LolaGeek

There’s been a bunch of stuff I’ve wanted to write about, and I just never get around to sitting down and doing it. It also doesn’t help that I’m so busy that I feel like I’m always just catching up with the internet – I’m so behind on reading blogs and stuff, I can barely keep up. I should just keep a running list of topics or something. Enjoy, I think this post is going to be all over the place…

1) Rhapsody in May: Our band concert was last weekend, and it was amazing. I think it was our best concert ever. The feature of the concert was that we played “Rhapsody in Blue,” which has always kind of been a dream of mine to play. As of concert day, we had still never actually played the whole thing all the way through! I have to admit, I was nervous. But everything went so well. The soloist was great, and we all got a standing ovation. I had been saying all along that after playing that, I could safely quit band or die or whatever, and I’d feel like I’d accomplished a life goal. But on the way home from practice the other night, one of the women in my carpool said something about playing “An American in Paris,” so… new life goal? (I do love me some Gershwin.)

2) The Shops at Target: I was kind of “meh” about these mini-collections when I first heard about them, but I happened to be in target last week and they happened to have a bunch of enormous signs all over drawing attention to The Shops, so I briefly checked them out. The Webster, I just walked past, it’s not really my style. I also didn’t look at the Polka Dog Bakery, since I don’t have a dog and even if they had cat treats (I don’t know if they did), we are very well-stocked on treats and toys for the kitties. The Cos Bar display was neat, but it was just like soaps and nail files, and as Target Addict mentioned, you can get fancy wrapped soaps and things for less at places like TJ Maxx. I just looked past The Candy Store, some of the things were cute, but I had no need for special candies at the time. The Privet House collection looked nice; I didn’t look at the prices on the serving pieces and things, but I liked them. However, they had this set of blank notecards with rubber stamps to decorate them (like “thank you,” “you’re invited,” etc.) and it was like $12 or $15, which I thought was a bit much. I’m kind of interested to see how the fall round of Shops does. I’m interested in the Curiosity Shoppe and Kirna Zabête; it’ll be nice to have something for the guys with Odin; and I already like Patch NYC, so I’m excited to see what they bring to Target.

3) Mother’s Day: I went out with my mom and grandmother for lunch on Saturday to celebrate Mother’s Day early. I got them both the same gift, a Scentsy warmer and some bars, and I think they really liked them, so that’s good. Lunch was good, and then we went to Charming Charlie’s, which was really fun with them, we are all big fans of accessories :o)

4) Fringe Finale: I was a week behind on Fringe, so I got to watch both parts of the finale in one sitting. It was kind of a weird turn for things to take, but they wrapped everything up at the end. (I may have shed a tear. Just one.) This show always seems to be up for cancellation and it keeps coming back, but honestly, if this were the last season, I’d be ok with it. I think they ended in a good place. But it did set things up to be where we need to be for that flash-forward episode from a few weeks ago, so I’d definitely be happy to see the show continue and finish up that storyline.

5) Get Offended Comedy Show: GG performed in a comedy show last night with the Get Offended guys. I went to this show, for once, because it was at a restaurant that was non-smoking. Well, the show started like an hour late because they were waiting for restaurant patrons to finish eating so they could clear out the area where they’d be setting up the stage. The last guy there was actually the restaurant owner, who was lingering over dessert with, apparently, his teenage kids. He finally moved to a different spot so the show could get started, and things were going really well. There was a good crowd of fans, and the comedians were good. Then this one guy cut his act short because three little kids walked into the restaurant. Who brings their kids to a bar for dinner at 10:30 at night? I don’t know, but apparently the fact that there were children there was enough to derail the show. Some of the other guys just got up and started singing. I prodded GG to go sing, which he did, and in between he made loud comments about the young visitors. I guess that finally got to them, because the dad in the group told someone that they didn’t realize they were interrupting a show, and to please continue. I don’t know if he knew what he was getting into, but the show did go on! GG was the headliner, he did a thirty minute set, and he was a big hit!

6) Pen Organizer: This is barely blog-worthy, but ever since we lost our kitchen “junk drawer,” we’ve been keeping our pens, scrap paper, scissors, chip clips, and other assorted items in a big cardboard box. This was hard to get into, hard to find things in, and generally stressed me out with its disorganization. I’ve been looking for a while for some kind of organizer thing with pen compartments, slots for paper, and drawers for our little odds and ends. Today GG and I were getting ready to go to the supermarket, and I sketched him a little picture of what I was looking for. We stopped at Michael’s craft store before food shopping, and I swung him through the scrapbooking department to show him these organizers I’d seen there that are similar, but not exactly what I was looking for. Guess what – in addition to those close-but-not-quite organizers, there was another item that was pretty much exactly what I had sketched! And it was 40% off! I was so excited! I have all my pens and stuff organized in the kitchen now and it’s making me smile every time I walk past :o)

I haven’t done an actual life update for a little while, have I? I’ve had a busy couple of weeks. A couple Fridays ago, my friend JK and I drove up to Perkasie for a Scentsy/Thirty-One party. The girl selling Scentsy was a friend of mine from college (who I hadn’t seen since college!), and a friend of hers sells Thirty-One, so they teamed up. It was fun to see my old friend again, and all the other girls there were really nice, too. I bought a bunch of stuff and actually got talked into hosting a Thirty-One party of my own, so that’s coming up in a few weeks.

GG and I went to see The Cabin in the Woods. I don’t usually like to go to scary movies, but there was something weird about the preview and I was curious. The movie was fabulous! Yes, it had scary/gross moments, but it was super original, hilarious, and really turned the horror genre upside down. (I’d see it again just for the Japanese schoolgirl scenes.)

Between me, GG, and the cats, it seems like we’ve had nonstop doctor, dentist, and vet appointments the past couple of weeks. In addition to Ivan’s dental issues (he is already back to normal, by the way), I’ve also been having some jaw problems that warrant their own post that I’ve been meaning to write. I have two more medical appointments on the calendar this month, and then hopefully we’ll be done for another year. But I am thinking of trying acupuncture, so maybe more other appointments will be added soon…

Last week I had a three-day meeting at work with our boss and three of my co-workers, from a total of four different sites. This could be nightmarish to some people, but our little fraction of our team gets along really well, we got a lot done, and I think it was a really good week. I was talking to GG afterward and was kind of amazed: our group overall is kind of dysfunctional, and past team meetings have been awkward and unproductive. But the five of us work well together, get things done, and also get along as friends. We spent all day together and then had dinners together too. Thursday was the last day of our meeting, and that afternoon a friend of mine, who was in a different three-day meeting this week, IMed me because ice cream and toppings for 30 people had just been delivered to her conference room, but her group had finished up early and everyone left, so did we want to come over? It ended up being a big reunion of everyone from our old department who was still on-site, and it was nice to have everyone together to catch up for a little while. That night my other PA co-worker had us all over for dinner (minus our boss, he had to leave right after work – probably a good thing!), which turned into a late-night drinking and cupcake party. Because GG was there, of course, and he could talk all night if you let him. Anyway, it was a great week and great to see everyone and also to be able to just sit in a room together and get stuff done.

Today was kind of a waste. I woke up at 8AM and had a horrible headache that only got worse over the course of the day. I spent most of the morning and early afternoon in bed, then finally felt well enough for about 15 minutes to brush my teeth, change, and move to the sofa, where I napped for a few more hours. I was starting to feel better around 4PM and ate some crackers, but even now, at 10PM, I still feel some traces of headache. Luckily, I was able to take some time this evening to do some of the chores I was planning to do today, but this was really bad, I had big plans and a lot to do today, and I really couldn’t get most of this stuff done. Maybe I’ll catch up tomorrow…

A couple weeks ago we took Ivan and Katrina to the vet for their regular checkup and shots, and learned that Ivan had a bad tooth or two that needed to come out. Poor boy. He wasn’t really acting like he was in pain, though it did kind of explain why he seemed to prefer his wet food to the dry food (he would still eat the dry stuff, though). So we made an appointment for him to get the tooth pulled.

Ever since we got home from the vet that day, he had a really bad case of goop-eye (which is the non-scientific term we use when the cats get conjunctivitis). He gets like this sometimes when he’s stressed out, and it always gets better in a day or so. But this time, it was just not getting any better. And if he thought his quick trip to the vet was stressful, he was about to get really stressed out when it was time for his dental appointment!

This morning was finally time to drop him off for his tooth extraction. I took him to the vet when they opened this morning, and they explained what they were going to do: preliminary bloodwork, then the tooth extraction, followed by some IV fluids (due to his history of kidney problems). And they would take a look at the goop-eyes.

They called me in the early afternoon to say he was just waking up, he did great, and we could pick him up after 4 PM. So when GG got home from work, we headed over to pick him up. Poor boy’s eyes were so goopy, I said it looked like he’d been punched in the face! We got some ointment to put on his eyes twice a day for the next ten days – that’ll be enjoyable. His bloodwork was all perfectly fine, and they said the levels of his kidney stuff were exactly in the middle of where they should be, so that was good to hear.

When we got him home, we opened the cat carrier, and he came stumbling out. He could barely walk! It was sad but kind of hilarious. He did eat some wet food (with extra water mixed in), and has spent the rest of the night stumbling around, following me around the house, and snuggling. He bumped his way all the way upstairs, and followed me all the way back down! He’s currently snuggled up next to me, which is all he’s wanted to do all night (except for the part where he fell asleep on the bathroom rug for a while to rest up before following me back downstairs; or the part where he used the litter box, apparently peed on his foot, and then regained strength by taking a rest on the floor next to the box).

My poor, poor boy… At least his eyes are looking a little better. And as I tried to keep telling him, now his teeth won’t hurt him anymore.

As I mentioned last week, I have joined the rest of modern society and gotten myself a smartphone. After a lot of research, I chose the MyTouch 4G Slide, because it’s super powerful (I don’t want to have to upgrade again for a while), and has a physical keyboard. Also, it’s got a pretty amazing 8 MP camera (my actual camera camera is only 6 MP!). The first thing I noticed when I started using it was that it eats batteries. I knew that going to a more powerful phone would mean having to recharge every day, compared to my old feature phone which I could use pretty heavily and still recharge just every couple of days. I know you can turn off various services and functions, or you could just not use your phone, but what is the point of having this powerful device that you’re afraid to use because you might run out of power while you’re out somewhere?

So I started researching about the battery, and found that hardcore users often upgraded to one of two brands of high-capacity batteries. HTC is good at making phones, but doesn’t specialize in batteries, so it’s a good idea to upgrade – plus, I bought my phone used from eBay, so who knows exactly what the situation was with the stock battery anyway? It certainly wasn’t brand new. So after researching, I went with the Anker brand batteries, which are a good brand and a little bit higher capacity than the stock HTC battery. They sell a set on Amazon for like $30 that includes two batteries and a universal battery charger (so you could have one in the phone and be charging the other). I am so happy with them! I have been keeping all the notifications and background synching on, using it what I’d consider a “normal” amount to make calls, send e-mails, check Facebook and Twitter, play Draw Something, take and post photos, etc., and the battery can last over 24 hours.

With the battery problem solved, the other thing I needed to do was get a case. This is highly recommended to protect the phone in case you drop it, of course, and also to protect it from dust. Apparently, dust can get under the screen and this can be a big issue (I had no idea!). There are a few options and styles, but the one I kept seeing mentioned as the best is the Trident Aegis. I ordered one, and meanwhile I kept looking, just in case. The other case I saw a lot of people mention was the Fishbone, which was less than half the price of the Trident, so I ordered one of those as well and figured I’d choose in person and send back the other one. The Trident arrived first. It is very bulky looking, and there is a large logo on the back. It’s supposed to be better because it covers more of the holes on the phone (speaker, various jacks and ports, microphones, etc.), but that makes it look very hardcore. When the Fishbone case came, I put it on immediately and have been very pleased. It has the same two-layer padding that the Trident does (there is softer rubber against the phone, and then a hard outer shell over it), so it seems pretty protective. It doesn’t cover over the front of the phone so much, covering the speaker and all, but I prefer this look. Also, there is no logo on it – the logo, I guess, is just the “fishbone” design on the back. It goes on and off pretty easily, but it’s not like it’s going to fall off. All the holes and cutouts are in the right place, and the slide mechanism still works smoothly. So I am going to keep the Fishbone and send the Trident back.

My other accessory is a stylus, which I pretty much got just to play Draw Something. I’m not even going to mention the brand, because it was like $5 and it sucks. My main problem in Draw Something is trying to do detailed things on my little phone screen with my big fat finger. The stylus is basically like a fat finger in pen form. I should have sprung for one with a finer point. Oh well, I guess it helps slightly…

The phone itself, I love. I’m not going to bother with a real review because I don’t know all the technical stuff well enough and I still feel a little dumb trying to figure out how to do things, but for the most part I’ve got it set up the way I want and have the apps I need, etc. I feel like I’ve caught up with everyone else with smartphones (and even surpassed everyone with iPhones, since there’s so many things they can’t do, like play Flash).

Best Of MetaFilter: No need to read anything else – this blog will bring you the best of the best of the web.

ifttt: Stands for “if this, then that,” and is an awesome way to link up your social networks to have them automate each other. For example, have all your tweets that include a certain hashtag posted to your WordPress blog. Automatically post all your Instagram photos to Flickr. Every time you update your Blogger blog, have it create a tweet. Have all your Foursquare check-ins added to a Google calendar. There are tons of possible recipes…

“Shia Labeouf” by Rob Cantor: Tally Hall’s yellow tie guy built himself a portfolio site, but one song stood out above the rest. I like to think I have something to do with that, since I wished for this song about Hollywood’s “actual canibal” to become viral…

Amazon customer images for Horse Head Mask: I have no idea how this got started, but clearly a lot of people are having fun with their $20 horse head mask. Some of them are hilarious, some are really disturbing…

Titanic: The Sequel: With the release of Titanic in 3D, there’s been a lot of parodies going around, but this one is great. I would go see this if it were an actual movie!

Not too much new is going on since last time…

• We got some new furniture that is amazing for relaxing and watching TV. The sofa is huge!
• We had Easter brunch with my family at a new place, and it was fabulous. The food was great, and it was less expensive and more casual than the place we usually go. It was not busy at all, and we did not feel rushed (in fact, the waiter was MIA for a while when we started thinking about leaving, so we couldn’t even get the check). I would definitely go back.
• I went on another business trip, but this one was stupid short – we left at 6 AM Monday, and I was home by 11 PM Tuesday. While there, I was in a workshop for two days, had a team dinner, and met my work twin’s new boyfriend (I approve).
• I got a smartphone! I felt like a huge moron at first because I could just not figure out how to do anything, but I quickly got the hang of it. My next concern was battery life, because this thing dips frighteningly low compared to my old phone, but I’m getting the hang of managing that too. Want to play me on Draw Something?
• GG and I went to see a show some of his comedian friends put on. There were about 12 people in the audience, and all the comedians knew him, so they were all picking on him (and me). The main topic, of course, is how a guy like him could get a girl like me. Thanks, that makes me feel really great about myself, too. (Sarcasm.)
• We watched a couple movies. First we saw Fireproof, which surprisingly GG wanted to see because he heard Kirk Cameron had an internet porn addiction, but they didn’t really show much about that. I had a lot of problems with this movie (too many sterotypes, of all kinds, not to mention the horrible acting), but the next door neighbor was great. Then we watched Timecop – I have a lot of problems with this movie, too. They got in a special car to time travel, but then popped out in the past without the car. Why did they turn up in a different location every time; wouldn’t they just appear in the same location they’d left from in the future? Or if they could control the location, why would they choose to arrive over a lake or in the middle of a highway? After the past and future versions of the bad guy touched each other and imploded, why didn’t the bomb disappear? Wouldn’t anything his future self had done at that point cease to exist? I could go on…

When thinking about writing this post, I just kept thinking of Tally Hall’s “Natural Ketchup” sketch. “Can you put it on French fries?”

Anyway, this post is about shampoo. As I was running out of my normal shampoo and surprisingly did not have any more stockpiled away, I thought maybe I should switch to something more organic, and less likely to give me cancer with all the chemicals. There are a lot of options out there, and I didn’t really want to waste time and money trying a bunch of stuff, so of course I turned to my friend J for advice. She has been doing the all organic thing since her kid was born a few years ago, and recently announced that she has switched out all her chemical-laden beauty products for natural ones. (Except I think she still gets acrylic nails? Whatever, I’m not judging.)

J recommended the shampoo and conditioner from Organic Excellence, which are also highly recommended by one of her favorite bloggers, The Glamorganic Goddess. This stuff is not cheap! But, they all said it is the best. J even gave me a couple almost empty bottles so I could sample it for myself. I tried it out for a week. The first day or so, I didn’t really notice a difference. After that, my hair started feeling dirty when I was fresh out of the shower. Like it was second-day hair. By the end of the week, I just felt gross. I considered using this stuff every other day, alternating with my regular deadly shampoo, because even 50% less chemicals would be an improvement, right?

But I decided to try one more option. When I asked for shampoo recommendations at my favorite green living message board, someone suggested Nature’s Gate. Guess what – there are about a million Nature’s Gate options, I learned when I got to the store. The first thing I noticed is that there is a second line, Nature’s Gate Organics, so I decided to just look at these products. I ended up choosing the Lavender and Aloe “for all hair types” shampoo and conditioner, and I’ve been using it for several days now. I love it. It was rated a 5 in the EWG database, and its score comes mostly from the fragrance it contains, but it is the last ingredient in the list. And I’m sure this product is still better to use than regular shampoo. Anyway, if it kills me, at least my hair will look good…

Last night I happened to be watching HGTV when a new show came on, “Clean Freaks.” (And I ended up live-tweeting it with Amy and Natalie, which was fun!) It was amazing, I wish it was a whole series! Sabrina Soto traveled around and visited some of the most organized people in the country (one professional organizer, the others appeared to be bloggers). I consider myself a very organized person, but these people are just way beyond…

Nobody really convinced me to change anything, though. If anything, a lot of their organizing tips seemed kind of wasteful. Especially the first woman they featured. For example, in her bathroom closet, she had everything in identical plastic bins, and labeled everything. If you live there, can’t you probably tell what’s where? The labels are only useful to someone who doesn’t know where to find things. I opened my bathroom closet to see if I could incorporate anything from her, and I really couldn’t. Yes, my bins and baskets may not all match, and they are unlabeled, but I could quickly tell which held cleaning supplies, shampoo and bodywash, toothbrushes and toothpaste, foot care products (yes, I have an entire basket just for foot scrubs and lotions), etc. She also redid somebody’s closet, and ended up putting each pair of shoes into an individual plastic shoe box – which is great if you’ve got room for a million plastic boxes in your closet, but wouldn’t really work for me. Somehow my little shoe shelf system is still working just fine. This woman also recommended creating a chore chart, where you mark off with a sticker which tasks you’ve completed. What is the point of that? Now you have to keep a zillion color coded stickers around to fill out your chart, and then what, you throw it out at the end of the week? Why not do something online, or use a whiteboard or something?

One of the other women featured has pre-printed lists and charts for everything, like shopping lists. (In fact, she’s selling them on her web site.) I write my shopping lists on scrap paper, and somehow still remain organized while shopping. I don’t even color code them (most of the time). I just use different shaped bullet points for produce, grocery, and refrigerated items. I try to write them in order, but that doesn’t always happen. When this lady got home from the store, she decanted all her items into plastic containers. On one hand, I guess that’s a good way to be able to see how much is left in a box of cereal or pasta. But on the other hand, that seems like a waste of time to do, and a waste of space, as these containers are much larger than just the standard cereal box.

The one tip that I liked was to use plastic file bins to organize bags of stuff in your freezer. Right now there is not much in our freezer anyway, but when it does get messy, it’s usually because of half-empty bags of frozen fruits and stuff. Keeping all that mess organized in bins and boxes does sound like a pretty great idea.

Overall, even though I probably wouldn’t incorporate most of these tips myself, I enjoyed the show, and I think it was really inspiring for people. Plus, I love Sabrina Soto (is it because of her connection with Target? She just seems like a lot of fun). I hope they make this a real series!

Last weekend GG and I drove out to NJ to visit MB and A. GG and A stayed home and played guitar all day, while MB and I went to lunch at her sister’s restaurant and then took advantage of the beautiful weather and took baby R to Grounds for Sculpture. MB has mentioned it many times, but I’ve never been and didn’t really understand what it was. It’s basically a huge sculpture park on the grounds of a former fair, so there’s some indoor areas but mostly it’s outdoor exhibits. A lot of the sculptures were done by Seward Johnson (of Johnson & Johnson), who is a sculptor and art fan, and created the park. Most of his pieces are realistic sculptures of people just sitting and standing around, and it’s sort of funny because you can sit with them, or they’re set up in places where you think there’s really somebody there. We had some fun posing R with some of the art.

There are also peacocks that are loose on the site, and R got to interact with them a bit. She toddled around after a beautiful white one, and it spread out its tail! I didn’t think she’d be able to catch up with it, and if she did get too close, I figured the peacock wouldn’t stand for it and would run away anyway. Nope – she grabbed a tail feather while the bird just stood there! But he did not look happy. As I did not want to see a baby get her eyes pecked out by a peacock that day, I did scoop her up and carried her around while we looked at the other peacocks sitting on their perch.

R is still the cutest baby and my favorite! After Grounds for Sculpture (and driving through Hamilton, NJ to see some of the other public sculptures in the town), we went back to MB and A’s house for dinner. We ended up hanging out kind of late, which I hadn’t wanted to do because I still had to get home and get ready for my business trip, so it was a bit of a late night, but of course we always enjoy seeing our favorite little family!

The rest of my week was all about work (and, luckily, was a lot of fun too). Two coworkers and I left on Monday afternoon for a week of meetings and stuff at our other site in CT. Usually we can get up there in around four hours, but because of a big accident on the highway, it took us more like six. We’d planned to drive about 40 minutes north to another town for dinner, but after sitting in the car all that time we didn’t really feel like it anymore. So we checked in at the hotel, then went to a nearby seafood place. The sun was just setting over the water when we arrived, and it was really nice.

On Tuesday we had team meetings at the office all day. The morning was just our training team, then we had a lunch break, and then the afternoon was a joint meeting of the training and compliance groups. We’re technically all one group now, but this is a recent thing – however, due to my position, I’ve been in both groups all along, so it was especially nice for me to have everyone together for once. There was a lot of good discussion, but as I’d predicted, nothing really got done, it was just a lot of talking and complaining. Still important for everyone to be able to discuss together, I think. Then we had a combined team dinner at a different seafood place on the water. We seem to always end up at this restaurant when I am up there. We had a lot of fun. The waiter was so strange – he kind of gave everyone a hard time, and joked around a lot. But in the end he turned out to be really funny. For example, one of the specials came with a “baby arugula salad,” and one of the ladies at our table was curious about this salad, but didn’t want the meal. He gave her a hard time and told her the arugula was only available with the special. But later, when he brought out desserts, he also brought her her own little bowl of arugula salad! Also, there is paper over the tables, and crayons, so we were having fun drawing things. In the photo here, she is posing with the arugula salad and a crayon drawing I did of her.

On Wednesday, I didn’t have any “official” meetings, so I just went about my regular business, working from the office up there. It was kind of fun! The office is all open, which is neat for once in a while, but I wouldn’t be able to work there every day. I also got to take advantage of their on-site IT help desk, because apparently I lost connection to the network and locked out my computer account! They couldn’t help me because I was not based at their site, though – they looked me up, saw what the problem was, and said, “But we can’t help you because you’re not a [CT site] person.” Then this other guy walks over: “And why aren’t you a [CT site] person?” I was like, “Um, because I’m a [PA site] person? I’m just here for the week.” They did phone the help desk for me, and they were able to help right away, but that was sort of weird. On Wednesday night I met up with another coworker who’d finally gotten into town, and we went out for dinner and a little walk around this coastal town. By the time we were done, my hair was a mess, what with the slight humidity of being close to the water all the time.

On Thursday we had our huge all-hands meeting. On one hand, it was kind of cheesy and scripted/staged, but on the other hand, it was actually pretty good. Also, I got to see a lot of people I rarely get to see (like my coworker from England who was in my group in our last company, too, and brought me a huge bag of British chocolates!). And I got to meet a lot of new people – both new people in our group who are based at other sites, and people I’ve been working with for a while but had just not met in person yet. For the first half of the day, we randomly chose numbers out of a basket and had to sit at that table number, which was actually a good way to get a mix of people from different groups at each table. But for the second part, we did get to sit and work with our own groups, so I got to be with all my buddies. Most people left after the meeting on Thursday, but I had to stay for something on Friday, so I wasn’t going anywhere. I ended up going to dinner with my boss and two good friends, which was really great. It’s always good to get a chance to get your boss’ ear for a while (plus he is a super great guy), and it was actually cool because the four of us are all from different sites, so this type of get-together would almost never happen. We went to S’s favorite local restaurant, which specializes in “Mediterrasian” food, sort of an Asian/Spanish tapas place.

On Friday morning, I was back at the office to help run a big presentation – we had over 200 people online! Everything went amazingly, and I’m glad I got to be there in person to help present. Afterwards, my two traveling companions and I started back home. We did stop for lunch, but still got home in about four hours. I took an epic afternoon nap, then went out to dinner with GG, and got online to do a little work I hadn’t had a chance to do with the spotty and slow hotel internet connection.

GG did a good job of holding down the fort while I was gone, but the poor kitties were pretty stressed out that I wasn’t there. They spent most of their days hiding from GG, except when it was feeding time. And they were throwing up all week. Poor babies. It took them about a day to get used to me being home again, but as of this evening, the three of them are all snuggled up and relaxing with me. I’m glad they’re happy now, but they really need to be able to survive for a week (not even a week!) without me!

I have been very bad at Linky Thursdays for a while because lately when I see interesting links I usually just send them to the people I think would enjoy them. Maybe nobody will enjoy these but me, which is why I need to post them here.

How to Make Lip Scrub at Home: I’m obsessed with scrubbing my lips. I recently bought a container of that Fresh sugar scrub, which is great, but way too expensive for a little container of sugar. So I’m eager to try out some of the other lip scrub recipes I’m finding.

Long-Awaited Olive Garden Receives Warm Welcome: I can’t decide whether or not this is supposed to be a joke. Sadly, I think it is not. The saddest line: “Instead of the raspberry lemonade she suggested, I drank water.” Wasn’t there an article almost exactly like this in The Onion once? [Edit] Author Marilyn Hegarty responds to her sudden viral fame! [/Edit]

Cool Like Pie: I know this is supposed to be for kids, but there is a lot of really cool stuff on this blog! I was about to try to list out some categories of things you might see posted here, but they really have some of everything, you just have to check it out :o)

My Body Gallery: Want to feel better about yourself (or… worse)? Put in your measurements and see how you compare to other women of your height and weight.