Monterey aquarium

mola mola
Originally uploaded by ksmch.

I'm at my conference now. oops

so tired!

This has been about the worst week ever at work. Insane questions, help desk people who obviously are new, don't know the answer, and yet tell you how to do it wrong. So waste a couple of hours, get a bunch of shit and look stupid to the bankers. Call back the next day and get a normal person who helps you thru it. Everything seemed to drag out for more than one day. Finally, one hour to go on Friday afternoon and get a question: list of 20 companies' convertible debt and need to find all the prospectuses. THEN, since they are in the office across town and stupidly NOT connected to our server (or whatever), I have to email all these documents two at a time so that my email won't freeze up. Could only find 10 of them anyway since some were private and the prospectuses are not published.

Got home, mrh had cooked:
1. black beans- from a can but lots of stuff added like chopped garlic and onion, etc.
2. rice
3. arepas
4. platanos
5. chicken cutlets- used seasoned breadcrumbs but added chopped garlic, parsely and parm cheese.

All was in hand and all was carefully thought out so that everything was ready in a timely fashion!! A very fried, starchy but yummy dinner.

I helped him clean up and totally cleaned up the kitchen and threw out all the gross food from the fridge, cleaned the microwave and all the counters so looks real nice now folks.

Very tired. Baseball is on the TV but I don't feel like watching it. This has been going on for months now and more to come. Will the Tigers win? Will the Mets? uh, so not interested right now.

No riding tomorrow as RI is judging a horse show. May have it on Sunday afternoon but I want to go ride in the morning. mrh has tax prep course all day tomorrow. That is my signal to go . . . shopping!! Still, I have almost decided not to spend another dime on clothes for WORK. Which I heartily want to quit.

So, I haven't posted in a while. Put on my senior prom dress today. Could not zip the back up all the way, but almost. I got it because my parents have saved it all these years. They also saved lots of letters that I have sent them over the years. Last night I read some from when we first moved to Ithaca and some from when we moved to Taylor, MI. Very disturbing for some reason! Had trouble going to sleep. God, I was such a nerd.

Back to the prom dress, one of the letters said that I had lost some weight and was back to my pre-pregnancy with Laura weight of 102. I am now fluctuating between 117 and 119. Since I gained 30 pounds both times I was pregnant, that means I am like, at a 2/3 pregnancy weight. Really, it is all fat on my stomach, butt and thighs (not to mention upside-down-bowling-ball-calves). Surprisingly, although I ate my face off in RI, I did not gain any weight. That just proves that moving around during the day instead of sitting at a desk can make a big difference.

Went for a 3-mile walk around the neighborhood and then went and bought a copy of Middlemarch to read and then got a package of about 15 blueberries for $5, and 2 engagement calendars.

I love my engagement calendars which I have been writing a few lines in every night for years. It is very very surprising how you can go back several years, pick a page, and actually remember doing whatever it was! I have a new idea and that is to write down at the end of the year all the really important things that happened. Just off the top of my head for this year:

had grandson for a week
mrh's company was taken over and he is not working
parents moved out of condo and into independent living
daughter pregnant

It would not be too hard to go back a couple of years and pull out the important things since I usually * or _ them.

I bought an engagement calendar for mrh and want him to start writing. It only takes a minute to write a couple of lines each night.

Have not been riding my horse too much since instructor is on a trip. She said I could ride every day when she was gone but I've been either working late or just too tired from the trip to bother. Plus the horse is not exactly fun to ride because I can't get him to do anything. Last sunday, we had a nice lope going and some actual trot it's not teaching me anything. I think I will get out of this lease as soon as I can. I am just not a good enough rider to teach this horse anything. Rode the other night and several kids were running around and shrieking and distracting my already uninterested horse. Hope to go early tomorrow and catch the group that goes out on a trail ride which he is good at and enjoys.

I will never wear a dress again or uncomfortable shoes or pantyhose or any of the crap I have to wear to work. If only I can quit my job. It's all I can think about. I don't care about any of the stuff I have to do. As my co-librarian in NY said yesterday,

"We are too young to retire and too old for a career!" how perfectly true!!! we don't give a rats ass about what we are doing.

book

Reading The Summer Before the Dark by Doris Lessing. I'm only at the beginning and I will probably read the book, but it's just too much introspection for me right now. Maybe I'm not at the stage of life where I feel like I need to take a close look at my life. I'm too happy right now with my new horsie to worry about stuff like that. Anyway, I have never been horrified, as this woman seems to be, that I went from a young girl to and older woman. wtf. I can't wait to retire and really start enjoying myself. No such thing as boredom unless you have no brains. I can be perfectly content with mrh and cats and horses. Miss kids very much but the rest of the family just fades out sometimes. We have been apart for so long. I always wished to live near my sisters but it wasn't to be.

Retire- I want to ride, cook, sort out things in my house, go back to making scrap books, spend time with kids and Milo (my baby), generally mess around every day without any pressure to go to a job that is way boring at this point. The same old questions. Jump from one thing to another all day long. No thanks. Sick of the people and the relationships and being nice to everyone. Sick of dressing up and spending money on clothes.

Get to do horses tomorrow and then go on Sunday and ride Sevo or just hang out with him.

Frustration; Fear; Happiness

Frustrated with my job- taking it minute by minute.

Fear that sisters are at war in my parents house and the toll it is taking on everyone.

Shining thru it all, utter happiness that I have my lease horse. Bareback lesson on him last night. First time he has been ridden bareback and he was in a hackamore. So much to say and no time to say it in.

First, he is 14 years old but has NO training at all. Doesn't even know how to walk on a lead rope. The interesting thing is that my RI (riding instructor) has been teaching me basic basic aids that she says any horse can understand. She is being proved right. It's one thing to do these things on one of her horses that she has trained and had for years. But last night, I did a couple of basic things on this totally untrained horse, and he responded perfectly. For instance to stop: do nothing with the reins, just stop my seat following the horse's movement and stretch up tall (sitting up straight as well) and the horse comes to a perfect stop. Turn 180 degrees: look around to the spot you want to go and the horse goes there. omg.

He doesn't want to have a bath so on Saturday, RI is going to show us how to teach him to have a bath. We are going to teach him to lead. He is so sweet and learns very fast and is eager to do the right thing once he understands.

I just feel happy thru and thru under everything else. A little secret thing that I can trot (hehe) out anytime and be happy about.

The Dreaded TV

I watched TV all Friday night with my pizza and cats. Then, didn't even turn it on til Sunday night. Where I stupidly wasted the entire evening. Oh well, I got a lot done on Sunday anyway mainly creating files for piles and piles of papers:
Books/videos
Cell phone info (new plan)
Coupons
Flyers
Elderly
Horses
Expense reports (from work)
and lots more I can't remember right now.

I still have more piles to go, but a great start has been made.

DOWN WITH TELEVISION

heard on NPR this morning that some very good quality film of the 1969 moon walk has been "misplaced" . I remember so perfectly holding Liz up (one month old) to look at the TV so she could say that she "saw" it. Liz, you DID see it!! lol

The images that everyone saw on TV at the time was a regular television camera filming the monitor with the really good images. Rats! They'd better find them! They are keeping the old viewing equipment just in case.

Hoping to take a personal day off tomorrow to meet with my decorator (yay!!) and go and visit my new lease horse- spend some time with him grooming, bathing, walking on lead to grassy field. Taking pics maybe.

five times a week!!!

So I'll be leasing the horse and my two lessons per week will not count as the 3X a week I can go and ride!! However I will be handing over a hefty chunk of my paycheck!

My goal of spending my entire monthly pay to prove to mrh that we don't need it is coming along fine. (Should I admit to myself that it is rather self-defeating since without a paycheck I could hardly justify some of the things I'm doing?) Spent a bunch on makeup and shoes yesterday. Got some perfectly impractical ones just cuz they were cute. I don't care.

How to be a banker

Make up a paragraph (or 2 in this case) to prove a point and leave a few strategic blanks for me to fill in the statistics. But first:

1. have a few beers
2. be sure you don't really understand the subject
3. make it impractical
4. have some suggestions that don't work
5. drag it out for 2 days

There you go, you're an investment banker. Be proud!

people are a$$holes

Did you know?

What was I thinking this spring? Instead of taking my parents on a 2 week vacation, I should have been settling them into assisted living. That would have been useful. But no. I will include myself in the title category.

sigh

mrh very depressed about going to his mother's tomorrow. She is being very resistant to selling her house. She is now pulling the "health card" as mrh says. She can't go look at new houses because of the heat and getting asthma. Well, duh, turn on your air conditioner! She can't because she can't afford to run it. Well, sell your house and use the money to live like a normal person and quit driving my husband crazy.

Horrible questions at work yesterday. Left at 4:30 and I don't care. I'm sick of it. I need time to get subscriptions worked on and I have too much other work. I'm sick of ethanol and corn questions. Shove some gas in your car and get over it.

passive agressive or lazy or what???

OH has been home for 3 weeks now. Is anything of substance done around the house? ha! I just cleaned out the fridge (was that milk or what?). Cat barf from 3 days ago still hanging out in 2 places. Pay a bill and leave the stubs and all the other stuff in a pile in the desk instead of turning around a filing it. Files are all there- just put the 2 things a day you touch in them. :P:P:P

I will just ignore. I will lease my horse and not be here to get aggravated.

horse lease?

Now I have to decide whether or not I want to lease a horse that my RI is hoping to take on. My leasing him will help pay for his board.

RI wants to charge me $250 a month for 3 days of riding. This is fine with me but then my lesson on Sat is $68 and the bareback on Wed nights is $38. omg, that comes to $674 per month!! yikes. I must be crazy. I need to discuss with her!

I would ride him in my lesson on Saturdays for sure. Wed nites I could probably ride him or the one I usually ride. If I rode lease horse on Weds, that would only leave me one more ride for my $250. And if I need to use another horse's tack like I did yesterday, that will be a problem because the times when I can ride (after work) the other is usually being used for a lesson. I guess I would ride him on Sundays when there are no lesson given.

If I can work out the tack problem and find out exactly what "training" I would be doing, I will probably do the lease. I have not had a chance to really discuss this with her. I hope to on Wed night. RI's helper has been told that this will be her first horse to train. hmmmmm I think I am being used for the financing of this horse (I know I am) so I need to be sure exactly what I will get out of it. I don't mind the $ so much but I don't want to feel taken advantage of in terms of amount of training I will help with (and learn how to do) and being limited for times to ride because of the tack. If I only rode him one extra day a week (Sundays) that would come to $62.50 a week. But I would be able to make friends with him and spend time there with him (I love being at the barn) and learn something as well.

Spent a lot of time this week answering oil & gas questions. Since this is supposed to be my area of expertise, all these get left to me. I realized that I am not so bad at it (many years of experience should do that!) but that if I left the company, all the things I just "know" about (in my head) would be unavailable to someone else. This is a typical librarian's problem which encompasses the whole idea of "knowledge management".

Knowledge management or basically any library work means manageing information from so many sources that knowing where to look, what the sources are, who to ask, what you may just know in your head, etc., is what is important. Getting an email reply such as "Dude, you're awesome!" is totally cool!! hey, all I did was get the monthly import total in $$ for India from 1968 to June 2006!

Today will be spent going to the gym, washing a few things, I hope sorting out some piles of papers and JUNK, cleaning out the fridge, getting a few more groceries, brushing a cat, calling mother-in-law and getting nowhere with that fiasco, thinking about horses, and most likely wasting most of my time doing nothing instead.

Thanks to someone special for setting up this blog for me :)

what to say

So I set up my blog with daughter showing me how.