new fashion, teeth removal

i got four teeth removed today. now i have room to move other teeth around. joshua took me out for a last meal at lunch and then drove me around. i had to go to the orthodontist to get my wire removed, have the teeth extracted, then go back to get the wire put back in. they gave me hydrocodone, and a lot of it so i am expecting a little pain when the drugs wear off. i could not feel my face and kept drooling for the first hour. it would not be so bad had i not still been bleeding. finally i just got a towel and let myself drool. i have to keep gauze in the empty spots and that makes me look like a walrus.
last week of school! we celebrate by going to defcon.

i have an office

the housewarming party went well, many family members drove up from tulsa to visit. my mother did not end up making it but she plans to come up at a later time. we ate food and talked until late in the night. this morning i got up to have breakfast with bob and lee before they left town. the party was a good idea. my house is in better shape, i feel good that my relatives like me enough to drive up to visit, and i got joshua to start cleaning the garage. bob also brought up my old moped so that i can fix it up. today must be spent doing homework and getting payroll done.
the boys are climbing water towers to switch out equipment to upgrade the network.
i feel like i am finally getting caught up from the begining of the summer when i got so overwhelmed. i hope this feeling continues as there is still much more work to do. i finally got my office cleaned up so i can work comfortably from home. the missing piece is the cpu that shorted and somehow took out my ups. i was going to replace the power supply with one from work when i realized the the little shuttles have special power supplies. now i have to decide if i want to keep the little shuttle and get a new supply or move to a different box. i like those little mini itx boards and i felt close to that shuttle because i spec'ed it and built it myself.

liberal in kansas

tomorrow is my housewarming party and already my family has started arriving. bob came up last night because he wanted to have time to wander around the lake. the easiest way to get a visit from bob is to send info about the nearest lake and he will show up with a boat and fishing rods. mom and lee are driving up tonight as are my grandpa and uncle. everyone seems to want to hang out in lawrence. i just wanted them to come visit, i had no idea the prospect would be so enticing. joshua has helped around the house and even cleaned the garage a bit despite the fact that he would rather play with the new toy he is building for defcon. we are headed out there next weekend and he just had to enter a contest. i have never been to vegas for work before so this should be fun. am i allowed to write off meals eaten in a casino called circus circus? we got the paperwork back from the irs (finally) approving our 501(c)4 status. i am officially an employee of a non-profit organization.
on a happy note, i finished ny constitutional law class today and turned in the paper i wrote for a final project. bob asked me about my subject over breakfast this morning and i had to tell him that his daughters were liberal and he did not want to know that information. he replied that at least one of his daughters was a liberal. my answer was that cheryl followed my lead and then that my paper was about how the death penalty violated the eighth amendment. that was enough of an answer for him.

another weekend gone

spent the weekend in tulsa working on the rent house. that was fun. they left the place half way clean but it still required 2 days work by 3 people to get it back in shape. i was mad and wanted to send a bill to him for $3000 for all of the late fees, cleaning, and repair work he owes us but joshua said just to calm down. he killed my japanese maple in the back yard. i called an arborist to see about rescuing it and he said it was a $1500 tree. we have new tenants moving in next week so i guess i am not really mad.
this coming weekend a few of my family members and a couple of friends are stopping by to see the new place. joshua has informed me that there is no hope of getting the house finished in time. he of little faith. usually all i need is for someone to tell me i can not do something for it to get done.

another normal day in kansas

i wrote about a dog on a motorcycle a few days ago and i truely believed that was the oddest thing i would see in kansas for quite some time. it turns out i was wrong. i attend classes in topeka at a lovely university called washburn. it is the only municipal university left in the united states. see fred phelps is the exception, not the norm in topeka. in order for me to get to topeka i have two choices, the turnpike or the country highway. i would rather take the country highway everytime but it does take a few minutes longer so i tend to not go that route in the mornings. after school is another matter, with all of the time in the world i almost always take the winding road that takes me past the goat farm, the buffalo farm, the chicken farm, the people selling hay, those selling tomatoes, and just about everything in between. needless to say, i have seen a lot on that country road. i had not, however, until yesterday, seen a peacock waiting by the side of the road for me to get out of the way so he could cross. i had no idea peacocks knew to look both ways before crossing

rambling part two

so i have been having these sleepless nights, as mentioned in several previous posts, and i usually end up watching movies and eating odd leftovers out of the fridge. the other night while watching swat i got a plate with a little dollop of mayo and a few slices of turkey and cheese to dip (no bread). it was not the 'real' cheese that joshua likes; i bought some fake, processed american cheese slices and i do not care who knows i like fake cheese. these are the areas where there are a few differences between the professor's son and the girl from the wrong side of town. can i help it if i am attracted to smart types who grew up in grosse point and lawrence? this one happens to have had a little easier time growing up. never did he return from school to find that mom had not paid the water bill (or electricity, or gas) and that there was likely nothing to eat in the fridge. this is why to this day i still love to grab anything out of the pantry or fridge and see what i can throw together. during high school we used to make pasta and melt butter and parm cheese on top because that was all there was. another odd trick i learned for after school snacks was to spread frosting or peanut butter and honey on toast or crackers. we did what we could. joshua turns his nose up at many of my cooking trials like that. he has less sense of adventure when it comes to emptying the leftovers into a pot, adding sauce, and calling it dinner. for him there must be a recipe and a timer involved. not to say i do not love him for his silliness, but i still eat peanut butter and honey sandwiches. there are those rare times when i am hormonal that i think he may be judging me for my white trash upbringing. then i remember that i am more cultured, better read, and have more social grace than he. so what if i still eat a tomato and mayo sandwich? i can be white trash in my own home. he ate pork and beans with hot dogs for dinner tonight.

man's best friend

i saw a man and his dog riding a motorcycle today. the man parked the bike, set up an umbrella for the pooch and went inside. amazingly the dog stayed put and the man returned shortly to continue being a freak on a motorcycle with his dog. and this happened in topeka, not crazy lawrence where everyone has an issue (which i will blog about as soon as i have energy).
ramblings part two will come another day as i am beat today.

rambling part one

the last few days have been very odd for me and i keep meaning to blog about them for a little perspective. this may end up being a long session so i might break it into 2 or 3 parts. check back if i end in the middle of a thought. joshua does that to me all the time...we will be in a conversation and all of the sudden he stops talking and...
so back to my ramblings.
my sleep patterns have been screwy the last few months because of demands at home, a little frustration/depression, and the fact that i tend to be a night owl taking morning classes. i know that sentence is out of balance but my english professor is not reading this so i will leave it.
a combination of reading about george's escapades in cali and watching several movies about the socal area have me reminiscing about my days living in san diego. a few nights ago during a very late night movie marathon i watched SWAT whiched opened with the scene of those guys robbing the bank wearing kevlar and shooting cops with armor piercing rounds. it really happened in la. the guys robbed a bank of america and killed a few cops. that memory brought back others of the news footage of the car chases that would shut down the freeways seemingly ever other week or so. the media always had a helicopter there almost before the police air units showed up. they would replay the incident on the nightly news a few times just to make sure we all saw it. i was not living in san diego when the guy stole the tank but i have watched that several times on those police chase shows. at some point one of those chases ended at the border after some idiot not remembering the 30 minute wait to cross raced to mexico with his kid then held a knife to the toddler's throat to bargin for passage. i was also in san diego during the rodney king riots in la which actually effected san diego about as much as they effected dallas. some kids left class at ucsd and sat on the 405 blocking access north but that was all. my grandmother was visiting her sister in van nuys so i was a bit nervous about the entire area burning down. there are many more fun things i remember about sunny california, like the helicopter that landed on the freeway during rush hour and held me up for 2 hours, but none of them are experiences i would like to go through again. i guess the point i am trying to make is this...how did all of the nut jobs end up in on place? i remember now...they heard a voice telling them to go west and they were stopped by the ocean. so why all of the fuss about california? if there is any confusion please take it up with george as she is the current expert on la.
joshua has been talking about new zealand. if things fall through with the current company or go so well we are not needed for day-to-day operations he wants to work in new zealand for a bit. i told him new zealand was fine or oregon. i had a blast on my short trip to the oregon coast. more on that in a bit.

lazy sunday afternoon

when things are going well i tend to not blog as much. that gives the impression that life around here is always horrible. far from the truth. we are doing well, happy and productive. joshua has been working on a new project for fun and that has kept him content. he needed to find stuff in the garage which led to a cleaning day yesterday and help for me in moving boxes, hanging pictures, and generally getting the place in order. except that now i have move all kinds of things out of the garage and the place is cluttered again. as soon as i finish the shelves things should move into place.
instead of working on the house i spent most of the day up at the hospital with the proud new parents, andy and larissa, holding little detroit brown. they have not decided on a name officially but andy has been calling him detroit; i call him junior, junior brown. all fun aside, i need to get into the kitchen as i had planned to have several meals ready for the browns for when they bring the little guy home. i thought it would be nice to not have to cook the first few nights.

life is good

the teeth are getting better. i had a nice day and i even got some work done. today it was easier being me. i woke up refreshed, got a few hours of work in, had lunch with andy and joshua (larissa showed up at the end), went to the office to help out, had a meeting with our grant writer (very cool woman, an okie), and then managed to have a great dinner and go to the movies with the browns. every time i get down about life or anything the tide seems to turn and all is well. and i now have my very own extension at my home office. i can receive calls "at work" like a true professional. no one need know i am probably in my robe or pjs drinking coffee and reading blogs or doing homework.

not on vacation

so i have not been much in the mood for posting these last few days. we were supposed to go on vacation to the grand tetons this week and last minute changes had to be made for work. i was not too terribly upset about it but joshua has been taking it very hard. he has been unbearable the last few days. he works long hours, comes home demanding food, and then reads or sits in front on the computer. now i love this man dearly but lately i want to strangle him. he called today and i was so upset that all i could do was rant about all of the stuff he wanted me to do for him. it really was not all that much but i sort of blew it out of wack so that i looked better. it is not that i like being mad or fighting with him, but lately all i seem to do is demand that he offer more. i am going to try to be nicer to him tonight and see if maybe he is just feeling the same way. this has been a rough time for us and we should not fight simply because life has dealt us a few blows.

i remember

for those of you who came of age in the late 80s early 90s i have a recommendation for you...watch pump up the volume again. it makes more sense now that i am older, but mostly the music is cool. oh, and who knew one of zappa's kids was in it? i really thought i could change the world after watching that movie for the first time.