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October 31, 2006
California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois
What are states Jodi will have been in from October 20th through November 11th, Alex? Lordy. Tons of travel including one of the most poorly planned roadtrips in well, the history of roadtrips. New job starts tomorrow, hence the travel next week to Illinois, wheee! I haven't flown since we got back from getting married, so this should be an experience :) November brings Leslie's birthday, Thanksgiving, and preparations for my birthday, so let the fun begin!
The road trip down to the bay area was nice on a lot of levels: we got to see beautiful scenery including Mt. Hood and Mt. Shasta. We also got to spend time with Dingo, and that was incredibly nice to reconnect with an old friend. We got to tour Toyama, the datacenter where I cut my teeth and really pushed myself to the next level. We got to see the old neighborhood, drive around and see what changed and what was still the same. Oh, and we got a new car (eventually).
The bad on the trip isn't worth getting into -- many stupid things were done by both of us, it was a ton of stress, and we both hit our flashpoints. But we worked through it somehow, and in the end managed to still enjoy most of the trip. I'm very fortunate to have such good friends :)
Speaking of which, Leslie gave me my birthday gift early while we were at The Container Store finding some solutions for my utterly unworkable kitchen. That ruled! We got this neato bar that hangs over the closet door and has little modular baskets to hang on the bar. Baskets hold canned goods, even 2 liter soda bottles! The best thing was finding out that they hold those ginormous spice bottles from Costco absolutely perfectly, yay! That freed up a bunch of space in the pantry, too. Double bonus.
We also put together a 7 runner elfa cart with a butcherblock top, since my little rolling drawer cart that I got from Staples for Richard's office but ended up using in the kitchen, was falling apart. I got one 3 runner drawer, one 2 runner drawer, and two 1 runner drawers. The big one holds my melamine bowls, bacon rack, other rack, and miscellaneous baking pans with ease. The 2 runner basket holds other random baking crap. The one 1 runner drawer finally again holds my wooden silverware tray, and the other drawer holds all my random utensils and gadgets. YAY!
Posted by jodikins at 8:30 PM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2006
"I'm right on top of that, Rose!"
First of all, I survived Richard's nine day trip. Work is still hectic, but moving forward on pretty much all fronts. If things were stagnant, I'd be a lot more stressed, but just plain busy is not a horrible state to be in.
My parents have decided to postpone their trip out here until Spring, which is excellent news. If they came out the first week of November as they'd planned, then we really wouldn't have time to entertain them. On a sad note, Mom had Jakie put to sleep. Jakie was over 17 years old -- the last of the litter I raised by hand from a week old -- and she had a relatively happy life.
About the only other thing that's been going on here is: catching up on housework, and some major catching up on sleep. Last night I felt extremely crappy, and ended up going to sleep at 7pm and skipping dinner entirely. Got up at 5am, made breakfast and felt much much better. And now, more sleep sounds like a plan :)
Posted by jodikins at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)
October 7, 2006
My husband
Although we've been married for a year and a half already, it's occasionally been hard to think in terms of "husband". It's such a weighty word, full of years and miles, past present and future, ups and downs. As I sit here waiting for the days to pass, and busier than I've been in years, more alive than I've felt in months, I toss and turn at night and think about how much I miss my husband.
Five more days...
Posted by jodikins at 6:09 AM | Comments (0)
October 4, 2006
Toast
Good thing I fixed that display only the last 7 days issue on here, or else there'd just be an empty space here. I've been working a lot, starting new projects which rely on skills I used to have when people paid me far more money :) Richard's in Amsterdam this week, and St. Louis next week. I'm here holding down the fort and tending to the menagerie. Unlike past trips, I haven't even begun cleaning anything really. Work is just so busy, and I'm still trying to project plan that so I don't feel so overwhelmed.
One of the issues I'd been avoiding at my current job is the fact that it's not very challenging. Day to day I do very little work, and parts of the job that required lots of effort in the beginning, are now routine busy work. I have some new opportunities doing some technical writing/information architecture, which is something that I am passionate about and enjoy doing. BUT, having been a mindless cog for so long in the current machine has made me a bit lazy and completely out of shape intellectually. I'm feeling the burn, so much so that I'm going to take the rest of the evening off to regroup.
Posted by jodikins at 5:10 PM | Comments (0)