Monday, July 28, 2008

Wish Me Luck...

Tomorrow morning, Alex has a haircut with a new stylist. Her old chick moved back to Puyallup a couple of months ago. No sweat, we thought, I can take you to her every month and a half or so. So when I called two weeks ago to get an appointment, I was told Jessica was off until September due to a medical procedure. Help. So we're trying out someone new in Enumclaw tomorrow.

Do all teenagers go through a seemingly bipolar stage? She's also been having back pain, which I think is due to the $3 flip flops she wears. So I actually offered to get her some Fit flops, which as any woman knows, are available at Bath and Body Works for $50 bones. You heard me. My brother-in-law's cousin told us that her friend's back actually stopped hurting from these shoes. Thank god we went to five different stores and didn't find any. Well, not thank god in a sarcastic way, because the entire expedition did SUCK, and at one point, after I threatened, "I'm not sure what I'm even doing here" and she retorted, "Well, fine, let's go home, then", I actually did turn around to head home. But thank god in the "I didn't have to spend $50 on shoes for Alex that I really wanted for me" because my mother then informed me that she heard people's arches are falling because the shoes don't have much support. Not sure any flip flops actually do. Anyway, I've taken away her $3 pair and I've told her to start wearing her tennis shoes. We'll see.

I have been working lately for a firm from Yakima that I used to work for probably four years ago. They're keeping me busy, so I can't complain. Well, actually, I can, because what I really want to be doing is transcribing from CD's at home. But that isn't working out so hot right now, so I'm happy to have this work. Plus, I've been keeping WAY on top of it since I'm leaving for Montana on Friday and I don't want stuff hanging over my head when I get back.

Also, for the longest time, Alex played Guitar Hero only on Easy, trying to get five star reviews on every song, while Eric and I slaved away all the way up to Hard. I got stuck on Story of My Life, which is actually a LONG song, while I think Eric has passed maybe half the songs. A few months ago, Alex stayed at her cousin's house where they made her play Mediums. About a month ago she picked up the guitar and passed maybe five Hards the first day. Now she's passing Hards all over the place regularly and has even passed some Experts. What gives? Maybe someday I'll come out of retirement and try again. She was even playing Through the Fire and the Flames on Medium, which is WAY hard, and chatting while she was playing. HELLO.

The funniest new show that my sister and I have just discovered is called Spaced, which is actually showing some on BBCAmerica, like at midnight. I've seen the whole first season, and Tim and Daisy are my new heroes. They are the most lovable slackers ever.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Morning

We got a new coffee pot a couple of months ago, and you can set the time for it to make the coffee. I love getting up and having coffee already made. Except that it's not really hard to dump some water, a filter and grounds in and wait for three minutes, so it does make me feel a little lazy.

One thing that has been bugging me more and more lately is that I use my phone as an alarm clock, so I've always got it next to my bed. So in the mornings, I wake up, put my glasses on and grab my phone to see what time it is. So this morning I SWEAR my phone said 8:32. I listened to some messages and read some texts and pet the cat who had decided that THIS MINUTE is the time for today where she will LOVE someone -- you kind of have to take advantage. Anyway, I got up, threw some shorts on and as I was leaving my bedroom, I looked at my phone again and it said 8:23. So what the hell time was it when I got up that looks so much like 8:32 in my hazy, losing their sight, sleep eyes? If I had the money, I think I'd totally go get eye surgery. The fact that Eric has done it so successfully and it's now, what, six years later? I'd have NO qualms. The doctor who did Eric's surgery has like eight kids who ALL went to Federal Way High School. So when Eric got his surgery, he could count maybe 15 people that he knew personally who had had surgery from this guy. Total confidence.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Summer Jam concert

Nope, not a fan of the hip hop fan. Let me just say, heavy metal fans were BY FAR a better crowd than the hip hop fans. We took a ton of abuse yesterday for the price of water ($4.00, which WE DO NOT SET the price of), and the fact that we have to keep the caps. This is starting to become a bone of contention with me, though. I have brought home enough caps to keep me entering points in my My Coke Rewards account through maybe October, so that's cool. But we actually got yelled at at one point by this little blond White River Amphitheater employee because she was told the vendors were giving out caps. Later, when I was sitting during my dinner break drinking a diet coke, mainly due to the fact that the food joint was out of everything except nachos, I noticed the walk-around vendors (who are not a part of our group) giving out drinks with caps. I don't mind taking the caps, as long as I don't eventually get in trouble for taking them home. One of the parents told me that we were supposed to actually leave all the caps in the cooler. Let me say until I'm caught redhanded, I will be taking the caps home. Even then, we work our asses off, and we should get some reward, even if it is only taking home TRASH. We also rarely get breaks and didn't get dinner, so SUCK IT. But I don't appreciate getting yelled at when other vendors are doing it. The only times in previous concerts I have given caps is when it's a parent with a kid or someone relatively sober and courteous who is ordering three or more drinks.

Anyway, it was a long HARD day, and if I can help it, I won't be working the last all-day show at the end of the summer. Heavy Metal fans RULE.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

14,000 or 466 days

I know it's been awhile since I've posted anything. I've been busy trying to get work done, in between swim lessons, soccer practice, and trying not to wish TOO hard that school was starting tomorrow. Seriously, I talked to two other moms this week who were totally sick of their kids being home. I will finally get Samantha to see that I am WORKING, and instead of coming into my office and "bugging" me, she'll come into my office and stand or sit behind me and not say anything. Then if she needs something, say, yolk eggs and toast, and if I don't hop right out of my chair that instant to go make them for her, she'll say, "Oh, never mind, I just won't eat again EVER." Little turd.

The two concerts I have worked so far were concerts where we were required to keep the cap off of people's pop or water. I brought home quite a few caps from the first concert and started a My Coke Rewards account, since each Coke cap is worth three points. The second concert, I actually brought a big grocery sack and brought home maybe 300 or 400 caps, probably half of which are Coke. The deal is you can only enter 10 caps a day. So I've been perusing the rewards to see what I can eventually purchase, and they have this whole set of Rachael Ray cookware, orange colored, totally cool, for 14,000 points. Although I'm sure I won't be able to save up 14,000 points, I do go and look at the cookset from time to time after I've entered my 10 caps for the day. For curiosity's sake, I did a quick calculation and found that if I entered 10 caps a day for 466.666 straight days, I could afford the Rachael Ray cookset. I'm sure no one has ever gotten it, because I do think the points also expire. I know I had some last year, and I never bought anything, and I'm pretty sure those disappeared. What a racket. But they do have quite a few magazines, so I may just start up a few of those.

Mamma Mia the movie starts tomorrow. I went to this show a couple of years ago with my cousin, and when then play was over, the whole theater was standing there shaking their groove things. The cast came back out and did a couple more numbers while everyone cut rugs in the aisles. I remember Melissa and I discussing the whole way home how "We live near a town that gets Broadway musicals. We ought to be doing this once a year." Oh, well. So I told the girls that we are definitely going tomorrow. I need to do something fun where I can stand being around them. I have a four-hour hearing to get done this weekend, and it's not going to be pretty. Plus, I have to work an all-day hiphop concert on Sunday. It's going to be a long weekend, but clearly, not long enough (for work purposes).

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Mayhem Update

It's taken me a couple of days to recover from the mayhem that happened at the Mayhem Tour. I seriously felt hungover, and I didn't do anything but work! I had forgotten how I'm seriously not a sunny girl. We got out there at 11:30, starting selling around 1:00. By 1:45, with only breakfast around 8:00 holding me over and some 80-plus degree weather, I was thinking, Crap, I HAVE to eat something or I may pass out. I did get a quick lunch break, and that was okay. I didn't work the Tim McGraw concert, but apparently the soccer team group took in $2,800 or so. We took in over $13,000 at the Mayhem Tour, just to give you an idea.

These fans were along the lines of Iron Maiden, but on the whole, quite a bit younger, I would say. Plus, all the afternoon bands were on the stages in the parking lot, so we were RIGHT there. I thought my ears were going to bleed after a while. Driving home that night, I was thinking, You know, I'm not sure that was worth it. I guess we made eight or $900 for the soccer team. Now that I've had a couple of days to recuperate, it was pretty fun. I wore my croc sandals because I don't do the job where you have to walk all day, but my feet still killed me. It was a LOT of work. I almost had to work the Stevie Wonder concert last night, but Eric was gone so I was left off the hook. I almost wanted to go and see how different it could be.

Both the concerts I've worked have been HEAVY METAL, dude. Or maybe you're not supposed to use the "dude" vernacular with metal. I'm not sure. I figure I could end up being one of the cooler moms in the neighborhood, seeing as I now know the difference between Disturbed and Slipknot, and I can tell you the ages of Black Tide and could even pick their guitar player out of a crowd. I guess if I'm going to work there, I might as well learn something!

Here is Slipknot and their song that's on Guitar Hero. They have some pretty weird masks, but the lead singer now has curly blond hair, instead of that long stringy dyed red stuff. You might even think he might be cute, under that creepy serial killer mask.



UPDATE: I went back and watched the whole video, since I didn't watch all of it when I picked it out. I'm bummed you can't REALLY see their masks. It is some creepy stuff. Then I was struck by thinking about how if I were to "bang" my head like that for one quarter of the time of this song, I think I would have a screaming headache. How on earth do the guitar players do that and still play? And is there such a thing as Shaken Adult Syndrome? I'm just saying.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Adding to the Mayhem...

First things first, my climber from my fantasy TdF team, Mauricio Soler, had to abandon today with a broken wrist. So sad, for him and for me. I had moved up in the rankings from 1771 after the second stage to 1645 after the fourth. I could still do okay, but probably not, without a climber.

The metal face plate part of my phone was coming loose, so I glued it down with gorilla glue. Now the space key is stuck down. It still works, but texting today has kind of been a pain. Alex really wants a new phone (the kind she wants escapes me this second), but if she were to get one, I could have hers...

I will be spending the day at the White River Amphitheater selling pop and water to Mayhem Tour enthusiasts. Although I have no idea how long this is going to go, I'm not optimistic for getting home before 9:00. If I do, it will be like a special surprise to me!

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Oh, Joy

Well, today Alex and I have an appointment with her orthodontist to start the braces process. It's sort of a double-edged sword, because she's actually beautiful even with her teeth, but think what she'd be with great teeth. Needless to say, we are both NOT excited, although I say get it going. But I'm the one who has to write the check...

Monday, July 7, 2008

Fantasy Cycling Update

Well, since one of my GC contenders won the first stage of the TdF and kept the yellow jersey through today, the third day, I thought I might be in pretty good shape. After finally getting the site to load the results down to my name, I'm 1771st, out of I don't know how many. I'm also playing a different game, mainly because I don't think there are any prizes in the first game, and you pick your nine guys and pretty much just sit and wait, while the second game has prizes, the grand prize being a trip to France for the 2009 tour, and in that game, you pick 15 guys and can switch them in and out daily. But with both websites, it's been such a chore to get anything to load, I probably won't end up checking my results as often as I'd like, which is fine. Also, in the second game, I decided to pick all different guys, which I'm not sure is a good idea or a bad one. On the one hand, there are more guys to route for, but on the other hand, if one guy from each team does something good, it doesn't necessarily help me. Oh, well, it is interesting and fun. I'm just waiting to see if my climber from my first team is still in. He fell on the first day and they think he injured his wrist, which totally sucks because he won the King of the Mountains competition last year.

We were in Spokane for the 4th of July for a baseball tournament. My parents came from Kalispell and we spent a couple nice evenings in my aunt and uncle's back yard, hanging out, chatting about my cousin's wedding, etc. Should be a really nice time. Eric really likes this group of kids - ninth graders (sophomores next year) and one or two juniors. One of the kids he's most surprised about is the son of the owner of my Curves where I work out. She's become a really good friend, and it's kind of been one of those situations where I so totally want to run home and tell him to pick her son and be nice to him, but I try to keep my mouth shut. He told me he's definitely a kid he wouldn't even think of cutting next year. He also thinks that in a little town, it seems like some kids get labeled young, and then the label just doesn't change. When I first learned about this kid, I mentioned him to Eric, and Eric asked around and was told he was okay, maybe nothing special. Now his entire perspective has shifted from getting to know this kid. It's pretty cool.

Samantha is going to vacation bible school with our neighbor this week. It's so funny when she comes home and tells me about stuff from the bible, her interpretation. But it also makes me feel bad that we haven't gotten a church here yet. The one I liked the best is the Presbyterian church in Enumclaw, and I think I'm going to make an executive decision this fall and we're going to go.

Alex has volleyball camp. She was so bummed that her best friend from Federal Way can't go. She went last year and spent three nights in a row at our house. But kids are just busier these days. I kind of slowed Alex down this summer. So now, like today, when we got home from camp and she went straight upstairs and I started to feel guilty that she didn't have anyone to do anything with, I have to stop myself and tell myself it's not all bad. There was a girl at camp today who is actually younger than Alex, but also great at everything she does. Alex said it seems like no one likes this girl. I told Alex she should understand how that feels from her experience and try and be a bigger person. Hopefully, some of life's lessons are going to stick!

Me, on the other hand, I still hope to run into either her ex-friends (1, 2 or 3) or two of their mothers, just to see if I'll blow or not. I'm sorry, but if your kid is a shit, I'd think you'd be wanting to know about it...

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Wish Me Luck

Well, I've joined the ranks of the men in my life who play fantasy sports. I've entered a team in the Fantasy Tour de France game on velogames.com. I figure I've won if my entire team finishes with no positive dope tests. Here are my guys:

GC - Alejandro Valverde, Stijn Devolder
Climbers - Mauricio Soler, Sylvain Chavanel
Sprinter - Mark Cavendish
Domestiques - George Hincapie, Christian Vandevelde, Gert Steegmans
Wild Card - Fabian Cancellara

The name of my team is ICU81MI, which, granted, maybe two other people that I know of will get, but oh, well, I was under pressure. In the words of Tracy Jordan, "That's Hilarious!"