Wow – I haven’t posted in a month! I’ve had a story to tell, but had to get over the incident before I could actually post about it here.

A couple of weeks ago I was at work and dealing with a highly irate customer. This customer had demanded to see a manager and that would be me, so I was sitting there getting the brunt of her anger for a few minutes.

I was walking to the back of the store to get something for this customer when a co-worker stopped me and asked what school my kids went to.

At this point, I have to break and explain a little bit about my son’s school. The full name of the school is “An Awesome School that My Son Goes To” The parents, kids and teachers all call it “A.A.S.M.S.G.T” (obviously made up, lol) but the general public just calls it “Awesome School” for short.

Anyway, so when my co-worker asks what school my son goes to, I say “A.A.S.M.S.G.T”.

“Oh good!” She replies, not making the connection. “The gunman is at Awesome School.”

I continue on my merry way for about 90 seconds until it hits me what this person has just said. “Gunman? GUNMAN? Awesome School?! Wait – that’s A.A.S.M.S.G.T! You guys, that is MY SON’S SCHOOL! There is a gunman at my son’s school?!”

Irate customer be damned, I shoved her box of stuff into my nearest co-workers’ hands and told him to deal with it as I ran out the door.

Let me tell you guys – that is a feeling I never EVER want to experience again. Words can not express the panic and fear that I felt. Dude, my son is 9 years old. Who the hell shoots up an elementary school?!

Anyway, I got to the school and apparantly the “gunman” had been sighted two hours beforehand. I got no sort of notification from the school that anything was even happening! WTF! Anyway, the SWAT team was there and no one was allowed near the school. After searching the school, the police did not find a gunman of any sort. They decided to evacuate the school room by room and bus all the students to a nearby high school.

That was a MESS. 800 parents milling around waiting for their kids to be bussed. I am blown away by how immature some of these parents really were. Swearing and being jerks to the teachers and staff – as if they had anything to do with the panic we were feeling. And DUDE – we were ALL in the same situation. We ALL had kids in that school and we were ALL waiting to see if they were safe. Some of us were just assholes about it and some of us weren’t.

In the end, they never found a gunman. Thank God.

Take a look at these cakes – specifically the elephant for the 1st birthday! http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2010/01/sunday-sweets-cute-tastic.html

I forgot to blog about my cat. Bet you guys are waiting with bated breath, no? (Yeah, it’s “bated”. I googled it.) Anyway, we ended up finding a new home for our kitty Golly. He just wasn’t happy here – the dogs constantly chased him, he pretty much hid all day, then he started to pee on stuff and that was the last straw. I posted him on Craigslist (shuddup) last week and a very nice lady ended up adopting him for her two nieces. He is now an only cat in a dog-free home and I think he will be much happier.

That said, we are now looking for a new kitty to adopt. We are going to be jerks about it this time though, and adopt a kitten instead of an adult cat. We adopted Polo as an older cat and he worked out wonderfully. We adopted Golly as an older cat and… well, you just read that paragraph above, right? Anyway, our hope is that a kitten will adapt to the dogs more easily as well as adapt to the new confangled litterbox contraption that we use. I think that was part of Golly’s pee problem, but not all of it. He started peeing on stuff before we even had the Cat Genie.

Speaking of the Cat Genie – that thing is the SHIZ. My basement no longer smells like a litterbox – it’s fantastic. It may be pricey, but it’s WELL worth it. I highly recommend it for people who don’t love the smell of cat urine.

So, that’s all I got. What sort of pet stories do you guys have of late?

What is the absolute worst part of returning to work or school after a particularly long and relaxing vacation? How quickly do you re-acclimate to the daily grind?

Email. Hands down. My Blackberry makes it easier to keep up with emails if I need to, but I am still in email lockdown when I get back to work. It takes hours to sift through and delete/organize/act upon them.

As far as the second part of that question goes: it takes mere minutes to re-acclimate. Minutes, I say.

In an effort to blog a bit more, I’ve decided to use the Livejournal “Writer’s Block” question of the day for inspiration. I’m not doing the nifty little box with the buttons though, since I am not posting this directly in LJ. All of my blogging is done in Wordpress and just crossposts itself into my LJ. I’m not quite sure why I do it that way since the only people who ever read my blog are on LJ anyway.

Anyhoo – here is the WB question for today: Have you ever made an important life decision (such as where to work or attend school) based on purely emotional factors, even though you knew it was not the best choice for you? Would you do it again?

Absolutely – in fact, the job I have now is the result of one such emotional decision. Back in 2004 I was working as a manager at Quizno’s. The job wasn’t terribly difficult, but it was very frustrating. I worked six days a week (ew!) and got work phone calls at home all the time. I couldn’t keep good employees because my boss wouldn’t allow me to pay a decent wage. One day I was having a hard time at work when the guy next door at Kelly Temporary Services came over to buy a soda. We talked a little bit and I vented about my job for a few minutes. He told me to come over to see him and he could find me a better job. And he did! I actually turned down the job offer at first because it was a temp job. I would be giving up a sure thing with salary in order to take a temp job at a cell phone store – an industry I was not familiar with at all. After I turned it down, the manager Gregg (still a leader of mine) called me and asked me to reconsider it. And I did. And it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. I will work for U.S. Cellular until they drag me out kicking and screaming.

Apparently everything I’ve given my latest client has been “not up to standards” and he is now going to pass on the graphic design stuff to someone else. This just makes me sick to my stomach. I’m so over this web design stuff right now, I really am. First I get my biggest client screwing me with the tax bullcrap and now I get my second biggest client telling me I basically suck as a designer.

I just volunteered to make a website for the non-profit organization F.O.G.E and I am doubting my abilities to even do this. They are using a platform I am unfamiliar with and they have some pretty lofty goals as far as the future goes. In fact, what he has already done looks pretty good (not up for viewing, sorry) and it’s making me question why they even want me to change it.

I am a bad blogger. But I’m a wonderful reader, I swear! It’s just so much easier for me to update a 1 or 2 sentence Facebook status than to write out a blog entry. Because I’m so… uh… busy. Yeah, that’s it. Busy.

So, Christmas is finally over this year – yay! Man, as a parent of two semi older kids, the holidays are just an ordeal. Finding all the right gifts, paying for them, wrapping, hiding, etc. And frigging SANTA CLAUS. My son is 8 and we are at the “to tell or not to tell” stage this year. He is adamant that he believes in Santa, but I’m not so sure.

So… what’s new? I got an e-reader for Christmas from my mom – a Sony PRS 300. This is seriously the most awesome gift ever. I am a big reader as it is, and now I can carry my library with me wherever I go. I’ve spent the last few days downloading and formatting PDF’s into eBooks. I’ve loaded 89 books so far – all of which I have already read with the exception of the Sookie Stackhouse series and a few Chuck Palahniuk books. I’m just a person who can read a series over and over again. I can squeeze probably 800 or so books on my reader so I’m not hurting for space, even if I downloaded every book in the world that I want.

We are having a New Year’s get together just like we do every year. We sit around and play Rock Band – and drink a bunch. It’s awesome. You should come, really. We’d love to have you.

I am a “reader”. Everyone knows this, right? I read every night before I go to sleep. I read on my lunch hour. I read in the bathtub. I have backup books in the trunk of my car in case I’m stuck somewhere. But I almost never read at home on my days off. I have too much work to do! So, when I take hours out of a day to sit and read a book, it’s a big deal. I can only remember a handful of times I’ve actually done this. “The Easyway to Stop Smoking” I read in one sitting. #7 in the Harry Potter series. “Lasher” by Anne Rice. “Duma Key” by Stephen King. But, it seems to me that every single book by Dan Brown catches me in this trap – with the exception of “Digital Fortress” which was kinda lame. So, I picked up his new novel “The Lost Symbol” the other day and here I am – on my last day of “vacation” – reading all day. I have work to do. I have clients that need stuff. But you know what? I have worked all day, every day of this so called “vacation”. I am taking the day off and reading my Dan Brown book. He owns me.

You know what? I really don’t get sick that often. A couple of years ago when I quit smoking and my thyroid went haywire I was sick all the time. Thank goodness that’s over! Well, I guess it had to catch up to me sooner or later because I have been very, very sick for days now. I do believe it may have been the flu. I think this mainly because I had a pretty decent fever going and MAN the headache and body aches I had! I’ve been without a fever for 24 hours now, but I’m not sure if I’m really getting better or if the gallons of Dayquil are just masking it. I went the first day without taking drugs just so my body could do it’s job, but I’m just too stuffed up now to handle a drug free sickness anymore.

Anyway, I feel like I may have turned a corner. I’ve been able to sit up for more than a few minutes today and actually got a little bit of work done on the computer – although one client told me to go back to bed because my design was awful, lol!

In other computer news, that laptop I’ve been saving up for has ceased to become a necessity for me now. I wanted to buy a Windows machine so I can test my work on multiple versions of Internet Explorer, but today I found a roundabout way of doing this on my Mac. Yay! And now that Blackberry has released Desktop Manager for Mac I officially have no reason to buy a laptop. This means I will actually be able to afford my vacation in November! Paying cash for stuff ROCKS.

Most of you who know me well know that I usually have some sort of creative project going on. I will pick an art form and stick with it until I feel it’s mastered and then I get bored and move on (or realize I suck at it – ahem, painting – and move on). I’ve done this with hemp jewelry, beadwork, sewing, clay, painting, web design and most recently crochet.

My most recent crochet project is the first thing I’ve ever fully completed in this medium. The pattern for this purse is from 1917, which is what really attracted me to the project. I love history (don’t tell my high school teacher that) and the thought that some woman had this very same bag over 90 years ago is just plain neat.

Anyway, the yarn I used was “Simply Soft” in light blue and tan. I sewed in a paisley liner which the pattern did not really call for. I meant to sew in a zipper, but just couldn’t figure out how. Oooooh, I just had an idea for a zipper… maybe I’ll try it again on the next bag.

On to the pics – you can click on them to see the full size image: