It is finally out and out snowing here! It’s supposed to snow between 1-2 inches today! But of course by Thursay it will be back up to 60 still leaving this as possibly the mildest NY winter ever. And California and Texas will still have had more snow.
It’s been a long time since I colored my hair last and I had some really bad highlight grow out going on so I decided to cover them. I’d tried that before and they continued to show through the color, but I was still hopeful that I could cover them.
You know how when you have hair that has elements of reddishness about it you are supposed to stay away from anything with golden in the name? Aparently that goes for carmel too. I picked carmel brown and my hair is now a nice shade of auburn. It’s really not bad, just not what I was going for. But at least now the blonde streaks are gone!
Tonight we are going to see Xanadu at the movie theater. I have to say movie theater cause when I told Kelli we were seeing it in the theater she asked if they were really going to roller skate on stage! I’m excited. I will never forget watching it outside on a wall in Commerce at ETSU when I was little!
Yuck. I’m job searching again. The lady I’ve been filling in for at the advertising agency is coming back in a week. They had said when I first started that there may be someone else going on an extended vacation that I could fill in for, but that’s not happening. And they didn’t give me much warning. So after next week I have one day scheduled for the rest of the month. If I only knew quark. Or somebody in publishing.
Patrick and I were both unexpectedly off yesterday, so even though I had a few things I had to do, we decided to quickly go get our drivers licenses since it was the first time we were both off when the DMV was open.
I knew that things like that can end up taking awhile, but I never imagined it be 5 or 6 hours! First we went to the Jersey City DMV and despite long lines and a gruff receptionist, things were moving along quickly. I only had one small complaint– that I had to fill out the exact same form 2 times, with a comment to Patrick about carbon paper being very useful.
We had numbers 77 (Patrick) and 79 (me). And as I said things were moving along quickly. That is until they called number 76 and then it was eons before we ever got to 77. Patrick went up to window number one and I waited a few minutes until it was my turn. And when I was called to window number 6 I proceed to the quickest route there, not being able to see that to continue the way I was going I’d be walking in front of someone getting their photo taken. Hey, I’d never been there before, there was a wall up and I couldn’t see that. So I stopped and was going to wait the two seconds it would have taken for them to finish when the lady who was going to help me barked at me to go around!
So I went around, feeling dumb. And when she asked me to sign here, she pointed at what I thought was a piece of paper I had handed her so I reached for a pen and was about to sign when she informed me that I needed to be signing the little keypad thing. Ok, again I felt dumb, but I did it. And she kept making me start over. It wasn’t until the third time that she finally told me what I was doing wrong, my knuckles where apparently hitting the screen. So by this time I’m feeling about 2 inches tall and it’s time for my picture. Needless to say I’m not smiling very big!
So I go over to the line behind the blue ropes where I’ve been instructed to go and Patrick is coming towards me saying no, we are leaving. He explains to me that because we are doing an out of state transfer, and their computer is broken, they can’t finish ours today. We’ve been there for 2 hours at this point. We’ve gone through many check points and at each one told them exactly what we were doing, and no one had said a word about not being able to help us. You’d think they’d want to post a sign or something.
We were directed to the closest place that was open “late,” meaning after 4:30, that could help us. Patrick tried to explain to the man that if he gave us the physical address of the place our car’s navigation system could get us there, but the man would have none of that and just kept giving Patrick directions.
So we follow the directions, which have no sings of streets or distances and somehow find the spot despite it being much further away than the man had implied. We explain to the people at the front what had happened and we get rushed to a special line, which we somehow took to mean we’d be processed faster. No such luck. We were handed numbers 136 and 137 just as we heard the call for number 80!
We groaningly took our seats and waited our turn. When they finally reached our number we go to another line and sit and wait. But this line moves fast. We come across our first person with any personality whatsoever when we get to the front of this line. But then we are knocked down again when she tells us they sent us to the wrong line, we should have gone to have a vision test first…And we’ve already been through 4 people who neglected to direct us to the right place.
Thankfully she tells us to come directly back to her when we are done. After waiting a short time through the vision test line, we finish and proceed back on our way to purple lady as we dubbed her. The lady at the front of the room didn’t want to let us through but we were having none of that….So we skipped on through to the front of the line and in two seconds had our NJ DL’s two hours after arriving at the second location.
We were going to have to go Clark Griswald at Wally World if they didn’t get us straightened out pretty soon! With travel and wait time it was about 5 hours….and a lot of traffic.
So Kelli has already told me we are lame for not doing anything to celebrate new years. We basically spent new years eve day traveling though, and when we were done, we were too tired for much else. A 4 hour flight will do that to you.
Kelli wants me to publish my new years resolutions, I will humor her with a few I’ve come up with.
1) Wear my glasses when I read
2) exercise more
3) eat less fat
4) get over needle phobia
5) worry less
6) learn to sew
Patrick and I got back Friday evening from a great trip back to Texas. We got to see lots of family and a few friends, though not as many friends as we would have liked.
We had an unexpected funeral to attend when Patrick’s great aunt died at 89. While it was awful that it happened, it was very nice that we were able to be there for the funeral. I think it made Patrick feel much better about things.
I got to see my parents, my sister, and two sets of aunts and uncles as well as several cousins. The funny thing is that it has made me a little more homesick.
My parents are storing some of our extra stuff and had it all set up in the bedroom we stayed in. I just kept going around the room and touching all my stuff. And we got to sit in our huge, wonderful recliner. They also let us drive my old car, which they had bought from us. It was so nice to have the freedom to drive again. Since I don’t drive here, I leave that to Patrick, it had been 6 months since I’d driven. And I love to drive.
We went and saw our house which was nicely decorated for Christmas and looks really well taken care of. They have built tons of shopping around the area. If we ever move back into that house, Old Navy will be way too close to me!
Our dogs stayed at the vets an extra day and after 11 days of only getting out of a pen 2 times a day, they were over joyed to see us again. We had to take them to play and wear off some of that extra energy. I think they thought we weren’t coming back for them.
We had a great time!
12/20/2004 Category :General 0
We got our first snow last night. It’s not much, just a dusting, but it’s supposed to snow more today too. We woke up to 11 degree weather but it actaully felt like -1. The high for the day will be 20. I felt like the marshmellow man walking to work today so bundled up that I couldn’t hold my arms down at my sides normally.
We had a busy weekend of running around trying to finish up Christmas shopping and buying things for the cold weather. I got some great winter boots with our finally arrived discount abilities! You really have to love shoe discounts. We went into the city on Friday night and again on Sunday and around Jersey on Saturday. We are finally ready!
We head home for 8 days on Thursday and are very excited. We hope to be able to make arrangements to see everyone but still have plenty of time to relax and visit.
12/15/2004 Category :General 0
A prime example of why people shouldn’t go to work sick! Patrick got sick at work from somebody who came to work sick and in turn got me sick. I’ve been sick for a week now with a monster cold.
I got sick on Wed and thought I was better on Friday. We went out to the movies and when we got out, I had no voice. Every time I spoke I’d come out sounding like Marge Simpson. Yesterday, I woke up and felt great. My voice sounded much better and I had a lot of energy. And then I went outside.
Something must have been floating in the air that set my allergies off. I came in from walking the dogs and could not stop coughing or stop my eyes from watering. There was this tiny dry spot on my throat that would not get hydrated no matter what I did. I drank a gallon of water followed by a glass of orange juice and took a fruit breezer, still couldn’t stop coughing.
I have a much better voice today, although I was just trying to talk to my sister and had to go because I started coughing again. I’m fine as long as the air doesn’t hit my throat!
So today Patrick is walking the dogs and let me sleep in. He’s promised to come home and walk the dogs and cook me dinner! I’m pretty excited about this given the fact that it’s 27 but feels like 17 according to my little weather watcher! Snow is predicted for Friday and for Monday. I think this time it may actually come.
Check out the pictures of the city at Christmas. We found the most massive crowd last weekend wherever we went, but the city loves Christmas.
Ok,so I’m obviously not that good at keeping a journal, but I’m not sure that anyone has noticed! We’ve gone to the Bronx zoo, to look at leaves and had visitors. Andy came to stay with Patrick one weekend and Kelli came to see me the next. We’ve seen a taping of Letterman, the top of the Empire State building and Patrick has gone to Philly while I went to Chicago and saw my parents and my sister and did some business. We’ve been a bit busy, so we will probably take it kind of slow this weekend…but you never know. Last night I was looking at the holiday schedule for NY and am now all excited about the holiday season here! I want to see all the holiday window displays in the department stores,all the Christmas trees,but especially the one in Rockefeller Center, and go to the Nutcracker!
Who says you can’t see nature in the big city? This morning when I was walking the dogs in the park across the street we saw a very large mouse run into the bushes. The dogs really wanted to chase it but they were a little busy! Then,we saw some lizard like creature a little further into the park,but it also hid before I could get a good look at it. I haven’t updated yet, cause it’s been a week from Hell, but we took a 3 hour cruise last weekend and have some nice pictures of that. I’ll tackle that update this weekend. Today, the phone hasn’t rung once, and even emails have been slow! You’ve gotta love Fridays! I stay awfully busy for no full time job!