Curtin Call

The sun is shining, Spring is just a wee three days from now and everyone gets to be Irish today!

I ask you – does life get any better than this???

I am now the official owner of not one, but two, iPods. Yes, me!

You may recall I received an iPod touch awhile back. Well, I just purchased an iPod shuffle (no, not the BRAND new one – I have no patience and decided I wanted one and Radio Shack is just up the road from here) for myself. I can not get over how small this thing is – and the newest one is even smaller? Oh, yeah, I could see myself losing that sucker in about 30 seconds.

This is cool, though! Very, very sweet!

That is all.

I have to leave work a tad bit early today to go pick up hubby so we can go have our taxes done. This is not something I am looking forward to.

I had extra money taken out of my paycheck every week this year so that should help, right? I also won an award and my institute is conscientious enough that they give you a substantial enough amount so that when Uncle Sam gets done taking his share, you can still take your family to Mickey-D’s. Uncle Sam did just what he’s known to do and took over 40% of the money. One would think that he’d also have a conscience and say to himself, “My, what have I done here? She was DESERVING of that money. Now I feel bad. I’ll give her some back now.” People look at me funny when I suggest that. What do you think?

Or am I just a jinx?

I subscribe to three magazines. Two of them are “homey-type” and one is a recipe/cooking tips magazine. About a week ago, I received one of the homey-type editions and it was accompanied by a note that they will no longer be publishing.

Yesterday, I received the recipe/cooking tips magazine which was also accompanied by a note that they will no longer be publishing.

Jeepers. With all the magazines out there, what are the odds that two of the three that I subscribe to would stop publishing??? Is this a common occurrence these days? If not, and any of my readers publish their own magazine, please let me know now. I promise I will not subscribe to it!

I’m doing my share to stimulate the economy:

That beauty should be in my garage in the next day or so. Sweeeeet!

In case you ever find yourself wondering if there are any good people left in this crazy world of ours, I write now to assure you that yes, there are. In fact, there at least two such people right here in my own little world.

When I got to my car Wednesday evening, I found a note “I scraped your left front bumper. Call me.” I called when I got home and not only did this person leave their name and phone number, they actually left a name and phone number that really did belong to them! This man did not have to do this. If he apologized to me once, he apologized to me ten times. Not only for hitting my car but for creating an inconvenience for me in having to deal with the repairs. Thank you, kind gentleman, for being so kind.

Thursday morning, in my rush to get across campus for a 7:30 meeting, I dropped my bracelet. I did not notice this until I was at the meeting location but was fairly certain I likely lost it somewhere in my office area. I called one of the gals here and her first question to me was “Did you lose a bracelet?” Thank you, Sara, for being so thoughtful.

Yes, life is good!

It wins every time, doesn’t it?

I am in week four of trying to behave when it comes to eating habits but damn it – temptation wins out every time. Did I really need the Caramello bar that I just inhaled??? Did I even want it??? NO, but hey – its to help out the youth basketball league so who can say “No”???

And then there’s that cute little Girl Scout who rang the doorbell that I ordered three boxes of cookies from. Could I have ordered one or two? Of course but they, too, were for a good cause so why not.

And could I help it when an hour later, two more Girl Scouts showed up on my doorstep selling cookies, that I had to buy even more? “You’re the second ones to ring my bell today,” I said, “so I’m only going to buy one more box.” “Okay,” they said, “thank you.” Then I proceeded to order two more boxes because, hey, they were out their on this bitter cold winter day just trying to raise money for a good cause.

Fortunately, I have not yet reached this point:

Poor Winston! (no, that’s not my cat but at the rate Shadow’s going, he best learn to beat temptation, too!)

Well, it sounds as though the job is safe. For now. We think. Typically, they didn’t say “much” and the words “lay off” weren’t actually used but they did say that they are “restructuring” the maintenance department. The hubby’s boss’s boss will be gone the end of June and the boss himself thinks its only a matter of time for him. As far as hubby, from what we’re hearing, the restructuring will result in fewer techs in each area. Fortunately, hubby has seniority (though we’re told that’s not really going to matter) but he also is in good standing with his boss and is told that he’ll be “rating” each of the techs to assist in determining who stays and who goes. If his recommendations actually mean anything, we should be okey-dokey. It will mean servicing more stores but its a job – one that he’s put a lot of time and effort into – so we are nothing but thankful for that at this point.

Niagara Falls has stopped, at least for now. Of course, that’s probably because it was 8 degrees when I got out of bed this morning but, hey – at least it wasn’t below 0, like it was in some areas!

On Saturday, my week from h3ll just continued but I won’t bore you with the details on that. Yesterday was a wonderful day, though, so I’m hoping things are on the upswing! Hubby informed me that he won’t be doing anymore sanding for the next couple of weeks so I reclaimed my house and dusted everything in sight! Its so good to have my house back!

We also got a weekend without any snow. Ahhh! What a treat that was. Though we’re not getting to excited. They’re now saying its going to snow Wednesday. All day. 6″ – 10″ with some areas getting as much as a foot. Can anyone guess what we’ll get???? Ahhh, the joys of living in New England!

This has been the week from h3ll for me.

–The weekend brought another foot plus of snow. That’s over 40″ already and we’re not even half way through snow season. Grrrrr….

–Niagara Falls has relocated inside my house. Clearly a new roof is in our not-so-distant future. Ugh.

–We were under the impression that hubby’s job was secure through 2009. Now the person in charge of maintenance has scheduled a conference call with the maintenance department at 3:00 this afternoon. Hubby is being optimistic and thinks this is going to be when he finds out “if” he’ll be out of work. I’m trying to be optimistic, too, but deep down, I think its going to be “when” he’ll be out of work. Never in my life have I wanted to be so wrong!

Which raises the question that has been going through my mind since he told me this last night – WHY do companies insist on doing this type of thing on a FRIDAY AFTERNOON??? Could they not ruin our work days instead of our weekend???

I will stop whining now. I will continue to remind myself that we have our health, a warm (albeit wet at the moment) home, each other and lots of love coming at us from many angles so life could absolutely be a lot worse. I’m just stressed out right now. And tired.