Rant

In my current profession, I do a lot of writing. In my previous life, I did less writing but still a considerable amount. I like to pride myself on having good grammar and sentence structure as well as being good at telling a story. (disclaimer: I do not proof these posts, so don't judge by my blogging alone. If you want professional writing samples, we can do that elsewhere.)

So today I read a story published in the local newspaper that I often sent stories to in my previous life. Not once did they give me the "author" title as they did this new guy. So he can't even pawn off the mistake. The story is talking about the tough economic times the organization is going through. I'm going to post the story in entirety, changing the names so they can't search.

CORNFIELD, IL-- Tough economic times aren’t coming, they are already here, says Dr. Jerk #1, president of Cornfield College.

The state is currently behind $1.8 million in money it owes the college. The college was owed $2.5 million until last week when State Senator I Drive a Tractor (D) worked to get $700,000 in state emergency funding released so the college could make payroll.

“I hear a lot of people talking about what is going to happen, I am more concerned about what is already happening,” Jerk #1 said. “I hear diffcult times are coming, but we are already experiencing them.”

Nice Lady, the college’s chief financial officer, said the college is looking at every possible expenditure cut to keep from laying off any institutionally funded employees.

In the meanwhile, Jerk #1 said it is important that college employees understand how the state’s current financial picture is affecting the college.

“I am encouraging everyone to pull together and work as one so that we might see our way through the problem we are facing right now,” Jerk #1 said.

The key line in this story is "in the meanwhile." How many of you have started a sentence with that?

Before and After

I love love LOVE the thisyounghouse blog and they posted yesterday about a before and after contest that you did yourself, with very little outside help. I love contests and think that hubs and I do good work to our houses, so I entered. I submitted the porch that we did last summer at the old house.

This is the before:

The previous owner to our house used the screened in porch as a dog kennel, and storage for trash. (that photo is from the day we closed on the house - exactly as the previous owner left it...) The floor was like jello, bending and bouncing back as you walked across, and if you jumped the entire structure would jiggle. So my husband and my father ripped up the stained indoor/outdoor carpet and tore apart the floorboards. They left the screens and the four corners in tact, and solidified the foundation of the porch with cement and a lot of lumber. We used pre-treated outdoor lumber and stained it to give it a nice finish. We also hung the lamps to give the area a nice glow at night (that green ball at the top of the photo). And those cute little candles on the table are actually baby citronella candles :)



Do you think we'll win?

Behind our house...

what kind of bird is that?

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Peace out AT&T

The VP pulled through for me. He got on a three-way phone call (welcome back eighth grade) with me, and his AT&T buddies. I think he felt some of my frustration because during our round of being transferred to this dept and that dept, he started getting a little annoyed with the folks who were supposed to be helping us. He reiterated his status at the company several times.

Finally, we found out that AT&t does not support my house. How nice of them to tell me that. I've only been calling them since May 6. That's almost 2 complete months. I wonder how long they would have teased me into thinking I could get some quality internet.

I broke down yesterday and will begin to get ripped off by Charter very soon. That is, if the technician can be snagged into our house while he runs to the door, knocks as quietly as possible and scoots back into his car, to tell us later that no one was home.

Summer Vacations

Until I was in college, my parents took us kiddos on a summer family vacation. Most of the time, this was a two-week-long trek one way or the other away from STL (the center of the universe right?).

My mom has continually been unloading crap to my sister and I that we left at her house on purpose when we moved out. She thinks we want to keep it, so she is bringing target bags full of stuff she's finding that she thinks we want. In my most recent drop off, I got my GRE scores (which I did amazingly well in math/science and horrible in verbal/reading... kinda ironic given my career choice), my sorority group pictures from college (where everyone has that tiny piece of felt on as a shirt and some fake pearls), and a 13-page wide-rule notebook paper scrapbook from our trip to Bar Harbor, Maine.

This thing has my first lobster bib on it, rocks, notes about my sister puking in the car, and my overall complaints about the long drive. It was hilarious to read.

I also found a list that my mom made of all the trips we took, that she can remember. To preserve this list on the internets, here it is:

1980 - Hunting Island, SC
1981 - Gatlinburg, TN (I was born in Aug 1981, not sure if I was alive, or in womb)
1982 -Hunting Island
1983 - Padre Island
1984 - Gatlinburg, TN
1985 - Hunting Island
1986 - Estes Park, CO
1987 - Myrtle Beach, SC
1988 - Charlottesville, VA, Virginia Beach, Washington DC
1989 - Disney World, St. Augustine, FL
1990 - Fripp Island, SC, Vicksburg, MS
1991 - Yellowstone National Park, Grand Tetons
1992 - Fripp Island, SC, Gatlinburg, TN (Captain Wally trip for those who went)
1993 - Michigan
1994 - Yellowstone/Tetons #2
1995 - Maine
1996 - Fripp Island (condos)
1997 - Fripp Island (house)
1998 - Eminence, Branson, MO
1999 - Door County, WI
2000 - Fripp Island, Highland NC (have necklace from sapphires)
2001 - Fripp Island, Gatlinburg
2002 - San Francisco/Napa Valley/Santa Cruz, CA (our first flight)
2003 - Chicago/Memphis
(This begins hubs and me trips)
2004 - Chicago
2005 - cruise to Bahamas
2007 - honeymoon in Key West, FL
2008 - Fort Bragg, NC
2009 - Fort Bragg, NC

Oxymoron

You'd think anything from Dairy Queen would = horrible for dieters. HOWEVER, I have good news for you!!! These little treats are 0 points!!! They have 50 calories, no fat, 6 grams of fiber.

Kinda on the pricey side, at $7.99 for a box of 6 (at the DQ by my house anyways) but definitely tasty.

I had to do it.

Last semester, in one of my classes, we had a guest speaker. He happens to be a vice president at AT&T. He spoke about furthering your career and how to have good business practices. He also gave everyone his personal cellular telephone number and said if anyone wanted to talk to him about anything, he would love to hear from us.

Yesterday, when my promised internet did not turn on again, I finally broke down and called him. I was trying not to use that very thin connection I have to someone high up at AT&T, but I just DO NOT want to use Charter. I'm sure my fellow St Louisans will support me in that endeavor (unless they work for the bankrupt company).

Vamp Talk

I'm completely wrapped up in Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels that the show TrueBlood is based on. If you liked Twilight, this is something you might enjoy if you don't mind sex scenes. These books are not rated-G folks. They are super easy to read with a very conversational tone.

If you have read these books, leave me a comment and tell me you thought they were awesome too. I'm only on the 5th book and the hubs is already uber-annoyed that my nose is constantly in a vamp book.

AT&T still

So I called this morning and they admitted to the problem being on their end, and said it should be fixed by tomorrow morning at 10am. I don't believe it for a second, but I will let my avid readers know by posting when I get home from work tomorrow. :)

Other than operating sans-internet, our new house is awesome. We had mom and dad + emily and russ over for dinner Saturday night. Hubby made his secret ribs recipe, which my dad loves. They turned out great and I think everyone enjoyed eating them. (That's what the place-setting photo was for)

We bought fence supplies to put up a fence in the backyard, which will be a drastic life-changing event for one small pug. He's never had a fenced-in yard to run around.

Next weekend, hubby's grandparents are coming to see the house for the first time. Hopefully I can get all the rib/father's day dishes cleaned and put away by then. I hate doing dishes. Give me laundry any day of the week before dishes. I tend to let the gross ones sit on the counter until I break down and can't stand it any longer. I can unload the clean ones just fine, but I hate touching a dirty dish.

Accidental suicide

This dumb bird killed itself by flying into our storm door while the inside door was open...

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perfect.

Rend Lake is so calm. Love my father in law for buying a boat and letting us borrow it!

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Im on a boat!

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Dinner is almost ready

beautiful place setting...

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And I was right.

So it's Saturday and I was on the phone with 5 people from AT&T this morning, over the course of 1 hour and 14 minutes. The last asshole I talked to told me that nothing could be done until Monday. I said I would pack up his 2wire router and ship it back to him on Monday and he said "Ok. Do that. Have a nice day" and hung up!!!!

What I got out of the entire conversation is that AT&T messed up our order somehow yesterday while the technician was trying to turn on our service and that AT&T does not work on the weekends, so we can wait until Monday to see what the hell is going on.

WHAT HAPPENED TO CUSTOMER SERVICE???

Hubs is almost ready to call the other St. Louis assholes- Charter.

hanging art

the one piece of original art i own was painted by my uncle.

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I loathe AT&T

I have been trying to get AT&T internet at our new house for more than a month now... I believe I made the first order the second week of May. It is June 16, and I have placed at least 5 orders, probably 6.

Every time I call to see why the internet is not working, the assholes at AT&T tell me that they have no record of my placing an order. Every time I get so frustrated to the point that I want to cry - and if you know me, you know that's a huge issue, because I'm really not a crying person.(Until this AM when some lady told me she could see all my orders but then she said she'd call me right back and never did...) So I just ordered their damn router, which I was trying my best to save that $93 and use our old router, but if that's the only way the assholes will give me the internet, fine. I'll pay your $93.

Here's proof of my order placed last week:


The bia I talked to today told me that my internet would be on between the hours of 8am and 8pm, June 18, with my router arriving that day from UPS, which I will need to be home to sign for, but not for the dude to turn on my internet.

Somewhere in this month, I've also signed up for shitty dial-up only to find out that our computer does not have a dial-up modem and HP wanted to charge me $50 "to determine the proper route to take in a solution" with no guarantee... no dice HP. I tried to buy an attachable dial-up modem from walmart - no such luck. So I also need to call and cancel that ISP when I calm down.

6 points

My new favorite lunch. The asparagus tasted real and the ravioli was amazing. Really good for $2.25

home improvement #11

new chandelier!

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home improvement #10

newly painted room and curtain rod

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home improvement #9

a very minor improvement - new doorstops

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Call for backup

I need someone smarter than myself, when it comes to the internets and computers, to help us out-wit the Actiontec GT704-WG wireless router/gateway that we bought from verizon. I need it to work with AT&T internet. I figure there has to be a way to do this, but the hubs and I just are not experts at out-smarting technology.

Maybe a certain Jones boy would like to volunteer? I will pay you in beer.

Full view

So this is the one wall complete - and you can see the rug too. The top color still needs to be bought, but I will update you for sure.

home improvement #7

new dining room paint - the colors don't show up well, but the green on the right is very sage green, with lighter sage green above it. The blue matches the beautiful rug Hubs got me for Christmas a year ago.

damage from last nite

green mount rd and frank scott pkwy

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Weekend in photos

Stupid wires

So I finally figured out the problem with AT&T/the internet/our house. I thought the new house would not have any problems like the old house with wiring being all screwy, but apparently I was wrong. Instead of electrical wiring problems, we have phone wiring problems.

Hubs is good at electric wiring, but I'm not sure about his telephone skills...

snakes!

The hubs and I spent a considerable amount of time this weekend working in the yard. Part of that time included hunting and killing our overly-friendly snake. He was just a-snoozing on our front porch Saturday morning, probably like he's done for the last year while our house sat on the market, overpriced.



Then we moved in and he thought we'd become friends, but I shoved him into a box and the hubs cut his head off.

Yesterday, I went to my to-be cousin in-law's bridal shower.



That's my mom, me, new cuz, my sister and my aunt.