So This is Crunch Time

March and April are pretty stressful months, because I have the planning of the summer events going on, and the planning of the Cancer fundraiser happening.
I used to hate ironing the laundry, but now I long for the days where I spent the whole morning ironing shirts. I miss my iron.
I typically spend a couple of hours from midnight to 2am worrying about the stuff that needs to be done, worrying about the stuff that is done already but isn't panning out, and worrying about how I'm going to make it all work.
I wake up in the morning with awful stomach pains. I thought I had a sudden attack of heartburn but it turns out it's stress. Time to simplify.
I've got to tell my boss to downgrade me from an operations manager to just some sort of an assistant, because the responsibility of paying his bills as well as the company's, and getting the events taken care of is starting to take its toll on me.

We went out for St Patrick's to a local pub that was conducting a "St. Baldrick's" fundraiser for children's cancer research. Guys collect donations in support of the cause, then show their own support by getting their head shaved. Four green martinis later, I was completely stress free. Unfortunately that didn't last.
I woke up at my usual midnight hour, worrying.

Here's Steve and I on St. Patrick's, he's wearing a shirt that I ironed:

Meow Meow

Haven't seen him for a week, and finally last night I ventured outside to find him on the roof. He came to us as a stray almost 3 years ago, and he has stayed around ever since. He takes care of the yard, dismembering any pigeons or rodents who make the mistake of trespassing, and he chases the rabbits away. Of course not all the rabbits get away...I keep finding rabbit parts out there.
Steve's daughter stays with us every other week, and lately she's been bringing her little dog, a miniature pincher, with her. I used to like the dog till I noticed how much the damn thing was peeing in the house. Well the cat doesn't like the dog either. If she's here, the cat disappears for a while.
He usually shows up with scabs, scars, and open wounds because he fights with other male cats out there. Last night was not exception! He was covered in his own blood, and hair was coming out in tufts. I got him cleaned up and let him rest up.

He slept all day, and now that it's night time he's out there prowling.

Movie Review Time

Haven't seen any new porns lately, but I did rent some normal movies recently.

"Into the Wild" was not what I expected. I remember the commercials, and thinking it was one of those feel good movies where the guy gets out there to witness how beautiful nature is, and his struggles to adapt to the harsh life in the wilderness is eventually overcome with a happy ending.
Boy, was I wrong.
I like happy endings. I don't care how cheesy they are. That's why "I Am Legend" was such a bummer for me. This one shocked me, completely. I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I can recommend it; I guess I would say it's a good movie and very well put together. But don't expect the feel-good ending. And keep in mind that this is a true story. They prove it at the end.

"American Gangster." Oh. My. God. That's a great flick. What makes it even better is knowing that in the end the good guys win.

"Let's Go To Prison." Boring. Never even finished watching it.

"Mr. Woodcock." Hilarious. Billy Bob Thornton plays a fantastic asshole and he never disappoints. We laughed thru the entire movie. You know how usually the goofy movies kind of die off about halfway thru? Not this one. I definitely recommend it!

Time For AARP

I'm an adult now. I've never felt this way, not even with all the little milestones being met in the past. You know, buying a house, a car, doing the job with the briefcase, paying taxes, buying alcohol without the help of the older neighbor friend. You know.
So I'm an adult now, because I set up a college fund for my son. I've had a savings account for him for almost 10 years now, but it has never had a significant amount of money in it. And the interest it's earning is laughable.
When Steve and I discussed my tax return and other stuff, he told me I should really consider starting a 529 Mutual Fund. It's specifically for educational expenses and it can be tailored to fit whatever budget you have. So I looked into it, and quickly set an account up before I had a chance to spend my tax refund on garbage and more garbage at Wal Mart and Ebay.
So now I have a good start on Shay's college fund, and at $50 a month it's not so much of an obligation.
Wow. A college fund.
I'm all grown up now.

Funny Camera Story

I have a funny camera story. Lots of people have heard it today, so you will, too.

When my ex and I split many years ago, I had a lot of belongings that I was not able to get back from him. Nothing at all, not even my clothing and my son's stuff. Asshole. One of the items that I refused to give up on was my Kodak Easy Share digital camera. We went to court several times over the years, and finally one day about 6 months ago his new wife brought the camera and some other things to the courthouse for me to take home. It wasn't based on principal; the camera (and my laptop, and my furniture...etc, etc) were all awarded to me because it was MINE in the first place. But the camera was the only thing of value I was able to recover. He'd been thrashing on it for several years, so it was not in good shape. But I happily put it to use, photographing everything and anything.

We went for a sunset cruise on the lake two days ago and I took the camera with me. The little wrist lanyard had come off earlier in the day because it was a cheesy thin little thing. I snapped all kinds of neat photos on the boat ride, and even took some pictures at the boat ramp as we were pulling out of the water. At the last minute, Steve needed me to guide the boat in from the dock next to it, so I leaned over to grab the rail. "bloop." That was the camera falling out of my pocket into about 8 feet of water. Nothing I could do, the camera was already ruined. I was just happy that I'd been up to date on transferring all the photos off of it.

Today I had to run to WalMart at 7 am to get a $29 DVD player for a fundraiser I was conducting. We needed one to play our fundraiser's DVD for everyone. As I went past the cameras, I saw a new Kodak Easy Share with 8.2 megapixels (the old one was only 5) and it even had a pretty good price. So without hesitating, I got the new camera.
Everyone who saw my new camera today got to hear the camera story.

This is me, blowing bubbles and running around on roller skates at today's fundraiser:

Myspace Miracles

There are certain people on Myspace who I'd never meet in a million years, and I consider them awesome friends. We email each other little tidbits of our lives, both the good and the bad, and we entertain each other with funny pictures and stories.
My myspace friends keep better track of me than the ones who live down the street!!

Interesting how that works.

My first friend on Myspace was an Englishman named Miles who was living in Houston. By English I mean he moved to Texas from Oxford. He would periodically post a blog about what was going on in his life, and he would provide in-depth movie reviews. I don't know what he does for a living but I'm getting the feeling from recent posts that he's a movie reviewer of some type.
After a bad breakup in Houston, he relocated to Wyoming to live with a friend he'd met on Myspace. That didn't last, because he quickly realized that Wyoming is COLD and BORING. I remember sending him a message, suggesting that if he really wanted to take advantage of that quirky accent of his then he needed to move out West where we suck up all that is different about a person, chew it up, spit it out, and make them really regret the whole venture in the first place. The entertainment industry.

Next post I read from him, he'd relocated to Los Angeles. He moved into a house at the beach, attended a movie pre-screen and provided a review. He recently stood outside the gates of the Oscars and got to see some celebrities arrive on the red carpet. Adventures, to say the least!

He and I swap stories (he once found the members of The Cure sipping tea in his back yard in England--and I once danced with hip hop singer Coolio to one of his songs)
And we laugh at ourselves for being so starstruck.

I think what makes these Myspace friends so stable is we can pick and choose which stories to swap, which drama to share, and we never get each other involved in the personal garbage that will ultimately chase a close friend away. We all have personal garbage.

If most friendships were on myspace, the world would probably be VERY QUIET...

Near Death, Sort Of

I worked this weekend for the gentleman who got me started in event production; Jim Russell. He is doing very few events of his own these days, being 65 years old and concentrating mostly on smaller projects. But each year, he puts together a long distance jet ski race called the Mark Hahn Memorial. It's a 300 mile race that's dedicated to the memory of a jet ski racer (Hahn) who died of a heart attack during a race four years ago.

My job at this event is to assist with the timing and scoring. That entails sitting on a boat that is anchored out from the shoreline, with a clipboard and watch, keeping track of all the jet skis and their laps they've completed. Since it's a 300mile race, the laps are 10 miles long and each racer must do 30 laps.
That means every lap is VERY important. Every jet ski must be accounted for, otherwise you're jipping them of 10 whole miles. Ouch.
The average speed of these jet skis is 60-65 miles per hour. So if a jet ski crashed into our timing boat for any reason, it would be a real disaster. This was something we actually discussed, after the race had begun and we'd figured out how fast they were running. And of course after having a few close calls with some jet skis that seemed to be turning a little close to us, we determined that we'd get hurt pretty badly should something actually happen.

With two laps to go, the jet skis seemed to be making a mad dash to pass one another. They were all of a sudden very close together so we had to pay close attention to keep our numbers straight.
I had to stand up with my score board because the waves created by the passing jet skis was rocking the boat and making it impossible to write legibly in the little squares I had on my paperwork. I stood toward the front of the boat, to get a good look at the jet skiers as they approached so I could make sure they made it around every single buoy marker that they were supposed to.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a whole lot of black and yellow coming at me very quickly. It was one of the jet skis, coming full speed and out of control.
I flinched because I knew it was coming. Sure enough, "BAM!" It sounded like someone had taken a sledge hammer to a huge loud piece of metal. He hit straight on, creating such a lurch for our boat that everything got knocked out of my hands.

I ran over to the edge of the boat, expecting to see an unconscious jet skier floating face down in the water. Thankfully, he was okay. I'm assuming he jumped clear once he realized he wasn't going to get his jet ski turned in time. Then I turned around. There were loud jet skis all around us, still racing of course, and the boat was moving all over the place from both the crash and the other jet skis.
The front of the boat was peeled back a good two feet from the impact. And on the floor was Monica, who was running the scoring computer. The impact sent her flying backwards and she hit her head; she was out cold face down on the floor.
I didn't want to move her, so I picked up the radio and called to the shore for help.
I informed the race director that we needed medics, that the racer appeared to be okay but Monica was unconscious. I struggled to reach the flags we had on board; green for the start, white for the last lap, checkered for the finish, and red for an emergency where the race needed to stop. I waved the red flag and informed the race director that we could not score therefore I was stopping the race.
He didn't know the mess that we were dealing with out there, so he was telling me to keep the race going and to continue scoring. I didn't argue. I found my clipboard, found a pen, and started logging the jet skis as they went by. All the while I held the white flag in the air because we were now in our final lap, and I talked on the radio, affirming that we needed medics.
FINALLY they sent medics out to us on a boat. Monica stayed unconscious for several minutes, but by the time the medics got there she was starting to come around. They loaded her onto a backboard and took her to the ambulance. While that was going on, the race was finishing and I was scoring it.
What a mess. When I finally got to the race director on shore, I wanted to kill him. He admitted to me that once he found out the huge problems we had out there, that I was right in making the decision to wave the red flag. We looked at my scoring sheets and determined that the end of the race was where the scoring was interrupted by the accident.
What followed was several hours of verifying numbers manually, since our computer and computer operator were knocked out in the accident. What a pain!!

All in a day's work...