My life...or something like it

Pet Peeve of the Day

Now, answering phones at a busy law firm, I get my share of annoyances throughout the day - but my biggest one? When people call and start by saying "I just got a phone call from this number...". C'mon people! 1) There are over 20 people that work here and the same number shows up on your caller ID. There's no way for me to know who from our office called you. 2) If you see you missed a call AND there's a voicemail notification, listen to the voicemail first. Chances are all the information you need to know is right there waiting for you on that voicemail. It might actually save yourself sounding like an idiot because you don't know who you want to speak with. And it might even save you from having to make that call at all.

Ah-ha. I got it. Next time a person calls and said "Someone just called me from this number..." I'm going to cut them off and say "I'm sorry, there is no one named "Someone" that works here!".

Good and Evil

So I had this epiphany this morning. Sometime between 6 and 7am. I realized that it's not so much that I'm going to bed too late, it's the damn cat that starts in with the constant mewing anywhere between 6am and the time I get out of bed that prevents me from getting that extra one and a half hours of good sleep!

I don't understand it. It's always ONE. It doesn't even have to be the SAME one. One of them always does it. If Jonah is being good - and these days he is (thanks to the "happy pills"), it's Finn who's being evil. And he always stands just out of range of the squirt bottle. At least with Jonah, I know if I get frustrated enough, I can jump out of bed and drench him. But if I try to do that with Finn, he knows all the perfect hiding places that are just out of reach of the squirt bottle. Ugghhh. It's not enough that I wake up with them at ~5:45 - 6:30am when they get hungry and feed them. No, then they have to continue to be little pains until I actually get up. And when I get out of the shower? What are they doing? Of course they are snoozing cutely and peacefully and look annoyed when *I* wake them up to pat at them! The nerve.

Decisions Decisions

So I won't go into some long apology about why it's been such a long time. I know it has. But I won't apologize for it.

On to the post.

I really need to start waking up earlier. And going to bed ealier. I think I tell myself this every morning. But do I do it? No.

So this morning I woke up one snooze session later than I should have (it's been happening a lot lately). To make up for it, I decided I'd microwave some oatmeal for breakfast and just take it to work with me. Even though I skipped the breakfast portion of my morning routine, I still left for work a bit later than I should have. Usually I'm able to make it up, because it seems as if the later I leave for work, the less time it actually takes for me to get there. No so this morning. So I got there 20 minutes later than I should have. And to make matters worse, I arrived at exactly the same time as my boss did. So it's not like I could "fib" a bit on the time sheet and say I got there ealier since we walked in at the same damn time.

So today I was planning on hitting the pet store at lunch, since I forgot to on my way home from work last night. The boys are completely out of canned cat food. I actually had to fool them. They should have gotten the rest of the can last night, but I had to half the half so they'd have something to eat this morning. (They have dry food available to them, so it's not like they couldn't eat kibble if they wanted to, they just want to be spoiled!)

But now I have to cut 20 minutes out of my lunch since I was late. I'm not sure if I'll have time to get myself lunch *and* run to the pet store. Do I chance it? Or just stop on my way home from work?

Last Minute

So I never did make a post about the boy finally leaving. It was two weeks
ago. And it made us sad - but also happy that he's finally working again and
hopefully starting to make some good money soon. And we can start planning
on things we're going to do with his newfound income. Like having me come
visit. So last Wednesday, we debated on whether or not to visit because of
the holiday weekend. Should he come here? Should I go there? Should I drive?
Should I fly? In the end we decided that a visit might not be in our best
interests. Mapquest says it takes 7 hours to drive there. That'd be 14 hours
of driving total. Like a whole day of driving. And with gas prices, that'd
be ~$100 worth of gas. So we moved on to flying. Southwest flies into
Ontario and has fairly reasonable rates. Problem is finding a way in to Palm
Springs (Ontario is an hour to 1.5 hours drive to Palm Springs). Rental Car
would be too expensive. Flying direct to Palm Springs was too expensive (for
not much more, I could have a ticket to Hawaii!). So Thursday comes and
Matthew again brings up the topic of me coming to visit. Turns out his
friend (and new boss) is willing to come pick me up from the Ontario
Airport. So we revisit the whole flying issue. We check ticket prices again
- and what we thought was a very reasonable price on Southwest turned out to
be the one-way price only. (They do have very reasonable rates, but you have
to plan more in advance than the Thursday before a Holiday weekend). So the
debate continued. In the end, we decided, even though it was more than we
wanted to pay, we wanted to see each other more. Especially since it was a
holiday weekend and we wouldn't have another opportunity to visit for
several weeks (as for two weeks this month Matthew will be back home in
Hawaii). So I ended up buying tickets ~1am Friday to leave San Jose to
Ontario at 12:35pm Friday. Talk about last minute. At first, I decided I'd
go in to work a couple hours on Friday and say I had to leave early, but in
the end, I figured I'd probably need that time to get myself ready, so I
called work, left a message for my supervisor saying I had a "family
emergency" and I wouldn't be in on Friday. Good thing I did, as I really did
need every minute to get ready before I had to leave for the airport.

The beasties seemed to have done just fine without me. I came back to my
apartment in the same condition I left it - although with the litter box a
bit more stinky than I would have liked. This is the longest I've left them
by themselves - 4 days/3 nights. If I'd been more prepared, I would have
tried to get someone to come in to check on them on Saturday - but I figured
they'd do alright. And they did. (Much to my relief)

We had a very nice weekend in Palm Springs. We were somewhat limited by the
fact that we didn't really have any transportation. Matthew's friend was
kind enough to let us use his big ass SUV on Sunday. We had a very nice
"date". We first went the zoo, The Living Desert, in Palm Desert. My
favorites of course were all the cat species - Mountain Lion, Ocelot,
Serval, Sand Cat, ect. I couldn't believe how uncrowded the place was. I
think we saw more staff than people actually visiting! Probably because this
weekend was the start of their season and it was HOT! Many of the poor
kitties were panting it was so hot!

We then went to a very yummy Mexican restaurant in Downtown Palm Springs.
Palm Springs is definitely a very "yuppie" town and had many yummy looking
(and smelling) restaurants to choose from. After that we saw The Transporter
2. It was quite entertaining. Jason Stratham is fun to watch. He has this
charisma and finesse (plus he's nice to look at) and he made a movie with a
so-so and much overdone plot - into a very enjoyable movie.

All in all it was quite a good weekend. It was very disappointing to have to
come home and think about going back to my crappy job. At least it's a short
week this week. I really really need to make a better effort a finding a new
job.

And I probably had more to say - but I've been interrupted so many times,
I'm not sure it's worth it anymore.