Mentor meeting

At IBM we are encouraged to have a "mentor". This person advises you and guides you in your IBM career. They can't be in your dept, or your manager, and the realationship is one of trust where you can tell your mentor anything on your mind and your mentor will never discuss it with anyone else. My mentor, Danna, is awesome. She used to be my manager when I first started at Tivoli. She was the best manager I've ever had. As my mentor she also talks to me about personal things going on in my life. I met with her yesterday and we talked about some IBM stuff, and I also told her of recent events in my personal life. What I got out of the discussion was that people make friends on many different levels and it all depends on the person. I am the type of person who invests a lot of herself into her friends on an emotional level, and therefore I place a lot of value on these friendships. People who don't invest as much feel less of a loss when a freindship dies. By letting this situation continue to hurt me I am giving the other person the power to control me. She's right. I didn't see it before.

I feel a million times better.

Wedding Dress Alterations

It's been a while since I did anything Wedding-related. Today I took my dress to another tailor. The first lady I took it to had converted part of her home into a work studio and she came highly recommended by several wedding sites. She was, however, a little pricy. I guess the high-end Lexus in the driveway should have clued me in.

Jenn E had a friend who recommended this new one that I went to. I thought I'd go and get and estimate to see just how worth it the first lady was.

This second Tailor is a chinese lady who barely speaks English. I asked her for a sample of her work thinking she'd have a dress on hand that she'd altered, but I guess she didn't, so she went to her sewing machine and took a piece of silk fabric and made the most perfect rolled hemline I've ever seen. She looked at all the layers on my dress and then quoted me a price. At first I thought she meant that price for each layer of the dress, but she meant total. It was less than 1/5th the price of the first lady!

I decided then and there to just go with her, afterall, who's going to be paying attention to the bottom of my dress? I'm going to be dragging it through sand and all sorts of crap. Though judging by the sample she showed me, I have nothing to worry about.

She helped me get into the dress and then put some pins in it to indicate where she would take it up. It will be ready in 2 weeks!

So a big thanks to Jenn for recommending this place.

Weekend in review

It's about that time again. Sunday evening and the weekend is shortly coming to a close. Again I've had an awesome weekend, which started on Friday early afternoon. My department and the test department had a party at Dave and Busters, and so did the development team that I work with (Brian's dept.). So I had two parties to go to instead of working on Friday, which is awesome. Brian and I left around 2:30 and decided to use the extra time by going to the gym to work out. Mike met us at the gym and showed Brian how to use the free weights. I did abs and upper body in prep for my Friday evening "fitness" class.

One of our crew was unable to attend due to being out of town. We did a full review of last week's material, and learned a few more moves. I'm sure she'll be able to catch up very easily. Meanwhile, Brian and his parents met Mike and Tara at Mesa Rosa for happy hour, then came to pick me up and we went out to The Oasis to watch Andi's band, Third Language, play. They were awesome as always. Jenn and Ethan were there, which was an awesome suprise! We met Barbie and Scott, and Scott's parents, Ann and Milt, and later, Bob, Renee, and Jen showed up. The band played until 10pm so after that we decided to go to the Water Tank, which is a dive bar in our neighbourhood. They do Karaoke on the weekends but we didn't arrive in time to get up and sing anything. We had fun hanging out and listening to the bad renditions of songs by other people, though.

On Saturday I helped Barbie pick out paint colours for her office, and helped her figure out what equipment she needed. We also went to Target to look for curtains for her office. I did pick up an awesome pair of jeans from Target and a top from Kohl's. Brian and his parents headed down to the Pican Street Festival while I was out. Brian said it was really crowded. So much for the bad weather we were expecting. When they returned, we got ready and went to dinner at Macaroni Grill, then came home and watched Wallace and Gromit. Neither Brian nor his parents had seen it.
Brian's parents recently went to Greece and they had brought me an awesome bottle of wine back, so we drank that as we watched the movie.

Sunday morning came way too soon. I love Sundays but during marathon training season we have to get up at an ungodly hour. We met Tiffeni at the Starbuck's at 183 and Anderson Mill and made our way to Town Lake. The weather was sunny but not ridiculously hot yet, though the other day we hit a record of 102 degrees which is extremely hot for September. We did two Lamar loops which worked out to be around 6 miles.

After the run and dropping Tiff off, we went home and I made breakfast for everyone, which consisted of cheesy scrambled eggs, homefries, and English muffins with Marmalade. Tiff and Brett came over for breakfast and then Brett left and Tiff, Tara, Brian, and Brian's mum and I went out to meet mike at the boat (and made a trip to Wal-mart) where he was changing the oil. Brian's dad stayed home to do some work.

It was super hot this afternoon and not a cloud in the sky, but the lake was somewhat deserted and we had really good ski water. Brian's mum tried waterskiing and the rest of us did some wakeboarding. The lake was actually warmer than it was the last time we went.

This evening Brian's parents are going to try to head back to Houston so we're going to head out for dinner shortly. Barbie is going to join us for dinner and the current thinking is Outback, though Brett's not working tonight so maybe we'll save Outback for a night that he is working and go some place else tonight. Either way, I'm starvin' and looking forward to some red meat :-)

Storm update

Well, we're officially sitting here waiting for huricaine Rita to hit the coast of Texas. Last night Jenn and Ethan came over for dinner. We made pork tenderloin with garlic mashed potatoes and fresh, steamed asparagus. And of course, sugar cookies for after. Ethan wanted his cookies first so I made a deal with him that if he at 5 bites of his dinner I'd give him a cookie. He ate about 3, but we figured it was close enough since he can't count to 5 yet. At one point Ethan was following Brian around, tugging on his shorts and going "uncie! UNCIE!" while Brian was on the phone to his brother. Jenn and I didn't stop him because we figured Brian would need to get used to that ;-)

Brian's parents drove from Houston last night, which it seems is what everyon else did, too. They arrived around 5am this morning after spending almost 7 hours on the road of which should normally be a 3 hour drive. They were actually the lucky ones, though. A friend told me that she knows people who went 30 miles in about 5 hours. The south-bound side of the highway into Houston has been set up as a contra-flow to accommodate the thousands of people trying to escape before the huricaine hits.

I saw Brian's parents this morning. They looked in good spirits considering what they're going through. I just can't imagine how they must feel right now having to just leave their home and not know what they will go back to when this is over. It must be really difficult :-( I'm very glad they're staying with us, though. At least we know they're safe, and there's noting more important than life, not even you precious photographs and keepsakes.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store on my way home and people were panic-buying. They had already ran out of bottled water. While I didn't get into the panic buying mode myself, I did add a few extra non-perishable items to my cart just in case the power goes out.

It looks like we're expecting about 74mph winds here in Austin, which is the most I've ever seen. There's not much you can do to prepare for it, other than to move all your lawn furniture inside, trim any trees nearby, and just hope for the best. I'm both excited and scared. It's no secret that I love storms... this one could change my mind, though.

I just really hope that Brian's parents will find their house in good shape when they return. It's just so heart breaking.

RITA anyone?

According to the latest storm tracker forecasts, hurricaine Rita is headed straight for Texas. Voluntary evacuations have started in Galveston, and as a precaution, Brian's mum is coming to stay with us on Thursday because Houston is in the predicted direct path. Brian's dad, however, is going to stay and take care of the house. Usually hurricaines fizzle out before they reach us because we're so far inland... however, looking at the predicted path, it passes right over Austin and up towards Dallas! This is not good news for Texas. The irony here is that all those victims from hurricaine Katrina that sought refuge in Texas are now going to get hit with yet another one!

If I believed in god I'd think she was playing games purely for her own amusement. What a bitch ;-)

Here's a link to the local forecast: http://www.news8austin.com/Content/Weather/Tropics/Tracker/Gulf/?SatRadImage=TRACKER_GULF

So in the event that we do get hit, I might consider buying lots of batteries, flashlights, and bottled water, and perhaps put the futon matress under the stairs to make sort of a storm shelter. All our important papers are safely stored at the bank in a safe deposit box. Everything else is covered by insurance. Rest assured that in the event of a life threatening situation, there will be no higher priority to me than Brian and the cats. The rest is just stuff.

Courtesy of my friend Jay.... You are a Social Liberal (71% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (33% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Home projects, etc

This weekend has been a good weekend for projects around the home, mixed in with fun with friends.
On Friday evening after work, gathered a group of girls to go take a class in "pole dancing". It was a total blast. Jenny V, Tiffeni, Renee, Julia, and Lahari all went. We now have a new found respect for strippers! The class was so much fun that we all signed up for seven more classes, except Lahari, who opted to give Hip Hop a try instead. Oh, and big news! My friend Jenny V just got engaged! I'm so excited for her.

After class I joined Brian and several friends, including Mike and Tara, at Mesa Rosa. Brian and Mike were pretty tipsy by the time I arrived. We had a light dinner there and then headed out to Austin's Park and Pizza to go race go-karts. I got my shoe caught in the accelerator of my go-kart and pretty much had to go with it. Thankfully, they don't go super fast and the only casualty was the heel on my purple snakeskin winkle pickers :-) Mike and Brian did a little rock climbing, then we went inside for air hockey before calling it a night.

On Saturday we got up pretty early and set about preparing to hang the TV on the wall, which involved cutting holes in the wall and running cables out through the garage, then back in again in a different location in the living room. This would enable us to move the cable box and DVD player off the mantel and pretty much out of the main living area. The wiring project went great. Brian ran to home depot several times to get the right wall plates while cut 4 holes in the walls and installed low voltage receptacles in the walls and ran the wires through. We ended up having to make the holes on the face plates bigger to acommodate the cables but it looks pretty good.

Somewhere along the line the drill battery died and we had to recharge it. While we waited for it to recharge we put in a new kitchen faucet. Also a bigger undertaking than we anticipated because it took us an hour of taking turns to try and get the sprayer attachment off the water supply. We eventually got the old faucet off and the new one was very easy to install, with a bit of creative thinking on which tools to use to do the job. The end result is that our faucet is no longer leaking, and it looks so much more stylish. Gotta love that.

We then attempted to mount the TV to the wall. This proved to be more of an indertaking than we had anticipated. The problem is that the instructions for the wall mount state that you need to mount the plate to two studs, however, to do that would cause our TV to be off-center in the alcove. We tried several ways, our calculations, however, were a little off and it proved to be impossible. So with many holes in the walls, we gave up for the day.

Saturday night we tried a new pub/restaurant called the Tilted Kilt. Was pretty much a waste of time. It definately wasn't anything to write home about. Might be good for happy hour. After our average dinner there, we, and Mike and Tara went to the Cheesecake Factory and split dessert.

This morning, Sunday, we got up early and ran 7 miles on town lake with the girls. It was a very hot day and it was tough going, but we made it. Afterwards we thought we'd take down the wall plate for the TV mount and try a different approach. Unfortunately, Brian had an accident that caused the cables to get damaged so we need to replace them before we can hang the TV.

In the mean time, though, I filled in the holes in the wall from our previous attempts, and painted them while Brian mowed the lawn. I spoke to a guy at Lowes when I was buying the filler for the walls and he helped me pick out some sheetrock anchors that we can use to hand the TV using only one stud and 4 sheetrock anchors. We're pretty confident that it will hold. That's going to have to wait until we get the replacement cables, though.

Brian was pretty bummed out about the cables so we went for a little retail therapy and a margarita and some nachos for lunch. Later he went over to hang out with Ben, while I finished painting over the wall filler and installed a new X10 switch on the dining room light.

Plans for the rest of the day are to avoid any kind of hard work. Watch a movie. Drink some wine. Eat sushi (well, I will. Brian's having quesadillas). And just RELAX!

As I've said previously, it's hard to be motivated to run when you have to run alone. Last night my two running partners were pursuing other sports. Brian playede soccer and Tiff played basketball, so I took off running our usual route by myself. At first I was bored and not wanting to run, but somewhere about 3/4 mile in I got this burst of energy that lasted the whole 4 miles. I felt like I was flying. I attribute it to the handfull of Gummi Bears I ate just before the run.

This morning I got up and went to the gym. Brian wasn't able to join me because his class starts early so he will go this evening instead. Tonight I'm heading over to Andi's house for some girl time. She's having a Southern Living party, which I'm really not that into, but I'm just going so I can spend some time with her and the rest of my girls.

In other news, Brian and I have 3 weeks of vacation left so we're looking for a Ski trip. I found a great deal on a trip to Vail the first week in December. I just don't know if they'll have snow there yet.

Happy Monday

I had a pretty good Monday...

Our project is winding down at work and there is not the mad rush that we've had over the past six months or so. We are now looking at our next project, though, which seems impossible. It's like standing at the bottom of a massive, sheer cliff, and all I have is one rope to help me get to the top. Sigh.
I had lunch with Tiffeni and Kerey at Tuscany. I'd never been to that place but I will definately be going back.
As I left work it was raining pretty heavy, and soaked me as I walked to my car... not that I minded because I love the rain, especially warm rain. The ironic part is when I got into my car, the rain stopped.
Brian was in a class all day, and I guess will be all week. We finished off the day with a 4 mile run in our neighbourhood with Tiffeni. She will be joining us for our evening runs to help in marathon training. It's always easier to feel motivated when you run with somebody. I always find that if I have to run alone, I feel less inclined to do it.

A rainy texas weekend

Despite the weather, though, I enjoyed it immensely.
On Friday evening Brian and I joined 20 of our friends to celebrate Sara's birthday at Ararat, which is a tiny hole in the wall restaurant that serves middle eastern food. They also have belly dancers. The food was excellent, the belly dancing was highly entertaining, and the company was awesome.

On Saturday we finished off our garage project by hanging the bikes and securing a hook and rope to the ceiling to provide more support for Brian's shop vac - it had been hanging by one hook and it looked like it might not hold. Later, Brian went to play raquetball with Mike down at UT and I stayed home and watched a movie and hung out with my sweet kitties. Brian had planned to come home at 7 to watch the UT football game, but ended up being home around 8:30, and feeling guilty for his lateness, took me out to dinner instead of watching the game. We went to the Cheesecake Factory. This was the first time we'd been there since we went with Paula, Steve, and Daniel when they were over last year. We split an entree and then split a slice of vanilla cheesecake. Brian actually did get to see the game a little bit.

On Sunday I got up at the crack of dawn and drove down to Town Lake to join the rest of my HARDCORE running friends for a run in the pouring rain. About a mile into it we had reached saturation. You know, the point where you are so soaked that you can't get any wetter... it was an awesome run, though. I LOVE running in the rain. LOVE IT! As a side note, Brian stayed in bed because he doesn't like running in the rain ;-).

A hot shower and a cup of tea later and I was feeling great. We had ran 6.5 miles, even though our training schedule only called for 3.5.

The rest of Sunday was spent watching movies and I made some awesome noodles with sesame and ginger chicken for dinner.

Today I almost burst into tears because I got an e-mail from the Humaine Society... I barely got past the first paragraph before I had to stop reading and just delete it. Heartbreaking!

They talked about how the animals left behind, especially at the shelters, had spent several days just trying to keep their heads above water while still trapped in their cages. This makes me so fricking mad that those selfish bastards at the shelter didn't spare a thought for animals locked up in cages! Why didn't they just set them free to at least have a chance? WHY? selfish pricks!

I guess I shouldn't stand in judgement because I don't know all the facts surrounding it. But it's so damn hard! I just wish I could go there and comfort all the animals and give them all baths and hugs and food and clean water and tell them it's gonna be alright.

Animals are a huge hot button with me. The easiest way into my heart and my wallet is to show me an animal who needs me.

Animal victims from Katrina

I've been trying not to watch the news when they talk about all the animals that are suffering as a result of the hurricaine. It just makes me so sad that I'd be in a constant state of crying if I read the stories or watched the news.

I can't imagine the horror of having to leave your beloved pet behind. They're so much a part of us that it would be like leaving a child. I just feel for all those people who have to live with the guilt of leaving their pets to fend for themselves. The water in the streets of New Orleans is toxic, there's no clean waterto drink. I know what this means for humans and animals alike, but humans have a choice. Animals don't.

Today I gave a donation to the Humaine Society Disaster Relief Fund. While it's just a drop in the ocean of what's needed, every little helps, and it makes me feel better knowing I did at least some small thing to help out. If I could have one wish right now, it would be that all those people get reunited with their pets, and that all the pets left behind somehow found a way to live through this. For those that didn't make it, I hope they didn't suffer.

There's a ton of focus on the human aspect of this disaster, I am so thankful that the Humain Society stepped up to the challenge of helping all those animals.

When I get home, I'm going to hug both my cats extra, and give them extra treats.

:'-(

Weekend of recovery

This past weekend was Labour Day weekend, so Monday was a holiday. I spent a lot of my weekend at home recovering from this awful illness, and a lot of it hanging with Barbie. I re-covered the dining room chairs with this awesome red fabric and made 3 pillow covers to go over the existing couch pillows. Then Barbie and I went shopping and I got some more fabric to contrast the red. It's kind of a gold silk. I made 2 more couch pillows. The house is coming together nicely... I might repaint the living room a different colour, though. I still like the red, but the sage colour is getting old.
Brian had a pretty full Sunday... He ran 6 miles with me and Jenny V on Town Lake, then he went tubing down the Comal River with Mike, Tara, Austin, and Andy, then I joined them all plus Jay and Erin for some boating on Lake Austin to listen to the Bob Schnieder concert at The Pier. After that we went back to Mike and Tara's for a game of pool and some hanging out.

Yesterday Brian and I slept late... I haven't slept past 9am for months so it was really nice. We then tackled the garage. Now that the waverunner is gone, it's realistic to think that we can put both cars in the garage. We just had to be creative about where to put things. So we moved out a table and moved shelves over. We hung a huge carpet remnant on the ceiling using a rope to hoit it up there. all that remains now is to hang the bikes, then we can get both cars in the garage. Of course, the trash can has to go some place else, and the stupid home owners association won't let us keep it outside where it's visible and easy to get to. I'm thinking about erecting some lattice fence down the side of the house to put the trash can behind.

Today I feel about 85% ok. Still got a cough and a bit of congestion, and a big sore in the back of my throat, but in all it's an improvement over the past week.

I'm finally feeling a bit more human. Last night was Jenn E's birthday celebration. We went to Iron Cactus for drinks and appetizers, then went to Graham Central. Jenn looked beautiful as always, and not looking a day past 25. Barbie and Scott met us at CGS and Scott's parents, Ann and Milt came too. We spent some time in the live music bar, but the band was awful, so we moved to Wild Cats to watch some booty shaking on the bar, then finished off the night watching some cheesy karaoke. I had to leave around midnight because my head was pounding, and my neck was hurting.

This morning Brian went biking with Eric, and I lazed about the house. Now that he's home, I'm going to drag him around more furniture stores because we want to buy a whole new bedroom set for our master bedroom and will be upgrading to a king size bed. Then I want to go buy some fabric to re-cover the dining chairs and make some cusions for the couch.