Rebellin

Crap. I totally lost my bet with JB on the Bachelor. Meredith got kicked off last night, meaning I owe JB a massage. Oh well…. I guess there will be plenty of time for me to pay up on our VACATION!!! Kelly Joe is totally going to win now.

OK, I’ve received two comments about people not speaking French in Vancouver. I know that, but having recently lived on the Canadian border at Windsor, I know that most of the products you buy there have French on the labels, so I can impress JB while reading him labels, right? There is also French on their money, and they have French language TV shows. So there… I’ll speak French there, but it may just be to myself!

Oh my gosh, am I ready for a vacation! Just think….. This time tomorrow I could be sitting in a little coffee joint in Seattle!

I gave my brother and sister in law a website for their wedding present. I offered to update the site for them for the next year as part of their gift.

So today, my brother, Chuck, sends me a picture he wants me to add to the site. Not a big deal, right? It took all of about a minute to drop it into Frontpage, and then I hit the Publish button.

It took FOREVER to upload, and I wasn’t sure why uploading one picture would take so long. That is until I happened to go to my website, LynnetteCook.com, when I discovered that stupid Frontpage had published ChuckNAudra.com to LynnetteCook.com, and my site was GONE.

Panic ensued.

So then I went back to my LynnetteCook.com files and republished them, and it took almost a half hour to complete. *fingers crossed that everything is OK*

I added some more photos to my photos section, so check them out.

In other news, JB and I are betting on our favorites for the Bachelor. We’re shamelessly addicted to the show. I’ve got my money on Meredith, while JB is rooting for Kelly Joe. I do have to admit that Kelly is FROM Michigan, and could handle the miserable winters there, since that is where Bachelor Bob lives. (He actually lives really close to where I used to live there.) Meredith is from LA, meaning she could win, but the odds of her surviving in Michigan are slim (at least in my point of view).

Remember when I went to Lake Tahoe with JB for a sunset picnic on the beach? That still goes down as one of the best dates ever, and here is a self portrait from that outing…

Note: I played with the coloring to antique the pic. The color version actually made my face look really funky because they over-enhanced it when the film was developed. Changing the color on the pic salvaged my face, but sacrificed the sunset colors in the background. I guess that means I prefer looking better than the Lake.

I really don’t understand how weekends can fly by so fast while the weeks just drag. Perhaps it’s because my weekends have been so enjoyable over the past several months.

Here’s what I (OK, we — JB and I) did:

• Went to a bar in Carson City on Friday night and danced to rap/hip hop music. All of the songs had the same beat, so dancing got a little monotonous. It was actually rather entertaining to watch all of the white people trying to dance to it.
• Did hard manual labor for JB on Sat. morning (translation: aerated his lawn and planted some shrubs)
• Went to the UNR Homecoming football game Sat. afternoon…. Showed up in the 4th quarter due to the hard manual labor taking longer than expected, and enjoyed the college atmosphere. Next time, I plan to tail gate and sit in the student section.
• Saturday night, we went out to dinner with my brothers and their wives, and my nephew Jack. We went to Outback, where the wait was ONLY 70 minutes. (Mental note: Don’t go to chain restaurants on a Saturday night any more!)
• Sunday we went another great hike in an area called Blue Lakes. The Fall colors were great, and the dogs enjoyed swimming in a lake.

So that’s it. Not horribly exciting to read about, but it was a lot of fun to experience.

Anyone that reads this blog knows that I’m a huge fan of the Reno-Tahoe area. Well, I’m currently running two contests for work, where we’re giving away trips to Reno-Tahoe, so if you want to try your chances of experiencing it for yourself (and helping me boost entry numbers), here are the links:

Win a Reno-Tahoe Golf Adventure
Trip a Week Giveaway

(Shameless plug complete….)

Next week, I’ll be headed to Seattle and Vancouver, Canada for my first official vacation with JB. I can’t wait. In fact, my mind is already there, and I just have to wait a week for my body to catch up.

Things on the ‘Must see or do’ list for the vacation include:

• Drink coffee from an official Seattle coffee stand
• Check out that Space Needle
• Go to a Seattle club and try to look grunge with my bangs and rain coat
• Eat LOTS of sea food
• Spend every moment of sunshine/part in the clouds outside (might not be many of those)
• Sleep in
• Make an effort to speak and read French in Canada (bad words don’t count)

The list is rather short right now because we’ve decided that this will be a ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ type of vacation, so we’re really not sure how many days will be in Seattle and how many will be in Vancouver. And as long as my ‘Must see or do’ list remains short, there shouldn’t be any stress of trying to make sure we fit it all in.

Now I’m off to get the zipper on my suitcase repaired. After one too many trips of stuffing that thing as much as I could, the zipper just up and petered out on me.

Oh, and did I mention we’re going during rainy season?!

Oooooooooo……… My sister-in-law finally started a blog. Welcome to the world of blogging, Janie!

In other news, JB and I finished setting up my piano last night, and I’ve downloaded all kinds of sheet music. There will be music in my house tonight! Must practice so that I can seranade him!

Finally, I finished one of my freelance projects last week. Check it out: RenoIceDome.com.

Despite the fact that we’ve been in our new offices almost two weeks, only one out of the 40 or so employees in our offices has keys. Hence, when she leaves, she locks all the doors, which actually locks the people remaining in the office inside. When she is late for work, like she was this morning, we are locked out.

Our offices remind me of a little maze. All of our different departments are in these little compartmentalized areas connected by meandering hallways. Well, this morning, I was extremely proud to be on time to work, and found the doors to the Marketing office locked. One of our admins, who was actually inside, heard me pulling on the doors and came out to tell me through the glass that she couldn’t unlock the doors, but that the Human Resources door was open, so I could go try over there.

So I marched over to Human Resources, and then had to find my way through the maze to the Marketing office. I ran into the Director of Human Resources on my way, and teased him by saying if he didn’t want us to come into work, they could just tell us instead of locking us out.

When I finally walked into Marketing office through the back door, I threw up my hands in triumph and announced ‘I did it!’ The other two employees that had also succeeded in finding their way through the maze applauded me. That leaves four other people in our department who are probably still wandering through the maze.

Now really, would it be so difficult to give us all keys? It’s not really a great incentive for us to show up to work early or to stay late when we know we’ll either be locked in or out.

On that note, I start my day.

I went to Costco last night to get some fruit, veggies, and milk. As I was walking through the store, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks.

It was a full size Casio digital piano with weighted keys. Now I know this wouldn’t excite many of you, but I’ve actually been in the market for a digital piano for at least six months now. And to find it at Costco was really exciting.

I started taking classical piano lessons when I was seven, and continued all through high school. I even took six credits of private instruction in college, but they then told me that if I wasn’t going to major in piano, I couldn’t take any more private piano classes. I haven’t had regular access to a piano since college, and I’ve missed it terribly. I play air piano a lot on my lap, but really, that doesn’t cut it for me.

My piano teacher never really let me play popular music much, so I’m extremely excited to start teaching myself what I want to play (not what she would have wanted me to play). Today at lunch, I’m going out to find me some Yanni sheet music — something I’ve been wanting to do since I saw Yanni in concert in May.

Watch out, people. I may be quitting my day job to play in a piano bar soon.

OK, really, I wouldn’t do that, but man, wouldn’t that be a fun job?!

OK, OK, I’m better now. Friday was one of those days that went from bad to worse, and was a bit magnified by some friendly PMS hormones raging through my system.

I went to see the movie Under the Tuscan Sun on Friday night. It was a good movie, but definitely NOT recommended on a day when you’re in a fragile emotional state. I was pitifully sobbing throughout the movie. The plot involves a woman that gets divorced at 35, loses the house in the divorce, and ends up moving to Italy, where she is lonely and gets her heart broken yet again. It did have a few positive themes, and ended on a good, but sappy note.

I actually ordered the book today, thinking that the writing would probably be pretty good, and I could appreciate it a bit more than I did on Friday. Here are a few thoughts from the movie that can help a girl get through a long Monday:

Italians built railroad tracks over the Alps before there was even a train engine that could make it over the Alps. The point is that they dreamed what was possible, and then prepared for it. The moral was that you should prepare yourself for Love and believe that it will happen to you.

A quote from an eccentric character in the movie: When I was a little girl, I tried and tried to catch lady bugs. Then I fell asleep in the grass and woke up with lady bugs all around me. The moral of that story was that instead of trying to make Love happen, you just need to let it happen.

So with those inspiring thoughts, go, young lads, and prepare yourself for Love, but don’t try to make it happen. (That’d be a bit hard to follow, wouldn’t it? In essence, don’t change a damn thing and just have hope that you won’t be alone for the rest of your life.)

Deep thoughts for a shallow world.

HBO has been running Sex and the City re-runs every weeknight (two shows per night), which has given me the opportunity to catch the first few seasons that I missed before I got hooked on the show.

The most recent shows have been making fun of things I am guilty of, and, as Carrie Bradshaw would say, ‘I have to wonder’ if I’m making some horrible fashion mistakes.

1. Using hair scrunchies. Now I know that these things aren’t acceptable for going out or office wear, but why aren’t they acceptable at the gym? Do I need to ditch my comfy hair friendly scrunchies for ties that will stretch and pull out my hair just to remain up with the trends?
2. Bangs. This has really been a huge topic of conversation for me lately, and I couldn’t believe it last night when Carrie Bradshaw said “Who am I to judge? I had bangs in the 80s!” Well, I had bangs in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. Am I a walking fashion blooper? I’ve been considering growing them out… I will look in the mirror and pull them back just to see what I’d look like sans bangs, and it’s really hard to imagine. What is even harder to imagine is enduring the actual process of growing the bangs out. I haven’t cut them in like 6 weeks, and they’re already driving me batty.

That’s all for now. Random thoughts from a random girl.

I finally finished packing up my office. Here are some thoughts dominating my mind right now:
1. How does a WEB person collect 7 boxes worth of stuff in one year?!
2. Oh my gosh — that’s what the surface of my desk looks like!
3. I’m so glad that the other girls in my office love 80s music, because we’ve been jamming all day as we packed. Right now we’re listening to “My Name is Luca”.
4. I’m really sad that our servers will be down Monday morning, preventing me from doing ANY work. Really. Sad, I tell you. Sleeping in on Monday is just going to SUCK. (Ha!)

After a Thursday night date that lasted a bit too late, I arrived at work this morning tired and famished. At 9:30, I popped over to the casino next door for the $2.49 casino breakfast and a never ending cup of coffee. I was serenaded my entire breakfast by the Keno runner…

“Keno. Keeeeeno. Kennnnno. Kenoooooo.” I was amazed at how many different inflections she could use in her voice for the same word.

And I now feel much better about facing the rest of the day, with caffeine surging through my veins and a full belly. We’ll see how long this lasts.

I’ve been through numerous office moves in my career. If there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that office moves NEVER happen on the date they’re supposed to occur.

We were supposed to move September 22. All the other girls in the office were diligently packing and preparing for that date, while I sat back waiting for the move to be delayed. And it was. Ha.

So now the new move date is supposed to be this Monday. Once again, everyone is packing and stacking boxes, but I haven’t started at all. Call me a procrastinator or a pessimist, but I really don’t feel like boxing up all of my files just so I have to dig through a bunch of boxes to find one piece of paper.

Well, we just had two mover men come into my office, and when they walked in the door, you could tell they were a bit perplexed.

“You looking for something in particular?” I asked them.

“Well, we’re coming in tomorrow to start tearing stuff down and moving it.”

“I guess I should start packing, eh?” I said, and they looked at me like I was bonkers.

So I guess the move is really happening now. It’s time for me to get off my butt and start packing. One more full day of my beautiful view… And as of Monday, my commute will be a short and sweet five minutes. Take that, Detroit!

This morning, I went to the gym and did a kick butt work out of 20 minutes interval running on the treadmill and 45 minutes of leg weights. I had packed a pair of jeans to wear to work (we’re boxing up our offices for a move next week, so jeans are OK to wear this week — yeah!).

The jeans I had grabbed happened to be a pair I hadn’t worn for several months. I bought them last January when I realized I didn’t have any jeans that fit well anymore. At that time, I threw out all of the old jeans that were too small and stocked up on bigger jeans.

When I buttoned and zipped my jeans this morning, I felt like I was on one of those Weight Watchers/Jenny Craig/Subway commercials where people hold up some huge pants next to their newly skinny body. I could pull the waist band out like four inches, and was genuinely concerned that my pants would stay up the entire day without a belt. I specifically remember these same jeans being a bit snug when I bought them.

So now as I head into the cooler Fall weather, I have determined that I need to go jeans shopping yet again, lest I look like some tom boy that is afraid to wear form fitting jeans.

And you know what?! I’m so glad I have this problem, and for once, I’m actually excited to go shopping!

After I put my jeans on, I went to the dentist for my 8 am appointment. The hygienist looked at me, sat back, and said, “something is different — have you lost a bunch of weight?”

So it’s official… If my fat pants are slipping off of me and my dental hygienist noticed, I have made a noticeable difference in my appearance. Thank God. It took long enough to get to this point!