Organized Atheism

In general, I'm a fairly laid back atheist. I don't care that other people believe. I don't care that it says in god we trust on money. I don't even really care if there is a moment of silence in schools. But as part of my building a community here, I decided to go to an atheist meet up. I've avoided them in general because I find it odd to sit around and talk about atheism. But I figured I'd try it out.

I found the group I found because there was a sign on the highway that advertised that they picked up litter along that stretch. I found that today was the day they clean up the highway and volunteered to do road clean up. I cleaned with two guys, one was new to the group and the other an old timer. The road clean up was fine. It is just road clean up which is no big deal.

They do a Wednesday night gathering and then apparently have business meetings once a month. After we cleaned up the road we went to lunch at a new Chinese food buffet

Anyway, I'm digressing. It was nice to meet new people and I'll probably try another event they do, but.. they're far more militant than I am. Apparently I am right to avoid atheism groups. I don't get a kick out of going where the believers are and engaging them in atheistic banter. I've never been persecuted for my non-beliefs. I don't feel the need to march or protest. Maybe I'll look for a different group that does activism that I'm more passionate about. As soon as I figure out what I'm more passionate about. :)

 I did like talking books with the young daughter of one of the members. She's reading Twilight and I gave her a bit of a hard time. But she's also read Hunger Games and HP (of course). I suggested the series I'm currently reading the Lorien Legacies.

Oh... and one of the weird guys I was picking up trash with messaged me about wanting to get together and chat sometime. Uh, no. Just no.

Word number 2 - Completion

There are 32 uncompleted posts on my blog dashboard. There used to be more but I've deleted some since then. I feel like this is emblematic about me. I feel like I tend to not finish things. I think I get involved in the research and the process but can't push the button. This year I want to work on that. I would like to finish things and feel like I can say look that's done. Shortly after I moved here I 'started' putting together what I needed to make a scrapbook of my scout years. That's in a box by the closet door. Last year I started on a project for Lyday. That might actually get done, but mostly because she's waiting for it. So I want to finish things this year. I want to complete my homebuying goal. I want to finish Lyday's blanket. I want to finish some of the work projects I start that I don't want to do. :)  So word number 2 is about finishing what I start - everything I start (well probably not EVERYTHING, let's be realistic) and not getting sidetracked by inanity. Except for brownies. It would probably be better if I didn't always finish the brownies. :)

Extremely Stubborn And Suspicious

There's a line from Mary Poppins where she measures Michael Banks with her magical tape measure and it says he is extremely stubborn and suspicious. I am extremely stubborn and suspicious. I've heard from someone with a vague link to my past recently. My first thought was not, wow, how nice to hear from this person. It was 'what does she want?'  Now that we're exchanging pleasantries I'm still thinking this way. I'm afraid she's going to ask me things I don't want to answer or I don't know how to answer.

Long Term Goal/Mid term goal

So I downloaded an app that is helping me track my debt repayment. Theoretically, if everything goes well by 2016 I'll be debt free except for my house. When that happens I think that's when I'll start looking for a library job. I won't be paying a huge chunk of cash out of my budget each month and I think I can take the pay hit that I'll take as a librarian. Luckily I'll be able to stalk the people I worked with at the library for my internship to see when they'll be retiring.

At my gym they have a website mymobilefit. Today I enrolled for their lifestyle challenge. I won't be as hardcore about somethings as I could be but I'm interested in the way the website can create workouts for me and help me with meal planning.

Correct Career Path

I've been working on researching for my home purchase this year. I might be enjoying this research phase a little too much. I love looking at all the houses online. I love thinking about all the possibilities and researching to find the best information. I've queried my coworkers about mundane topics like their electric bills and water bill. This morning I emailed my current insurance provider to ask about things I should look for in a home to lower my homeowners insurance (well and to find out how horrifically much more it would be if my delightful new (to me) home had a pool). The research part is so much fun! I'm sure the actual moving in and settling down may not be nearly as awesome. :) (Or it will be but the possibilities are just so damn exciting!)

Also, I like playing the "what the hell is wrong with this house" game. (Like the one I'm currently looking at which is $59,000.  It looks like it is perfectly normal. 

Fiyah! - Apps Apps and more Apps

I won a Kindle Fire in a drawing in December. I lurve it far more than I thought I ever would. (Oh wait I had it before I went to CA so I must have won it in November).  I love the ease of use. I love the ease of downloading crap. I love the portability. I love that I can find free wifi almost everywhere so I don't have to have a data plan. (It isn't fancy enough to require a data plan, it has to connect to the world on wifi only.) 

So the first thing I did when opening the Kindle Fire - Apps. Now whatever Apps that I talk about are ones I've purchased of my own volition and not because I have received any renumeration for anything I may say or not say about their awesomeness or lack of awesomeness. Additionally, the fiyah uses Android platform (is that the right word) and you mostly have to get the Apps from the Kindle Store so I may have a bum app (which I do) which may actually be perfectly normal in the real App store but since I'm limited to the ones from the fiyah store I'm stuck.

First apps I downloaded were the mail, twitter and facebook app. Yahoo mail and twitter work just fine and mostly how you'd expect. They work just like the ones on your phone. The facebook app is a waste of time. It has some weird bug that limits what you can see to only the top 6 or 7 items in the newsfeed. Since I have zero reception (for anything cell phones included) in my office, I can't check facebook 400 times a day and can only do so at lunch in the breakroom or at the end of the day. Thus, when I use their facebook app I can see 6 events and that's it. Totes frustrating. I just use the web version of the facebook.

The next thing I downloaded were a bunch of games I'd heard of but never got to play... Oh and those group games that everyone likes. Sadly, for me, many of those have already been abandoned by all my friends who used to play them. :)  BUT I did pull down Hanging, Words and Scramble with Friends. I like all of them. I also grabbed Draw Something which I play with my mother of all people. Neither of us has very good artistic skills. But all those apps work just fine and the way you'd expect them to. No surprises there.

I also downloaded (and here's how you know I'm behind the curve) Angry Birds. That game IS addicting. I've completed almost the whole thing, but several times I've had to consult YouTube for assistance.  (Now there's an app the fiyah doesn't have - a good YouTube app, perhaps because it doesn't have a camera and recording capability?)

Netflix and Hulu Plus are both available. I'm currently a member of Netflix (although maybe not for long) and not a member of Hulu Plus (although maybe not for long) so we'll see. The netflix app works just fine and is easy to use.

I do love the pinterest app. I'm not sure why but I like the interface and how easy it is to see all the pins. I don't like that it seems like (and I could be wrong) that in the attempt to save space on the screen (or something), when I'm repinning I can't see ALL the boards I can pin on so that can get frustrating for me.

While I was visiting M's kiddos in CA (oh that sounds like I go there just to see the kiddos... ) While I was visiting M & the fam in CA, I downloaded several kiddo apps. What bugs me about kid apps (which is what I'm sure kids love about kid apps) is the need to add on to the app. I downloaded some free coloring apps and those were fine, but any of the dress up apps you had to buy up for more stuff. I have smartly turned off in-app purchasing so I did not get a $600 bill from Amazon for my in-app purchasing. Oh unlike the iphones (and my droid phone) Amazon provides me a receipt for any app I purchase. (Even those that are free) Since those are automatically sent to my email I would see it much quicker if I had kiddos doing in-app purchasing that I was unaware of.

The app I just recently downloaded (and the actual reason for my app posting) is called Erase Debt. I put in my debt situation and give it some variables such as how much extra I can put toward debt and it calculates for me my debt payback schedules and how long it would take and how much I'm paying over the purchase. I'm hoping this app helps keep me on track to become debt free in the future. I like that I can adjust how much I want to put towards debt repayment per month and it will readjust the repayment schedules. I also like that it isn't tied to anything so there's no sharing of data between that app and my card companies or anything.

And let's not forget the Fiyah's original use - books. All my already purchased books hang out in 'the cloud' and I can pull them down or remove them from the device anytime I am hooked up to wifi. (Well I can delete them anytime but I can only pull them down when I'm connected to wifi). I like that the fiyah is back lit so I can read in the dark. It is probably bad for my eyes or something but I like reading in the dark. My local library has books for me to check out and since I can access the internet from the fiyah I can do it all on the fiyah and not have to go back and forth from computer to kindle. If I decide to join Amazon Prime (in consideration), I can also check out books from Amazon Prime's lending library so that's nifty too.

Vastly Different

For most of my working life I've worked for companies or a private university. Now I work for a governmental entity. What fascinates me is how public everything that we do has now become. There was a payroll issue today, which was a pretty big deal but I recognize that this is the first time this has happened in 30 years so that's pretty damn good. I have been at least one other (maybe 2 actually) places where this issue has happened before.  The big difference - this was front page news in my hamlet. Apparently once a year my employer will publish the salaries of pretty much all of us. I'm not sure if they do it by job title or specify salary by person. Under the Freedom of Information Act, people can request all sorts of information (and in fact I had to sign off on a form so that they couldn't release my SSN). 

The result of this is that everything we tell people (including employees) is fairly calculated. I went over to a notboss (if you will recall a notboss is what I refer to as someone higher on the food chain than me but not over my department) to ask what I needed to tell employees when they called and he couldn't believe employees would call my group on this. The man has no idea. We get called for everything - in fact I frequently hear "I don't think this is your area but..." JFC if you know I'm not the right persno why are you calling me?

Square Peg, Round Hole

Lyndsy pointed out in the comments on yesterday's post about home that perhaps Fort Worth isn't the right place for me since I haven't found "my people" here.

If I'm being honest, and why the hell not, it isn't that there aren't "my people" here, it's me. I have always had a very hard time making friends. Maybe it is because I was painfully shy as a kid (a trait I still have). Maybe it is due to a ridiculous level of low self-esteem that says 'why would someone want to be friends with you?' (Ok yeah that one is a biggie) I can't expect to move to a new place and have my life be magically different.  So far in multiple states that hasn't happened. The difference between Texas and some of the other states I've lived in is that I had built in friends already. When I moved to CA, I moved in with Michelle. In fact, when she moved out and started dating her now husband I actually had a bit of a hard time because she wasn't around as much. So I went back to my isolated status.  In Seattle I had V and through V Matty P. I picked up a few other friends along the way but it took years to get there. And if I'm being honest (and why the hell not) for many of my friends it was pretty rare that I'd initiate contact or an activity. (Lyndsy and Stephen were both exceptions to that but that took quite some time as well and at least in Lyndsy's case at the time she didn't have a whole lot of local friends either (don't hate me for saying that L)) Mostly I'd wait until I got invited because I couldn't imagine they would want me around. Matty P once said (and I wrote it down have carried it around with me for years because I value it so much) that I really under value what I have to offer as a friend. I know he's right.

A FOAF (friend of a friend although she's kind of my friend too but maybe not so much hard to know) once commented to our mutual friend that she was surprised we were friends. That cut me to the core because one of my biggest fears is that people are just tolerating me. That I'm the hanger on that you have to put up with if you want the better person to come to the party too.

In all honesty this is one area I don't know how to fix. It's probably a years of talk therapy kind of thing.

One Word - Home

Michelle is doing this whole thing with three words for her new year. I like her words. they are very clever and really clear. She joined Chris Brogan's Brave New Year program.

I don't really do resolutions, just goals. And sometimes I do well with my goals and other times I don't. So looking at my earlier goal for the new year and expanding it further leads me to the word "Home."

For me home means so much more than the big goal of purchasing a home. It relates much more to accepting jesus christ as my... oh no wait not that. It relates much more to accepting Texas as my home and building the relationships and experiences necessary to make Texas my home and not just some place I'm currently living. I have to get more involved in my community. I need to get out more and be active to try to meet new people. I also need to explore my community. I've lived here for three years and I barely know my city beyond my immediate suburb. (This will also help me in the house hunting project since a house in my current neighborhood is probably going to be more expensive than I want).  I want to feel less temporary about Texas. I can't build a life here if I'm always looking onward at where to go next.

So there is word number 1 - do what is necessary to make Fort Worth not just the place I currently live, but my home.

Goals for the New Year

Michelle sets up themes for her goals for New Year. Last year it was Health and Finances. I don't really have a theme for 2013. Maybe it is Home.

My first goal - buy a house. Unlike Seattle, FW is a unique position in that I could probably save $300/mo by buying a house. Or not. Given that my electric bill will probably go up (although when I move into a house I'm switching off the rock & twig hippy electric company I currently use) that'll take up some of my funds. I'll have to pay sewage and water and all that which I currently pay only about $20/mo for. At least I presume it would go up. (Look in the span of 10 short minutes I've talked myself out of it). :) But that's my goal. That's my biggest goal. I hope I can make it work. My lease is up in August so I'll begin to seriously start looking at houses in May. I think that's the right time. It gives me 3 months to find and go through the process. You know, unless I'm too optimistic. :)

My other goals are much more minor. I want to keep going to the gym regularly. I want to work on debt. Not encouraging more but reducing the current one I have. I may have to forgoe some things I usually want to do.

Domestic Time

In an apparent vain effort to become more fiscally responsible, I have given up the housekeeper. So I now have cleaning supplies and a vacuum and everything. I used to think I didn't really take pride in cleaning, but I think now I get it. I have been cleaning the kitchen this morning and it has been good for me to really go through my stuff to purge and clean as I go. I have been reading about hoarding and my sister and I will have to be vigilant (probably me more than her because she moves for work a lot) because there is a nurture component to it. Which I can see. Before I moved out of Seattle, I was probably more on the brink than I care to admit. And it is easy to get overwhelmed, especially if you are as big a hermit as I am. If it is just me and the cat, why bother cleaning? Luckily I get visitors from far away places periodically. So here is an open invitation, need a place to stay in the metroplex? Come on by. : )

Fish or Cut Bait

I think I want to buy a house next year. Unlike in Seattle, I could actually get a house here and my house payments would be less than my current rent. The reasons are solid. I like my job. I don't HATE Texas. As I drove around town the other day I actually thought about making my stay here permanent. I'm sick of moving. I'm sick of starting all over in a new state. I think I'm ready to be a grown-up.

If I acquire a house, I can start the process to acquire children as well. I could do so while living in an apartment, but I live in a one bedroom and children need their own bedrooms and we go back to the I can buy a house cheaper than my current rent is - with multiple bedrooms.  The one thing that makes me nervous is the electric bill. Mine is currently appalling (to me). With so much more space in a house... I shudder to think. The winter is fine because I barely use heat but the summer... I NEED AC. 

There can be only one

I was super excited to discover that I can get Gluten-Free ice cream sandwiches at my grocery store. They are ridiculously over priced. (Well I suppose over priced is relative but I am too embarrassed to even tell you how much I spend on them which means they are over priced.)  But they are so damn good. So damn good.   So far I've been to the ice cream section three times to buy them. So far there has been one and only one container of them for me to buy. I suppose that's good because that means I have to ration my use of them and I can't go crazy and buy 6 boxes and eat them all in 2 days (which I might do).

Family Project Phase 1

I've mentioned before that my parents' house needs a lot of help. My dad is too old to do a lot of the yardwork. My mom (and probably my dad too) is a hoarder. I volunteered (like an idiot maybe) to help them out.  My sister and I flew out for Labor Day weekend to deal with their front yard. Unbeknownst to me, they actually had received a letter from the City citing that they were violating multiple codes. We did what we could and hopefully they are back within code compliance. My sister is planning on going back over Thanksgiving to help deal with the garage. I'm not giving up my Thanksgiving plans, especially since we'll be back there in March.



This is the before picture. Those two cacti are severely overgrown. The smaller one on the left edge is called a 'bunny ears.'  The worst part about the damn bunny ears... the needles. The prickly pear on the right (also overgrown and big) at least has giant needles which are easy to pull out when they pierce the glove. Bunny ears give you teeny tiny clusters of needles. Please note the giant pile of crap up by the house. 

My parents had rented a smallish dumpster. We filled it and then my sister would climb on top and jump on it to squash the plant stuff down further into the dumpster. I think she had to do that twice. Maybe three times. She's kind of a badass because I was not about to do that.

 

Before lunch on the first day, we had cleaned up this side of the driveway. I pulled out an entire bunny ears behind that great big cactus. It was a mess. That big cactus, I don't know what it is called, but it also has teeny tiny spines. There was also one on the left side of the drive way which I trimmed with a chain saw. Look how badass I am with a chain saw? :) The little one in front is a cholla. Chollas tend to have big needles, but they are also hooked. That sucks, but luckily that little one was the only one that they had that was still alive.

 

At the end of day one we had filled this yellow trailer. I had read on the county's website that the transfer station was open until 3:00. Didn't realize that the CITY owned the compost part and that closed at 2:30.  That was not pleasing. We loaded up a bunch more on top of this over the rest of the weekend.

 

While I was weed whacking this little guy ended up on the top of the weed whacker. (wacker?). Super cute and he (she?) sat there as I carried it around the house, found my cell phone, futzed with my cell phone and took the picture. I had to move it onto a plant. It didn't want to leave the weed whacker (wacker?)

We filled that bad boy. In fact it was kind of bulging on top because we threw a bunch of rose bush clippings on top of it and continued to stuff. It was like packing a suitcase.

This stack of wood represents all the wood that was randomly in their front yard. There's a wood buffet amongst that crap. It had been damaged by rain. I'm not sure why they bought it to begin with. To torment me I'm sure.

 

Monday morning we used these old cinder blocks from a side fence and built this little "wall" to hide my father's SIX scooter lifts. Why do they have six scooter lifts? Very good question. Only one is regularly used but suggest getting rid of one and you'd think we suggested murdering one of their cats or something. One doesn't work at all. We were super close to getting rid of it but then my dad changed his mind. He's been influenced into her hoarder world.

 

On Monday afternoon the clouds rolled in. I convinced my sister that we were done at about 2:00. Good thing, after we cleaned up at the hotel, and went to leave to go get pedicures, it was POURING. And it continued to pour until Tuesday. Luckily SV weather is kind of weird and by the time we got from the motel to Denny's, that area barely was sprinkling.

 

 

We were waiting at the transfer station on Tuesday morning when it opened up. You may (or may not) be able to tell but there's a little brown road runner in the back investigating the contents of the trailer. I tried to get a better pic, but it wasn't having any of it. 

Here is the finished product. We got rid of all the wood. We got rid of all the weeds. That big white trailer... full of stuff. Sigh. We cut back a bunch of the cacti in the front yard. They can actually PARK in the drive way. Imagine that. Since they own 3 cars. Which is weird since there are only two of them and in general my mom doesn't drive. (although I did learn she still does periodically.)

 

Next up... Phase 3. I'm skipping out on Phase 2. Luckily that's not until March. 



The Ubiquitous Shoe Box

So my mother is finally on board with the great clean up project. I can't imagine how far we'll get. I'd like to think we'll make a good dent, but I don't hold out high hopes. So the plan is such: Labor Day we go for just the weekend to do front yard chores such as raking, tearing down a wall and cactus pruning. In March, during Spring Break, we go again to focus on the indoors. My goal is to get three rooms cleared out and detrashed. That might be too ambitious a goal. We'll see. I will imagine that my mother (and quite possibly on some level my father) will fight us tooth and nail over her 'treasures.' As my sister and I have both pointed out to her - if it is damaged due to neglect then it isn't a treasure anymore. For example, she has a headboard and footboard in the front yard. According to my father she has this whole image for my nephew's old bedroom (and before that it was Mandy's bedroom and before that it was Mandy & my bedroom together).  It involves that bed. Well I'm not sure when the bed was purchased, but in Arizona they are now in monsoon season. While for many, monsoon season means heavy torrential rains for days and days like in the Phillipines. In Arizona this means that the heat and humidity build and the ground bakes and this continues for many tortorous hours until about 2 - 3 pm. Then it pours down rain like a maniac for maybe 1/2 an hour. Then the rain stops and the sun comes out and the baking process begins again. Not so good for a 'wrought iron' bed frame. (I don't know what it is made out of. She claims wrought iron, my father claims "wrought iron."  Who knows.)

The hard part is how much these kinds of habits can impact your whole life. I've spent about 1/2 of today purging my extra crap. And most of what has been purged is trash or recycling. (Not gross trash, let me clarify that right away).  But I just dumped a bunch of old magazines. I'm chucking my ancient green bag that I used to use when I was a LITTLE girl for sleep overs. The oddly hardest thing to get rid of - shoe boxes. My mother is a big believer in shoe boxes. As children they were always kept because you can put stuff into them. Little things or slightly bigger things. Anything really. My mother used many of hers for old bills and paystubs. It took me several years to sink in that nobody gives a rat's ass about my pay stub from 1997 or that I paid my electric bill on time in 2002. My mother saved all of that stuff for YEARS. Somewhere in the 90s we were throwing away bills she had paid in the 80s. Why would you need to prove you paid the water bill from 1985? Obviously the water is still on therefore the bill has been paid.  The hoarder's mantra is "you never know when this will come in handy."  I confess this is a struggle for me. And yet, in the storage unit there are probably three or more boxes that I sort of know what is in them, but if I were to donate the box contents unreviewed to charity I probably would have no idea what is missing. And thereby wouldn't miss it.  Baby steps. If it ever gets to be under 100 I will pare the storage space again. And again until it can be pared no more.
One of the other things I struggle with is what exactly to do with the junk. For example, I have a broken rice cooker. I doubt it can be fixed. Is this something you can throw away? Do I have to take it to the dump myself? Is it going to fill a landfill and thereby cause problems for future generations? Can it be recycled? (Notice I get this hung up on a freaking rice cooker yet every day at work I throw a pepsi can in the trash because it is my own ridiculous mini rebellion since we do not have recycling in the building.) I have at least 3 ugly yellow plastic cups from Dickie's barbecue restaurant. What to do with them? I feel like donating them is shitty since honestly, what charity really benefits from them? They are the Top Ramen of donations. Currently they get used around the house, but really there are other things in my apartment that could do what they currently do. And since I have to take the recyclables to the center myself there are the bags of newspaper that fill the front closet and the bags of cans that fill the storage unit until I have enough to make the trek.

This and much much more will be the fun of doing my parents' house. Worse because I've gotten pretty good at paring down the things I don't need. They have a lot of stuff.

Succumbing to the cute!

A couple months ago I was struggling with what to get Michelle's 3 year old for her birthday. I got her a cute Fisher Price Wonder Woman with the invisible jet and a Joker and a Batman so she had a villian. Well, as is bound to happen, her other daughter has a birthday. This is a big one - five. As I wandered up and down the pink aisles of Target trying to decide what to go with, I found the little girl legos. I know blah blah blah they're pink and not empowering or whatever. They are also cute and contain little animals. So I got the pink lego. I made sure to get two kits because little sister might want a little girl to play with too. This may be a mistake, although I did check with Michelle first.

Not on the same page

During the summer there are many many Jehovah's Witness conventions at the Convention Center in the city in which I work (and live). This peeves me because they rent out the parking garage I use. It doesn't really impact me totally since I have a monthly permit and the garage does not rent out the number of spaces that corresponds to their number of monthly permits. Although depending on what time I get there this does mean my preferred spot on the 3rd floor is gone. AND if I happen to leave like I did today and come back I have to wait until they open the gate because they close it once the lot is "full." But I've totally digressed.

I was commenting to my coworker about my parking difficulties. She hadn't realized the JWs had such a large convention (and I'm fairly certain that this is just some Texas contingency, also oddly interesting it seems to be the Hispanic Texas contingency since their name badges are in Spanish - it has their name and the name of their group).  Anyway, (I'm full of digression tonight) I was lamenting to my coworker about the difficulty in finding a spot (because honestly those JWs are filling the garage at the ass crack of dawn!). She said "that's so sad" and I said "Yes it is sad that it was hard for me to find a parking space but good for the city."*  Apparently that's not what she thought was sad. She thought it sad that there was such a large group indicating that there are so many misguided people who have joined a cult. It's apparently sad to her that  all these cultists are going to hell. So not what I expected her to say about the subject. Not even close. For the record, although she knows some nice Mormons, they are in a cult and well, obviously Scientologists are too. Seventh Day Adventists are not apparently. Wikipedia claims JWs are a form of Christianity. (You know since Wikipedia is so reliable).

*I joke a lot about how "my life is so hard" with her. I say it to her frequently with a heavily dramatic voice and motions. Usually it is for something like having to go ALL the way back to my office because I forgot my trash can on trash day or something equally inane. She plays along with me so when I was being overly dramatic about parking difficulties I really thought she was kidding.

Death of a Hero

When I was a little girl I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted it in the worst way. I studied stars and I dreamed of going into space. I wanted to be Sally Ride. I was 8 when she first went into space. Something about that just inspired me to want to do the same. I wanted to see the earth from far away and travel around with the stars. My 5th grade teacher continued to foster my love for space.  She entered into the teacher in space program. I don't know how far she got in it, but obviously she didn't go. She made special arrangements for us to watch the Challenger launch in the library live. I also remember the shock and disbelief when the Challenger blew up.  I was undeterred, though. I didn't change my view on becoming an astronaut. 

That was actually the plan for several years up until high school. High school is where I discovered advanced math and the fact that I can't do it. I also learned that in order to be an astronaut you really have to go to a military academy and to get into those you have to have a recommendation from a senator or congressman. For a shy, small town girl that was just too impossible so my dream was adjusted. (And continues to be adjusted.)

I was sad to read that Sally Ride died today. A lot of famous folk have died but her death has made me sad in a way that others' have not. I'm glad, though, that her legacy lives on with her science program for girls. Maybe had something like that been there when I was younger I may have achieved my astronaut dream. Maybe not. Geometry still would have kicked my ass.

Cowardly

The worlds of my old hateful job and my new not exactly perfect but I like it a lot job are about to collide. In what can only be described as a cruel game, my current employer is considering contracting with my old employer to provide a near-site clinic and other medical management. Seriously. By itself I wouldn't really care. I don't have to go to the physicians from that group. We would just offer a better deal if people went to those doctors. However, apparently this collaboration will require meetings to set this deal up. The first one will be in August and I THINK it will be at my old employer's corporate office - the office I used to work in. I don't mind the person the meeting would be with and if she were coming to our offices I would go, but I don't want to go there again. I don't want to run the risk of seeing hated boss. I wasn't on the initial invite so hopefully that means I won't have to go, although the way things work my bigger boss I won't know about it until about 15 minutes until we have to leave for the meeting.

Laboring for Labor Day

My father has agreed that they need help. It took him awhile to reply to my email proposing the help, but he is in favor of it. The downside, he thinks the front yard has to be done before March. So my sister and I are giving up our Labor Day weekend to make the front yard look less ghetto. When I was there a couple of weeks ago for my reunion (which I really should post about), there was a smashed mailbox in the yard. I say to my father, 'dad, why is there a smashed mailbox in the front yard?' His reply, 'because I hit it with a trailer.' Not the response I was hoping for. Or looking for really. What I was really asking is why is there a smashed mailbox in the front yard and not in the trash. Much of the front yard is like this. SO, instead of going to Alabama to get a new tattoo (Alabama certifies or licenses or something their tattoo artists so that I don't have to wait the 1 year to donate blood per the blood bank's rules), my sister, my niece and I are going to AZ to spend 3 or 4 (depending on if I can get Tuesday off) cleaning up my parents' front yard and maybe building a fence. We have not broached this subject with my mother. My father is worried about that. My sister is handling that aspect since I handled my dad. We're still going to be going in March, this just makes their neighbors hate them a little less. (Since there is about 3 with for sale signs in front of their homes I'm kind of surprised they haven't snuck in in the night and hauled away all the unsightly junk).

I've been doing some research on what we could do with the front yard once we've got all the junk and dead plants out and it seems like a clover yard is an easy, low maintenance, not requiring mowing way to go. We'll see if there's time to put that down once we get the rest taken care of. I'm not sure if I have to do stump removal (which I will have to google) if I'll be able to get the lawn clover seeded. But they need SOMETHING and most of the cacti are dead. (Which will be so fun to remove.)