News of late

My sister, Miss Kitty, came and went way too quickly--we had a total blast in our 3.5 days together, and we're already planning our next visit in the spring. Dare we ask for a week's time? Oh, I think we dare. As I've been backsliding on my posting lately, let's see if I can get the shortest version of the latest news:

• I thought on Sunday when I went in to do casework shops that Thurston (an annoying Pomme de Terre staff member) had been fired or quit, but alas, he only moved desks. Damn. He's been a pain in the ass to two of my interns.
• Demo is moving forward on the MHRC procedure suite. Once the demo crew is done there, they'll move up a few floors and across the campus to the present lab area where the new radiology suite is going to be and start demoing that area.
• Casework shops suck. Seriously. I've spent the better part of 16 hours on them, and as soon as you solve one issue, there's another to solve. I looked at the casework shops for the original MHRC project we did a couple of years ago (which was completed in early spring this year), and I'm amazed they were able to build casework off these shops. There were no details on them, so I had to go to the building and walk around to see what the casework (countertops and cabinets, for the uninitiated) looked like, and I found yet again two different ways of doing them. And, I might add, neither of these ways looks like what we drew in our drawings. I swear to Phillip Johnson, I don't know how this building got built.
• Upon arriving home late this evening, I saw in the elevator that our next door condo neighbor, who has had MS for 12 years, has finally been put into a nursing home/longterm care facility. Finally. This man has been in a wheelchair the entire 6 years we've lived here, and he's been in a motorized wheelchair or unable to leave his unit of his own volition for at least two or three years. I should also add that we live in an unsprinklered high-rise building. If there was a fire, this guy could only roll out onto his balcony and wait for the fire department to show up. For the past few years, he's needed round the clock live-in care, and one of his nurses last year ended up stealing some very valuable jewelry from him. People walked in and out of there like Grand Central Station, so none of us neighbors could say anything--we never knew who belonged there. Guy and I would often ask each other, "Can you really call what he's doing 'independent living,' for crying out loud?" perhaps now he can live in a safer place. The building manager provided an address so folks could visit him.

That's all for now. I'll post again when I have my wits about me.

Playing hooky with Kitty

The past two days have been a blast. After seven years of visiting me here, I've finally learned to schedule our activities for the afternoon of each day. While I'm one of the 5% of Americans who are morning people, Kitty, like most human beings, is not. I used to book our spa appointments at 10am, forcing me to hustle her out of bed and to the spa downtown, but alas, Shorty has learned her lesson. Thursday, our appointment was at 2:30pm, which gave us plenty of time to drink a pot of coffee, read the paper, and bug the crap out of Maddy and Hazel, who are not accustomed to such fierce snuggling as they receive at the hands of Aunt Kitty. While getting ready for a lazy brunch, Billy Ray called my cell phone, wanting to make sure that we were demoing the existing heating coils in the walls of the procedure suite. I sighed as I weighed the options and tried to expain infilling the panels with metal studs and drywall. "Everytime I solve a problem, it seems to cause another one, doesn't it?" I asked Billy Ray. He chuckled. "If this was easy, Pix, everyone would do it."

The sp was heavenly. Dinner afterwards was heavenly. Poor Guy came home to a condo full of cackling women with home-decorating magazines scattered around the dining room and his precious TV room, which is also our guest bedroom. He took it well. What a trooper.

Friday was spent at the new Sephora store in Boulder. All I can say is OMGWTFBBQSEPHORA. We spent probably at least 90 minutes in there, rubbing various potions on our hands, faces, and lips. I was heartbroken when I couldn't find the Bourjois Lip Stain pen I coveted so much (Kitty showed it to me), but I found some other makeup and skincare delights. Bwaahahaahaaaaa!! My cosmetic domination is at hand! My skin will be clear and my complexion dewy! My eyes will coordinate with my perfectly glossed lips! BWAAAAHHAHAAAAA!!!!

Um, sorry. Where was I?

Guy cooked us a marvelous casserole dinner after we returned from a walk around my lovely neighborhood, which is filled with delightful little houses. Delightful meaning ornate late 19th-century scrollwork and Victorian paint jobs and slate roofs and rambling gardens, and little meaning 5 bed/4 bath upwards of $600,000 each. But lovely nonetheless. After dinner, we watched the Rockies whoop up (again) on the D-backs and hit the sack. Today is more lounging around and then visiting my favorite no-kill cat shelter to pet kitties and clean boxes. Cuteness will abide.

Crossing the streams, part deux

So, most of the cleaning is done around the house is done. There's still some clutter here and there due to unfinished remodeling, but otherwise the house is presentable for my sister Miss Kitty's visit. She arrives Wednesday night and will hang out with me for four glorious days of shopping, spa-going, kitty-snuggling, and general tomfoolery. I'm taking Thursday and Friday off to enjoy her visit.

However, having a short week while the MHRC procedure suite demolition is in full swing and we're a week away from getting our building permit for MHRC radiology is going to be tough. The next couple of days might leak over into some after-5 nights, which will reek while I'm working but will be more than worth it when Kitty and I roll into the spa for our massages.

And a good day was had by all

If he were still alive, my father would be 61 today. I make it a point to have fun on his birthday, as I think he would also try to do something fun on his birthday too. This morning, Norman and Elliot and I met for breakfast at Snore, a little brunchy spot near our neighborhood, and then at lunch Norman and I joined a couple of the admin gals for some kick-ass barbecue. Finally this evening, Guy will be returning home from an overnight business trip, at which point we'll go to our favorite Mexican restaurant for happy-birthday margaritas and chile rellenos and quesadillas. Elsewhere, my sister Miss Kitty presented her paper at a conference to rave reviews, so it seems. (As if we thought it would turn out any other way!)

Tomorrow, things continue to go well. I'll have the day to play and hang out with Guy, but the late afternoon belongs to my shopping pal from work, Ethel, with whom I am going for a manicure and then to dinner and THEN (are you listening, SpookyRach?) to see Spamalot.

And Sunday? I think I'll be sleeping all this off. That or cleaning the house like a madwoman for when Miss Kitty comes to see me next week.

The Lurrve Boat, Part 2: Mom the Inadvertent Haggler, and the Angel of American Airlines

Okay, where were we?

Oh, snubaing. After snuba, Mom, Guy, and I went back to the cruise ship and dried off, changed clothes, and got lunch. Guy wandered around solo while Mom and I went back to shore to do a little duty-free shopping. Our first stop was the jewelry markets, where we thought we might find some nice silver, for which Cozumel is known. Despite the downpours soaking Cozumel on Saturday, the vendors were out and about, beckoning us into their shops with heavily accented, "Come see, Miss! Have a look, Senora! Welcome!" Mom and I wandered into a store loaded with silver jewelry glittering in its windows. I'm a sucker for silver, and Mom's always been drawn to prehistoric and ancient symbols and mythology, so we knew we were in the right place when we found silver pendants with images of Mayan gods on them.

"This one," said the store manager as he held up a malachite and silver pendant a little smaller than a half-dollar, "is the Mayan god of rain."

"We're in a bad drought in Georgia," replied Mom. "I'll take it!"

She went to the counter only briefly, then returned to the shelf from whence she got it. She leaned into my ear and whispered, "No can do. He wanted $165 for it. That's way out of my price range."

"Oh well," I whispered back. "We might be able to find you something a little more affordable in another store." I continued to look around a bit, and it took a few minutes to realize that my mother and the manager were still chatting back and forth, his voice having taken on a hopeful tone. I had made a lap around the store to find Mom back at the counter with the man, who was shining the pendant and holding it up eagerly.

"Forty dollars?" offered the man.

Mom looked at me, eyebrows arched. "What do you think?" she asked. Her face was a bit pinched, like she wasn't sure if she was being robbed or not.

"It's a nice pendant, Mom," I replied, cool as a margarita. "And that's a good price for malachite."

"Okay, I think I can do $40," Mom said.

"Excellent!" the manager replied. "I wrap for you!"

Now, I might have been cool on the outside, but inside I was going WTF? My mom just bargained El Jefe down to 24% of his asking price? Damn, I gotta take her shopping more often! The fellow then proceeded to sell me a lapis lazuli pendant and earrings for a little less than half price, though I wish I bargained him down a little more. I think Mom put me to shame on that one. As we left the store, Mom explained to me that she just really couldn't afford to pay a lot for jewelry, since only El Seebeno is working and they had to fix their car recently, so she wasn't trying to be rude, just honest. Suddenly she stopped and turned to me, a little surprised. "Did I just haggle?" she asked.
"You didn't just haggle, Mom," I laughed. "You kicked ass."

We sailed out of Cozumel late that afternoon and spent a day at sea, arriving back into Mobile, AL on our birthday, which was Monday. After finally getting through customs, Mom and El Seebeno drove us to the Pensacola airport and dropped us off. We waited around for our flight, which was to take off at 5pm sharp. At 4:30pm, the gate agent for American Airlines informed us over the loudspeaker that the plane was finally pulling in, so they'd clean it really quickly and get us loaded. Five minutes later, a new announcement: the plane that would take us to Dallas (where Guy and I would then return to Denver) was hit by lightning on its way to Pensacola, so there was no chance it was getting back off the ground until it had been worked on. They were very sorry, blah blah blah, they were going to start moving folks onto other flights, wait until your name is called, blah blah blah.

"Whatever," said Guy. "You stand in line; I'm gonna run back to the terminal to see if we can get on another airline."

Guy retruned about ten minutes later with no good news. One AA guy read him the riot act for not being at the gate, while the other one said that yes, if he found a flight on another airline, he'd transfer the tickets for us. AirTran had no good news; any flight they got us on wouldn't get us to Denver until the next day, as we'd miss all their connecting flights out of Atlanta. Guy, however, was undaunted.

"Stay here," he huffed, out of breath from running all over the wee Pensacola Airport/Hair Salon/Tire Center. "I'm gonna run down to the gates below us and check Continental."

Guy returned less than five minutes later. "Come on; we're going to Chicago."

We ran downstairs from our present gate to see a small, blond woman typing furiously on a computer, muttering, "Come on, gimme that screen, come on...no, not that one, this one....no....there we go...back up back up back up dadgummit...." After about five minutes of her solid typing, she pointed at me, then Guy. "You're in 6B, you're in 5A. Go run get on the plane, and I'll bring you your boarding passes for your connecting flight."

"Thank you!" we practically prayed to her as we ran across the tarmac to hop on a flight to Chicago that should have been gone twenty minutes before. After several more minutes, the flight attendant was about to shut the door when we all heard a small shout of "WAIT!" outside the plane. Out our western windows, here comes our American Airlines angel, running hellbent for leather across the tarmac screaming "Give these to 6B and 5A!"

With our connecting flight boarding passes in hand, Guy and I took off for the Windy City with a sigh of relief. It was not until we got to Chicago that we realized that our angel had booked us on FIRST CLASS on the flight to Denver. We curled up in our oversized seats with nice fuzzy blankets and snoozed the entire two hours home from Chicago. Our luggage didn't make it home to us until Tuesday afternoon, but who gives a damn? It's extremely rare that I use real names on this blog, but Patricia Gifford of American Airlines at the Pensacola Regional Airport performed a minor miracle for us on Monday. Happy birthday to us!

All in all, the trip was marvelous and a welcome escape from the everyday. Hopefully we can go on a cruise again in the next few years, perhaps on a bigger boat with a bowling alley. Or more shuffleboards, so we can have a rematch against Mom and El Seebeno. It was a delight to hang out with my mom, whom I love dearly, and my stepdad, who always makes me laugh, and my Guy, who may be the best birthday gift ever.

And who, hopefully, will now stop singing "The Love Boat" theme.

The Lurrve Boat, Part 1: The Libido Deck and snubarifficness

Okay, I'm finally back from the cruise. I misspoke earlier in that our cruise was not in the Carribean, but rather in the Gulf of Tonkin--um, I mean, Mexico. We sailed out of Mobile to Cozumel and back and had a wonderful, wonderful time. Guy and I had some nice us time in our lovely stateroom with a king size bed (made of two smaller beds that formed a ridge between us and kept me from hogging the bed, says Guy) and a great view of the ocean. I never realized just how blue the ocean is. I either see it from way up high in a plane or at the Atlantic Ocean coast, where it's brown/grey and fonky. Y'all, we really do live on a blue planet. And it's a beautiful planet indeed.

The ship was an older one, had a bit of a disco-ish feel, but it was a good size for the four of us in that it was hard to get too lost. After a day and a half, we knew where most everything was. The food was pretty darn good as well, the main dining rooms being yummier and more elegantly prepared than the main buffet on the Lido Deck. After lunch the first day, Mom and I did recon around the boat, seeking out the gym and spa, first and foremost. We wandered up to the top deck and found the gym, then sat down on a bench in the gym lobby to review the list of classes and services. Suddenly, three rather heavyset, middle-aged women wandered off the elevator, saw the word "gym", and turned to confer with each other.

"Huh," said one. "Ah thank we went too far up."
"I thank so," said another. "Y'all wanna go to the buffet on the Libido deck?"
"Yeah," said the third. "Let's go back dayown to the Libido deck."
May I interject that this conversation took place without a trace of humor or irony. However, the humor and irony of it was not lost on us. Mom got the joke first, but it took a few seconds to hit my two-cycle weedwhacker of a brain. Mom was shaking with laughter until they were safely down the stairs.
"Gawd!" she burst out laughing. "The Libido Deck?"
I looked around for a hidden camera. "Do you think she even knows what she said?"
"Christ, I dunno," Mom said as she wiped her eyes. "I don't know much, but even I know what a libido is, and I don't think that woman would know one if it bit her on her ass."
"She might if it had a buffet," I replied.

Saturday in Cozumel, El Seebeno found something relaxing to do while Mom, Guy, and I went snuba. Snuba is kinda like going scuba diving, except that your breathing thingy apparatus/darth Vader mouthpiece is attached not to tanks on your back but to a long tube that goes up to an air tank that floats on the surface on a little raft. You can only go down about 18 or 20 feet, but it was still pretty damn cool. We saw lots of totally neato fish, including a rockfish that our guide goosed out of its hiding place. Of course, we can never stray too far from our usual humor: Guy spotted a fish taking a dump as it swam along, pointed it out, and made me laugh. Hint: never laugh with a scuba breathing thing in your mouth. Smiling introduces nonair-like substances into your mouth, like seawater. Even though the sun hid the whole day and it even rained on us, we had a great time under the sea. Those swimming fins make you swim really far. I actually had the thought, "I wonder if this is what being a mermaid is like!" Yes, Pixie, that's exactly what it's like, except the mermaids come to Cozumel via unicorn. However, my mommy was cute in her silver swimsuit and bright red hair flailing behind her as she swam above Guy and me.

I'm really tired today for reasons I will explain tomorrow in part two of my cruise report.

Shiny Object Syndrome and Dorkapalooza

My SOS was doing well today until Elliot and I sat down with one of the partners to talk about the Intern 101 seminar, which is now scheduled for the Friday after I get back. After a brief but productive meeting and a fairly productive day (not too many emails and phone calls to interrupt me), my SOS kicked in with 1.5 hours to go in the workday. Elliot and I heckled each other along with our new colleage Will, who sits in the seat vacated by the ever-dear Jimmy Ray, who occasionally tosses in quips for his own amusement and ours. I took breaks to post new comments from Miss Kitty and Baxtersmum, who continue to heckle each other about various levels of dorkitude on my blog. You have to understand that Bax and I went to Georgia Tech, whereas Miss Kitty went to our rival school, University of Georgia, presumably because she did not already have a high school diploma. I must say in UGA's defense that I rather enjoy visiting its campus in Athens, GA, as it is well-laid out, green, walkable, easy to park on, and there's the added bonus that if you drive past the campus with your car window down, they'll throw a diploma in your back seat. (Seriously, it's a great campus, fantastic downtown with great shopping and dining, and unlike most colleges, their on-campus dining is spectacular.)

A little later, Sarge came by to kvetch about the sorry state of Wanda's drawings. Yes, Wanda is still around, but she's annoying in new ways these days. "I swear to God," lamented Sarge. "What is up with Design Associates hiring all these 'architects' who can't use CAD worth a damn! Seriously, people, learn to draw a line and use a space object correctly!" We also indulged in a bit of schadefreude over the recent termination of a usually-annoying employee at DA. Evidently, this young intern decided she couldn't work with her immediate boss and didn't want to work on the banks that our office does, so they told her to hit the bricks. She then tried to backpedal with no success. I suppose it's for the best. It's odd, though, as she'd been acting a lot less annoying lately, but I guess this little stunt was more than anyone felt like tolerating.

Finally, I'd had enough. I left at two til five, came home and made a little dinner, then cleaned the kitchen and started the dishwasher. I cleaned the bathroom and the floors (mostly) this weekend and did all my laundry too. There's something about going on a trip that makes me want everything clean. I guess after staying in nice hotel rooms on vacation, you want to come home to a clean, pretty house where you can just dump your luggage and be done.

We fly out tomorrow morning. See you kids next week!