It's the simple things.

I can't call or text Tracy right now and tell her this, so this is a good place to make sure I don't forget to tell her.  Well, I could call or text right now, but she would be really cranky and smack down my enthusiasm.

I went to Walmart last week and bought earbuds because I didn't realize that my new iPod would come with them.  Ok, enjoy your giggle at my expense, but clearly I have never had a new iPod before!  I've never really had one at all, actually.  I used one that had someone else's music on it that was supposedly going to be mine, but that disappeared and I went back to CDs.

Thanks for my birthday present, Mom and Marty!  I finished burning (perhaps a quarter of) my CDs and finally opened the iPod box, ready to read a long and complicated instruction manual, but instead I only found a tiny brochure with a quick start guide.  The packaging was so novel and snugly put together!  What I thought would take hours took less than five minutes!  And there were earbuds!  Oh mah gad!

My iPod is charging AND synchronizing with iTunes as we speak!  I am old and out of touch!

Earbuds.  Good grief.

There's really only 2 hours to go.

Today is my at work birthday.  I got sung to several times and one lady asked me how old I'm turning.

"35," I said.

"Really?"

"Yep."

"Well, you are one well-pickled woman!"


Why, thank you.  We had our monthly potluck/birthday party for myself and the other birthday girl, and we shared cake cutting duties.  I ate too much and got my cake fix.  I got a card signed by everyone and as an added bonus, one of those signers addressed me as "PBJ," the nickname he assigned me after my cubicle name tag went up.  I like it- I'll answer to that.  Ma, you should have given me the middle name of Bertha or something so that my initials would actually be JBP.  As it is, you can draw little half circles on my E, so I guess it's ok.

And that's not all.  My gym friend who became my Great Basin Brewery friend brought me green flowers and an insulated lunch bag so I can take snacks on my trip.  That was sweet and I feel very special.

Today is more than half over, I came in early and got comp time, I'll be prepping for the trip and the presentation this evening; tomorrow I leave early for my eye appointment and have a pizza date with Jody, then Friday is the presentation.  It will be here before I know it, so I'd better practice a lot.

And yes, I love that I am turning 35 and still stretching my birthday out as much as possible.

Happy Tuesday!

Woke up to Solo hurking next to me. Grabbed her, need to keep her upright, where to? Where to? Aaaaaaaaaaahhh! Said my brain. Got her to the bathroom floor, hairball and corresponding bile hits the linoleum instead of the carpet or my duvet (again). Success! Two paper towels and some cleaner and we're done! What time is it? 5:15. Oh, boo.

I think I will look for new cat food- one with a hairball reducing formula.

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Home

CDs in mid-uploading progress, socks flung on the floor, dog waiting in hopes of kitchen scraps...

That's a dog bed under my desk, since that's where she likes to hang out. My favorite green walking shoes. Supposedly Queen Elizabeth on top of the bookshelf.

There's a lot to do, but I'm enjoying just sitting here, looking at my house.

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Well, now it's 10. Time management skills need work.

Hello, Jenny?  Are you there?  Where are your blogs?

I just went to sit down and text out a blog when suddenly I realized- hey!  I have internet!  So now I'm at my laptop, typing on a keyboard.  Ooh, it's so much faster this way.  And hold on-

Now I'm sitting on my bed with my laptop... on my lap!

So I got set up with internet this weekend because I was finally within the contract window and could change the service I had set up a year ago at the house.  To get this set up involved... aggravation, but finally I talked to a very helpful girl named Katrina at AT&T's tech support and she walked me through.  The only thing that's annoying is that the only phone jack that worked was one in my bedroom, so the signal is a little lame in the living room, but it doesn't seem to affect Netflix on the Wii, which I just set up by my damn self.  Even in here, sitting right next to my modem (look at me using tech language), I don't have a full signal.  We may have to have another conversation with AT&T in which they will invite me to upgrade.

But JENNYWAY, I have internet!  And it's mine, not stolen!  I am completely legitimate at this point, which means I may have to go vandalize a church or something.

Friday is the presentation/graduation for the apprentice class.  I'm already frazzled.  I can't stay on here too long because I have to rewrite my flash cards after Tracy heard my presentation.  She's my best editor- I was saying that I should have let her see it earlier, but I actually only had that version since Thursday.  I have already edited this a LOT.  But now it feels cohesive and I just have to get those cards so I can practice while walking Riley.  I can't have anything to hold during the presentation, just the clicker for my PowerPoint, so there's nothing to hide behind or read from.  I can't wait for this to be over, but I know that these next four days are going to FLY by.

I wrote out a week long calendar, not of what needed to be done, but what I got done each day.  It feels better that way.  I have a to do list going as well, because I go to San Diego the day after the presentation.  I got a lot done today, including uploading an ungodly amount of CDs to iTunes.  I have no idea what I'm going to want to listen to, so I'm trying to get as many as possible.  I'm realizing that I have way more CDs than I actually listen to.  I also listen to a lot of mix CDs from friends and family, very few of which are recognized by iTunes, which means research and a lot of typing.  Those will likely wait.

I do want to tell you- before I forget- about this great documentary I watched the other night.  It's called The Other F Word, and it's about all these guys in punk bands who became dads and how it changed their lives.  I was expecting a mild, cute movie about guys being dads, but these are punk icons- guys who lived in total chaos or with extreme ideals- and so the movie runs so much deeper as they explain how fatherhood didn't just change their world, it changed how they saw the world.  It was so interesting to hear them try to reconcile their past life and their beliefs with their current life and finding themselves in an odd place.  Most of the dads interviewed are still in bands, still touring and struggling to find balance, but one exception was Ron Reyes, a former singer for Black Flag.  According to Flea, Black Flag shows in those days regularly had people leaving by ambulance, and Ron Reyes was revered by all the other interviewees for the feelings his voice conveyed and his extremism onstage: he WAS punk.  But Ron Reyes quit the band suddenly in 1980, moved to Canada, and started a family.  During part of his interview, he said he's got a house full of teenagers, and none of them have left.  That made him proud, as all his punk peers were runaways.  That was a running theme throughout this documentary, and it's one worth revisiting: People trying to be better parents than theirs were.  Art Alexakis from Everclear said that people watch him as a dad and say, "I wish you had been my dad."  Art says he wishes he could have had a dad like himself, too.