Cripes, it's been a while...

My apologies to those who have been looking for updates here... been busy getting married, pregnant, working at the new job, etc. Oh yes, all happened this year!!

I am now Shannon J. again, which is pretty cool, I even changed my name today at the Secretary of State's office (more on that in a minute). I haven't even had time lately to get a haircut, which explains the almost constant ponytail, and my poor dog hasn't been for a walk in - well, I don't know how long. I just spent an hour this past weekend going over an enormous pile of mail (only half of which were bills, thank goodness, and some of them were even paid already) and I spent another 2-3 hours just cleaning the house. The spare room - soon to be the nursery!! - needed some serious cleaning alone. All the while I am trying to stop scratching, since my new injection medicine caused a nasty allergic reaction at the injection sites ... but hopefully the new meds (along with the Prednisone... ah, such wonderful stuff) will help with that.

Let's see... here's been my day so far.

Got up later than expected since my poor hubby wasn't able to sleep last night until like 3 a.m. (so the alarm got reset after it went off at 5:45). One of the issues with working at home and not having established a schedule just yet (hey it's only been 5 months, gimme a break). Anywho, the trash didn't get taken out last night so of course the recycling people and the trash guys both showed up before 9 a.m. (which never happens) and so now we have several bags of stuff that has to sit around for another week before we can get rid of it.

I got myself together to get out the door early to the Secretary of State's office, since we were finally able to get ACTUALLY married yesterday and we have a wedding license now (YAY!)... but hubby needed some help this morning getting off to his job, so of course I helped. Which meant I didn't get out the door until 9:45. I get to the Secretary of State's office about 15 minutes later, and although the smell in the place was slightly worse than the inside of a professional hockey gear bag, I grabbed a number and sat on a very uncomfortable plastic chair and waited. Now serving #54. I have the number 60, so I think, heck, this won't take too long.

I endure a video by the acting Secretary of State on the beautiful flat screen TVs (the only thing that's been updated in this office since about 1980) about how there have been so many updates and modernizations! Ha. About a half hour and a Pop-Tart later, I'm looking around for a water fountain or water cooler, but all there is in the corner is an ATM machine, because of course they only take cash or checks, no debit/credit cards here. Modernized, my butt. Finally I get called up into the line (because they can't rely on us to do that ourselves) and handed a form to fill out. It's about 6 lines long. I wasn't sure whether to put my new name on or the old one so I left it blank.

After letting another guy go ahead of me, and waiting for the lady with the oxygen tank to go ahead of me too, I finally get my turn. I show all the paperwork, fill in the form with my NEW name, get my lovely picture taken, and am told the card will be in the mail in 2-3 weeks. The only good thing here is that now I don't have to come in next month and get the thing renewed, or have to change my voter registration either, since they were efficient enough to take care of those today.

Then I decide to get to the bank and change my name on the savings account, since there's a branch right around the corner. I parked, and as I got out of the car, I see an older African American man getting out of a sedan, yelling at his driver... something about "You gonna say something, bi***? Go ahead, say something!" Great, I get to be in the bank with this guy. So I took my time inside filling out the withdrawal slip and getting in line. He was already with a teller when I got up there, talking to the teller about how she needed to write the balance on his slip much larger, because he couldn't see. I'm thinking he probably could have seen just fine if he hadn't been completely sauced. So while I am filling out another name change form, he's saying to his teller, "I think I know you from somewhere," and the poor girl is shaking her head. Then he starts mumbling about security and how she doesn't know him from anything. He says to her, "Ask me what my pin number is, go ahead, ask me. Ask me." Finally she gives in and says, "What's your pin number?" and he replies, "I ain't tellin you. Now why'd you go and ask me?" Yikes. So he gets his cash and goes to leave, but instead of turning around to see where he's walking, he walks backwards right into a display, which crashes into the wainscoting on the other wall, cracking the molding along the floor and taking a nice sized chip out of the display. Quite a noise. So the managers all rush out of their offices, and instead of helping to pick it up, drunk guy mumbles "Sorry" a couple of times and walks out. This is why I don't shop in the area anymore, weirdos!!

Topping off the day is a 45-minute discussion on the phone with my boss, who wants me to redo several timesheets with more detail, even though I redid several of them last night (which took me hours). Apparently I'm not billing enough time to clients vs. the company, and so now I need to go back and re-redo the work I already did. Which is one of my biggest pet peeves.

I also spent some time today sorting piles of junk on my desk - which you would think would not take all that long considering my desk is pretty small. But it took longer than I wanted it to, and two items I found were some unfinished writing that's been sitting around for about 6 years. Reminding me also that there's another thing I have not done, compounding the frustration of my day.

Other than that, everything's fine. :)