HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Haven't gotten any little goblins yet. Lark & I both bought candy. We may not get any kids...it's supposed to rain, so we'll have candy up the wazoo!

Speaking of rain, I heard some guy on the radio this morning talking about forest fires and said "if we continue to have rain in the near, distant future..." Huh?

Here's our Halloween decorations:

Rasta Jason

Here's another LO I just finished for a challenge.

What A Week!!!!

Budget, analysis, puking, celebrations... It ran the gamut.

Back at work on Monday after 3 days in Roseville and Saturday at a Scrapbook Expo in Sacramento. I spent most of Sunday in bed recouping/sleeping. Bought way too much stuff at the Expo, but then that's point, isn't it? I've been tied to my office doing budget projections. I'm still without a Budget Manager, so lucky me. On Thursday, what's left of the Admin Services Management Team took me to lunch for Bosses Day since I was in Roseville on the actual day. I wasn't feeling 100% before we went to lunch and got ill after. This seems to be getting to be a pattern. However, this time it wasn't the food. Last night the girls celebrated Roni's birthday and Vicki's new job. Can't wait until she's with us on Monday...for both personal and professional reasons. Personally, I want my friends close by. Professionally I want a full Accounting team. We're still short on that, but Vicki will help. Hope everyone is watchin the Saturday Night Live spots on recently. They are hilarious.

ps - Lark will be standing by the mailbox for the next few days. :-)

Here's my latest post for a new site I just found:

FINALLY!

After 2 days I finally got into the internet. Of course it's when I only have 25 minutes to play. We are meeting at the restaurant across the parking lot at 6:30 to celebrate one of our group members 50th birthday with the folks from Los Angeles County. Margaritas here I come. Called Lark while I was signing on and I just cut him off because I need surfing time.

The learning collaborative hasn't been too bad so far. We'll be done by 1:30 tomorrow so I can head home. Vicki and I will be back up here on Saturday for a Scrapbook show. Luckily, she's driving.

Back with more later.

Musings from Roseville

Sacramento and I are becoming very close. I’m on my 3rd trip up in the last month. At the end of September I came up for an Alcohol & Drug fiscal training. Last week I attended the Mental Health Services Act Fiscal Summit #3 and today I was at Medi-Cal Policy Doesn’t this all sound like fun. After Medi-Cal Policy I drove to Roseville (about 20 miles east towards Reno) for a 2 day “Learning Collaborative” that starts on Thursday am.

The Hilton Garden Inn supposedly has wireless internet. My system says it’s connected, but Internet Explorer won’t boot up. I’ve tried back-dooring it through every means I can. One gave me an error message that my firewall was preventing connection. So I turned it off. I still can’t get connected. I’ll start getting the shakes pretty soon if I don’t have internet access.

I’m typing this in Word to be transferred when the system decides to work or I get home, whichever comes first. While I do this, I am waiting for my room service meal from Tahoe Joe’s to be delivered (Sirloin, Caesar salad, baked potato and ice tea). I can’t put a Margarita on my County credit card. The rest of my group will either be up late tonight or early tomorrow morning.

I just got back from the Galleria Mall. I remember the girls and I driving up one time to go to this mall and thinking it was fantastic. I guess my trip to the Mall of America has warped my perception of a cool mall, because the Galleria just didn’t have the same magic it did the first time. However, I did get to hit Harry & David’s and Williams-Sonoma, both of which are not in Modesto…yet.

I also got a 25 minute massage from the Traveling Chinese Massage Group. They come to the Stanislaus County Fair every year and Lark & I always take advantage of it. $25 for 25 minutes. I swear 20 minutes of that was spent with the masseuse’s elbow in my back, one time she had both elbows going. She beat the Hell out of me…and I paid her to do it. And I got to be accosted by all the cart vendors. One enticed me to let her exfoliate my hands, but couldn’t get me to buy anything, even after she told me about the great deal and was for “today only”. I bet I can go back tomorrow and get the same deal.

The Camera Is Charged

so I can take pics of the new window.

the first is from the outside. Unfortunately, it shows the need for a paint job (next on our list). You can really see where the old planter box was. What looks like wings on the sides are the wing-windows. The cats love them. The get a breeze from both sides.





this is from Jack's new 180 degree view.




and without the cat.

I Can See Clearly Now

OK, the cats have gotten used to the new window and have decided, most of them anyway, they like it. Unfortunately when Bill took the old window with him, he took part of the alarm system. We can still arm the system, but have to force feed it every night. Bill is going to check to see if he still has it and bring it when he comes to do the trim. That will save us a $125 for the 1st half hour and $31 for each successive 15 minutes. I'm in the wrong business. Should have been an alarm company service person.

This is from the Stone Accents Studios Color Challenge, which had "mystery" as its theme.