Duly fingerprinted

Today we went to the Immigration place and had our biometrics taken. For the uninitiated that's a picture and loads of finger prints. It's nice it's not done with that yucky ink you see on police dramas - it was OK. We got there in the nick of time (bad traffic) and then it took about an hour.

I have an iPod video. I can't believe that I actually got one, given i've only my nano 6 months. I've already figured out how to convert all the movies I have for the PSP. I'm already impressed. I can see what my weekend will be doing.....oh, how I love being a geek.

One quick rant - why do women, and some men, think it's lovely to go tanning so much you go orange. I just don't get it. Do they not see what I see when they look in the mirror? It's blinking hysterical. Oh yeah, then you have the brigade who think it's foolproof to spray on that orange stuff. Oh my - I almost laugh out loud every time I see it. They should be like me - pale and proud of it!

Mum and Dad arrive today for their trip - should be a blast. Only a week until we leave for Jamaica!

Geek Central

I know I'm a self-professed geek....but we are definitely A+++ on geekness this weekend.

1. For our up-coming Jamaica vacation we bought snorkels and masks of our own - we found the cutest dive shop 3 blocks from where we live. They were great - and steered us to the $20 stuff, not the hugely expensive stuff. At least now I don't have to share spit with loaned out stuff:)

2. Wireless speakers. I found on the Bose website that they now have a module for surround sound. The back speakers, which historically result in wires around the room, now have their own little wireless thingy removing all those wires. We splurged and hooked it up this weekend. The sound is awesome, and I have fewer cables floating around.

3. IPOD. Yeah yeah, I know I have a nano that I love. But.... on ITUNES they have loads of podcasts that are video based....so I just had to buy a video. I did restrict myself to the 30GB, not the 80GB so we'll wait and see. I'm hoping it's as good as I want it to be. If my company didn't pay for my cellphone/blackberry I'd be having an iphone...but as I don't pay for it, this will be the next best thing. My theory is that I'll sell it on ebay when the new ones come out. I will say that I paid for it with an award my boss gave me for creating some reports and stuff at work - so it's not real cash. and it's only about 20% of the total award money so I can be sensible with the rest.

See - geeky!

The impossible gets me a bruise

This is a gym story. For background, because I do Pilates and Yoga I have strong abs which means thatfairly good at crunches, sit ups etc without it bothering me. My trainer, Billy, is always trying to find things that will make me say "ouch".... So for abs exercises I'm usually balanced on a stability ball with my feet on the wall doing 50 crunches (twice!) - I can do that, although it hurts.

Last weekend he thought he'd found the answer by asking me to do a "plank" for a minute. (think of doing press-ups but just holding it in the "up" position). Well, my old trainer was mean too and remember, I do pilates where this is a regular thing. I can do this. I mentioned to him that my trainer in STL (Jim) used to make me do planks with my feet on a ball so really doing a plank for a minute was nothing. Usually I don't tease Billy because it usually results in the impossible. Last weekend I have my feet on a stability ball doing a plank - it's harder as you have to balance at the same time.

Well, yesterday got ridiculous. Not only did I have my feet on a stablity ball, but he wanted me to balance on a bosu ball (that's half a stability ball). This means that you have NOTHING steady to balance on. Needless to say - I fell off. hahahahahahahaha. As you know I'm not the smallest person in the world so when I fall it's pretty spectacular - and my knee hit the edge of the bosu ball. Thought nothing of it until this morning and now I have a black bruise the size of a quarter on my left knee.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained - right?

I cooked

There comes a time when you just lust after real fresh, home cooked food. Well, it does for me. When I got home tonight, I got some New Zealand lamb out of the freezer, went to the gym came back and grilled the chops with some fresh veg and gravy. it was sooooooooooooo good.

Yum

Fitflops

Ok, I'm sucked in. Check out this link http://www.blissworld.com/product/code/BRAND-01.do?showPrevNext=false

Now, I bought mine on ebay - and I have to tell you they are the most comfortable sandals I've worn in ages. The fact that you're supposed to get a full workout wearing them is enough for me to try them out. I've decided that I'll do whatever it takes to get a pair of legs that I'm not self-conscious about. It doesn't matter how much working out I do my legs are stumpy and cellulited to death. Between working out and walking everywhere you'd think it'd change. It hasn't.

Perhaps I should give up chocolate again.... I have to find a way to get my ass thin. I love being fit and it would be so cool to be able to wear shorts or swimwear without looking for the "does it make me look thin" stuff.

Shopping and...

Trev went off to England this past weekend to surprise his sister Janet. He flew off late Thursday night and arrived back home Sunday afternoon - they had a great time even though it was a mammouth trip.

Of course, him gone for the weekend gave me lots of opportunity to do shopping. On Saturday, Melissa came down from Glastonbury and we hit up Union Square for shopping although it rained so we spent a lot of the afternoon/evening drinking cocktails and eating. A fun day. Sunday I went to yoga as usual and then went to the outlet mall near Newark airport, waiting for Trevor to come home. Ann Taylor is my favourite store, and it's so cheap compared to the regular stores, so I bought lots of work clothes there too. Fun fun fun.

We also broke down and got killer for the ants. I tell ya, they're clever buggers, but they're multiplying. We now have little box thingys that have food in them. The ants get the food, take it to the nest, kills them all. Yippee - hopefully will be over soon. It makes you feel so unclean.

Yesterday I went out for a Women's Network day - in the morning we had a session on learning about communicating and personalities and the in afternoon I played tennis and sat by the pool. It was a lovely day. There's always a however, right?

It so happened that our president was there and as we were going through role play and stuff us women started talking about bullying in the workplace. Not sure about you guys, but it's pretty prevalent, especially with senior white males. They always look good, bully like crazy etc etc. Well our president couldn't help but overhear....apprently he wants to follow up....and he's reminded me twice already. There were two other culprits with me too, so we've got to get our stuff together. On the plus side he really wants to eradicate this, on the minus side most of the people we were talking about he thinks are fabulous. An interesting proposition. Ah well, I like a challenge!

Two things that were gross

I saw two things that just grossed me out.

1) Where I live and in Manhattan it's a smoke free zone in all bars and restaurants. As someone who's never smoked it really never bothered me much (well, not compared to reformed non-smoker.....they are the worst for complaining about it - right?) but now I'm really used to not having smokey atmospheres. I like it. I was on my way last night driving the FedEx/UPS trucks to pick up a parcel and I saw the saddest sight. As I sat at the traffic lights I saw a young lady, probably 24, standing outside a bar, alone, smoking a flipping cigarrette like her life depended on it. She didn't even look like she was enjoying it. So, so sad. Give it up I say, and buy an extra G&T!

2) The cleaning woman at work who sits in the toilet on the cellphone, pees, flushes......and then walks right out of the flipping bathroom. and then has the audacity to clean stuff. Ewwwwwww

Ants

Oh my - we have ants. Lots of them. Well, they're contained to the kitchen - but ewwwww! and yuk! When things like this happen I beat myself up about it and worry about whether I keep our place clean enough - that's been most of this week. Now, bear in mind I have a cleaner come in every fortnight (to you Americans....that's bi-weekly) and inbetween I'm anal about keeping clean. I'm ok with messy and untidy, but I'm not Ok with unclean. So, I'm now at the point of intrigue.

They are amazing little buggers. We have them in one spot. Every morning and evening I spray them with boiling water, fly spray, bleach, whatever and wipe them away with a swiffer. Every evening I do the same. Now these are not just ants running around..... which of course is the point of me bringing it up here (it'd be boring otherwise, right?

Every time I clean there are always lumps of plasticy stuff - what I've realized is what these fellas are doing is taking away our sealant - ie the stuff between the floorboards. it's all pretty amazing. This morning I came out to find a dozen of them moving a bug....and the bug was not there last night. Needless to say I'm now so fascinated with them I haven't bought any stuff that'd kill them. The floorboards now have holes where the sealant used to be.

I'm am paranoid though - where do they find this stuff....I'm convinced they're building a colony and I'll wake up one day to find my bed covered in ants....

OK the mind is playing tricks, I'm off to bed before I have nightmares!

How weird are you?

You Are 50% Weird

Normal enough to know that you're weird... But too damn weird to do anything about it!

How Weird Are You?

Are you a dumb American?

You Are a Smart American

You know a lot about US history, and you're opinions are probably well informed. Congratulations on bucking stereotypes. Now go show some foreigners how smart Americans can be.

Are You a Dumb American?

Green card

Amazing. We got our receipts through over the weekend so we now know our application is progressing - I'm already signed up on the internet for alerts etc so we can check progress several times a day (it should be once a month, but knowing us we'll check in so frequently they may ban us from the website!!).

Tonight was cool - I got home and we already have our appointments to get our pics taken and fingerprints etc. It's all plain sailing from here.

Need to clean up my resume!

Things that peeve me

1) People dawdling at commuter time strung across the whole pathway at Times Square, holding hands, sometimes whole families. Do they not realize some people WORK THERE and want to get home fast?

2) Ladies bathroom at work. When you make a mess in the toilet, flush again. Would you really leave it that way at home? Ewwwwww

3) People who stop by my desk to whine....and don't want to take responsibility

4) When the dishes stack up on top of the dishwasher

5) When I can't get all the cash I want out of the ATM machine

6) When I call for spare elevator keys to my apartment. I called before and got them, I wanted them again today and was told I had to travel to The Bronx in person

7) When people think I have all the answers. Do they not realize that a) I think about how I could achieve said problem, b) I read the manual, c) I research on the internet - ie I find the flipping answer myself

8) People who swear for no reason. I swear.....but it's usually justified and in good cause and not in earshot of children or those with sensitive ears

9) The guys in Times Square who solicit you for a) a boat trip, b) a bus trip, c) comedy club. When I'm wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase do I look like I want to hop on a bus and take a trip? Duh and duh again.

10) The people who are walking along and won't even move even if it looks like they'll walk straight into you. Much as I might like to move, I am really fed up of the tall, wide people banging into me.

I felt the need to write all that stuff down.....now I feel better. I feel like I experienced all of them at somepoint today.

Oceans 13

Went to see this movie this weekend - was pretty good for a threequel. I was happier about this than I was about the Pirates movie - was really disappointed in that. At least with Oceans 13 you knew what you were gonna get - and it delivered. Very similar to watching James Bond. I like that.

We also went to see a Broadway show this weekend - Talk Radio. Was really good too - we had a great dinner afterwards.

A good weekend.

We had our butts kicked in the gym over the weekend, for whatever reason my arms are sore (nothing to with too much time being spent there) - I'm really starting to ramp it up, especially cardio, as I'm determined to get thin at some point in my life. My dream in this life is to have a pair of legs that I could wear a mini skirt in - a huge wish.....but you never know.

The nicest things

Two things.

First - our anniversary. A very quiet affair to celebrate. As gifts, I bought Trevor a Sony Playstation 3 - it's something he's been coveting for a while and I thought it would be cute. it won't be around for ever, but he was soooooo excited when he got it yesterday. For me he bought me the most beautiful 3 stone ring. It's in white gold so i can wear it when I'm wearing all my other white gold jewellry. It was a surprise, so very very cute. I knew I was getting a ring but I thought we were going out shopping at the weekend - it was lovely receiving something that I didn't have a hand in picking. It's gorgeous!

Second - on the bus this morning I saw something that touched me. The prices on the bus went up at the beginning of June and many times people get on the bus and they don't have the extra dime the fare costs. A guy today didn't even have a dollar bill to put in the machine and the bus driver was particularly nasty - a retired lady who gets the bus a few blocks every day gave him a dime. Wasn't that cute?

What is your New York age

My New York age is 35

This New York age puts you into a middle category between young and old (but not "middle age" per se). Be proud. You've got a nice balance between going out hard-core and staying in. You care about culture but also like some quiet nights. Keep it up, but think about expanding your horizons in the other directions. Head to Studio B or Anthology Film Archives for the first time, or finally check out the Village Vanguard or Elaine's for a dose of old-school NYC.

Does your age reflect how you're living? Let us know.

What's your New York age? Take the Time Out New York quiz and find out!

10 Years

June 7th, 1997.

My wedding anniversary. We made it to 10 years.

Part of me feels we should be celebrating in big style, the rest of me says life will go on as normal. Some years were easy, others were more challenging - either way we raised a great family and are now enjoying time on our own.

Check out the pics from our wedding day. Don't we look young?

Bottom picture l-r - Dad, Carrieanne, Dave Mum, Cathy, Trev, Peter, me, Beth, Laura, BJ and Paul

Questions from Amanda

My friend Amanda sent these....

1. Were you named after anyone? Not that I'm aware of
2. When was the last time you cried? Probably a month ago
3. Do you like your handwriting? If I have a nice pen, yes
4. What is your favourite lunch meat? None - would rather have spinach and cheese panini
5. Do you have kids? I have 3 great stepchildren
6. If you were another person would you be friends with you? yes
7. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Probably more than I think I do:)
8. Do you still have your tonsils? Yep
9. Would you bungee jump? In a heartbeat!
10. What is your favourite cereal? Readybrek
11. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? No
12. Do you think you are strong? yes
13. What is your favourite ice cream? anything citrus
14. What is the first thing you notice about people? eyes
15. Red or Pink? Hmmmm - neither really. I guess red
16. What is the least thing you like about yourself? my legs
17. What do you miss most? I miss all my friends and family that I don't see often
18. Do you want everyone to send this back? yeah!
19. What colour pants and shoes are you wearing? Black gym pants, ASICS sneakers
20. What was the last thing you ate? bubble and squeak with a friend egg followed by stewed rhubarb and icecream. yummy - leftovers are the best
21. What are you listening to right now? I'm watching an episode of Monk
22. If you were a crayon what colour would be? Blue
23. Favourite smells? English fish and chip shop
24. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? Trevor
25. Do you like the person who sent you this? Of course...I wouldn't be completing it if I didn't!
26. Favourite sports to watch? None...I'd rather get a massage
27. Hair colour? Reddie/blond/brown
28. Eye colour? Blue
29. Do you wear contacts? Yes
30. Favourite food? sushi
31. Scary movies/happy endings? Happy endings - watched too many scary movies as a teenager
32. Last movie you watched? Pirates of the Caribbean 3
33. Summer or winter? Summer
36. Most likely to respond? Penny
37. Least likely to respond ? everyone else
35. Favourite dessert? crumble and custard
38. What book are you reading? none
39. What is on your mouse pad? don't have a mousepad
40. What did you watch on TV last? As I say, I'm watching Monk
41. Favourite sounds? That would be telling:)
42. Rolling Stones or Beatles? Do I have to pick? Neither are fabulous
43. What is the farthest you have been from home? Australia
44. Do you have a special talent? not that I'm aware of
45. Whose answers are you looking forward to getting back? Everyone's
46. What surprised you most about the person that sent this to you? favourite sounds
47. Do you like animals? yes
48. If you have one wish what would it be? for a Star Trek transporter to become reality - I could jet all over the world and see everyone without ever having to worry
49. Where were you born? Hemel Hempstead, England
50. Favourite job? Massage Therapy Tester (this is my secret wish for a job!!)

Lara

Lara is an angel. I splurge on Lara. She arrives every other Tuesday and makes our home beautifully clean. She washes the sheets, cleans everything, does the job as well as I do - it is fantastic.

Coming home tonight it was all gleaming - and it felt so wonderful. I realize I'm fortunate that I have her - but then that's why I work my rocks off, right?

Love it.

Pimp that snack

Check out this website....it's very cool. It's a competition website that has people create food snacks in giant form to the regular counterparts.

Jaffa Cake, Twix, Creme Egg - all brilliant. Worth a chuckle....

http://www.pimpthatsnack.com/projects.php

Fallout, a fight (well, almost) and a general catch up

It seems to be the week where I cause commotion at work. It's not intentional, but it has taken a lot of time to get straight.


First I thought I'd pissed my boss off last week, but when I talked with her I hadn't really. She just wanted to wait a while before I hire any managers to work for me - while that's great on paper, I cannot continue to manage so many people. It's very draining and more importantly, I'm not having any fun at all. I'm keeping my head up, trying not to sweat the small stuff and remind myself that my job pays for nice things like massages, a personal trainer and holidays abroad. Keep the thought...that's what I keep telling myself.


Second was about our program for bonusing for new sales lead program. I asked my bosses boss for some advice (at the suggestion of my boss) and it went belly up. He went absolutely mad and started calling the account managers etc. I never even got my question answered. BTW - this had nothing to do with me, however I felt responsible as I couldn't even give the guys a heads up that an missile was coming through. It all righted it the next day, but it didn't stop me feeling bad. I still had to tell someone who worked for me that they had been paid too much money with this program. My guys don't get paid a huge amount so this is a big deal for them.

So, the fight. Friday night I went for a drink with my friend Mary Ann at a bar near Penn Station. We had fun, Trevor joined us and it was fun. She went home after a while and Trev and I stayed, had dinner and sat and talked. We had our own booth. As time went by a bunch of construction workers came in, clearly on a "do" of some sort. There was one particular guy, in his 60s, who was pie-eyed. He had 2 bottle of beer (one in each hand) and then a lunch bag slung over his back. He kept staggering around and nearly knocked me in the head a couple of times. I touched his bag a few times and told him to watch out, he was going to knock his beer over. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he'd put his beer on our table - so much for a private booth. Well on one of his rounds he had put down both bottles of beer and swung around and if I hadn't stopped him, the beer would have gone over us. I pushed him and told him to watch his beer. Well, he turn round, got in my face and started effing and blinding at me. I thought it was quite funny, which really didn't help - but bless Trev - he got up started yelling at the guy "that's my wife you're talking to"....cute eh? By this time the manager was helping us and the guy had a couple of buddies who were trying to steer him away. Anyway, fight averted, we paid and went home.

In other news - we have all the plans for Jamaica. Looks like Carrieanne may be coming with us - I'm so excited about that. We'll see. Mum and Dad have their tickets too so it's awesome that we'll all be together.

On the gym, I added a further 10 minutes to my mammouth Saturdays. This is how a Saturday goes....
10 min cardio (stairmaster, ski machine)
1 hour Billy
10 min rest
1 hour Pilates
10 min cardio (stairmaster, ski machine)

the thing to add to this is that I did during my hour w/Billy 10 mins uphill climb on the treadmill and also 4 mins on the stair master. Needless to say I feel like that's a huge accomplishment. If only it'd turn me to a size 8...

On the giving up chocolate front, I can now confirm I am addicted. While I was not eating chocolate I didn't really want it and focused on other sweet stuff like yogurt, jelly etc. On Saturday I tried a few pieces of chocolate (can't remember why), and by Sunday night I was back to eating crap loads of it. today I've struggled but I'm back on the straight and narrow.

OK, I have to go to sleep.