Celticangel.org

Photo by Napoleon

And…here we go. I’m starting day one with a picture of…me. Obviously I did not take this picture. It’s from that day that I got up way too early to record a podcast at work. Interesting how I look like I’m concentrating, not having a full fledged “Oh My God, this isn’t going to work” panic attack. For the record, it did work. If you have any interest in an Economic Forum about the Silicon Valley, you can listen to the podcast here.

Yesterday was a bit on the entertaining side. I had the day off, and I had received my third paycheck. (You know, the one that you don’t have earmarked for the usual round of bills. It happens twice a year, and generally it ends up going to either paying off something or paying for things we’ve been putting off. Like…new tires and shoes.) I was in a bit of a quandary, though. The maintenance guy was going to come check our smoke alarms, but I needed to take Koshvader’s car to get new tires for it. I called the office to see when to expect him, and it was determined that I should go deal with the car, then return home and sit tight. So I did. (I even had time to pop over to the Shoe Pavilion down the street from the shop while I waited for the car to be finished. It was going out of business, I discovered, but I found nothing of interest.)

I came home from the store. And I waited.

And waited.

And waited. Got all sorts of things done around the house. Had a terribly productive time. But no knock upon the door. So I called the office, only to discover that the manager had thought that I was calling when I got home. Oops. Well, she’d send him over right away. I put the cats away then went down to the front door and opened it. The first thing I noticed was that the Maintenance Guy had a box of batteries in his hand. Then he says to me, “Are any of your smoke detectors beeping?” As though I’d called to have him come out and fix something, rather than merely rescheduling something from a notice put on my door. I told him that everything was fine, and stepped aside to allow him to come in. He eyed the apartment behind me nervously, rather as though he expected something to leap out and eat him in fine Halloween style, and did not step forward. He suggested that perhaps the service guys had, in fact, come the previous day. I assured him that they had not. After a moment of uncomfortable silence he offered me some batteries for when the smoke detectors did start beeping, and left.

No lie. I now have five batteries for the next time we have to replace one in those darn beepy things. I pondered the MG’s strange behaviour for a bit, and finally decided that this must have been the same fellow to encounter Very Grumpy Koshvader a while back. Koshvader hates it when the office decrees we need something “maintained” even more than I do. I fear that the VGK left quite an impression on the MG. Oh, well. We are fully capable of dealing with our own smoke detectors. And that was the fastest Maintenance visit ever.

Once Koshvader got home we went to the mall and spent an obscene amount of money on shoes. Seriously obscene. I find that if you buy quality shoes they last a few years, so we went to The Walking Company to replace dying/missing footwear. Yep. It has taken a whole year, but I have finally replaced my work shoes that went missing. I admit to replacing them with two pairs of shoes, but you need one for cold weather and one for warm, yes? Hopefully Koshvader’s frickin’ expensive new shoes won’t start hurting his feet after slightly less than a year. I don’t think they will. I still have my light hikers from Merrell that I’ve had for about five years and they remain fabulous. I’ll post pictures of my shoes, so that you can share in my “new shoe” squee, in a moment. First I have to complain about my ruddy bank.

Now, I know that it’s good to keep an eye on spending habits so that you can catch fraud early, but to decline a purchase that is about one fifth of the one that you just let go through with no problem and to not even allow a “call to verify” on my own gorram money? Oh! And to make me jump through about ten minutes of hoops on the phone to get the mess straightened out? That is not what I call good customer service, Bank of America. You certainly saved me from shopping at Mervyns. Growl…

Okay, enough with the ranting. On to the shoes.

The Plaza Bandeau by Merrell. On sale, can you believe it?

Warm Uggs “Cove” black boots. Designed to keep my feet happy during the winter.

Two last things.

1) I was wearimg my black kitty mask sort of pushed up to the top of my head during dinner lst night. I little girl walked by wearing a cute dress with an attached tail, and I heard her say to her mother as she walked away, “She’s a kitty, too!” *purrr* *preen*

2) I’ve actually written a whole sentence on my NaNoWriMo project so far. Yep. I’m started. Now…to continue.