So, on Friday I drove for 8 hours, covered about 500 miles and arrived at my parents house exhausted! Luckily, I was able to leave work early, so I got to their place at about 7pm.

I had a really good time with my folks. I was able to relax a little and catch-up with both of them. I was sad to leave this morning.

Today it was a repeat of Friday, except I pulled away from their house at 6am and got home at 2pm.

I have to say, I went a different route to their than what I usually take, and I live in a truly beautiful state. I haven't driven up by Mammoth in over 20 years and the parts north of there in about 40 years (when I was a kid). It brought back so many good memories.....and maybe an itch to go camping.  If I do go camping, I'm not gonna be doing the driving any time soon, lol! It will take a while for me to recover from this!

The only really shitty apart about this different route (apart from the desert part) is that there are a bunch of areas that the speed limit goes: 70 65 55 45 35 25. And you can't speed! I saw tickets being given all along the way. It's hard to slow down that fast, especially when there are big trucks on your bumper!

I was told on Friday, before I left work, that they wanted me to go to a new office tomorrow and help train people. I wish it could be Wednesday instead, since that guy I work with that's been out of the country is due back tomorrow and we had a meeting scheduled....that's not going to go over too well!

Now, I'm gonna lay around and do nothing.

Work has been good. After a few difficult encounters with a guy I work with who is a jerk, my boss  agreed that it would be best for everyone involved if we didn't have anything to do with each other any more (he's on the other side of the office and needs to stay there!).  Sooooo, now I almost never see or talk to the asshole now. No more abusive or inappropriate comments from him, hooray! It's been so nice not getting angry and having to hold it in anymore, lol.

One of the other guys I work with has been out of the country for the past couple of weeks, so I've been watching his book of business and taking care of his clients while he's been out. It's been really stressful, but good. The downside is that, by the time I get home from work, I'm usually dead and drained. It's been early nights to sleep after a cocktail most evenings!! He's due back next week sometime, so I'm looking forward to that.  

I've wanted to call in sick a few times since that guy has been out of the country, but I've had to suck it up and come in to work so I can look after those clients, plus I had a few really big meetings last week and one more tomorrow that I've had to attend, as I'm the reason the meetings were able to be set-up in the first place (yay for me).

I don't know if I'm getting sick or if it's allergies, but I've been having to take my migraine medication like it's candy and have added allergy stuff to the mix over the past couple of days. My head feels a little better, but it's like I'm always on the verge of a full blown migraine, which is physically exhausting. My back has been hurting too. I think I retain a lot of my stress in my back. I had a masseuse tell me that once, so it must be true, right? Maybe I can book a massage one of these days. I got a pedicure this past weekend when I went up to visit a friend and I was really disappointed. I paid extra for a good foot massage and she only spent a few minutes on them and she even hit the bottoms of my feet a few times! Who does that? That hurts, that doesn't feel good!

I'm a mess!! (Nothing new there, right?)

I spent some time this past Saturday with a friend who lives out in the IE now. I haven't seen her in a while since she lives so far away, so it was nice to spend time catching-up. We went to dinner and the movies and had a good time. I was thinking about it, and this year is the 25th year we have been friends. It just doesn't seem right that I'm old enough to have had friends for that long,

Fingers-crossed I can leave work a bit early Friday as I have a LOOOOOONG drive planned that day. I'm not looking forward to being in the car for hours on end, driving while I feel shitty, but I'm looking forward to the trip. Again, gotta suck it up and get shit done. 😀

Hooray! This fucking crummy week is over!!!  Today seemed to take forever to pass!

Apart from getting my annual blood work done tomorrow, I think I have a pretty free weekend, which I'm excited about. I think I may meet some friends at LACMA tomorrow to see an exhibit that ends this weekend, but I'm not sure I can make it back to that side of town in time. Hopefully we can go to lunch afterwards if I can't get there when I need to.

I'm really hoping it's cooler this weekend, so I can go through my bookcases, cupboards and closets to clean things out without getting heat stroke. It's been so hot the past two months, I haven't gotten anything done around the apartment. The dresser and hope chest my dad brought down are still in exactly the same place they were put in the living room when he dropped them off. Although, everyone knows it's super-classy to have a dresser in your living room, as long as your cat lounges on top of it (as mine does) so maybe that should stay where it is. Ha!

I also want to try and make it to Ulta and Target, for purely selfish reasons of course!

Jeez, crummy day today. I really hope tomorrow is better! I couldn't sleep, so I've been up since about 2am.  I had to go into work early for a deal that was going to price and everyone seemed to want to be an asshole all day long.  At one point, I just got up and went to the ladies room to wash my hands and take some deep breaths. I didn't want to say anything I might regret!!!

I think I'm going to sit on the couch and have a cocktail.  Maybe more than just one...

My Amazon Echo arrived on Friday.... Oh my gosh!!! It's both creepy and fucking fantastic!

"Alexa! What is the news?"

Then she plays the headlines from NPR!

I'll be honest though, Alexa doesn't have the great sense of humor that Siri has. If you ask her childish questions like "Alexa! What is your favorite food?", she answers that she doesn't understand the question. At least Siri makes something up! Yes, I routinely ask available AI dumb questions. I'm 5 years-old.

You guys, I wasted an ENTIRE Saturday listening to comedy podcasts!  I moved from couch to the chair to another couch to a different chair.  Then I picked-up the Echo and took it in the bedroom when it was time to retire for the evening.

I didn't do anything productive while I was listening either,  I pretty much just listened while I had the TV on mute.

What did I listen to? Thanks for asking! I caught up on "The Smartest Man in the World" podcasts with Greg Proops, "The Todd Glass Show", "The Steven Brody Stevens Festival of Friendship", "You Make it Weird".... And a few more.

What do they have in common? They're all comedy and they're all LOOOOONG.

I need to figure out a way to listen to the podcasts while doing other stuff, like maybe cleaning up my filthy, filthy apartment. Doing two things at once is going to be a major challenge. Am I up for it? Probably not. I'll keep you posted.

"Alexa! What time is it?"

Alexa: "5:25 am"

Crap, I gotta get my act in gear and get my iced tea to go to work!!

So happy today is Friday! It's been a good week, but I can't wait to sleep in a little and FINALLY get some laundry done.  I've got a quilt AND a duvet cover taking up a lot of room in my dirty laundry hamper, so I'd like to get that taken care of.

I received the part for my car that I hope will take care of the problem I've been having with it.  It should only take a couple of minutes for David to swap out the part, so it looks like a quick trip to Pasadena is on the schedule for Sunday morning. Fingers-crossed this fixes it!!!!  I'm tired of my car acting weird.

I told most of you guys about having to get rid of my very expensive, very beautiful rug.....because of the fucking moths that invaded my apartment because of one of my neighbors.  I thought that getting rid of the destroyed rug (I've never seen moths do damage to a rug before) and going through clothes, killing every moth I see, would take care of the problem.  I was WRONG!!!

Luckily, I decided to wait until I hadn't seen a moth for a week before I unrolled the new 6x9 rug I bought (still safely shrink-wrapped in plastic) to replace the one I threw away. It was five days and I thought "hooray, I can put the rug down soon!". Noooooope. All of a sudden, I'm seeing three moths a day! I'm probably going to have to toss out another rug I moved into the living room temporarily, as I think maybe it had a few moths hidden in it that I'd missed when I was going through everything. This is bullshit!!! I'm tired of throwing out pretty and pricey rugs, all because I did a favor for a neighbor.

I'm also going to rearrange some of my furniture and maybe look into getting a storage unit to move some of my seasonal stuff and boxes (and boxes and boxes) of comics and CDs to. Since I am probably going to be moving in the 8-10 months, it might be easier to move this stuff out now (since I never go into the boxes anyway) and that way I don't have to pay The REAL Rock N Roll Movers to do it (they are the BEST movers, look-up their story, it's awesome).

I don't need to get a pedicure, but I really want to change the color of my toes and get a foot rub, so I think I'm going to try and fit one in this weekend. Yaaaassss! Foot rubs rule!

The plumber came Wednesday and replaced most of the pipes/hoses under my bathroom sink, so I guess it wasn't my lack of plumbing skills that caused me to be unable to fix the problems last weekend. PLUS, the cuts on my hands are almost healed. Bonus!

I can tell that it's gonna be a good day today, I can feel it. I'm going to pay my bills, have a few conference calls, maybe buy a stock I've been looking at (if the price comes down to where I want it). I'm looking forward to starting the day!

This past weekend was fun. I got to see my dad for a little bit, went up and hung out with friends for a while and tried my hand at fixing a plumbing issue. I totally failed in the plumbing dept and cut up my thumb and index finger, but it was fun nonetheless.

Add to that the fact I had a very good day today and I can honestly say I'm happy, so hooray for that!

All is good.