Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! We aren't doing much for the holiday, but I am excited to see Ross' new house. This time last year we were working on slating our patio. I took a week off between ending my old job and starting my new job, and what a week it was. My parents helped us to put down slate tiles on the patio, and we also got new countertops (green!) in our kitchen. I'll have to post pictures of it. I am very happy that this year I'm enjoying our hard work and not doing it! I didn't even see trick-or-treaters because we were trying to finish up laying down some of the tiles before it got too dark, my mom did trick-or-treater duty for us.

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Since I started my job right after Halloween last year, next week will be a year since I started! woohoo! I will finally be off probation, and can take advantage of the Fitness Release Program, where I can take 3 hours of work time each week to work out in the gym! I got my boss' approval today, so now just have to wait until I'm off of probation. This will help me in finding time to work out and being consistent.

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I can't believe its already been a year, though in some ways it already seems like I've never not been here. Searching for and taking this job was a HUGE step for me, and one I'm glad I took. I've already learned a lot in my short time here and really like the people I work with. I am glad I started in a non-legislative year, it gave me time to get up to speed before the deadlines are moved up and the urgency increases of getting everything done by those deadlines. I knew there were a lot of reports to the state, but could not even imagine how many:

• 6 due every semester (fall, spring, summer)
• 3 due every fall
• plus others that I don't complete but come through my office, ad hoc ones, etc.

These reports are what we spend most of our time doing, and are in addition to the reports to the federal government and external groups I was used to, and the internal reports. It is quite different working for a state institution. It is similar in some ways to where I worked before, it is much larger but has that 'family' feel, and I love how diverse it is! There was a time of adjustment - just getting into an elevator every day was different from my last job and it took me a while to get used to the new uniformed groups I see daily, at my other job it was priests and nuns and here it is police cadets.

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Working for the state is interesting. Often it seems like deadlines are recommendations. I'm used to working with if its due then its due then, though I request an extension if I can and think I'll need it. But even some of the state deadlines seem to be just recommendations, its in the directions for reports due in mid-October that "they need to be certified by Dec 1". I guess that what I consider "due" and what they consider "due" (a draft to them) aren't the same thing, good thing though because I've quickly gotten used to being able to go, oh well, past the deadline but this is the real deadline so we're ok.

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I really enjoy the work that I do, and am very glad I "fell into it". It is a good fit for me and I stumbled upon it because I wanted a part-time job while I was a college student!

Birthday with pictures

My birthday was everything I could've wanted :) The weather was gorgeous, clear and cool. In the morning, Kevin and I went on a bike ride, so I was actually riding my bicycle when I turned 30 (at 12:33 pm). Then as planned, my family came up and we went out to eat at Tokyohana, an hibachi restaurant. I love the food - had chicken and scallops this time - and really enjoy the show the chef puts on for you as he makes the meals in front of you (onion volcano is my favorite). The chef does lots of tapping of the cooking utensils against the cooking surface, to keep a rhythm I guess. Between the 7 of us, we ordered almost everything on the hibachi menu, so we got to see him prepare lots of different things - chicken, beef, tuna steak, calamari, even a noodle dish for my sister. It was great fun, and actually went a lot faster then expected. At the end of the meal they throw some sort of vegetable to try to get you to catch it in your mouth, and I caught it second try :)

My parents went home from there and we went on to Cecil's (a bar that I love) to celebrate. A few of my friends came to join us. Mimi had gotten back from France that day and she made it out, jet lag and all, and Stacy came up to join us too...yay! It was great to spend time with them both and to have my brother and sis-in-law in town for it too, and as always great to spend time with my sister, Laura, and my hubby too. Cecil's long island iced teas are ~dangerous~, I forget how good they are..

I also received many messages on my birthday (email, voicemail, facebook, myspace) and the rest of the weekend from people who couldn't celebrate with me. I had a great time, and felt very loved with all the wishes I received.

On Sunday, Kevin and I went to the Texans game, and they had a decisive win against the Bengals!!! 35 to 6, it was great to see them win, and somewhat rare to see them dominate the entire game. Today I went back to work and my staffers took me out to lunch at Treebeard's (shrimp etouffee, yum!)

Photos are available here.

Odd Birthday twin

Watching the Today show this morning, apparently I share my birthday with the movie Halloween. It turns 30 today too! Its hard to believe I'm 30 today, I don't think it'll feel much different, mostly I'll just have to remember to write my age starting with a 3, not a 2. Based on how bad I am with changing the year when I write the date come January, it'll take a while. I'm in a great place in life and looking forward to what milestones I have to look forward to in my 30s.

Here are others that I share my birthday with, Pablo Picasso I knew about, but I couldn't have told you the other ones.

1825: Johann Strauss, Austrian composer of 'Blue Danube'
1838: Georges Bizet, French composer
1881: Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor
1936: Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's official biographer

and here is October 25th in history

1415: Henry V's 'Longbowmen' defeat French Knights at the Battle of Agincourt
1854: The infamous 'Charge of the Light Brigade' takes place at Balaklava,during the Crimean War
1951: The Conservative Party, led by Winston Churchill, wins the General Election

Source: http://www.tnl.net/when/10/25

I'm already having a great birthday. I have gotten many birthday wishes in email, Facebook, and myspace and get to spend the day with my family. They're coming in town to eat at a hibachi restaurant with me, and later we'll go to a bar to meet up with friends. A low-key celebration and getting to spend time with family and friends is exactly what I want :)

Kitchen misadventures

Other people have cooking blogs, I'd like to have one but I'm afraid my kitchen misadventures are often more memorable then my cooking successes. On Friday, I was going to make a roasted chicken for dinner, it takes longer to make then most of our week night dinners, but since I took the day off I could do it. So I prepped the chicken - took out the 'giblets' and rinsed it out, chopped up garlic, and put garlic/rosemary/lemon juice combo between the chicken meat and the skin, and put half a lemon inside the chicken. We've made it once before and it was so good, so I was excited to make something good (and healthy) for me and my hubby. I put it in the oven. Over an hour later I went to see how it was doing, and the oven wasn't on! Turns out when I was trying to set the timer on the oven and mistyped in how long I wanted and hit cancel on the timer I'd actually hit cancel on the oven, so the oven turned OFF, and the chicken had in fact been sitting there in a cooling off and then cold oven. I was so mad at myself! This is beyond blonde moment, I feel truly dumb when I do something like that...why didn't I notice that it wasn't hot or just make sure the red light was still on after having problems with the timer??

At that point we were too hungry to wait (and not sure that it was safe to eat since it had sat at room temperature for over an hour), so instead of my yummy chicken, we had a last minute change to pizza :(. I'll try again next weekend and we have yet another inside joke, remember the chicken will be talked about for years.

Weezer and vacation day

Kevin and I went to the Weezer concert Thursday night (my birthday gift from Kevin). It was a great concert, they played many of my favorites and made Kevin's night by covering a Pink Floyd song. Some of the songs came out when I was in high school, so I've been listening to them for over 10 years, hard to believe. Though the mix of the crowd shows it - it was a mix of all ages. On one side of us was high school kids, and on the other side two parents and their teenage boys, and a similar mix all around us. The 'hootinanee' was good - they had local musicians of all sorts (flute, guitar, saxophone, trombone, trumpet, etc) come on stage to play two songs with the band.

We both love live music and it had been a while since we've seen any, which made it especially fun to see a good live show. We mostly go to see cover bands at bars or small concerts, but most all kinds of live music are fun. We were in the seating section, neither of us wanted to get tickets for the floor, where you stand the whole time. I've had tickets in that area for other shows, but prefer being able to sit when I want to and being far from the moshers/crowd surfers.

I took the day off on Friday so that I could sleep in after the concert and also get stuff done around the house since we'll be busy most of the weekend with birthday celebrations. Kevin is still working from home since his offices were damaged by Hurricane Ike so we were able to spend much of the day together and got a lot accomplished. We took his truck in to get a grill guard put on it (looks good!), got my oil changed, went grocery shopping, went to the bank, and cleaned up the house a little bit.

We also took the opportunity to early vote, so our votes are in for the Presidential election. We voted at a Fiesta grocery store, and the line snaked from the back to the front of the store, through all of the international foods. We had a lot of interesting food to look at while we waited, and took the time to make our shopping list! In total it took about 25 minutes to wait in line and vote, not too bad. I'll take this opportunity to remind everyone out there to go vote!!

Sustainability

Our blog has followers! I wish I had more to say, and more time to say it for our followers. Work is incredibly busy, in my line of work its always busiest in the fall, and its even busier because I'm still learning some of it - I started in November of last year so I'm finishing up the first cycle of getting through all of the various reports we have to do (and getting a better understanding of some that I saw the end of last year), and since its a legislative year there are some extra ones. I also see that in the spring they have some earlier deadlines because the legislature is in session! I feel a little silly but sometimes have to forward stuff to my boss and ask - is this something I need to complete or send to someone else? oh well, comes with the territory of learning a different job. There are more reports to the state then I could've ever imagined. We'll get them all done, it just seems like a never-ending task to get all of the information and make sure its consistent across the reports.

Today at work was Sustainability Day, so in the morning there was a small farmer's market and giveaways of some earth-friendly items. In the afternoon I went to see a short video and panel discussion about consumption and sustainability and the school's and my own role in it. From Wikipedia: Sustainability is "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" The ideas of reduce, reuse, recycle all go along with the ideas of sustainability and living in a sustainable way. I am by no means an expert on it, but am interested in ways to make my footprint a little smaller. The video showed an artist who depicts how much we consume using photography and Photoshop. It is an interesting way to get the point across and eye-opening to see how much we all consume. It makes me wonder what I can do, I try to do what I can in small ways - bring reusable bags to the grocery store, recycle plastic at work, use an insulated cup rather than disposable cups. I'm not a tree-hugger by any means, but definitely want to do what I can to leave this Earth in good shape for those who come after me.

I also have to make sure to sustain myself, so I'm taking a vacation day on Friday to fully enjoy my birthday weekend. Probably not the best idea with how busy we are, but I wanted to take the day off and the work I don't get done will be waiting for me on Monday. We're going to a Weezer concert tomorrow night, so by taking the day off I can enjoy the concert and get to sleep in a little bit since it'll be a late night. I'm looking forward to having a day off and have plans to go and early vote (I really know how to live it up, huh?)

Halloween party

This weekend we went to a Halloween costume party, and for the first time ever we did coordinated costumes. I went as a referee and Kevin was a football player. We had fun with it. I even made a yellow flag like the refs have so I could throw penalties on K all night. The only one I actually threw was a "party foul" when he was playing with the gooey eye balls and threw it on the ceiling, and it stuck! The party was a lot of fun, this picture is of Jay, Gwendolyn, me, Kevin, and Laura.

I didn't think about it until Kevin said so, but I also looked like a Foot Locker employee. If I walked into a mall dressed like that, I'd probably get some strange questions.

He's a Survivor

Congrats to Kevin, he won our Survival Football League! It is a fantasy football league where each week you choose one football team that you think will win and you can only choose each team once. I made it to week 6 (down to 3 competitors), but lost that pick. Carol plays fantasy football? yes, yes I do. I also have two teams, and one of them is tied for 3rd right now, woohoo!

I will never be a football fanatic like Kevin, but it is fun to play and gives me something to cheer for (or against) when we watch the other football games on Sunday and Monday. It can also be frustrating when your players don't do well, or those you benched do REALLY well. The funniest thing about fantasy football is it has the same premise as a game I played following MTV's Real World/Road Rules Challenge. You also selected players and got points when they did well or did certain things, but their points weren't limited to the contests, they also got points for crying, fighting, etc. It is probably for the best fantasy football isn't like that - you'd lose points for arrests, celebrations, etc. I haven't watched that show in years, I like to think my taste in tv shows has improved (Kevin might disagree). I still have my silly shows that I watch just as a way to relax at the end of a long day, my current favorite: Samantha Who. Our newest show we watch together: Fringe

Whirlwind weekend

This was the busiest weekend in quite a while. I felt like I needed a weekend to recover from my weekend. My friend from college, Stacy, was in town for her 30th birthday, so we hung out on Friday night, had a BBQ at Delena's on Saturday, and brunch at my place on Sunday. The brunch was to celebrate Stacy being in town but also a surprise baby sprinkle (smaller than a shower) for our friend Gwendolyn. She and hubby Jay are expecting their first baby, congrats! We did a great job at surprising her and had a good time hanging out and watched them both open gifts. Gwendolyn was my college roommate, hard to believe that it was 11 years ago we first met and I don't even know how long I've known Stacy since we actually went to elementary school together.

During the day on Saturday we went to see Kevin's grandfather (Paw-Paw). He lives in Bridge City (near Beaumont) so he was evacuated for Hurricane Ike to Paris, TX (any connection to Paris, France? - still not sure) and was just now able to return home. Kevin's aunt Danise put together a 'welcome home' party for him, a really great idea! While we were there we went to see PawPaw's house, where Kevin's mom and sisters grew up and all the grandkids spent time over the years. Driving through Bridge City was like a war zone, there were piles of stuff everywhere (carpet, all sorts of household belongings, and appliances - including taped up refrigerators). We even saw some people still adding to the piles. Danise described it well, saying it looks like a giant flea market, with stuff outside of all the houses. We drove over to PawPaw's house, and nearly every house in the neighborhood has a a POD storage unit outside (for what they could salvage, or my guess for tools and supplies). His house had had 4 feet of water inside. Kevin's parents had been there earlier and said that it now looks better because the pile outside his house was there, but much smaller. We walked into the house and it is stripped down to the studs. The only things that make you realize it was a completed house are that the ceiling fans are still there, and there is one place between the kitchen and living room that has finished wooden vertical bars (amongst the studs), aside from that and some remaining linoleum it looks like a house under construction. Very surreal to walk around and see whats left of the house he lived for 40+ years. Thankfully he still has a place to live, but its devastating for him and so many people on the Gulf Coast, it will take some so long to recover and as our lives are largely back to normal its easy to forget.

Debris Pile

I had never thought much about where all of the trees and branches that are torn down by a hurricane end up after they are gathered up, put at the curb and picked up by the city/county. But, I now know where some of Hurricane Ike's debris is going. On my way into town from home on highway 288, I pass by this open area that is now a huge debris pile. Look at how tall the piles are compared to the truck and other equipment around it! It makes the vehicles look like toys. I'll have to keep an eye on how big this pile gets. I wonder how many piles there are like this in the area.

The photo quality is not very good, but its the best I could do - I pointed my camera towards my passenger window and hit the button to take the photo several times in quick succession. I will give up a lot of photo quality to give more attention to driving :) A better idea would've been to take the photos when Kevin was driving, but I didn't have the camera with me then...