It's over.

Looks like tomorrow afternoon I take down and put away the decorations. That's the worst part of putting up decorations.

Didn't really have many kids tonight... maybe 30 or so. I bagged up 120 individual bags, gave 2 to some kids. So, I've got lots of candy left if ya want some. Lesson learned: next year get the good stuff, lol.

Was sick yesterday. Went to work, but came home early. If it was possible and I didn't know better I'd say I was pregnant. I'M NOT! Anyhow, felt kind of guilty when I got home because I started to feel better. Well, at least I didn't feel like I was gonna throw up over everyone anymore, so that was better.

Not much else going on.

Less than ten days now until we go to Michigan. So much to do yet.

I would probably write more, but I've just discovered why I do my writing when Bryan isn't around. He talks a lot. A LOT! More than me. Seriously. And he's sitting right next to me. Good thing he's cute. I'd have to hit him.

Anyhow, I really just wanted to post something to get an entry above the Halloween picture in the one below.

I had hoped to have a "do nothing" day today. It started out that way,had all the makings, but by seven o'clock this evening it had gone to Hell. I got up at 8, played around on the computer for a bit, showered, and by 11 I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open so I took a little nap. Perfect thing to do for a "do nothing" day. Then I got up, checked on the pot of chili I had made last night for dinner for tonight, watched a movie online (Premonition... not really sure what my review is for that movie: it was okay for a "do nothing" day I suppose).

I checked on car rentals for our trip to Detroit. We already agreed that our truck isn't road-trip ready and it would be cheaper to rent a car. Besides, all experts pretty much tell you to rent a car for road trips. Anyway, then for the fun of it I checked into how much it would be to take the train. Short of the long of it: it's cheaper to rent a car and drive than to take the train and rent a car in Detroit. Besides, there's stuff I need to take with us that I can't take on a train. Sooo... no train this time. Darn.

Anyway, back to my "do nothing" day. It was going great! I didn't even get dressed most of the day. In fact, I only got dressed because I thought Bryan's daughter was going to be here early evening. Turns out I thought wrong, which is what I get for thinking on a "do nothing" day. So, there I am, pretty much enjoying my lazy day when out of the blue I hear a whispering sound coming from across the hall. It gets louder. Wouldn't you know-? It was the laundry! Damn clothes are restless and threatening mutiny if they don't get washed. Argh! I hate when they do that!

So I sort them out - only because they insisted to be sorted this time (usually I just dump them all in the machine as one load). Then I pile them into the basket and take them to the utility room, which is off the kitchen. As luck would have it, that's when the dishes piled neatly beside the sink start in on me. It's all "hey! if the clothes get washed, so do we!" I tried to ignore them, but then the entire kitchen got in on the act and more threats were heard. The kitchen was promising it would disconnect from the house and go find another house to hook up to if I didn't make the dishes be quiet. I didn't have a choice.

As I write this, the dishes are washed, sitting in the drainer. I'm sure when I go back out there to transfer the first load from washer to dryer, they'll be whining about wanting to be put away or something. Then the stupid slow cooker will probably start in about wanting the chili out of it so it can be cleaned.

It was bad enough yesterday when I walked through the door after work and the entire house started bitching about wanting to be swept and the end tables in the living room began coughing to show disgust for the dust accumulating on them. I thought I had appeased everything. Again, guess I was wrong.

Actually, my only goal for today was to go out and get a pumpkin to carve. And that's the only thing that didn't get done. Maybe tomorrow.

It's starting to feel like Fall now, the breeze is a little brisk, it's rainy/drizzly. We have some color on the trees now, but the leaves are falling off so fast you don't really get to enjoy the beauty before it's gone.  After all the ~HOT~ weather we had in August and the ~hot~ weather we had in September and up until a week or so ago, this is a welcome change. I'd be happy if we could keep these pleasantly cool temps (a little less rain) until December, then have a month of winter, and get back to spring. That would be awesome dude!

Not a whole bunch of anything going on in these woods lately. That's okay. Bryan emcee' d last night at the comedy club he frequents, I'm sure he'll write about it on his comedy blog - either the one here or his MySpace account. He did a real good job. Other than that, it's just been the same thing every day, just a new set of clothes. Oh... and we'll be getting Nigel back soon. Yay.

Two weeks from today we'll be in Michigan. YAY! My son called me last night to inform me I have a "fan base" there, waiting for my arrival. Four or five of his friends, and him, are all skipping school that Friday to spend with us. Don't want to encourage that, but it's nice they want to see us. And I was also informed we are not to get a motel room for the first night there because we'll be staying in Alex's room... guess his surrogate mom is even making us dinner. Woo Hoo! Anyhow, the plan is to spend Thursday afternoon and night in Detroit, leave Friday afternoon to head up to my best friend Judy's house where we'll spend the night - visit with her, my other best friend, and my brother; Saturday we head up north a little further to stay with my aunt (not sure which one yet) and come back Sunday. We'll be bone tired dead Monday for work, but it'll be worth it.

Also, when I talked to my son last night he informed me that Mr Wonderful had been in the hospital for stress last week. Alex's words to me were: "Looks like I wasn't the only stress he had in his life" and I said that it couldn't be blamed on me, either, because I hadn't talked to him in months. Then we thought that maybe the lack of stress was stressing him out, lol.  Of course, being that I have an inquisitive nature, I wanted to know what he would tell me was the reason he was in the hospital, so I called him today. The reason he gave me was that he pulled a muscle and his back went out resulting in him not being able to walk (without help). Whatever.

As soon as I pressed "send" on his number I began to grit my teeth and hoped he wouldn't answer his phone. All I wanted was to find out why he'd been in the hospital and be off the phone ten minutes later. He answered his phone for the first time in ... well, this is probably the first of the last dozen times I've attempted to call him that he picked up when he saw my number. Dammit. It is so difficult to be civil when I talk to him. I'll catch him in some lie and I want to say "Ha! Liar!" But I don't... for a couple reasons: #1) he tends to take it out on my kids when he's pissed at me. Not in a physical way, but he'll tell them stuff that isn't true and try to play mind games with them. And #2) it just doesn't matter any more -if it ever did. I know he's lying, I probably even know why he's lying. It just pisses me off! Why do some people feel the need to ... well, it doesn't matter, right? It's just grrrr! So frustrating. Ah well, the Universe has a way of making it all even - you really do get what you give. So, no matter how frustrating he is, I'll treat him civil because things come back to us two-fold.

I wasn't sure if I was going to keep his last name after the divorce or go back to my maiden name. I'm looking forward to using my maiden name again. I think even after Bryan and I get married I'll keep it, just hyphenate it. My only argument for keeping his name was that it's a hassle having to get my name changed on legal documents and I didn't want to do all that just to have to turn around and do it all again a year later. If I change back to my maiden name and hyphenate, I won't have to do it again. So win-win! Yay.

That's about it for now. Y'all have a pleasant tomorrow!

Back in September of '99 I was living in a little farm town near the "thumb area" of Michigan. I'd just gotten my first computer a few months earlier, was still addicted to the internet, particularly messenger services... ICQ to be exact. I guess it's still in use, but back then it was pretty popular. The great thing about it was that you could 'browse' for people to talk to. I can't recall exactly how it worked, just that it was nothing to get messages from people you didn't know. A lot of my messages were from young boys in India and especially Turkey who typed incredibly bad broken English. However, this particular time I got a message from a man who lived in Toledo. I was very single at the time and so busy flirting with other men on ICQ that I barely gave him notice, but we did chat.

I remember he said he'd just gotten back from some festival. Bratwurst and beer was involved.

The thing is, we continued chatting on other days. Then we switched to using MSN Messenger because it was easier. We became friends. I told him about things that were going on in my life, he told me... well, he never really told me too much. I knew he was married when I first met him, but he said there were problems although he never really went into too much detail. Even after we started talking on the phone every now and then he didn't share too much of his personal thoughts with me; but he had no problems listening to me bitch and whine about the various things I needed to vent about.

He got divorced soon after I got married. I remember when I told him I was getting  married he got pissed. He never said "don't do it", but he was upset. It wasn't that he or I thought anything was going to develop beyond friendship, I think he was just upset that I was being so stupid. He knew the problems me and Mr. Wonderful were already having. By then we were good enough friends that had he said "Kim, I think you're making a mistake" I probably would have listened. But that's neither here nor there anymore.

We all know that people come into our lives for a reason. Usually we don't know or appreciate that reason until the person is out of our lives, if even then. I'm no different. He was in my life from mid September of '99 until I got an email from him in August of '05 saying "I'm going off the internet for a while. Please don't call or contact me." If it was actually from him, I don't know, but there was no more direct contact. It totally threw me for a loop. We were the best of friends for six years, then I was being told to have nothing to do with him and not given an explanation. I was devastated. But I got through it.

Looking back now, I can see why he was in my life. He was my shoulder to cry on despite the fact that we'd never met in person. There were so many times in my life that just talking to him about some menial nothing thing was enough to make my dreary day better. Maybe there were times I did the same for him. That's what friends do: sometimes just knowing there's someone out there who cares about you makes it all easier.

Anyway, the day I left my husband I kept my computer hooked up until it was time to pack up the car. About an hour before I unplugged I got an e mail from a woman who explained a lot of things to me about him. Turns out he wasn't completely truthful about several things. I felt no bitterness about it... why should I? I was about to head into my new life and nothing was bringing me down, especially some lies by omission. Besides, after having spent so many years living with a pathological liar, his petty lies didn't hurt... and the fact that a year had passed since he cut me out of his life made it easier too. If anything, I felt confused. I had always believed we had the kind of friendship that lent itself to complete honesty, and it turned out I was wrong. Not to make light of it, but the world didn't come to a crashing halt because of the things he didn't tell me, so in the end did it really matter? I was just glad to have so much come into the light finally.

I would like to believe that despite the things I didn't know, we were in each others lives for those years because we needed what the other had to offer at that time. Even if it was just the "idea" of what the other person was, it was enough to get us through. It was enough for me.

This morning within five minutes of me logging on I got a pop-up message saying I had received an e mail from the woman who last contacted me over a year ago. Before my Hotmail even finished loading I knew what it was going to say. Unfortunately, I was right. My friend is dead.

He was 55 years old. How or why don't matter, it was of natural causes. And now I'm not sure how I feel. Numb. Detached. Unbelieving. Grateful to have known him, to have had him in my life, in whatever capacity. He may not have been perfect, he had flaws as we all do, but he was a good man and that's how I'll always remember him. As my friend.

James E Karamol

11-4-51/ 10-19-07

We hauled Nigel (the Mazda) up to the mechanic's - a 20 mile hike. To save nearly a hundred dollars over what it would have cost to have it towed, we rented a tow dolly. Know what? They're not made for little foreign cars. We got the ramps down and the tow straps ready, then Bryan tried to drive the car up onto the dolly. This is what happened:

 Outlined in white is the front bumper. We first put it in the back of the truck, then decided to put it in the car because it's so light. Anyway, it started to rip off, so we just unhooked it. Below, in pictures, is what we had to do to get it loaded:

Bryan had to jack up the back of the car so we could put longer ramps under the wheels because when he tried to drive it up, the underframe hit against a couple bolt thingys on the ramps of the dolly.

After it was loaded, we had to jack up the back to get the ramps out again.

But, there he is, all loaded.... minus the front bumper

I said a little prayer before we left: Please, God, let us get to where we have to go without the car falling off the dolly. And we did. Of course, once we got to the mechanic's we had to do it all again - but it was easier.

Then, Sunday, we went to Six Flags. This time we took Bryan's daughters, a friend for the younger daughter and his grandson. Because the oldest daughter is so much like her mother I almost dreaded going, however it wasn't bad at all. I had a very good time, in fact. Me and the oldest daughter got along pretty good. We're not best friends or anything, but at least she treated me nicely. Keep in mind: she's actually his 35 year old step daughter, although he's pretty much the only "dad" she's had.

I'm not going to post any pictures of the family. . .  Bryan can do that on his blog if he wants (I don't like posting other people's kids pictures here). However, I will put up some of the generic pics. Fright Fest '07:

I have been watching a lot of movies lately. Again. This time I've been watching them for free right here on my computer.  The picture quality isn't the best, it isn't a large screen, and the movies are shown in parts, but I'm okay with that.

So, what have I seen lately? Lemme tell ya! I recorded World Trade Center on the DVR when we had Showtime free a couple weekends ago. Finally watched it Sunday. It was one of those movies I wanted to see but wasn't sure I wanted to see... you know what I mean? Had to be in the right frame of mind for it. For those of you who don't know what it's about - Port Authority cops first on the scene of the Twin Towers, before they knew it was a jetliner that hit the first tower. Anyhow, a small group of them are in the concourse between the North and South Towers when they collapse and this is the story of two of them that were rescued. It's a pretty good story, just not anything I would want to watch twice.

Becoming Jane:       you have to be a fan of Jane Austin to like this. And according to everything I read about her after watching the movie, the main plot of it was actually all conjecture. It was okay.

Just My Luck:       Lindsay Lohan. Girl who is super lucky kisses a guy and loses her luck - but the guy she kisses, who couldn't get much more unlucky, gets her luck. Dorky story-line. Only watch it if you're super bored.

Georgia Rule:     another Lindsay Lohan movie. This one, however, was 98% better than I thought it would be, and I was expecting it to be good. A totally different story-line than I expected, and I'm not sure what exactly I expected. Go ahead and watch it.

Knocked Up:     Another dorky story-line. Predictable. The guys are funny ... mostly because they're goofball screw-ups. Overall, not impressed. Watch it if you have it, just don't expect too much.

Wild Hogs:    Funny, funny, funny. Some parts are pretty run-of-the-mill guy movie stuff, but overall it was really good. Go ahead and rent it.

Reign On Me:     Excellent. Adam Sandler is a man who has retreated into his own little world after losing his wife and kids in one of the planes that crashed on 9-11. None of the goof-ball over-the-top that you expect from him. Have tissues handy.

We went to Bryan's brothers "farm" for a pig roast Saturday. It was a good time, as usual. This time we decided to take Mac with us. He hadn't gone "bye-bye" for a long time and I think Bryan just wanted his puppy to go with him, lol.

Anyhow, I've had Mac for...  lemme think here a minute... got him in September of '03. So I"ve had him four years and he was ... three or four when I got him, which makes him either 7 or 8 now, right? Okay, the only thing important about this is that he's a golden retriever and this was the first time I've had him near water. I wasn't sure how he'd react. I know.... I k now! It's kind of an inbred thing for him... hello ! water-proof coat! Anyhow, a few minutes after we got to the farm I walked with him down to the pond and he walked right in. Got him to come out almost immediately and he stuck around with us while we ate and visited. Then after about an hour I noticed he was missing.

He went back to the water. OMG! He had a good time. I'll bet that was the best day of his life at least since I've had him, lol. Well, not including the day I rescued him from the shelter, because that was the luckiest day of his life. I"ve never seen him having such a good time. My guess is he spent at least three hours playing in the pond, chasing frogs and small fish, running around in the muck. I'm posting pictures below so you can see what a truly happy dog looks like, lol.

This is fun.. even if you've done this already, do it again. You'll get a kick out of it.

And for the record, I bombed on the second question...  I hope y'all do better.

Exercise of the brain is as important as exercise of the muscles. As we grow older, it's important that we keep mentally alert. The saying: "If you don't use it, you will lose it" also applies to the brain, so…

Below is a very private way to gauge you loss or non-loss of intelligence. So take the following test presented here and determine if you are losing it or still a MENSA candidate.

Ok, relax… clear your mind, and begin.

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Q: What do you put in a toaster?
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A: The answer is bread. If you said "toast," then give up now and go do something else before you hurt yourself. If you said "bread", go to the next question.

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Q: Say "silk" five times. Now, spell "silk." What do cows drink?
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A: Cows drink water. If you said "milk," please do not attempt the next question. Your brain is obviously over-stressed and may even overheat. It may be that you need to content yourself with reading something more appropriate such as "Children's World." If you said "water", then proceed to the next question.

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Q: If a red house is made with red bricks, a blue house is made with blue bricks, a pink house is made with pink bricks, a black house is made with black bricks, what is a greenhouse made with?
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A: Greenhouses are made from glass. If you said "green bricks," what the heck are you still doing here reading these questions? If you said "glass", then go on to the next question.

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Q: Twenty years ago, a plane is flying at 20,000 feet over Germany. If you will recall, Germany at the time was politically divided into West Germany and East Germany. Anyway, during the flight, TWO of the engines fail. The pilot, realizing that the last remaining engine is also failing, decides on a crash landing. Unfortunately, the engine fails before he has time and the plane crashes smack in the middle of "no-man's-land" between East Germany and West Germany. Where would you bury the survivors—East Germany or West Germany or in "no-man's-land?"
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A: You don't, of course, bury the survivors. If you said ANYTHING else, you are a real dunce and you must NEVER try to rescue anyone from a plane crash. Your efforts would not be appreciated… If you said, "Don't bury the survivors" then proceed to the next question.

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Q: If the hour hand on a clock moves 1/60th of a degree every minute, then how many degrees will the hour hand move in one hour?
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A: One degree. If you said "360 degrees" or anything else other than "one degree," you are to be congratulated on getting this far, but you are obviously out of your league. Turn your pencil in and exit the room. Everyone else proceed to the final question.

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Q: Without using a calculator—You are driving a bus from London to Milford Haven in Wales. In London, 17 people get on the bus. In Reading, six people get off the bus and nine people get on. In Swindon, two people get off and four get on. In Cardiff, 11 people get off and 16 people get on. In Swansea, three people get off and five people get on. In Carmathen, six people get off and three get on. You then arrive at Milford Haven. Now, what was the name of the bus driver?
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A: Oh, for Heaven's sake… It was you!

I think this one might be short. Probably not sweet. But short.

I like my job. I like the people I work with. Most of the time. However, I only understand what they're saying maybe 45% of the time. Two of the women are older than me, so it isn't that they're using some slang that only people under 30 understand. No, they're speaking what they believe is Americanized English, like most of us who were born and raised here.

They, however, have no difficulty understanding each other. Two or three of them will be talking and the next thing I know they're laughing. I haven't let on to them that I usually don't have a clue what they're saying, so I'm not getting paranoid that they're talking about me. It's just that I feel left out because I not only didn't understand the punchline, I missed the lead-up as well.

When I first moved down here, Bryan would pronounce the word "here" as "her" as a joke. Or instead of saying "I don't care" he'd say "I don't cur". Well, I found out it's not a joke. People actually pronounce those words that way. At least twelve dozen times a day I want to correct their language. I've heard one or two teachers pronounce those words like that, too, and it makes me cringe.

The thing is, these women just don't separate their words. Sentences are almost like they're blending all their words together to form one giant word. Except that ... well, it's difficult to explain. Little or no lip movement to differentiate one word from the others. Almost song-like but not lyrical.

So, I just mosey around like I'm in my own little world. If I ask a question that I need an answer to and I don't understand what I've been told, I ask again as if I have a major hearing problem. Same when I've been given instructions to do something... if I don't understand I just ask again.

Also, Lillie, the kitchen manager, has a rough vocal tone. Even when she's not reprimanding you for something it sounds like she is because of the tone of her voice. I have a difficult time figuring out if I was just given a thrashing or if she's just giving me friendly advice. Unless I'm feeling overly emotional I take it as advice, friendly or not. I've also discovered she's a bit of a control freak... likes things done HER way, and that's cool. Unless I like my way better, lol, and it doesn't cause too much friction.

When I was first hired, I was told by "the boss" that Lillie isn't a good manager, but she's very clean. Well, I don't think it's that she's a bad manager, she just rates low on the "people meter" and that's just because of her control issues. However, we do have the absolute cleanest kitchen in the district, and no one will get sick because we haven't washed our hands or used gloves to handle food. And that's a fact, Jack.