Meh. Headache. Let's hope the excedrin kicks in soon as I can't afford to be anything less than 100% right now.

I know that the fact that Zappos has amazing service is not fresh news, and that I've even expounded on it before. But I have to share yet another example of their excellence.

I had to return some boots that didn't fit well (which by the way, was as easy a process as is possible without them actually coming to pick them up). However, I must've written down the tracking number incorrectly, because i couldn't get it to come up on the UPS website. It had been a week, and the website wasn't showing any changes to my order, so I started to get nervous that something had gone wrong.

I called them up, got a rep who was immediately able to find my order, as well as confirm that they were received. Without me even asking, she put the credit through right then and there. Problem solved within 5 minutes!

But that's not even the cool part. A few minutes later I get a few emails, notifying me of the credit etc. And another one, letting me know that I am now a "VIP" customer, and that am now on entitled to free overnight shipping on every order. Ye gods! That's amazing!

Zappos, you have my heart.

I feel like work is all I've been doing lately. This statement would no doubt boggle the minds of my teammates, since I've been off phones for the last 2 weeks prepping for the India trip end-of-January. But just because it's DIFFERENT work than I usually do and on a less strict schedule doesn't make it not work, and not difficult.

I'm really starting to stress about the trip. I had been laboring under the mistaken impression that everything was running behind schedule and I was assuming my trip would not be end-of-January, but later, and I had plenty of time to prep. I found out yesterday that that was not the case, and my visa application documents needed to be completed ASAP. Plus I hadn't even begun my training plans.

Good god!! Why didn't anyone tell me training plans were so time-consuming to create? I spent half the day working on Day 1 of one of the two 5-day plans I need to create, only to discover I had only actually managed to cover less than 3 hours worth of material, including a 20 minute break. At this rate, I'll need 4 weeks to create them both... I don't have 4 weeks. Especially since I *have* to take 2 days off before the end of the month, or lose the vacation time.

I also wish I had some experience at this sort of thing... I sort of feel like I'm aiming for a target, then closing my eyes and hoping for the best.

I realize this post sounds kind of emo; I assure you it actually isn't. I'm stressed, yes, and feeling the time-pinch, but I'm still excited to go and very honored that they chose me. I just have to relax a little and stop worrying about being Epic Fail at it. I suppose it's normal to have nerves about something like this, especially when it means a) being overseas for the first time, b) being overseas by MYSELF for the first time, c) doing something very critical to my department, in the eye of all, when I've never really done anything like it before (writing lesson plans and training) and d)training people in not just my job, but one I don't do and that is far more erratic than one might suspect.

I'm sure I'll make it through ok -- I'm fairly smart, very resourceful, detail-oriented, and have the support of the higher-ups -- and just think how great it'll look on my resume! Just don't be surprised if this LJ is full of ranting, whining, and panicking until it's done, ok? ;)

Jill hate snow. :( :(

That is all.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US peeps. For the rest of you, just have a great day. :) I am grateful for you all.

Worse than no documentation = outdated, disorganized, and poorly written
documentation that's available in hard copy only.



I've got a lot of work to do.

My mom gave me some of my old dresses she made, including my 8th grade graduation dress, my prom dress, and the bridesmade dress she made for me when she got married (I was about 18).

I wasn't ambitious enough to try on the graduation dress; I think I'd actually be a little freaked if I was the same size I was when I was 13. Luckily, I think there's no chance.

Can you believe, however, that the prom dress and bridesmaid dress actually DO fit?? I didn't realize I'd lost THAT much weight. I'm essentially the same size I was at 17. Ok, the thighs are maybe a bit more snug, and my tummy is not as flat, but dammit, I can fit into the dresses and they don't look half-bad.

Amazing!!

Our governor says "I am out as a negotiator, and I am taking with me the $7 million of state funding."

The union head says he doesn't care; "I am not for sale. I will not sell my membership out."

Umm, yes you are. You're negotiating for more money. That sounds to me like the definition of a sale. And now you just flushed 7 million free dollars.

I can't believe the chutzpah. So many people are out of work, or working with no benefits at all. Yet you're refusing several decent deals, because it's not quite a sugary enough slice of the pie for you?

And in the meantime, the city suffers and struggles.

The gall. The unmitigated gall!

I wish I could boycott them. Never use their service again, and convince the rest of the city to do the same. But I need it, just like the rest of us.

I am a union supporter, generally, but this is a clear-cut case of a union having way, way too much power.

TWU, I hope you burn in hell.

Seriously, you HAVE to try this place:

Marrakesh Express
4407 Chestnut St
215-222-9008

Josh and I ate dinner there after being stuck in horrid, horrid traffic (fuck you, SEPTA) and it was easily the best part of my day.

The owner was incredibly cool and friendly, the prices were cheap, and the food was awesome. And he even gave us free soup and Moroccan mint tea, just because he was that rad.

Try the lamb tagine -- it was incredible.

I bought some rain boots at 7 pm last night, with Zappos' free standard shipping. I expected to get them some time next week.

Overnight, they apparently shipped them out and upgraded me to overnight shipping, totally for free.

Boots will be mine today.

All online retailers should learn from their example. Zappos FTW!!!

Thanks to this morning's vaccinations, it's decided that I have two strains of hepatitis, tetanus, and of course polio.

I am sooooooo tired.

Tomorrow: typhoid pills! Yay?

Travel used to sound like such a GOOD idea...

I need opinions. Which do people like better? This one, but in red:
http://tinyurl.com/yhmlo4f or this one, in the blue:
http://tinyurl.com/yholz8f

Bodyrock gym's Back-to-Basics workout just kicked my ass SOOOO hard. My legs and arms are all noodley.

I go lie down now.

I R DED.

One thing that isn't so great about the new place is the amount of street noise that gets in. I'm a very light sleeper. This makes for a bad combination.

Now, if this was just cars, or even the trolleys, I could get used to it -- but this is Lancaster Ave right on the edge of the... shall we say... less nice part of town.

This means things like, in the past half hour:

1) A car parked outside, blasting loud pop music, with 4 club-dressed girls shaking their thangs on the sidewalk. (Though I have to say, when I went outside all sleep-addled and let them know that we had kids in the house, they were very nice... apologized, and shut it off immediately.)

2) A dude loudly losing his dinner behind the house and across the street.

Hence me being awake at half-past two in the AM.

*sigh*

Sure hope I can adjust, because otherwise, now that Pix is back, I am feeling pretty good about this place.

!!!!!

I got home, and he was crying, filthy, at the basement door. Somewhere there must be a way in and out of that basement, because we looked in it a TON of times.

So, no kitties allowed in the basement. And we're going to close off the dining room door whenever we go down there just to be sure. We're also going to try to find the place of escape and patch it up.

Thank you a million times to all who helped out by looking, printing fliers, and providing moral support. I have the best friends in the world, I really do.

1) Still no Pixel, obvs, since I would have posted.

2) I forgot my cell phone at home.

3) My lunch peach liquefied in my bag.

4) The CEO of the company is visiting today, so I made an effort and am
wearing my favourite pair of nice pants. However, the liquefied peach
got my bag wet, which was sitting on my lap on the trolley. The ink from
the fabric ran and now there are several bright pink stains on the front
of my pants. Classy.

5) One of my Philly colleagues called out. It's not unexpected as he is
out ALL the time, but it still sucks.



It's gotta get better from here, right?

No cat news. Saturday night I had to make Josh disappear the kids out of the den so that I could have a much-needed mini-breakdown. I've been a bit more centered since... although, apparently not centered enough as I COMPLETELY forgot about my grandmother's tombstone unveiling ceremony on Sunday AM and made the whole family late.

*sigh*

Now I'm at work, and I'm just trying to hold it together, y'all.

In a rare moment of luck, at least I'm "email person" this week... so I don't have to try to act like I care about people's bibliographic problems on the phone. Because I'll tell you what -- I don't. Not right now.

I seriously haven't been this upset since we lost Star. That was obviously worse, but nothing else has really come close to this since then. The not knowing, the worry, and the hollow place where he would usually sit on me at bedtime... it's all killing me.

Still no Pixel, but I did manage to eat and sleep a little now that the initial shock of his disappearance has dulled.

Can't eat; can't sleep; can't find cat.

Just when everything seemed to be going so well, finally...

I am freaking. the fuck. out.

We're now officially SHACKING UP! Squee!

Beatles Rock Band is SUPA AWESOME. I snuck in a little time to play it before bed. I kind of am mad that I have to do things like sleep and go to work when I have this awesome game I could be playing...

LIFE IS PAIN.

It's Beatles Rock Band Day!!!!!!!!!!

I can't wait to get my hands on it. Sadly, I won't be able to play it until tomorrow at the earliest since I need to be at Josh's helping him finish packing for his move tomorrow AM.

Still, at least I'll have it!

Apparently, my cats fear hula hooping.

Well, I thought the most exciting thing of the day would be finishing painting the bedrooms (which we did, for the record). That was until I sat down to eat my dinner, and heard an incredible screech and a crash right outside my window. I called 911 and tore out of the house. Apparently some dude was driving insanely fast up 38th street, lost control, took out 4 parked cars, and still managed to travel another full block before stopping.

Seems like he was the only one hurt, though he appeared to be still conscious (if handcuffed) when I saw him.

Some illustrative, unartistic photos I snapped to show how nasty this accident was:

One of the parked cars -- I've never seen anyone rip open a vehicle like this. I feel badly for the owner. Can you imagine coming back and finding your car like this?

This car was parked right behind the one above. Note that the impact forced it all the way onto the sidewalk!

Shitty picture... but it shows how far that car got pushed off the street.

The asshole's car. It's amazing that he got so far on a disintegrated front tire.

Just coming back to reality after a violent migraine that hit me like a freight train this morning, forcing me to leave work. I'm still a little achy, quite shaky, and very fuzzy, but doing better. Getting home was horrid, though... between the glare of the fluorescents, the rocking of the train cars, and the squeal of the metal wheels in the subway tunnels, I was literally seconds from vomiting the whole time. Then, to make it worse, when I was about 4 blocks from home police activity on 36th St. held up the trolley, and flashing police lights and piercing sirens had me literally hyper-ventilating. We were stuck there for about 15 minutes.

I got home and threw myself face-down on the futon, arm over my head, until the dizziness passed enough to at least take off my shoes. Josh came downstairs and I couldn't even look at him to say hi, so he just kissed me on the back of my head.

Pathetic. Heh.

This also means no fencing tonight, which fucking sucks. I have barely fenced in a month with all the moving stuff, and I was really looking forward to training tonight. However, I can tell that doing so would be a bad mistake. I am going to go over there to sit down and talk with Ahren about our expectations for the upcoming season, though... that much I can do, as long as I wear my sunglasses and move slowly. Living 2 blocks from the club has some definite advantages.

In other news, I just got an email from my aunt asking for my legal information to get the money that Bubby left me. I am kind of surprised. Frankly I'd completely forgotten about the idea of inheritance -- I'm not one of those people who looks to gain from the deaths of loved ones. When she died, I never really thought about inheritance at all, but if I HAD thought about it, I kind of would have figured that she wouldn't have had anything left to leave. As it is, I'm sure it's not going to be much, but it's nice to know that something is coming, in light of all the money I'm spending on home improvements recently.

Yesterday Josh and I did scary grown-up stuff.

We got paint colors for the bedrooms -- paint-o-caust begins today!!

We signed up for Costco. He took me to one and had me look around; I was astounded by the great prices. Since he has a car, and we have a house to keep stuff in, signing up makes good sense. And I was also still feeling the loss of my saran wrap package, which was bought by my old roommate's parents at Costco back in about 1998, and only just ran out a couple weeks back. That saran lived in no less than 3 apartments with me.

We also bought a new dining room table. We picked up a very slightly marred store model of this table for only 199! What a bargain... the table is solidly built, seats six and has two built in butterfly leaves so it can expand to 8. Dinner parties ftw, y'all!

Lastly, and very excitingly, we also concluded the search for the replacement coffee table! Yes, I finally found one I could approve of. Even better, it was a set -- a coffee table AND 2 matching end tables for $250. I wish I could find a picture online; it's a really nice set.

So, now I'm poor... but at I'm happily nesting.

I thought I was suffering from a case of serious stupid or something for a while -- I could NOT for the life of me get my wireless internets set up. Turns out it was a bad cable, so I am (temporarily) redeemed.

ETA: Also, I'm about to cook my first meal in the new house. Granted, "cook" is a kind of generous term for jarred sauce on pasta, but I haven't gone food shopping yet.

Now that I'm moved, the unpacking must begin, and as previously mentioned, I'm behind by a day.

Therefore, local friends: any of you who have some time on their hands today or tomorrow would earn Bonus Friend Points if you wouldn't mind spending a little of it here helping out! As extrs incentive, you'd be one of the first to see the New House. In fact, no one's been here but me and Josh as yet, so you could even ne THE first...

Give a ring if unpacking or even painting sounds like your idea of an excellent time. You should have the number.

Some of you were "privileged" enough to see an emo post from me early this AM, while preparing for my move. The short follow-up to that is -- things got much better.

Firstly, Mambo movers are just as excellent as everyone says they are. They were fast, efficient, friendly, and one of them was even smokin' hot.

No complaints.

When we got to the new house, though, drama once more ensued -- the painters were actually in the house. After an initial freak-out, we managed to make it so that the movers dumped pretty much everything into one room for us to sort later so that the painters could continue.

Apparently the painters were told that they had until the first, which is why they hadn't been here yet. *facepalm*

On the plus side, they did a really decent job, and were very graceful in the face of mine and Josh's initial fury in their direction. They not only cleaned and touched up the paint, but did some basic spackling, put sealant on the old water damage spots, and told us that they'll talk to the realtor on monday about fixing that permanently for us... their comment was "if we don't do it, someone else will. It will get fixed." And they're coming back tomorrow for a few other things as well.

I feel much better, overall. Sure, we're about a day behind since we couldn't unpack while they were working, but the worst is done.

Now I just have to convince the kitties that the world has not, in fact, ended.

Ok, I'm pretty used to some crazy-sounding bugs, but the life cycle of Cymothoa exigua just blows my mind. It is the GROSSEST, COOLEST, CRAZIEST bug life cycle I've ever heard about... ( click for more. )

Too much going on. For the 4th time this week, I find myself awake at an ungodly hour, unable to keep my mind quiet.

This time, after an hour, I got up and decided to check emails and LJ and read for a bit, rather than tossing and turning angrily. Hopefully I'll soon feel tired enough to attempt more sleeping.

I so rarely get insomnia, so when I do, I just don't know what to do about it. :/

Along with the crazy bad shit going on in my life, there is also some crazy good shit. AND NO I CAN'T TELL YOU ABOUT IT YET. 

Believe me, not being able to talk about this is hurting me far more than it's hurting you. I promise that as soon as I can, I'll spill it!!!

We got in to the new place today to take some measurements. Exciting! We'd only seen it the once, after all, so I was getting all confused about the proportions of the rooms. I could remember the overall layout, but not sizes of rooms etc.

And, yep, I still think it's gorgeous, and I still can't wait to move in.

One thing I didn't remember at all is that the downstairs bedroom (henceforward called the "den," we decided, since we aren't going to be using it as a bedroom) is HUGE. I really didn't remember at all the size of that thing. It's a monster! And has its own powder room, and hidden storage in the back! I'll be using it as a reading/hobby/guest room (yes, pinkhairedcyn , a guest room, the door of which will always be open to you once I have it).

I also didn't remember the beautiful wood inlay on the floors.

I did remember quite precisely how much I loved the upstairs living room, though, and the lust I felt at the giant built-in wardrobe in the front bedroom. For all the closet-lust, though, we're taking the larger, back bedroom as our master -- but I'm still going to keep all my clothes in the built-in in the other room, BECAUSE I CAN. I'll leave a wing of it for the kids' stuff, as that'll be their bedroom on the weekends, but overall, ees mines!!!!!

30 days until move. Tick freaking tock!

and they're trying to gnaw their way out of my skull.

I was just told by a neighbor-child that I look like "that girl from Ace of Cakes." I'm doing some furious You Tubing, but I can't for the life of me figure out who they might mean. Any ideas?

We've finally hit 2-showers-per-day hot-and-humid weather here in Philly, but I'm not complaining... I'm amazed it took this long to get here. Late July instead of late June? I'll take it, and happily.

Besides which, I don't want to piss off the weather gods. I am still desperately praying that Move Day, Aug 29th, will be Not Horrible. Moving in shitty, stormy, and/or sticky weather is just brutal. I did schedule my move for first thing in the AM, though, so hopefully if there's heat it won't be too bad that early in the day.

In other moving news I've made arrangements to have both the electricity and cable internets on. I have packed pretty much all books, DVDs, CDs, and Wonder Woman memorabilia. I think next will be excess kitchen crap -- I'll leave myself out a few dishes and pots and stuff, but pack anything extra that I won't need in the next month.

Here's a small selection of some photos I've recently taken. Most of the zoo photos are from the new bird house, which is great. Small, but packed with gorgeous birds. Great place to shoot! The plants are all from the Botanical Gardens outside the Japanese house in Fairmount Park. ( Click to see! )

Apologies in advance for the upcoming photogasm, but I finally got around to processing and posting a bunch of stuff from the last month or so.

As usual, you can see it all on my Flickr page.

Apparently, home-owners in the Philadelphia area can request a free tree.


What a great idea! But get on it if you want to take advantage... the deadline is next Weds.

With unemployment worse than ever, I've been pooh-poohing the economists who've said that we're on the mend.

However, I can't ignore that for the first time in half a year, my 401K statement is in the black.

I'm not saying I believe them yet, but it does seem a promising sign.

Mark the ones you've read. Via crowyhead.( Cliquez vous! )

...I found a deer tick attached on my hip this morning.

Goddammit.

I woke Josh up to remove it (I couldn't really reach with the angle it was at), and called the doctor, who confirmed my instinct that no panic is necessary. Just watch the site and move fast if any illness, fever, or rashing appears.

I packed most of my books today. I think my Wonder Woman memorabilia will be next.

I ordered the movers for the 29th... I guess it's really happening now.

Wow.

Alas, there was a problem with Aug 1 as the move-in date. Apparently the landlords screwed up and the current tenants had asked for a 1-mo extension on the lease. The earliest they will be out is the last week of August. *sigh*

So, our lease will now be beginning Sep 1, and I will be moving in a few days prior to that.

I'm a little sad -- I was hoping to spend a few short weeks walking to work before the office move -- but overall, the extra packing/preparing time probably won't hurt.

Gonna be out of town for the next couple days. If you need something, phone will be the best way to get a hold of me.

I actually set fire to a piece of pita bread in the toaster at work today. I don't mean I just burned it, oh no. I mean FLAMES and SMOKE.

Luckily, only one lady saw who was the responsible party for all the smoke and nasty, and I put it out and cleaned it up verrry quickly.

Still. Mortifying.

(If you don't recognize the subject line, you should hang your head in shame.)