How to Scare the Shit Out of Yourself in the Morning!

Have an alarm in your place that is suppose to go off to the frequency of glass breaking and make a smoothie in your smoothie maker/blender. Apparently when the alarm sales guy came by and told me that it works by detecting the frequency of broken glass, he failed to mention that it will go off with any loud noise.

So here I wake up on Sunday morning and go to make a smoothie. I was wondering what that weird noise was and didn't hear it was the alarm until I shut off the smoothie maker. I was like holy shit that is loud and ran over to turn the damn thing off. I'm sure everyone in the entire building heard it.

A couple of minutes later when the alarm company called to see if everything was alright, I gave her the code and said I was just making a smoothie and she said yeah the loud noise made the glass breaking detector go off.

From now on, as soon as I wake up, I'm turning that damn alarm off.

My Pre-Birthday Weekend

My birthday is tomorrow, but my brother asked if I could meet him downtown on Thursday night for a pre-birthday surprise. I had no idea what it was, but I told him I could take a train straight from work to the loop and be there a little after 6pm. He said that would be perfect and met me at the train station. I was surprised and delighted to find out that he got us tickets to a taping of NPR's weekly news quiz, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! My brother and I both download and listen to the weekly podcast and love the show. Paula Poundstone is our favorite panelist and my brother said he got tickets for this week instead of next because Paula was here for this taping. It was a great show and if you download the podcast, I'm sure you can hear my laugh. = )

Then on Friday, a friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to go to a Bears game. Apparently their pre-season games have started and since I hadn't been in Soldier Field since it was remodeled, I decided what the heck. The only problem was that it was overcast all day and looked like it was going to rain so I put an umbrella in my purse and when we got to the gate, they said no umbrellas were allowed outside and there were a couple huge garbage cans just filled with them. Unfortunately by the time the game was over it had started to rain. Not too bad, but just a little drizzle so we figured we could make the 15 minute walk back to the train station. Unfortunately it picked up and by the time we got to the train we were drenched.

Then I went home on Saturday for a little birthday party with the family. My aunt and uncle came over and we had a nice time. I spent the night at my parent's house because I wanted to go to the mall today, but I also wanted to go through our basement and bring some of my alcohol stash back. After lugging 6 cases of it up the stairs, I decided I would go shopping next weekend when I go home for my mom's garage sale. She has informed me that if I want to see any of the money from the things of mine that she sells, I need to be there too.

Tomorrow my parents and brother are going to drive here so we can all go out for dinner when I get home from work. And of course they are making me wait to get my presents until my actual birthday so I'm looking forward to it.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend!

Overwhelmed

I've been feeling very overwhelmed lately. At first I was really excited about how quickly everything was happening from the job to the new place, but I think I was moving a little too quickly and didn't allow myself the rest in between.

I enjoy work and what I'm doing is interesting, but we are just understaffed right now and things are piling up too quickly. Not only that, but I feel like I'm working in slo-mo. I guess these 3 years out of the corporate world have taken their toll on me. I know things are starting to come back to me, but I think I'm more frustrated with myself that I didn't start right back up where I left off.

Work coupled with family seems to be the last straw on the weekends. Even though I moved out, it doesn't cease to amaze me how much my mother can still annoy me with just one 5 minute conversation. I've talked to friends about it and I don't know if she just starts nit picking to get a rise out of me because she's bored or if she just doesn't know any better.

Then to top it all off, my car started making a weird noise about 2 weeks ago. So I had to drive my car home last weekend and my parents brought it to our trusted repair shop. $700+ later and I am not a happy camper. Sure the car runs better than it has ... since I got back from Germany, but I wanted to try to build up my savings stash before reducing it dramatically.

Well I guess I should be thankful that I have my health, or at least good health insurance.

Have a great weekend everybody!