H-O-T

WOW!! We had absolutely gorgeous weather this past weekend ... uh, for JULY!!





It was unseasonably H-O-T, not that I'm complaining, but I never would have expected when we moved into this new house last March that the kids would still be swimming in the lake in OCTOBER!! The water was a little chilly, but they didn't seem to mind!


My H-O-T weekend started with a golf outing with my dear friends Amy & Joel on Saturday.


It was a couples' scramble. Kev took Liam to the Michigan State football game that day, so the other half of my couple was Dave, a friend of Amy's Aunt Doreen.

Aunt Doreen organizes this golf outing on the first weekend of October every year, and this is the second time I've golfed in it. We missed it last year because the Tigers were in the ALDS and we had tickets to the game (ahh memories, when they spanked the Yankees as I sit here watching the Indians abou to clench the ALDS championship by spanking the Yankees, but I digress).

So, this was the first time I had ever met my partner Dave and he was nursing a mean hangover from the night before. He and I came in last place, and won $20 for that prestigious honor. At least he had the hangover excuse to fall back on. My excuse is that I basically suck at golf. So, then how did I win the women's closest to the pin prize!?!? A kick ass drive, that's how. It was thrilling!! Too bad Kevin wasn't there to witness it firsthand. That honor yielded me another $20! Despite the sweat dripping down every crack of my body, the day was lots of fun.

On Sunday, I had planned on taking the kids to a pumpkin patch, an apple orchard, or to the Leonard Corn Maze , but it was just too darn H-O-T for those types of fall activities. (Maybe next weekend the weather will cooperate!) Instead, we spent time on the lake. First, we took a family walk around the lake (trying to exercise regularly and be more healthy).

Then, Kev did some fishing from the shore and caught this 18 inch bass. >>>












THEN, we tooled around on the paddle boat for a while and Kev caught this 23 inch bass >>>

YES, 23 inches! It was enormous. The boys were delighted and excited and enthralled. I even got caught up in the moment. I guess fishing CAN be fun. (I know you're wondering ... He let them both go.)

I was lucky enough to catch both of Kev's stellar catches on film. It was very very very cool. Or, as Paris Hilton would say, it was HOT.

Are you an atheist?

Being in the Information Technology industry, I work with a good number of Indians. (The ones from India, not the ones native to America - or to be completely, blatantly, politically incorrect: Dot Indians, not Feather Indians.) As a matter of fact, more than half of our onshore project team is Indian.

So, last week, we all went out for a team dinner to an Indian restaurant (the type of restaurant we were at has nothing to do with the story). Anyway, we're all at dinner and the topic of conversation turns to religion.

India has some sort of caste/class system. I can't explain this system with the best, or even with little detail, but what I do know is that at least two of our team members are from India's priestly caste/class, one of the highest in their culture. One of the guys from the priestly caste/class has been taking intensive religious instruction for the last 3 years in order to…what…I don’t know, become an ordained Hindu minister or something? Again, not sure of all the details (did I mention I was drinking wine during dinner?). So, the other priestly caste/class Indian was joking with the guy taking the religious training saying that soon the guy getting all the training would have a glow around him, that he will be illuminated because he will become so enlightened through this religious training. Ha ha ha.

Of course, after a couple of glasses of wine, I chime in to this religious instruction conversation with my adopted philosophy of religion which is basically that I think religion itself is just red tape that people go through to become better people (Islamic jihadists excluded). Whether it's Christian-Catholic, Baptist, Protestant, Lutheran, Methodist, whatever, or Hindu, or Jewish, I think people are just trying to become better people and establish a relationship with or an understanding of a higher power.

To which my priestly caste/class Indian co-worker asked me, in the most serious of tones, "Are you an atheist?"

Oh my goodness. No, I don't think am an atheist. No, I'm definitely not. I was pretty much raised Baptist (or a variation of Baptist). So, I'm a Christian. I believe in God. I just don't practice a religion. In doing so, (or not doing so) am I being perceived as an atheist?

Apparently.

DMOME WiURGN

On Sunday night, as my Monday morning business trip was fast approaching, Liam wrote these letters on a hot pink piece of paper.
DMOME WiURGN
After this string of letters he drew a heart, with a crack in it. This was his note to me. He read the note to me as he handed it to me and it said "Dear Mommy, When you're gone, my heart is broken".

Then he drew a big stick person (minus the legs) next to a little stick person (minus the legs) and a big heart with out a crack in it. Which meant that when we're together, he's happy.

I had to hold back the flood of tears. I didn't want him to see me cry and then feel bad and think, "Oh, no, I made mom cry." So, I thanked him for the note and asked him to run upstairs and put it in my suitcase so I would have it with me while I was away. Thankfully, he scooted off immediately and I was able to compose myself.

It breaks my heart to know that my being away from him breaks his little heart.

But it warms my heart tremendously to know that it makes him happy when we (the legless stick figures) are together again.

WAAAAY Behind

OK, so I'm WAAAAY Behind in updating my BLOG. More importantly, I'm WAAAAY Behind in reading other people's blogs.

My apologies.

So, what has kept me away?

Well, the week of 9/17, Kevin and I both took a week of vacation. VACATION? Well, if you call hanging out around the house and completing 0 of the 10 projects we had planned, having a root canal done, and dialing in to a conference call every day from 2-4 pm vacation, then, yes, we were both on vacation that week.

Last week was the week from Hades at work. Actually, if there's a place worse than Hades, then that is where last week was from. (I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to end a sentence with "from", but too bad). The project I am on is stressful, to say the very least. I was on information overload last week and had no time to digest or decompress. The team's incessant negativity was really bringing me down and permeated my own attitude and outlook on things both inside and outside of work. I think I drank wine at the hotel every night last week just to cope. It was also the first week that we started our Mon-Fri travel instead of Mon-Thur. And, by Friday at 10am, I was close to tears. Thank God for my extremely supportive husband for sending me encouraging emails and keeping me informed of what my kids were up to and making me smile. He really got me through the day.

So, this week, I'm making a conscious decision to be positive. I'm going back to that old adage that even though I may not have control over the circumstances around me, I DO have control on how I choose to respond to them.

So, I choose to be happy this week. I will be happy and whistle while I work. I will be happy and exercise. I will be happy and eat healthy (the banana's foster I had for dessert last night was to ensure that I had a full 5 servings of fruits and vegetables for the day). And finally, I will be happy and BLOG.

Family Fun Night

On Friday Kev and I took the kids bowling for a night of family fun (and it wasn't even forced!)

We have a marble rewards system with the kids, and once they fill the family jar with marbles (they do this by doing their chores, being nice to each other, etc.) , they get to pick what reward they want...and this time they picked BOWLING!

Well, Kev and I decided not to rejoin our bowling league this year and we have been missing it, so we were both pretty excited to do this with the kids.

The bowling alley was preparing for Friday night leagues, so we only bowled for an hour, but this was plenty of time. Enough time for me to get one of my highest scores ever, 143! Woo Hoo!

Then we went to dinner at White Horse Inn in the town north of us and had a splendid meal.

A trip to Blockbuster for a couple of DVDs and a trip to Kroger for some Movie snacks (Snow-caps, Whoppers, Resee's Pieces) rounded out the evening. Snuggling up on the couch with the entire family was the best way to end the day.

Why do I follow the rules?

Two carry on bags per person. Period. That's the rule. And then the rule gets more specific...one bag must be small enough to fit underneath the seat in front of you, and then the other bag can be stowed in the overhead bin as long as it fits within the small overhead bin tester box provided by the airline. And if you have a bigger bag that requires overhead bin compartmentalization, your second bag could be a laptop bag OR a purse, but not BOTH, because then, that would be 3 bags. And that's against the rule.

I take this rule, and most rules, seriously. As a travelling professional woman, this means I have a carry-on suitcase, a laptop bag, AND a purse! Oh no, 3 bags! So, I always leave room in my carry-on bag in which to stuff my purse after I have removed my wallet and cell phone from it and inserted those into my laptop bag. This way, before I EVEN go through security, I am in compliance with the rules. Purse inside the carry-on suitcase = 1 bag. Laptop bag = 1 bag. TOTAL = TWO BAGS.

Why then, when I was waiting to board the plane, was there a young woman in front of me with FOUR BAGS?!? A very, VERY large "carry-on" suitcase, a duffel bag, and two very large purses, one on each arm (OK - I'm a purse girl, but I rarely find the occasion to carry two at once, but I digress). So, this young woman was with a group of many other 20-somethings, heading back to Detroit, oh excuse me Ann Arbor, and they all sounded like the cast of the Real OC (I think they were trying to look like them, too, but they weren't as cute). Are you going to Ann Arbor this weekend? Of course! Where are you staying? Where are you staying? Like we're going to sleep AT ALL. (they roll their eyes) I'm going to start drinking on the plane. Oh my god, we already had a couple of drinks in the airport bar! That is so ghetto. blah blah blah.

Youth envy? Seriously not. But back to the bag story.

How on earth did she get through security with all of those bags?!? She probably has 3 gallons of liquid in all of those bags, too, and you know that I follow the 3-1-1 rule to a T. SURELY they won't let her board the plane with all of that baggage. OMG - they're letting her board the plane with all FOUR of her enormous bags!! She breezed right onto the plane.

So, then, why do I go to all the trouble of transferring my purse belongings to my laptop bag and then transferring the purse itself into my carry-on suitcase? Why do I go to all of the trouble of following the rules?

Here's why. That enormous carry-on suitcase of hers wouldn't fit in the overhead bin even thought there was ample room in the overhead bin for a rule-abiding bag.

Had she followed the rules, she wouldn't have had to hold up the remaining boarding passengers to take her enormous bag to the front of the plane to gate-check it.

Had she followed the rules, she wouldn't have been chastised by the flight attendant for rearranging already stowed bags to try and fit her other bags.

Had she followed the rules, she wouldn't have made an ass out of herself. Ok, she probably still would have made an ass out of herself.

But then I wouldn't have had the opportunity to sit there and smirk while I watched this rule-breaker struggle with her rule-breaking baggage. While I was comfortably sitting in my seat, already buckled, beginning to read a book, prepared for take off, with all TWO of my bags safely stowed.

I'm glad I follow the rules.

Caution

A yellow road sign, in the shape of a perfectly square diamond trimmed in black. Deer Crossing. Railroad Crossing. School Crossing.

These are the types of cautionary road signs I am accustomed to.

I know what these signs mean. Watch out for deer, or else you might hit one. Watch out for trains, or else one might hit you.

But, "Caution, Low Flying Planes" ?!?

Does this mean that as I return my rental car to the LaGuardia airport Avis station that I need to watch out for low flying planes or else one might actually hit me?!? Has a low flying airplane hit someone else in the past?

A low flying airplane?

Caution.

I think I'll rent a compact car next time I'm in town.