Last Friday I drove to Rockford to see my college friend, Jessica, whom I haven’t seen in over 12 years. We’ve kept in touch, sporadically, over the years via email and the occasional phone call, but with her spending some of those years living in North Carolina and then having babies, the time was just never right to get together. I’ve got a lot of free time on my hands so I figured I’d go see her since she has three boys to look after – two 6 year old twins and a 12 month old. We spent about five hours hanging out at her house and what was great was that I never felt self conscious around her even after not having seen each other in so long. I think it’s hard sometimes to find people who make you feel relaxed and free to be 100% yourself, so when you do you must cherish it. I only hope it won’t be another 12+ years until I see her again.
Category: Friends
Lazy Friday
Today has been my laziest day since resigning. I’m still lying in bed, in fact.
I’ve had a very difficult time sleeping after Joe’s alarm goes off at 5:20 am but today I managed to fall back to sleep at 8 and sleep til 9:30. I figured I should get as much rest as possible since tonight is BINGO night with our friends! We haven’t played BINGO in at least a year, if not more. It’s a lot of fun, although I’m usually yawning like crazy come 9:30 pm because its a bit too long for my liking – it starts at 7:30 and usually ends around 10:30. We get there an hour early to snag a table so it ends up being a four hour affair and the last two games are coveralls which are painfully slow. Despite my “complaints”, I am looking forward to it. I haven’t left the house since Monday or socialized with anyone in person besides my family in weeks.
A couple of updates:
I never heard back from the company I interviewed with. I had no intention of going on a second interview with them anyway, but it’s a bit disappointing to realize they didn’t like me as I know I would kick ass at that job. But ego aside, I don’t really care.
The foster place doesn’t have any kittens to place at the moment but it’s only a matter of time they said. I’ll most likely be fostering two at a time as they like to adopt them out in pairs. In the meantime I’m going to check if any of the local libraries are in need of a volunteer so I can get some experience under my belt. Who knows, maybe I’ll find out I don’t like it as much as I imagine I would.
Deja Brew
There’s this bar in Oak Lawn, Illinois called Deja Brew that Joe and I used to “frequent” when we were first hanging out before we officially started dating. It has been over a decade since we’ve gone there… until last night. Apparently all the peeps in his and his sister’s age group coordinated a get together through Facebook. It was pretty fun – I finally met one of Joe’s childhood friends, Terry, who I’ve been friends with on Facebook for over a year. Real nice guy. I also learned that the woman who asked me to retrieve her mail awhile back because she had just had surgery is probably his SIL. Small world!
Roller Skating
Last night’s skating “party” was fun. I had invited about 12 people and 5 people and their spouses/friends showed up. I could not believe how crowded the rink was! I honestly didn’t think roller skating was popular anymore, but boy was I wrong! The rink was packed with people which kinda sucked because it was extremely difficult to navigate with everyone skating at different speeds. I used to be a pretty decent skater and I was getting into a nice groove but ended up falling at one point trying not to run into someone, and now my right knee hurts. It feels like it’s deeply bruised even though no visible bruise has developed yet.
Surprisingly, I didn’t end up with any blisters on my feet like I used to get, although it felt like it once the night was over. It’s probably because I didn’t skate the entire time due to the aforementioned crowd.
I need to find a rink that’s either bigger or that offers skate times that aren’t as crowded. We were joking that we should open our own duel-rink facility – one rink for the slow skaters and one for the fast ones. My friend remarked, “one for over 25 and one for under 25” to which I replied, “same difference”. The majority of adults there were practically clinging to the walls to stay upright. I liked that the walls were covered in a rug-like material because the rink I used to skate at was pure concrete and had these huge “speed bumps” separating the rink form the other areas which would make you trip.
One thing that sucked was you couldn’t request music from the DJ. They went a little heavy on the R&B and while I don’t mind some, I didn’t want to listen to it all night. In any case, I would definitely like to go skating again soon, and plan on scoping out the other rinks in the area once my knee heals. And maybe I’ll try using my roller-blades instead of renting skates because my blades are more comfortable and I don’t have to worry about the tongue constantly moving over like on the skates. I had to reposition them every few minutes which was annoying.
Shower me with games
Saturday we attended our nephew’s and his girlfriend’s baby shower. It’s been years since I’ve been to a shower which is a good thing because I’m not into that sort of thing. That being said, this one wasn’t bad, although I felt anxious when it reached 4:30 pm (it started at 2) and the guest of honor still hadn’t gotten to opening our gift. We needed to leave at 5 in order to get back home in time for game night which I was hosting and had planned two months ago before receiving the shower invitation. Luckily we did end up getting out of there on time and all my guests arrived late so we were home with plenty of time to spare. Oh, and I won the “Baby BINGO” we played. The prize was a box of mini diffusers in “Linen” scent which smell really nice.
Game night was a blast!!! It’s tough finding people who are truly interested in playing board games but once they were introduced to Aggravation, my friends couldn’t get enough. I don’t know why I even own so many other games when Aggravation is the bestest one ever! :) My new-found friends, which happen to be my new boss and new Director (and her boyfriend), are awesome. I feel very comfortable around them. We get along great on work and non-work levels which is such a refreshing change after all the bullshit I’ve had to deal with over the years. Joe really liked them too and I hope we all get together soon, although with the holidays coming up it might be awhile. Who knows.
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DST. Should I complain about it because everyone else is? Truth is I didn’t notice any difference in my sleep schedule. But I don’t understand everyone’s happiness about the light in the morning. I really couldn’t care less if it’s dark or light when I’m driving to work. I much prefer the sunlight once I’m off work. Also, now my commute into work involves the rising sun in my eyes and the drive home is the setting sun in my eyes. Woo hoo. Not.
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Recently they upgraded our computers at work to Windows 7. I have a laptop since I work from home once a week, so they installed Windows 7 on a new machine, a Lenovo ThinkPad. My old laptop is a Dell, which I loved, but they stopped supporting them at work, plus the Lenovo has a faster processor and twice as much memory. So while it functions better, I don’t like it because of the following reasons:
The internet cable port is on the side instead of the back.
The USB ports are on the left-hand side whereas they were on the right with my Dell.
The power code doesn’t wrap up nicely like the Dell one.
The control key is not the bottom-left key, the stupid function key is, so I’m constantly thinking I’m copying something when I’m really not. Are there no standards to keyboards?!? Pretty much every other one I’ve ever used has the control key in the bottom-left corner. WTF Lenovo? Do you think you’re special?
And most importantly, the thing is just ugly. No, FUGLY. Just look at the thing!
The 90’s called and it wants its laptop back.