Insomnia is for the birds!

I worked too many long days this week. Yesterday I was swamped off and on all day dealing with an issue related to how we select people for different roles in our environment -- which controls what kinds of resources they can access. And then at the end of the day we had a Director's Meeting where I was presenting some of the Project Management changes we are starting to move towards to give the Director's a chance to provide some feedback. As a result, all day my attention level was exceedingly high.

When I finally got home for work, I ended up doing more work because I hadn't had a chance to get to some of the tasks I had wanted to get to during the day. By the time I went to bed, I was pretty tired, but wound up. I managed to fall asleep without too much difficulty, but then woke up at, like, 4:00 a.m.! Of course I just could not fall back to sleep. Instead, my head was full of horrible work things, like Home Org vs Ck Distribution Org vs Timesheet Org! How horrible is that? I finally gave up trying to sleep and just snuggled in my covers and complained at the cats for not being willing to cuddle with me. They are such traitors!

Today I worked at home in the a.m. -- very productive. Cats were once again traitors and stayed in the living room all morning! Lazy beasts. Now I'm in an Office 2007 Pilot Training Class. I quite like the new version, despite my desire not to.

Tonight I shall attempt to clean the house a bit in prep for the Quasar of Rage's birthday festivities. I do not want to face the wrath of QOR.

Just the general news...

Not much going on right now. This week has been a busy one at work. I'm starting to get new projects assigned to me and the VPIT and I are trying to work out some initial PMO frameworks to use to attack at least our current and FY08 pending projects. So, the challenge is managing these new tasks with my current Project BOB tasks. I also want to find a viable web-based project management system that incorporates project portfolio management, too. Since I have no budget for this, it will be a challenge.

On the social side of life, a few of us girls will be getting together on Sunday to celebrate the Quasar of Rage's birthday (QOR). While I look forward to this, I do not look forward to cleaning the apartment -- thus, my efforts shall be the bare minimum.

And that's really all I have to report at this point.

Stop all that TEXT!

I decided there was too much text on this blog and not enough pictures. So here's Keiko, appreciating Major's birthday present -- an original print by our friend, Mark Z. Though a tough critic, Keiko ultimately gives it a paws up.

Dinner with Linda

I had a great night tonight. Went out to dinner with our Linda (of the buck on the dashboard fame). We went to Pacific Catch, where I drowned myself in their delicious Dark and Stormy cocktail -- or cocktails, if I must confess -- and sweet potatoe fries. Linda is a total work-a-holic, so getting her out to dinner is always fun because she gets to chill for a little while and I get to hear some great stories. Linda is a wonderful story teller and I just wish I could some how put her voice into my telling of her stories, but I fail. It was lots of fun and not just because of the two Pisco Sours (Linda) and three Dark and Stormies (me).

Then I came home and was somehow inspired to ride my recently re-powered lifecycle. Well, I can't really count 12 minutes as exercise, but at least I got on the thing!

Now I'm here doing a rare blog update and with really not much to say. Keiko is racing and leaping around the place as if she was being chased by some horrific monster while Katja looks on with a certain disdain and distant humor and I sit on my new bed typing away. A lovely domestic scene in the Snarfffable household.

We are over the week hump and now I just have Thursday and Friday to trudge through. But I look forward to the rest of the week... dinner with the Quasar of Rage tomorrow night, perhaps a quiet night of battlegrounds Friday night and then a cute little 1-year old's first birthday party on Saturday. Life could definitely be much, much worse -- seriously.

Bedroom Oasis on its Way!

My new bedroom furniture arrived today and is now set up and looking lovely (I'd post a picture, but frankly I can't get a decent angle), As always, the furniture appears bigger in the room then in the show room, but there is still plenty of room . I just have to decide if I want to rearrange at all. For now it is okay. I just need to decide on my paint, so I can redo the walls -- they are in dire need of a new coat of paint. I'm still leaning towards something in the green family with maybe brown and red accents. What I think I'd really like is brown velvet curtains with an under curtain of sheer dark red, like a brick red. That would look cool if the green was right, though Walker thinks the red will cancel out the green making it all look more brown... what do I know of color? I shall have to experiment... maybe instead of red I should consider a pale and light, but bright, green, like lime or something. Ah, we shall see, we shall see. I shall go to the paint shop tomorrow for the base color and start there.

On another note, Linda was back on site this week after a few weeks of away that turned out to be most unpleasant for her -- Poor Linda! The low point was when she and Sister Judy (her sister-in-law) were driving along a highway in Montana somewhere at a mere 78 m.p.h. in a nice convertible rental car when suddenly they smashed into a large buck! Of course the car was totaled, though thankfully, and through some miracle, neither Linda or Judy were hurt. We can, therefore, offer up our sympathies to the poor buck. But, for those of you who know Linda, you can imagine her speeding along only to find a large male deer in her lap! Poor Judy had to be driven off in the police cruiser -- I won't say why, because it would be indelicate -- but Sister Judy did note the lack of legroom in the back there off the cruiser!

Speaking of Linda, we talked a bit about my plan for a trip out to Montana. It is currently planned for early Fall. Her husband is quite the outdoorsman and we've talked a bit about me going hunting or fishing with him. But to be frank, I'm a soft touch, regardless of my marksmanship. And then, when Linda starting talking about hunting geese, and how geese mate for life and that when you hunt geese you therefore try to get both of them at the same time... well, how could I? My hope is for fishing... I think I could do that! I'm so looking forward to visiting them... it will be so cool to go to Montana.

Cleaning/Purging is so lame...

SP took took over 10 bags of books away today. She is going to attempt to sell them and make some cash for herself. I hope so gets some good cash back. I have done a lot in the bedroom though it seems I still have a long way to go. I cleaned up the hall closet a bit so I could put the craft boxes in there. Not enough room for the comics so for the last few hours I've been working on the bedroom closet. I've thrown out a bunch of crap I was keeping for no good reason, dumped some clothing I haven't worn in ages and put the comics on the shelves. I'm now cleaning the walls with bleach to help with some of the mildew that seems to always grown in there. I even swept the closet floor. Sheesh. I feel just a bit too productive.

But today has not been all work and no play. SP, Gabe-ish and I went out to the cafe by the beach for breakfast in the a.m. Then, in between spurts of cleaning, I was playing battlegrounds in WoW so I could get a better weapon, which I have now acquired! It's a very lovely longsword. My pally is quite happy. I shall continue in the battlegrounds until I get some better armor, as well.

My final goal for the day will be to finish the closet and throw out some more crap in the bedroom before I go to bed. Marc will come over tomorrow night to help me dismantle the futon frame and get it down to the garage.

Bedroom Transformation Underway

After a long time of wanting to get some proper bedroom furniture -- still have my old futon frame, an end table that's wobbling and no dressers -- I finally took the plunge and purchased a bedroom set. I had been shopping around for awhile and had thought I wanted this nice, heavy bed from Pottery Barn, but when I came across a Room & Board catalog and saw the Lowry collection my mind was immediately changed. Even so, I hedged and hedged until I finally went to the store with Abby and took the plunge. I ended up getting the bed in queen, the 5 drawer-tall dresser and one end table. It gets delivered this week.

Needless to say, when you spend a significant chunk of change on new furniture you get the idea that perhaps it's time to do something about the existing condition of the room. And those of you who know me know this won't be pretty. First, I want to get all the books out of the bedroom. I can't put them all in the living room, so all there is to do is mass purging. I'm up to 6+ bags of books and still I purge. It's painful getting rid of my books, but I've tried to take the approach that if I haven't reread it in the past several years, then it needs to go or be passed along to a friend who will enjoy the reading. I'm considering posting something on Craig's list about the books... something like, "bags and bags of books available for free - you pick up."

After purging the books it will be time to get the craft supplies and comic books -- both of which are stored in plastic containers -- put away in the hall closet (a disaster area of its own). Then it's just a matter of dismantling the old futon frame and getting it down to the garage to be disposed of. How does one get rid of junk like this in this city?

After the room is purged of it's clutter, cleansed and new furniture delivered, I shall paint. I have some ideas, but they haven't panned out so far and I don't want to paint until the furniture is in so i can make sure the colors will be right. Any suggestions for a nice, relaxing bedroom color scheme?