I'd like to take just a minute to wish someone very special to me a very happy birthday: Sammy the Ferocious Guard Poodle! He's 7 years old today! I've related before the story of how he came to live with me, but for you newcomers I'll give you the Reader's Digest condensed version: I'd looked around for a LONG time for a poodle without much luck...all the ones I'd seen were too old, too expensive, or sick. I finally found this one lady who had a litter just old enough to be adopted out so I went to take a look. Initially I'd picked out a little girl, but then I spotted this other pup who was a peach color with a little black spot on the back of his neck. The breeder tells me, "that spot is an imperfection so he's not worth as much money...." That was all I had to hear....I put down the little girl and picked up Sammy. I wasn't looking for a dog that was worth a lot of money...I was looking for a dog who was worth a lot to ME! You animal lovers out there know EXACTLY what I mean by that! I've never once regretted my decision because though it may sound kind of silly, that little dog has brought SO much happiness into my life! Here's some pictures of my little boy:

This is Sammy on the first night he came to live with me. He ate a whole plate of food and then tried to eat the plate too!! I guess he was glad that he finally didn't have to share his dinner with the brothers & sisters!

Here's one from this past Christmas---Sammy *LOVES* Christmas because he always gets a present from Santa Claus!

This is a few years old...he learned how to pose for pictures at a VERY young age!!

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Speaking of pictures---my little nephew Eli has become quite the ham! He's had a zillion pictures taken of him in the last 2 1/2 years, so now when you tell him to say CHEESE, the following is what you get:

I swear folks....this little guy is getting to be more like his Uncle Bryon every day!!

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AND ANOTHER:
Remember my entry about my friend Josh recently? Well, he's a dad now and I finally got over to his house to meet Timothy Darnell:

Since Josh is VERY.....VERY selective of who gets to hold Timothy, I was so honored when he put the baby into my arms!! I don't have a picture of Josh to post, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say Timothy looks JUST LIKE his dad! What an awesome little kid, huh?!

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So that's about it for now--yikes...two days in a row with short entries!! I'm losing my ability to ramble!!!

I was on "ant watch" last night: the doctor at the ER cautioned Cindy yesterday that the reaction to the fire ant bites could come back, so I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning making sure that I didn't miss a phone call from her [we haven't gotten the walkie-talkies as of yet]....a phone call that thankfully did NOT come!   In fact, Cindy came over for a while today bearing thank-you gifts: a plate of deviled eggs (one of my favorites!) AND a homemade chocolate pie! I asked her why she felt the need to do something like that and she told me, "I'm just so thankful that you were there to help me out yesterday!" Of course that made me feel really good, but I just had to tell her, "Now you know I don't do things for you to get gratitude....I do it for the food that I know you'll send over!"   Yes, things are back to normal on the cul-de-sac!

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Today was actually very nice---even though I was up until [literally] the crack of dawn, I woke up early enough to enjoy several hours of complete peace and quiet! Chris had to be at work by 6am {YUCK!} so he was already gone by the time that I got up; Sammy the Ferocious Guard Poodle didn't wake me up by sticking his cold wet nose in my face to be let outside; Miss Bigglesworth the Princess Cat didn't mistake my stomach for a mound of bread dough that needed to be gneaded; and the phone didn't ring ONCE!! It was like a little slice of heaven! I got up, made myself a glass of BryCoffee (iced tea--I can't stand coffee!) and signed onto the computer to check email---no impending tragedies there either! Then I was able to spend some time drawing some home designs on my Punch Home Design program {I've told y'all I'm a geek!} and even got to watch a movie on TV--completely UNinterrupted!!                                                      

   Now all of this may sound somewhat boring, but I **EARNED** a day of boredom!!! I'll take a day of dull over a day of mayhem ANYTIME!!!

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Understandably, I'm quite pooped, so this is going to be a short one this evening! So I hope everyone has a great week ahead! G'nite!

After the week I've had, the ONLY thing I asked for was a little peace and quiet this weekend. I swear..that's ALL that I wanted--just some time to take it easy, maybe work on going through some stuff in the spare room I've been needing to get rid of...

Clearly I was wrong in my assumption that my request was a small one because shortly after 1pm today my day went completely to hell.....

While I'm in the bathroom showering, I hear the phone ringing....of course I can't answer it while I'm soaking wet, so when I get out, I check the caller ID to see who'd called. It was Cindy's number, but she hadn't left a message. I figured that she was probably calling to see if I wanted to come over to hang out by the pool for awhile, so I decided I'd call her back after I finished getting dressed. About 5 minutes later, I try calling and get a busy signal (Cindy is one of the few folks in the world who still doesn't have call waiting!) so I decide to just try again later and I go into the den to watch some tv. Since the den has 4 huge windows that cast a very annoying bright spot on the tv, I'd hung dark drapes and closed them & the blinds....which prevents me from seeing anything going on outside, such as cars [or an ambulance!] coming down the street.

A few minutes after that, the doorbell rings....I figure it's Cindy popping over for a visit since she couldn't get me on the phone, so I head into the living room to answer the door. It wasn't Cindy at all, but my other neighbor Jeremy. So I answer the door and he tells me, "Cindy wants to know if you can come over and take care of her dogs for a little while....she's really sick." I give him this weird look and look past him to Cindy's house, where I see an AMBULANCE in her driveway!!!   Of course I shot past Jeremy and was at her house in less than 10 seconds [although at some point I'd put on my socks and shoes, though I don't remember doing that!] and go in to find two paramedics hovering over Cindy while she's barely conscious in a recliner!! I asked what happened and she tells me that she had been weeding in her back yard and had apparently gotten bitten by some fire ants and was feeling really sick. I could tell right away that she was in VERY bad shape...she was swollen up, barely conscious, and was turning different colors! Now here she is, on the verge [literally] of death and the only thing she's worried about is her dogs!! I assured her that I'd take care of her dogs while the paramedics took her to the hospital....and then they took her away with sirens blaring and lights flashing. Meanwhile, another neighbor had come over and asks me, "she looked really bad...do you think she did something stupid?" I looked at her and said, "Um, no. If you visited her on a regular basis, you'd know that she's doing a lot better these days (after Kevin's death) and the thoughts of doing herself in have pretty well dissipated." What a bitch.

Anyway....THANKFULLY Cindy got to the hospital in time and was saved literally just in the nick of time. Her blood pressure when she got to the hospital had dropped to 50 over 30...no that's NOT a misprint....it was really that low! It was amazing that she was even still conscious at that point...or even alive really! But anyway, here's what had happened: she'd been out in the back yard doing some weeding at an area behind her pool...the ground is sort of raised up....the landscaping that has a retaining wall (you all know the look I'm talking about)...well it's about chest height on her, and while she was weeding, the bottom of her arm was resting on top of the retaining wall...which was unfortunately the home of a colony of fire ants...these little shits are all over the place out here....anyway, when they're disturbed, they will swarm (like army ants) and they are actually quite poisionous in large numbers.....so Cindy didn't realize what was going on until her arm started to burn and she saw some crawling on her.....then she realized there were LOTS of them on her...so she runs to the pool and jumps in to get them off of her....but by then it was too late. They had already gotten all over her arm and even into her bathing suit and were biting her all up and down the front of her body!! While she was getting out of the pool she started to feel faint and just barely made it into the house to call me. Well when she didn't get me {and didn't leave a voicemail!!} she called 911----and spent the rest of the afternoon in the emergency room. The docs at the hospital told her she was very lucky to have survived because she'd had literally HUNDREDS of those little evil bastards on her....so now she has to carry an EPI-pen because if she gets bitten again the reaction will come on faster and even stronger!!!

Needless to say, it scared the living shit out of Chris, Cindy, and me!!!! I told her that we now have to come up with some sort of plan to alert each other when something like this happens.....and she made a good point....she said something like this could have happened to any of us and we wouldn't think about leaving a voicemail....and we're not always alarmed if there's no message because we're always calling just to say hi...which is why I didn't think much of getting a busy signal when I tried to call back! Being that she's alone over there now, she could have died had she not been able to call 911....so we're going to get walkie-talkie's or something to alert each other in case of an emergency.....

GAAAAAHHHHH!! Can I at least have SUNDAY with a little peace??!!!

Had I not checked my calendar [and the fact I wore jeans to work] I'd have sworn it was Monday! My first mistake of the day was actually getting up and going to work. I should have known when they gave me the wrong size tea at Chik-fil-A that it was going to be a VERY bad day!

My second mistake of the day was turning on my phone once I got to my desk at work. I'd barely gotten the stupid thing turned on when I get some bonehead from New Jersey on the line who spent the next 25 minutes complaining about everything from the company we work for to the computer he uses to the strange growth that has developed in the crack of his ass [MY guess is that it's his HEAD!]......

No sooner had I gotten off the phone when I made my THIRD mistake of the day by answering a call that had been holding specifically for me for 15 of those 25 minutes I was on the phone with Guido Lattaciacchionenoodle. I pick up the line and here's the jerk that has spent the better part of the last several months trying his best to make me feel & look like a complete idiot. He's pissed because--GASP!--I have once again had the GALL to do my job!!! So this guy spends the next 10 minutes telling me just how much of a dumbass he thinks that I am, being VERY careful not to use that exact term because he knows the call is being recorded, but still making his point. Get this though....regardless of the fact that I'm reading to him instructions on how this certain job was to be done, he informs me that it is NOT my job to follow those directions because it doesn't coincide with what HE wants to do. Yes. He ****REALLY**** said that. All I could do at that point was tell him, "Look. Someone MUCH higher on the totem pole here has given me specific instructions on how my job is to be performed and if you have even the slightest inclination that I'm going to do it YOUR way just because YOU say so, you are very SADLY mistaken." Now here's the funny part...after I *finally* manage to get this festering boil off my phone line, I take a closer look at the order and realize that he'd just made a complete fool of himself BECAUSE----

The order that he was bitching about my having sent to his computer was actually the last [and most critical] part of a two part software upgrade. He'd said that he had not done this part because it had NOTHING to do with the first part of it......HOWEVER....in order for the upgrade to have WORKED, the 2nd part HAD to be completed!! THIS means that he documented that the upgrade was COMPLETED, when in fact it had NOT...meaning that he falsified company records!!  



My FOURTH mistake of the day was going to my brother-in-law's surprise birthday party after work. I get there and start to fire up the video camera and instantly see RED. Who should I see lurking around in the building but my sister's recently arrested for forgery sister-in-law!!! YES!!! That inbred, check forging, adultering, backwoods bayou bimbo had the NERVE to show up for the party!! Unfortunately the invitations for the party had been sent out BEFORE this whole arrest thing and Jethrine just assumed she was still invited. My sister, being the South's answer to Martha Stewart, figured that it would be impolite to throw the bitch out on her ear [even though yours truly offered to do it FOR her!] so she was allowed to stay so long as she kept clear of my sister AND my nephew! GRRRRRR.....my sister is TOO nice sometimes!!

If that whole situation wasn't bad enough, yet again I ended up getting my feelings stomped into the ground. Not long ago I talked about how my sister never lets me keep my nephew for any longer than a few hours and NEVER at MY house....well I'd convinced myself that it was mainly because she just doesn't like the idea of him being away for an extended period of time. That theory got blown to hell when I heard one of my sister's coworkers talking about how much FUN she has had during all the times that my nephew has gone to her house.....and then ANOTHER coworker was saying the same thing!! Basically my nephew has spent a lot of time with everyone ELSE except for ME!   

*sigh

Oh well. At least the food was good!

I'm pleased to announce that I do not have any incidents to report about my almost untimely & very tragic demise due to Geritol guzzling grannies!! That's not to say that the day didn't have its interesting parts though:

--> As I sat in my truck during my first break of the day, I noticed there were two guys putting up some sort of sign on one of the lamp posts that line this little road going from the parking deck to the building behind mine (it's also owned by the company I work for)....so after a few minutes, the guys stepped back to admire (?!) their work---they'd just hung a speed limit sign! That in itself isn't what made me chuckle out loud--what made me laugh was the fact that the speed limit is 10MPH!!                                              

  Now I ask you all out there---WHO do you know that can drive ONLY 10MPH??! Even my 21 year old truck goes faster than that even when I don't have my foot on the gas pedal! So as I was walking back to my building I saw that these stupid signs were EVERYWHERE!! There's one going INTO the parking lot, one going OUT of the parking lot, one going onto the top level of the parking deck, and one on the way down from the parking deck! I would say that I was a little surprised that the company spent a lot of money on these stupid signs but I'd be lying if I did. Something this idiotic is typical of the company I work for! This company is the kind that would put the horse before the cart, beat the shit out of the horse when he didn't pull the cart, and then hire a team of "IT EXPERTS" to study why the horse isn't pulling the cart!

--> Tomorrow ought to be interesting. After work I'm heading down to my brother-in-law's surprise birthday party and I'm DREADING it! Not that I don't like my sister's husband...he's a nice enough guy...but I just don't have a lot in common with him so we've never hung out or anything. Given that though, I still agreed to videotape this thing because my sister said she had NO ONE else to do it for her! Drats!! The worst part about it is that the night will be filled with banjo music and people I've never met. Oh joy.                                               The upside is that I'll get to see my nephew Eli for a bit...and since my sister's trashy sister in law won't be there, I don't have to worry about her coming and snatching my nephew up like she did at my sister's party last October!! Just so you all know, I have now officially changed this woman's name to Jethrine because she reminds me of that character from The Beverly Hillbillies--she's dumb as dirt and as ugly as she is stupid.

That's it for now! Tomorrow is Friday!