Fly those friendly, freaky skies!

I flew to Chicago this afternoon and was just struck by how crazy the people you fly with can be. I flew in on a smaller plane today, probably about 75 passengers or so, but they are all complete strangers and, let's face it, close in proximity! I think the crazy thoughts started coming to me when my seatmate decided to nod off for a while. To make the story richer though, I should mention that the guy sitting across the aisle from me, nodded off before we even took off and started snoring quite loudly. You know, the people that scare themselves awake because they don't know what that ridiculous noise was?! Nonetheless, several heads turned to try to discover who the snoring bandit was. My seatmate laughingly says to me ''Can you believe this guy"? I quietly chuckled and continued trying to read my book. We had barely taken off when my seatmate decided to catch a little shut-eye himself. I continued reading my book but out of the corner of my eye I occasionally saw him twitching...hands, arms, legs, feet, head, etc...nothing was out of the picture here. It appeared to me that the deeper the sleep, the more the twitching would occur. I started to become a bit concerned when the twitching led to full out arm flailing...first, he smacked the seat back in front of him, scaring the person in front of him awake. Ok, I did almost laugh out loud this time...honestly, it was tough not to. However, no real harm was done so soon he was back asleep and twitching away. He was holding a McDonald's cup full of ice (yeah, he was crunching on ice cubes right up until takeoff when they were almost all crunched on) in his hand on his lap and the next really big twitch resulted in his hands squeezing the cup until the lid popped off. In the process, he also tilted the cup and apparently had more ice cubes remaining then I was earlier led to believe, since the tipped cup produced a sizable amount of water, created by the melted, unchewed upon ice cubes. Now, this particular episode did produce more of a fuss for him since he now had a wet (and presumably cold) lap. The funniest part about all of this is that throughout all of it, I just continued to quietly read and pretend like nothing at all was happening. I'm not sure if he wasn't aware of what was happening but he didn't seem the slightest bit embarrassed by all of the goings on. It made for an entertaining flight and I was grateful I didn't walk off the plane with a nice shiner! Alas, I'm guessing the flight home won't be quite as interesting since I'll probably be among those sleeping since I take off at 6:30am! Happy flying all, and try to keep those eyes open!

Chi-Town

It would be just my luck that the very first time I go to Chicago is for a business trip.  I will be there solo for two nights and don't know how much sightseeing I will be able to achieve on my own, considering I have NO clue where anything is!  I'm kind of excited to just get out of town for a couple days, even if it is for work.  I wish my husband could join me but it's not in the cards, unfortunately.  It would have been awesome to take Friday off and make it a long weekend.  Oh well, I would have been stuck paying for the return flight then so I suppose it's best this way.  I guess I will have to do a bit of research to see how far I am from downtown because I have to get there at least one of the nights.  I do have an acquaintance there (close friend of a close friend of mine) so I will probably look them up to see if they are available one of the nights...preferably the first one, since I will be up ridiculously early to catch my flight back to MPLS on Friday!  Perhaps I will have some exciting pics to share upon my return...but don't hold your breath!

The "Corner"

I don't know what it is about this particular work station in the corner of my office building, but for some reason it attracts quite the cruddy people. The latest person to occupy it has been with the company for the last couple of months anyway, maybe more like three, but who knows...time flies. In any case, he is the first person to sit in this particular area since the last guy quit and the chair went inoccupado for probably about 14 or 15 months prior to the new guy starting. I don't even want to go back to the last guy and all the fun he was...but believe it or not, the new guy is so much worse in lots of ways. I'm sure I'll really only be able to name a few here though, any more and I will be in grave danger of losing my lunch. So, here's just a little taste of my daily dose of disgust at work:

1) He belches out loud and doesn't excuse himself. That's right, no polite burping here (although I consider that an oxymoron anyway). Of course, nobody has said anything but we're all quite disgusted by it...just a lot of head shaking and quiet chuckles of disbelief. Every once in a while if he really lets one loose, he will try to cover it up with some coughing as though the rest of us don't know what has just happened.

2) Still not sure if he does actually chew tobacco, don't think so because he couldn't get away with it for this long, however...he does have an Arizona tea bottle that he continually spits in throughout the day. I have taken it upon myself to throw this bottle on a few occasions, without inspecting it's contents and with a very heavy duty glove.

3) He has NO personal business apparently. Due to his complete lack of a work ethic he spends the majority of his day perusing the internet (shopping, banking, e-mailing, etc...) while the rest is spent on the phone with his wife (how he managed to do that, I have no idea at all), friends or his mother or father. We all know far more than we need to about his family and his own personal and miserable financial difficulties. There is no shame or embarrassment but more like some sort of horribly misplaced pride here. He is not quiet about any of these issues and it really is terribly annoying.

Alas, I must stop here because that is enough fun for one day. I truly wondered if it was just the chair or the work area or what. I mean, the last guy didn't do much work either and I'm just saying if this particular area comes with some type of clause stating work is not required, I think there should be a lottery for it or something, or maybe just a departmental rotation? Ok, enough ranting for today.

Verbiage Issues!

So, one of my biggest (and I mean BIGGEST) pet peeves is when people use words out of context! My annoyance with this is considerably amplified when said people use 'big' words out of context to try to impress others. Sorry, but that just confirms your idiot status in my eyes. Come on, if you're going to pull it out of the repertoire...use it the right way!!!!! There isn't one specific person (anymore) that is doing this but it just seems that lately I've been getting this from people and it's making me bonkers. An ex-manager used to use the word nomenclature a lot, in the correct context, mind you. It's not a real favorite word of mine but I think just because it is a word that is used quite often in the particular industry I work in, others just throw it out there, whether it works or not! I wish I could think of the particular word that an ex-coworker used all the time and he used it to try to sound much more intelligent than the person he was talking to at the time. Unfortunately, he has been gone too long (no, actually the fact he is gone is quite fortunate) for me to remember what it was. I could probably look at past posts and I bet I brought it up somewhere! Funny that I've forgotten because he used the word several times a day it seemed. I guess our minds do serve us well at times by allowing us to forget life's little annoyances. I'm sure it will come to me sometime though! So, along with grammar I have a big thing with spelling too...which brings me to the title of my post and the word verbiage. Every once in a while...you run into a word that you know is spelled correctly but it still doesn't look right. This is one of those words for me...why the 'i'? They do the same thing with the word carriage, which comes from carry. Why wouldn't verbiage be spelled verbage, like bondage or carnage? I don't get it and I suppose I never will. How sick is it that I could talk about this all day?

Dreamy Haze

I had the strangest dream last night. It was my wedding day (which already occurred 39 days ago) and my parents were like two giant anchors. The wedding was scheduled for 1pm (even though we actually got married at 3pm) and I was hanging around waiting for my parents to get back from somewhere? so we could get to the church for the wedding. They didn't show up until almost 12:30pm and then I don't even think we got to the church until like 2pm. I have no idea what this dream was about, but the startling thing was that they didn't think there was a problem with any of this! Eventually I called Kate (my maid of honor) who told me that several of the guests had already left because they had other things to do. Sadly, I woke up before knowing whether or not the wedding ever took place, although the last thing I remember is my parents coming down in an elevator still dressed in their casual clothes and my mom asking some really stupid, totally unrelated question. I was outraged by their lack of concern yet could not give a voice to this outrage. I just stared at them dumbfoundingly as though I couldn't believe this was even happening. I am very big into dream analysis, analyzing in my own head, mind you, there is nothing scholarly or professional about this (although I did take a class at SCSU called 'Psychology of Sleeping and Dreaming', but that was 15 years ago). So, I really just can't figure this one out. Obviously the wedding has already taken place and everything ran according to schedule and my parents were the efficient, responsible people they always are. Perhaps I feel I owe an apology to some of my guests for STILL not getting a thank you to them? Or could this be a sign of what I'll be like someday when my own child gets married due to my lack of planning, organization or seeming concern about the mess my life is in so many ways? I just don't get it at all! Does it mean that something should have been done differently with my wedding (perhaps in a church that actually HAS an elevator?)? In any case, I'm not that concerned about the dream, just puzzled to say the least. It was very odd, but hopefully not very telling of the future! I think I'll try to clean a few things up just in case it was!

Step-Children

Well, meeting the kids went just fine. They are surprisingly well-behaved, but of course could also just be on their best behavior for their dad and new step-mom. My husband will go pick them up from Grandma and Grandpa's house this afternoon and we will most likely have them until we take them back home on Saturday. They have spent the past few days with their sister (or half-sister) Olivia at her house. It just seems so odd to me to have Steve's (2nd) ex-wife so involved in what seems to be every aspect of our life. She's not a bad person, a tad annoying sometimes, but otherwise a good person. It's just that she still seems to be so involved with the family. I know a great deal of this is because they have a child together who we still see regularly, but it's just very strange. It strikes at that jealousy chord again I suppose. I did end up with a migraine on Saturday night after all the hustle and bustle with the kids and my husband was sweet enough to get them out of the apartment so I could rest. Then when they got home he came into the bedroom where I was resting with a big grin on his face and said that he brought me ice cream home. Ok, so he still has a thing or two to learn about migraines. I love him all the same. And the kids had a great Harry Potter/ice cream party while I slept off the migraine. Hopefully the kids will be back and the migraine will stay away now!

Introductions

Above are a couple pictures of my husband's youngest daughter Olivia (who was a junior bridesmaid in our wedding) So, tonight I will be meeting two more of my husband's children and I couldn't be more nervous if I tried. My husband is twice-divorced and has 4 children with his first wife and one with his second. His first wife is (or at least was and seemingly still is) quite the case...I think we've lost track of how many fathers took part in making up her 9 children, but we think it's 5. In any case, this weekend I will meet one of his 14 year old twin sons and his youngest daughter with wife #1, who I believe is 12. I'm not so nervous about meeting her, but quite nervous about meeting him...especially since he just found out about me a few days ago! My husband has been quite estranged from the kids, much due to his ex-wife trying desperately to keep them away from him, and I know he is very excited to see them since he hasn't for about a year and a half. This is all made even stranger by the fact that we all now share the same last name so it would seem as though I should have some level of familiarity with these people, but there really is none, with the exception of a few photos I've seen. It's very strange.

So, I will just have to play the supportive wife and try to be myself in the hopes that it goes as well as it did meeting the first two. It's quite strange for me too...almost surreal because it is a part of my husband that I am still getting to know. I am also a very jealous person and it's hard for me to see all of the love that he has for his children. It's not that I wouldn't want him to love them with all he has, but it's difficult because it feels like it's taking something away from me. Probably ridiculous, but it's also very real. So, I guess I'll just say a prayer that all goes well for us in the next week with the kids and that I can stay strong and supportive for my new husband!

What a Difference a Year Makes!

I am just laughing at the irony here. It would appear my boss is rushing through all of our reviews this afternoon. Although I have been given no notice of this review, I do believe I will be having it today and I am not up for it at all! I am actually despising my job today and have been very dismal indeed...which could not bode well at all in a review. We were given the loathful 'self-evaluation' forms this year to fill out and I was quite honest. I admitted there are areas that I struggle with and need to really improve upon but also placed blame where it was more than due for lack of training, etc...which resulted in an account being poorly handled. In any case, I really hope I can get through the next hour and 10 minutes without a review.

The irony is that last year I had to continually harp on my boss (and his boss) for my review because I was pining for a major pay increase since my job responsibilities and title had changed. I did get the raise eventually, even though it was about 3 months overdue and I received no back pay. It wasn't as much as I had hoped for and something tells me that I won't be getting a raise this time around. I just found it interesting to think back to last year at this time and my repeated attempts to have my review taken care of and now today I don't even want to go through it. Oh well, it's beyond time to be job shopping anyway!

Well, since this post is still "scheduled" (what's that delay about now anyway?) I thought I would tack on an addendum...I did just receive my review and was handed a meager pay increase (basically just cost of living). I suppose it's better than nothing, but still. I will just have to work on improving everything I can while I am still here so that in the unlikely event I'm still here come next June I will receive an even heftier increase.

I'm Really Married!

So, my husband and I were married just over a month ago and I think I'm still kind of reeling and working it all out in my head. It's the oddest feeling, but it's almost as though it was all a great dream, except I know that it happened (the hundreds of thank-you's I'm still working to complete are evidence of that)! Although this picture (another of my favorites) kind of has that fairy tale quality with the arch! The odd thing is that I look at my ring finger (a lot) and look at the pictures and video and I see that it's me up there but it still somehow doesn't seem entirely real. Everything just happened so quickly (including the courtship) and I think I just didn't have time to process it all, even though we enjoyed it immensely. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm glad we only had 3 months of planning into it because it all goes by in such a rush! I remember my dad whispering to me right before we walked down the aisle to 'enjoy my moment' (which choked me up) and that's all it really was, a moment. I have a good friend getting married in September and they will have been engaged for 14 months at the time of the wedding...I could just have never done that. I suppose it worked out the way it was supposed to for me, but I'm still trying to put it all together! So many people always say that being married doesn't really feel any different than just living together, that you just get a new name. I suppose there's is a slight letdown because it's new and I never really knew what to expect, but I like married life and I sure do love my husband! I feel like such an adult and even have a 'real' banking account and a new car (ok, two years old is new enough for me) to show for it! Life is grand.