I go a collector edition of thread from DMC with new colors.  I also went to Hancock Fabrics to get the fill and background cloth for the cross-stitch that I'm making; when it grows up, its going to be a pillow, I've decided.  Last stop was to Orchard to return the extra keys that didn't work (it was the principle of the thing) and the one and only tomato plant that choked itself off in the middle somehow.  All were returned without a word from their management; in fact, I only wanted one plant to grow but got another flat of six because that's how they "had to distribute them".  So we're going to give some away I guess and Brian can start another one in my failing lettuce.  It just doesn't want to grow-- this is the second planting since the squirrels tore through the pots.  I'm going to try again tomorrow but that'll be about it.

Besides those seedings to start, I'm going to finish my closet-- I got the ironing done today and now I just need to sort out which shoes can be given to Goodwill (Yes, sweetie, you heard right!) and which need to go into storage for next year.  Then, I'll be able to work on the bathroom closet, too.

Fun?

Oh, yes, I do get to have some fun this weekend.  My friend, Kathy, called and we're going to go see "Rules of Engagement" tomorrow night.  I've heard a lot of good things about this movie so I'm really looking forward to seeing it tomorrow night.

For the rest of tonight . . .

Brian decided to take a break and cook dinner and after, I'll do the dishes as usual but then, I'm going to see about putting together one of my cross-stitch racks.  It would be really helpful to have this together to do the lettering on what I'm working on-- I'll see if it'll go together properly.  Other than that, its more of the usual.

Hope you have a good one, too!

Serious Stuff

I don't know enough about the web, I admit it-- I don't have to cuz it isn't my job to know.  I found a husband, that's the only thing I really wanted from it in the first place (even though I didn't know it at the time-- it wasn't like I was looking for a husband!!) so everything else is just icing on the cake!  Anyway, I'm still getting (or should it be "again getting") some serious web-crawling done on my site.  Do they (the different web search engines) periodically re-do the crawling so that the info that they have is current?  What is this all about?  Its not coming from the same search engines as before, either-- in addition to the Alta Vista, Google, and Inktomi stop-overs, I'm getting IP3000 (which is apparently a new search engine) and Webforia among others.  Someone with just an IP number did some major tromping through my site yesterday, too!  I'm not complaining, I'm just trying to figure out what's happening.  If you have any ideas, drop me a line.

And speaking of that . . .

 . . . at the rate PBI is going, I'll be getting any email that you may be sending to me, somewhere around the turn of the next century!  Yeesh!!  As strange as it may sound, use my Yahoo email for the time being-- Its still showing as "may be experiencing some problems".  "May be"??  "May be"??  PULLEEZE!!  I can't even get "cc" emails back to myself in a timely fashion!!

Rat-Killing

(Oh, man, do I wish it could be those pesky squirrels!!)  I've got a lot of errands to run tihs weekend-- when I lived in Texas, in one of my previous lives, we used to call Saturday morning errands "rat-killing".  I say that every now and then and it takes Brian a minute to figure out what I'm talking about but if I say it to anyone else, they turn this funny shade of green!

Anyway, I've gotta run to Orchard to return two of the keys that didn't work-- also, one of Brian's tomato plants decided to shrivel-up in the center of it so it won't grow anymore.  We don't know why it did that-- it just did!  I'm going to go to Michael's to get a stand and bracket for my cross-stitch; it'll make it easier to hold onto and less fraying of the edges will occur.  I've also gotta go see Linda, my nail-tech-n-friend, to pick up some shampoo/conditioner supplies that she's getting for me (at cost!).

Then, when I get home tomorrow from all of that, I want to hit the closets in our bedroom and bathroom hallway.  We've got a lot of stuff in the bathroom closet that doesn't need to be there and I need to sort through my winter clothes and move them to the storage side of the closet and iron the cottons of summer to get them ready to wear.

Should be a fun weekend, eh?  Oh, yeah!!  I can hardly wait-- no fishing, but maybe I'll catch a movie with my friend, Kathy, tomorrow night?  Sure-- its worth a shot!

Have a good night . . .

Email's Back!!

I believe that Brian has fixed the email problem at last!!  I got the vast majority of my mail today-- I think but then, how would I know?  I had an email from my sister in Maine that had been sitting in my in-box since Friday-- that's not a good thing!

Bicycling's Back, Too!

I haven't been able to put a shoe on since I broke my toe last Wednesday.  Tonight I finally tried it and, although it hurts (as in a dull ache) to walk around in, when bicycling, its fine.  In fact, I probably could've ridden before now but, who was to know?

A bit better today . . .

At work, it is starting to get back to busy-ness as usual.  One way that YOU, my gentle reader can tell is because I don't have any pre-drafted posts to put here on my update!  Again, however, everything is waiting on other people to give me input; unfortunately most of the people that have to give me that input are sitting in Hawaii but, I won't go there right now!

In the deals that I work, there are always at least two, possibly three, people involved: 1) the End User, 2) the Purchasing Agent, and 3) the Contract Negotiator; in some cases, the people in positions #2 and #3 are the same person.  I had an end user call to talk with me about the business and legal issues in a deal that we were working.  The items involved were the definitions of "Site" and "Affiliate" and what constituted "lost CDs", etc., and she didn't understand our position and my questions.  She was about to go into a meeting with the Purchasing Agent and needed to speak intelligently as to what we were trying to say to them in our changes and responses to their requests.  I asked her a question: "Why doesn't Janice, the Contract Negotiator, respond to my emails?"  "Oh, she can't!", explained Sandy, "She's not allowed to talk with you."  "Excuse me?  She's not allowed to talk with me??  Why??"  "Because you're a legal person."  First of all, there are some people I know that I would love to tell them: "Oh, nope, you can't talk to me-- I'm a legal person!"  However, in the work-a-day business world, how are we supposed to negotiate this deal if she can't talk with me?

Apparently, the way this company works is that in this case, the #2 and the #3 persons above are the same person, Janice.  She can send her emails to the sales rep, she can make phone calls to the sales rep, she can send her emails to the end user, and she can make phone calls to the end user but she cannot send email or make phone calls directly to the legal/contracts people.  I tried to explain that I'm not an attorney but apparently it has less bearing on  my "guilt by association" non-association with lawyers and more to do with the fact that they have been deceived enough by people in the past that they aren't allowed to talk with them, no matter what level of "them" I am.

I was kinda relieved to hear this because, frankly, I couldn't figure out why this "chick" wouldn't talk with me directly.  Every time I called, she was really cold and short and she would never send an email directly to me even if I sent my mail directly to her!  Its a weird way to do business and really, I think, puts them at a disadvantage in negotiation: the person who knows the most about "legalese" can't talk with the other person that knows about legalese.  I could be saying anything to the end user (of course, I'm not like that but you get my drift).  Oh, well, its almost a done deal-- still waiting on someone in Hawaii . . . maybe I should go see if I can bring the contract to him?  Nah!!  (Only because Brian would be ticked that he couldn't go with me!)

Webmaster Duties

I received a snail-mail letter from my brother-in-law, Bill, half of the recipients of the new computer a few weeks ago.  They don't have a scanner-- yet!!  While I was typing a funny comment to Bill's note here in my posting, it dawned on me: We have a no longer in use LogiTech scanner so . . . guess what will be winging its way there next week?  Then they will have a scanner but, I'll still do the webmaster stuff for them-- they just won't have to snail-mail pictures to me anymore!

Anyway, later tonight, I'll be scanning some photos of Bauru (the city where they are going to) along with a picture of the team that will be working with them.  You'll have to jump over to their website's Y2K connection later to have a look-see.

On to other things . . .

I've gotta make dinner tonight-- I'm leaning towards rosemary chicken again.  It has been a week or so since I've made it and it is soooo tasty.  I'm just about finished with the top corners of my cross-stitch so I'm looking forward to finishing it.

I know-- what can I say?

I said I was going to get back here last night and, really, I have no excuse for not doing so!  I just never got around to putting in more of an update which, of course, tells you how exciting my life is, eh?  Actually, I spent the night on the phone-- that's rare that I do that-- talking with my mother-in-law and a friend.  Talking with my mother-in-law, beside the fact that she's nice to talk with, was necessary because of Robbie's christening that's coming up.  Having been born and raised in a protestant church, I have no idea as to the customs, rituals, etc., involved with a catholic christening.  I called my friend because I hadn't heard from her (which will be explained below) in a couple of weeks and wanted to see how she was doing.  Both were good conversations and terribly unlike me, as I spend so much time on the phone during the day (particularly on busy days), I tend to not use the phone at night.  (Well, the other reason is that Brian and Tom are usually tying up the phone! I can hardly wait for our phone bill to come in for this month!!)

Ah-HAH!!

So that's the problem!!  If you're sending email to marcia@dutchgirl.net (which is my email address of preference), I have not been ignoring you.  It appears that Linux adjusted something in the box for mail routing when Brian was setting up new email address-- it kicked all of the prior known "rules" for my email out!  He hopes to have it resolved this evening when he gets home but, in the meantime, if you need to reach me and don't get a response after several days, ALWAYS send a copy of the email to the Yahoo email address-- that doesn't seem to go away as frequently as PacBell does for me.

So, in the middle of my day . . .

 . . . I check with Brian to see what he's up to; there are times when I feel like the couple in the MCI Wireless commercial ("No reason is to small to call" or something like that).  He's busy and I'm bored-- half of the sales reps are in Hawaii, suffering through meeting after meeting-- Yeah, RIGHT!! The other half of the sales reps that aren't in Hawaii are bitching about not being there and are not selling anything anyway cuz they don't want to work when their buddies are goofing off.  (Like that'll get them to Hawaii club next year-- Yeah, RIGHT!!!)  BUT, the bigger issue is that I'm out of work to do.  Everything that I have is waiting on input from other people and, whenever I'm given something to do, I do it and then, its done.  Sorry, I don't sit on stuff and not do the work-- I can't do that, its not in my nature!!

Now that my day is over and I'm home . . .

I have a couple more updates for you:  first, when I got home, I was the first of the two of us home today.  The last few days, since Wednesday of last week, Brian has been getting home before me.  As a result, I hadn't realized that I mistakenly ended up switching my key for one of the keys given to Albert, the housekeeper.  In addition to that, the lock also froze up so I couldn't get in at all!  I went over to the complex office and, within minutes they had someone here to help me and, they even made up a couple of sets of keys that do work in the lock for us.

Another thing, when I mentioned above that I was scared to death about the telephone bill, well, I don't have to be anymore!  The bill did come today but, thanks to Brian using the 10-10-636 prefix before dialing Tom, we saved a bundle on the long distance bill for a change!!  Last month, we were paying $20 per hour to talk with Tom but this month, over the whole month with a total of more than 6 hours in calls, and the bill is less than $15.00!!  HUGE savings!!  I don't know what part of the country it works from or if it works from other countries but try it!!  The savings is phenominal!!!

SVLUG

Brian has his Linux meeting tonight and, after I finish this post (no, there won't be an update tonight), I'm going to concentrate on working on my cross-stitch and "How To" night.  Normally I have my chat sessions with my sister on Wednesday night but she is on vacation in Hilton Head, thank you very much!  She should be relaxing on a beach somewhere-- its spring break at her school and she deserves a vacation!

SO, have a good night and I will see you when I see you!!

Surprise!!

Yeah, I know-- I said I wasn't gonna be back and, here I am!  Well, what can I say?  Some people's kids and all that, I guess!  I spent my night catching up on the email that's been sitting on grendel, Brian's main machine, and I soaked in a hot tub which I don't do as often as I should!  (Sorry, I don't have any neat graphics like Wendy!)  My email is still a little messed up, I guess-- I don't get it but Brian does and that's what counts.  If you need me, send email to mlbilbrey@yahoo.com or marciald@pacbell.net until we get this straightened out.

Final Thought

From my niece, Faye, who is really much too young to be cynical-- yet:

Spic-n-Span!

By the time that Brian and I got home tonight, Albert & Keith had been through the apartment-- man, is it clean!!  Brian's picky about cleaning this place but, these guys are good!!  The vacuuming lines are perfectly straight-- I've never seen anything like it!!  I may ask for a herring bone pattern the next time!!  It is absolutely spotless in here and, we have both sat down to the respective things that we want to do at our computers without having to lift a finger elsewhere!  Kewl!!!  For sure!!!!

Interesting Break in the Day

Today, my manager, Cindy and a co-worker (Sharon) decided that we needed to go shopping for our "lunch hour".  So we did!  That was fun-- we went to The Great Mall of the Bay Area and walked through about a quarter of it!!  They had to see everything: Sharon had never been there and Cindy had only been there a couple of times.  Since it is one of the places that Brian and I like to wander, I was the pro showing them around-- I'm actually quite a pro at shopping in general (ask Brian about my shoe collection some time).

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

With right around three months to go 'til our vacation to Ashland, we've received one of the program books for the series this year-- it'll be great to look through it before we go.  It is handy to read up on the stories about the production and what was involved in the project for the plays that we'll be seeing.  I am excited!!

Its early yet . . .

 . . . more later.

We start with . . .

 . . . snip-ettes from Brian's morning post:

From Svenson:

A Belgian entrepreneur is asked to paint a 5km wall along the E40 highway. Smart as he is he asks a Dutch colleague, Jaap, to do the painting. The first day Jaap paints 2.5km. Wow, thinks the Belgian, that will be finished here by tomorrow. Wrong. The next day Jaap only paints 1.25km. Bad day the Belgian thinks, we will see tomorrow. Third day 500m gets painted and that goes on like this. By the end of the week all is done but the Belgian wonders about the decreasing productivity. "Now", says Jaap, "in the beginning the pot with paint is close by but by the end it quite some distance you know."

And then it gets worse . . . from Brian:

Yup, there's a porch, I have a farm on it, in which to relax in my spare two minutes a week (Ouch! She hit me again!).

And YOU have a farm?  What about my part of the seeds and hard work????

(Boy, does he know how to get himself in trouble or what?!?!?!)

Dentist Appointment

I had a dentist appointment today-- actually worse than that but, I won't go there right now.  Lots of work to be done-- its been awhile since we've had decent dental insurance or couldja tell?  Not a pleasant experience and it appears, it will be worse in the future.  ARGH!!

Its later now . . .

The dentist appointment went bad-- I'm slated for surgery later this year.  No, it will not be pleasant!!

Weight Watchers Update:

I've got my Five Pound Bookmark-- I've lost a total of 5.1 pounds in five weeks so this is good.  I'm happy about that-- Brian is proud!

Agenda for the evening . . .

I've gotta clean before the housekeeper comes tomorrow!!  Oh, come on!!  You were waiting for me to say that!!  Actually, I just need to pick up a few things that he won't know where to put so its better to do it now than later.  Have a good evening . . .

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