The Blog With No Name

…with my sad little blog? It’s been so neglected. And here I am, writing the clichéd “oh my poor neglected blog” post too.

I could track my goals for this year – lose some more weight, feed the troops better, reduce clutter. How to measure is the question – the more quantifiable the goal, the better chance of success.

So:

• I want to lose 18 pounds. This will, I hope, be accomplished by doing a new exercise routine, and continuing to improve my diet.
• I want to make one “new” meal per week. It’s an extra win if it’s in the crock pot.
• I want to clear 25% of my file cabinets out and scan/shred the contents (that is one half of a lateral drawer).

We Shall See…

I’ve started using Google Reader to follow my gadget/tech/personal finance blogs. Wow, has it cut down on the time it takes me to see what’s interesting! More time for Facebook (arg). This is just a crazy month so far, thankfully it’s almost over! I still have these things to do:

• Junior High School PTA Bylaw Revision
• Breadbaking Demonstration
• Jenny Lind Chapel Budget for 2009
• Arrange a certain social event for March
• (too too embarrassing) put away the blankety-blank Christmas decorations!

Today is the day I get the by-laws done, if I have to stay up to midnight!!! Wish me luck!

If you have car trouble, and have to call your insurance company’s roadside assistance, take a picture of the truck when it gets there. That way, if the complete f***ing asshole who patches your flat tire also happens to take off one standard lugnut from each tire and replace it with one for which your dealer doesn’t have a socket, so that when you have driven all the way across town for a tire rotation that can’t be performed, you can call the jerk and have HIM come rotate the tires, instead of paying another $40 (and driving across town again) to have the dealer do who-knows-what to finally get the things off.

Bastards.

So there has been this bike lurking around in our alley for a few days – I think it started out as an OK bike, but the seat is a little beat up, and the squishy stuff on the handles is worn away, and so on. We’ve all been staring at it, wondering to whom it belongs, why did they leave it here. Charles came home from camping out last night, and asked me whether I had loaned *his* bike out to anyone. Turns out his bike has been stolen right out of our garage, and whoever did it just left his old one there next to our driveway!! Duh!!!

The scary thing is, this is the second time such a thing has happened. The first time was last summer; our babysitter’s bike was stolen right out of our front yard.

The moral of this story is, I need to make sure the garage is locked more often. Don’t let the kiddies take the key out there and then leave it unlocked.

the kiddies breeze through multiplication flash cards, until they get to this one. My daughter’s 4th-grade teacher couldn’t remember it either. What is it about 8×7?

The Daughter is at her New Best Friend’s house, again. I expect adoption papers in the mail any day.

I started to clean my office at work (translation: all the shit that people dump in there? I’m getting rid of it, usually by putting it in their offices). I fully expect serious flak for this on Monday.

I’ve just heard that our mortgage company (Countrywide) is being acquired. This makes me nervous.

I get to spend tomorrow at an IMAX movie, then at a snow-tubing party. Charles gets to spend the night at a Cub Scout lockin. Guess who is going to feel better on Sunday?

(This is where I smile) I’m signed up for another calligraphy class, taught by THE GUY in this area. I am absurdly pleased by this, given that the last time (which was the first time too) that I took a class I did exactly NO follow-up practice. Sure did manage to buy lots of books/pens/other toys, though. Now that I have a nice area in the basement, complete with a tilted table and so on, maybe I can be better about practicing.  We Shall See.

The good thing about my gym is that it has at least one of every exercise/weight machine ever invented (did you know there is a machine for working your neck muscles? I didn’t). The bad thing about my gym is that when the power goes out, and you are upstairs in the back, you now get to negotiate around at least one of every exercise/weight machine ever invented, in complete darkness.

Luckily, the power is back on (our house was out too), but in that hour I discovered that we had no batteries, only one working flashlight, no oil or wicks for our fancy oil lamps, and were generally pathetically unprepared. It was only an hour this time; last time it was seventeen hours, and the next time it could be DAYS. So guess what my priority is in the next few days?

Everyone seems to be relatively healthy.

I taught the kiddies to play Mastermind yesterday, and they both enjoy it, yay! (the actual board game, not an online version)

We’re having a quiet Thanksgiving dinner here with my mom and aunt; possibly the smallest gathering we’ve had since we’ve been married. As usual, I think the dinner will be overshadowed by the appetizers. My mother and aunt always channel their mother in circumstances like this; their idea of an adequate amount of food is equal to approximately six times the amount of food truly necessary. Lots of leftovers, that’s all I can say.

We’ve got five years of Babylon 5 DVDs to watch (Charles and the kiddies are farther along than I am, what a surprise. I still can’t stand Sinclair, so I have to force myself to watch the first season.)

I am officially old; I have my first prescription for reading glasses (or bifocals, if I want to go that route). I will soon be that person you see walking around with her glasses perched on her head, looking for her glasses.

After spending the past month fitfully, resentfully, haphazardly filing insurance/bank/school/etc papers, I have decided that my new year’s resolution will be to GO DIGITAL! I have an external hard drive and a shiny new scanner. NO MORE FILING.

I have started my Christmas bread list. So far there are AT LEAST 20 people on it. I better get to work.

The choir has begun taking communion in the choir loft, to save a particular member the trial of going up and down the steps unnecessarily. Today, the assistants finished with the choir and went over to the organ to wait for Pam to have a break. HA! Breaks? Breaks are for weaklings! She didn’t miss a beat, not with her hands or her feet. Pam rocks; if I have failed to mention that in the past, please know it now.

For some reason, I am on the Endowment Board for the Jenny Lind Chapel. I think there is a legal requirement that at any given time at least one person with my last name has some involvement. So anyway, like all old buildings it’s basically falling apart. It needs MONEY. It needs a huge boost to its Endowment Fund, so we don’t have to go to the bishop, hat in hand, every year to make up the shortfall in operating expenses. So we have this meeting. Never have I been to a meeting where so much time was spent discovering that so little was known. It turns out that no one knows 1. who owns the actual property (grounds and building) 2. who is in charge of the endowment fund (synod? endowment board?) 3. who can pay the bills 4. who can actually elect officers to the endowment board et cetera et cetera. All of these things are supposed to be determined by a synod council subcommittee that actually ceased to exist in the 70s, or maybe the 90s, or might still exist, it just depends on which copy of the trust document or bylaws you are looking at. The Bishop’s Assistant, the guy who GOES TO SYNOD COUNCIL MEETINGS, doesn’t know. I ASK YOU.  I kept thinking, “let’s CALL THE SYNOD TREASURER, or someone like that, and ASK.” But being the youngest person in the room by, um, half a generation (it occurs to me that I might be the youngest person ever elected to this board. Must ask), and being by nature a turtle in meetings, I held my peace.

It did not help that at least one person in this meeting was fluent in meeting-babble, so I had to endure references to mission statements, stakeholders, ownership, and the rest of that crap.

TWO HOURS into this mess, at 9:00 p.m., I had had enough (no, I’d had enough about 30 minutes earlier. Oh well). My poor little monkey boy had had to come with me, as I could not find a babysitter (spouse was at our church council meeting, daughter at swim practice). He sat quietly upstairs during all this, but I needed to get him home to put him in bed. They kept talking! I fled to the strains of “feasibility study…..”

That is the glory of being a lowly admin assistant, down there at the bottom of the totem pole. Rarely do I have to endure such nightmares. I can’t imagine a job or activity that would require them on a regular basis.