Ah! Two days off

Okay, i usually get two days off a week, but i got lots of rest and didn't even have to take a nap today. Jason has had the last two days off as well which has been nice to see him sleeping in FINALLY!
ok, wait, i have to watch Neopolitan Dynomite..... he's dancing for Pedro.... Man that guy has some MOVES!Love the boots.... hip action! a little moon walking.... spinning, yeah baby yeah! more hips.... ahhh it's over...

Vote for Pedro!

that was fun.... anyways, last week at work was better. I need the shorter service weeks for October, i think that will do me wonders. I have inventory tomorrow afternoon, but that isn't really work, it's just showing up and counting stuff. I should do ironing tomorrow as well, but i think i might just make cookies instead and watch baseball playoffs.

Speaking of baseball playoffs, it was a disappointing day for the teams i'm rooting for. Red Sox lost as well as the Angels. I just hate the yankees. I don't really dislike the white sox but i'd rather see the red sox win than them. We watched the end of the Saint Louis/ San Diego game this morning, but i don't think that series will be much of a series since St Louis is going to slaughter the Padres. The Angels weren't looking too hot today against the yankers, but in the 9th they made alittle run for it getting the tying run up to the dish, but they ending it by hitting into a double play and sending the yankees home field advantage with the road win. The Red Sox were punished by Chicago 14-2. The Chi Sox scores runs in bunches hitting something like 4 home runs just being bastards to Boston pitching. They'll rebound tomorrow and kick a little pale hose ass tomorrow.

JRA update- I've dropped to 16mg of prednisone as of yesterday. I'm feeling a little headache but i'm not sure if that is directly related or not. I am a little sore, but i certinly expect that for the first few days. I know i have to take it a little slower and be good to my bones. I gotta keep warm too. We got out the down comforter a few days back and i have been keeping my little warmers that my mommy got me in good use. We are discovering that the house we live in doesn't have the best insulation. Although, it could be so much worse. At least we can keep warm if we just add a layer or two and keep a little blankey around. I like the hot cocoa and tea as well. J is so funny the past two days, since it's his days off he is insisting on wearing shorts, but he also is wearing his jacket. It looks so funny cause he has his shorts on with white sox pulled up and then he's wearing a jacket that he wore skiing in Tahoe this past Thanksgiving. It's not like it's a huge heavy one, but it's the waterproof shell with a little warmth as well. It just looks cute. And at some points throughout the day he would put up the hood and pull the strings tight... silly man. Anyways it looks like it's soup and sandwich days again!

The started pouring the concrete for our side of the street today! It was actually a little quiet out there, it was nice to not have the tractors and machines going at 7 in the morning. It looks like they should finish pouring tomorrow on our side and then i suppose it has to set and all of that groovy stuff before we can actually park in our driveway again. It's been pretty annoying walking a block to my car every morning, especially when i bring folding or ironing home with me. It could be worse i suppose, i shouldn't complain about a block walk it's good for me. I was reading the little notice that they gave us about the work that they are doing and they won't be completely finished until sometime in December! I was thinking of having a housewarming party in October, but if people can't park close by i may have to put it off even further. Seems as though some of my family may never see my humble abode. In time I suppose. Thinking of all of this family get together stuff, i think that i need to reinstate the get together with family at least once a month for dinner or brunch. I've been looking for a reason to take a sunday off of work at least once a month and i'm thinking that i would love to take the first or last sunday off and have a family brunch or something like that. In the summers it could be BBQ's and in the colder months it could be late breakfast or early dinner. I think i should promote that family tradition back as i did about two years ago. I hope that i would have the energy to do that if i took one sunday off a month and had a meal with my loved ones. It just may keep me sane. I feel like this summer has nearly disconnected me from my family. I've missed birthday parties because i'm afraid that i might fall asleep at the wheel driving out there. I was so tired all summer long i need to recharge and get back to seeing the ones i love. My family makes me happy (most of the time, i like em, they are a good group of people) I think that i'm not too much of a burden anymore since i'm out of their hair most of the time. Of course i still do complain a lot, but that's just my nature most of the time.

I came to a realization this past week when i was talking to Jason half asleep. I'm a whinney little bitch at work. I guess i always kinda knew, but it was confirmed. J was talking about a situation he ran across and how annoying it was, and i started to think about it, well, it's me at work sometimes. And i was telling Joe about it on Sunday about how i came across the realization and how i was determinded to change it, and he said that it was a common thing, he thought, that when you are at a job long enough you get expectations on how your day should go and when i bump comes up that you are more comfortable letting people around you know that you are annoyed by the bump. He said that it was a sign of comfort and that it was expected. But i see his point in a way and i agree in many ways, but i don't want it to become ok. I want to be a good employee. I want to be the best at my job, and to do that it means being coopertive when changes happen. WHen i huff and puff and complain about what i don't like I'm not being the best i can be. I want to be a team player. But i think there are limits to being a Yes Man too, the HF way is to always think of the guests, and when some changes are made i think that it effects the guests' experience. The level of service and quality of their evening can be jepordized if there are too many changes and all of the employees can't keep up with what we are supposed to do to maximize their night. I try to explain that to my boss sometimes, but i don't think it gets through. I understand that there are certain circumstances can be made, but sometimes i also can see the dollar signs get in the way of judgement. When someone comes down and says "it's so hard to turn down 500 bucks" i understand that, but when it's 500 bucks over and over and over, is it worth it to make all of the people coming that night not get the smiles from the staff because there is just too much to do and too few people to do it? There just has to be the line where enough is enough and you must think of all the guests, the staff and the evening as a whole and not the "it's 500 bucks"
At the last meeting we were all reminded to have our "Thursday -aka first day of the service week- attitudes on Sunday, because the guests don't know that it's our last day before the weekend and they deserve our best because it's their night." We got that speech and a day later all i could think is how much that rule needed to be instilled back to the reservation taking when we are full or understaffed for how many people are booked, when they try to add people last minute. It's not fair to the guests that booked weeks in advance to have more people come than we are staffed for. When the quality is compromised because we can't serve them the HF way we simply shouldn't book their reservation.
Maybe it's all just crazy talk on my end, i don't know. It's past 4 in the morning now and i wanted to write something in my little journal here and i was thinking that i didn't really have much to say... silly me, i think i don't have anything to say and that's when it all comes pouring out! I could go on about nothing and everything for ages.
LIKE how HBO is sucking out my life the past few days. We have started watching the series Rome. It's one of the shows that we can get on HBO On Demand, which is cool cause i can catch up from when J was watching last week and i fell asleep. I have all of the episodes a little jumbled, so i need to go back and get them in order so i'm a little more clear on exactly what's happening. I'm not sure i like this whole watching TV shows again. We got sucked into Lost and now Rome. I don't like having to be there on a night and a time so that i can follow the story. I like it all on my time when i want! Now that we are caught up with Lost i have a day and a time that is dedicated to TV and it's so precictable. I like dedicating my tv time to sports, that's real reality tv. I like that. Now that Mariners are done for the season i don't have a nightly family to watch until the sonics start up next month. I have playoffs for a while, but it's not MY boys, it's other cities boys and their excitment. Oh well, i can take naps and not feel guilty about missing the game. I can stay late at work ironing or doing whatever and not feel as guilty when i come home and fall asleep. Basically it's all about the sleeping and sports watching. A little work here and there, but mostly the sleeping. Oh i like eating too. Now i also have to find ways to stay warm. We have a fireplace and i shall buy a duralog tomorrow for the test of it to make sure that our bedroom doesn't get overly hot by having a fire down stairs or whatever the case may be. Also we just want to see what the sucker does to the heat of the house because all we have are electric baseboard heaters and that will get expensive REALLY fast if we turn those things on. I think that we will end up getting space heaters for the bedrooms, and just layer clothes during the waking hours. I may have to find a warmer place for my orchids. Or i may have to create a warming tray for them for the winter. I was reading in my orchid book that i can get a soil warmer strip and create a cute little thing that should keep the roots a good temp and as long as they remain getting good light they should be good. I may also have to get a new plant light for the winter months since we are getting fewer hours of daylight for my precious little babies.
Oh my goodness, i havn't talked about what happened to my newest! There was a party here about two weeks ago maybe ten days ago, anyways a few days after i was checking out my babies and noticed that the one that i keep in the east window that the clay pot that surrounds the little plastic one was broken and positioned in a way that was trying to conceal the fact that in was indeed broken. The terracota pot i don't really care about, those are a dime a dozen, but i think that the incident that broke the pot shocked my little guy because now a few of the blossoms are dying! And they aren't like the normal aging and wilting of the blossoms. They are lower on the flower spike, but they aren't the oldest blossoms which is odd for them to die first. I was reading a post on the orchid group that i'm on and someone else had one of their plants fall when she was vacuuming and was asking if the fall could have stressed the plant enough to drop blossoms prematurely. And sure enough, apparently orchids can be so delicate that i fall can shock them and they can die! I was so sad to read that, and a little upset that my poor plant had been through a trauma. Now i have to baby it even more and try to find a very secure place in the house for it. I'll also need to go to the store and buy a new surrounding pot for it to try to make it feel better. The stresses i have to deal with.... I never knew that being a mother of three orchids would be so stressful. I better get myself a little baggie of m&ms to calm myself while i'm getting the new pot as well. what to do what to do??!! :)

Now that i've been rambling on and on about things that i will probably kick myself for later, i'm going to continue, because basically i'm not ready to go to sleep yet.
To try and solve the algae problem that i've been having in my fish tank i found some window treatment fabric that was my grandmothers that i got last year. I actually found it in my walkin closet when i was looking for the vcr remote last week. Anyways there was also two hook like things that came with the fabric and i got the brillant idea to hang it in the sky light to keep the natural light from getting to the fish tank. I read that a cause for the algae to grow is too much daylight, one of the causes at least. So i hung this maroon sheer fabric on one side of the sky light, which looks sort of odd when you come into the bedroom, but luckily for me the only people that really come up to the bedroom are Jason and I, although when my mom came over she saw it, but she liked it... I don't know where i'm going with this at all, but now i have a sun shield for my tank and i HOPE that it will help with the algae control! They tell me that i should be able to control it with regular water changes and not overfeeding, and since i don't really have the option of moving the tank from where it is because the house is so unlevel, i hope that the sheer maroon window "treatment" will help me with controling the SLIME that has invaded my poor pets home. I already had to throw out all of the plants i had in there because the damn slime choked them to death. I should get some new ones and if they die in a few months, so be it, at least they will have something to decorate the little tank.

Alright, i don't think i have anything else to type about.... even though it is fun to have fingers not hurting like a ..... hurting bunch of fingers....... i just have run out of things to say. I would have said interesting things to say, but that hasn't happened this entire post! Except when i was talking about Jason and his shorts and long jacket. That was funny, i should have taken a picture.

OH! I did my laundry today. I have things to wear that are clean! :)

We had lunch at Greatful Bread today, sandwiches were good, but extreamly overpriced. It was 7 dollars for a whole sandwich and all it came with was a quarter of a pickle, and cheese was an additional .50 I thought it was a good sandwich until Jason told me it was 17 dollars for two sandwiches and a coffee. I don't think that i'll be going back anytime soon for a sandwich, but they do have cafe vita coffee and the pastries are looking kinda tastey. I have a cinnamon roll about 6 weeks ago when Rach gave me a ride to work and we stopped for coffee on the way in. They have large cookies there that loooked good. I wanted a snickerdoodle, but i am determinded to make it myself!

Ok, battery on computer almost gone... goodnight!

Annie