Oh, the weather outisde is . . .

BEAUTIFUL!! I want to live in a place where it is this temperature all the TIME!

The best is when I can wear shorts and a long sleeve shirt. I am happy as a clam when it is like that. When I don't sweat before I even step out of the shower . . .

Ok, so Lynilu has called me out, and I am here to give an update! Wish I could make it as exciting as Amy Poehler in SNL, but you will have to deal with just me . . .

Work has been good. I had a very important meeting today with a local educational place to try and sell myself and my program to them as a contract service. I felt really confident and I presented myself very well. I recognize that if they choose not to go with it, it has nothing to do with me myself--it has to do with them as a program. Important distinction!!! Made me realize how far I have come--and that I am going to be ok. My grant ends the end of January, and without promise of additional funds I will be unemployed. I am ok with that. I am working as hard as I can to be in a position to have other options for myself.

School is going--I am less excited about spending the amount of money I am to take this class, but it is a means to an end. I had to email the professor the other day as we discussed a case and the class kept talking about how crazy this family was, and how crazy the mom was. I couldn't believe that in a school of social work that she would allow such things to be said. I somewhat firmly believe that we are what we think--so if we think that people are crazy and view them that way, then are we really giving them a chance at being anything different? I recognize we all need to blow off steam, especially in this field, but I was feeling that was just not cool. Tonight we were talking about self injury, and people were being stupid with their comments--and I finally couldn't take any more and I raised my hand and I told them that I was a person who used to cut and do those things, and I am not weird--ok, well, maybe I am weird--but you know. Several people came to me afterwards and thanked me for putting a real face on the issue. Damn, and these people are going to be social workers . . .

The kids are good. Riley is growing like a weed, and Addie is holding her own. I have embraced the use of the outdoor kennel, and we haven't been issued a warning from animal control that our dogs are being a menace, so I assume they are behaving when we are gone. We put straw in their houses, and they both seem to like the kennel. Riley has started a new training place due to scheduling conflicts with the other place. He is really smart--even more so than his sister I feel. We won't tell her though.

My brother in Houston still has no power, though their house was mostly spared any damage. I think they have a few windows that need to be replaced, but other than that they are ok. I am going to visit them next month, and I sure hope they have electricity by then!! Not too much to ask. I am going to visit after I go to San Diego for work. It is quite a sacrifice I am making to go to CA for three days to present for 12 minutes. They asked me at work if I would mind going for them . . .um, let me think about it . . .NO!!! I am really excited and scared at the same time, but that's another post.

I hate--dislike very much-Jenny McCarthy . . .

Weird sightings today--a man on the corner of a major intersection doing crunches on the ground . . .mid day . . .just on the ground doing crunches.

Ok, no more. I have had to draw a line in the sand and cut back on some things. I realized that I was out most nights of the week and so I have had to allocate one night a week that I am home, nothing to do but watch TV in my pj's. I have cut back on my women's hometeam group and will only go every other week when I don't have my social work supervision group. That frees up one night a week. Important self care that is hard for me to do . . .growing all the time . . .

There you go . . .I will try and be slightly more regular in my attendance!

B-I-N-G-O

So, it was any other ordinary Saturday, when we--meaning DP, DP's sister, and her man friend and I decided that we would go play BINGO on the reservation. Now, when this idea was brought up a while back, I was very excited--I had always heard that gay bingo was fun. Well, I came to find out later that the bingo we were going to play was not in fact gay bingo at all. Oh well, it would be fun none the less. Right?

Let me tell you, this ain't your elementary school bingo, kids! This was hard core bingo, complete with old ladies with oxygen tanks, smoke filled rooms, and bingo boards the size of a small child.

When we arrived at the Menominee Casino we were wide eyed and unsure what to do. You would have thought we all had 5 heads the ways these folks were looking at us. We found someone to tell us that we had to get a special card in order to play, which we did. We stood in a very smoke filled room while we all got bingo cards with our names on them. Then we had the tasks of standing in line tyring to figure out what all the options meant. At one point a fairly grumpy old lady informed us that the line was back there, and what did we think we were doing cutting in line. Couldn't we see they were all waiting?(She was sitting at a table that she clearly felt was a line??!!??) Apparently anxiety was already high in the Bingo hall because the computers had recently gone down and they weren't able to sell games in enough time to be able to play warm up games. While we waited in line, a bus arrived with many, MANY older people who had these little pins on-I guess to remind them they'd come on a bus and to identify them?

We decide on what kinds of games we will play, and DP and Man friend walk away with electronic bingo boards, and sister and I have the paper boards. The electronic games I think are for those that want to say they are playing bingo, but really want to pick up a hot lady or man friend while looking about the room. Basically these machines did everything for you, and even beeped and told you to prepare to yell bingo when it was time. Good thing I stuck to the real thing for some authentic bingo experiences.

After looking through my three inch stack of paper games, it was evident that we would need one of those dot maker things--otherwise known as a dauber. Pictured here in case you didn't know what they were. I believe in the world of children, they are also known as Do-A-Dot Art. Clearly this activity was started by seeing some child playing with their great great great grandparents daubers in Florida somewhere! Someone thought "Hey, we could make a mint on this and market it to kids-then they'd already know how to use them in their golden years for bingo!! Anyways, I went and made my selection of a medium size dauber-in purple of course. Sister chose green. Man friend was awarded a FREE dauber since it was his birthday month. You can BET I am going back in December when we are here for Christmas to get my free dauber. It even had a birthday cake and candles depicted on the front. Ah, memories.

Well, finally it was time to get started, and we were playing what is called 9-on, where we had nine games going for each round. There were 27 rounds total, though some were special ones. I swear, I left there with a headache and seeing colored dots floating around the room. It was interesting to watch others play this game. Some came with enough gear to get snowed in for months. Multicolor daubers, little snow globe receipt holder things, coolers of food, smokes--they even served free coffee and soda! I still don't know what you would do with a 10 color selection of daubers, but more power to them.

In the end I left with nothing but a blogging topic, and a better understanding of what was happening in the gym on Friday's when I went to catholic school. My fondest memory of bingo prior to this trip was getting chosen to be the one who was allowed to take my teacher's dollar bill to the gym and buy her a hot dog w/ kraut and mustard every Friday during bingo. I wasn't ever sure why I was chosen to do this, but I remember it fondly.

We stopped off at the slots for good measure with $20. I lost all but $4, but in a last minute decision, I ended up leaving with $21.50.

It was a good day.

(PS--this post was not meant to be offensive in any way. So if you, or your grandparents, great grandparents, or great great great grandparents are a bingo player and felt offended, I am sorry!)

Post Traumatic Cheese Steak Syndrome

Thank you folks for NOT holding your breath for this one. I apologize for the delay, but I have been undergoing intense psychiatric treatment for this and I am only now ready to talk about it.

So, there's the tale of two cheese steak places . . .We'll call them Pat's and Geno's for lack of better names. I even happen to have a photo of these fictitious places. Not sure how I conjured them up, but alas.

We had DP's sister here to visit us from Minneapolis, and we thought it would be fun to go get a real south Philadelphia Cheese steak. After all, they are famous, and some places are even making headline news.

We head down to the city for some fun, and as lunch time approaches our stomachs are aching for some cheese steak. We find a perfect, and close parking space-which by the looks of the surroundings was quite a find! We approach the corner and we see our two options. Sister says that she's been to Pat's before and thinks we should go there. We have no loyalties, and so we go.

First of all, the line was wrapped around the building. Once could only hope this meant that the steaks they had were to die for-literally since as you can see in the above pictures, people stand in the middle if the street for these things at Geno's.

Secondly, we are noticing the line moving quickly-though still quite long with storm clouds looming ahead. This is good cause as I mentioned before, we were hungry. Still unsuspecting of what was to come, we dream of our cheese steaks and fries. What would we do in the event of rain? Nothing would deter us from our mission.

As we round the corner where we see the counter, the anticipation grows and we become nervous. Things are moving very quickly, and we rapidly take in the sign that gives you instructions on how to order.Easy enough, right? We get nearer the counter and things are moving at breakneck speed. We see meat flying, onions flying, and hear lots and lots of yelling. Turns out the way they keep the line moving is to YELL at you. "Have your money ready" Let's Go, Let's go" What do you want?" Let's go, let's go" Move it, Move it" I am scared . . .

Let me set the scene. There is a window that says steaks only, and we are thinking we want steaks and fries. We are not sure if you can order all those items at this window. Thinking it is like a cheese steak express line, we go to the next window, which we are yelled at again and told now that it is only for fries and drinks. We try and BACKTRACK to the steak window, which has now processed about 50 people in one minute and those people are not liking the fact that we are now trying to get back there. Everything is moving so quickly that I have forgotten how to order-I need the Cliff's notes and I can't think, I am being yelled at, and I have no freaking idea what I want. There's no time to think when ordering your cheese steak in Philly. DP ended up with a cheese steak with cheese wiz on it cause she didn't know what she was doing and got scared, and I got mine mostly right, but I had a ton of onions as I guess I uttered the code word for butt load of onions.

Then we are thrown our sandwiches and change, literally, and the dictator starts yelling again, "MOVE IT, MOVE IT". We get to the next window and there is more yelling, more money throwing, and little time to think. Finally we all walk away with cheese steak and half filled fountain drinks and some fries. We look stunned. We try and find the ketchup station, and after we locate that and look for a table, we find that there is none to be found. We end up sitting on a stoop of an abandoned store with our food across the street.

Let me add in here that it is not too long ago that I was heavily medicated for OCD, and we are sitting here with greasy steaks, fries, on a dirty stoop-- with 2 napkins to share between the three of us. None of this matters now because we have the beloved Philly cheese steak in hand, and we have the battle wounds to prove it. The anticipation is too much to handle and we bite in with such abandon . . .only to find . . .

it's a cheese steak. . . Nothing special .. .after all that we'd had such high expectations and were quite disappointed. The fries were cold, the steak was greasy, and all together a waste of a few million calories.

So there you have it. Between the yelling, the dirty eating accommodations, the million calories, and disappointing finish, you can see why I have affectionately called this Post traumatic cheese steak syndrome.

I say next time we stick to this cheese steak place-Tony Luke's in Philadelphia. The steaks were better when we went last year with DP's family, and there was no psychological abuse involved. I drove by the scene of the event yesterday and I began to shake. I am sure in the distance I saw flying cheese steaks and heard the sounds of screaming men-just as I put the pedal to the metal and drove far, far away.

The End.

Seen today at the gym

OK, I saw the funniest thing today at the gym. I don't know that simply telling you will do it justice, but I have to tell someone.

I did my cardio and then it was off for some weight lifting. I had noticed a small, older woman of asian descent on the bike, then she too went to the machines. Well, she had the most unusual techniques about her work out. She was on the seated row machine-for those of you that don't know, it is the one where you sit down and pull the bar back toward you midchest with your arms . . .well was doing this to the extreme and whipping her whole body back and forth-sort of like seated row meats sit up . .

Then it appeared that she wanted every machine that I was on, so when I got off of one machine, she came racing over with the seriously scary face and very fast walk-like she could have killed me. . I SOO wish I could do more for this story with a visual, but I can't, but you have to know it was by far the funniest thing I have seen in a very long time. Oh, and she would stare at me while on the machine that she just ran me over to get to.

She then moved onto the leg machine, where you sit down and move your legs from 90 degree angle to straight out, well, again, she was doing her own thing. I looked around to see if anyone else thought this was odd, but apparently they are either used to it or didn't notice, but it kept me in the gym for an extra 20 minutes.

I just thought it was funny . . .

Tired

I am very tired today. I just finished working to catch up on paperwork and prepare for visits tomorrow. I need to figure out how to manage my time better when I have home days to assure that I get everything done.

I did manage to go to the gym today, so that was good. I even did crunches . . .

Oh, on an interesting note, I saw a guy in the city today completely flip over his bike-head over heels and land in the middle of the road. Luckily no one ran over him . . .I would have stopped, but I had a cab up my butt and it looked like someone was attending to him. He got up and walked, but I have never seen anything like that up close and personal. Oh, I also got to back down an off ramp today when an over sized load got stuck on the exit and we had no where to go but backward. What fun!

I am off to the shower then bed-short post today, but I think yesterday made up for it, don't you?