30 Days of Me: Day 25 - Your day, in great detail

hahaha - back in the Livejournal days, people used to complain about me describing my day "in great detail" so this is kind of ironic!

This is for the day of Thursday, November 4, 2010:

At midnight I was playing me some WoW. I had logged in for the first time in like a month and had quite a bit of stuff to do as the BIG patch came out since the time I had last played - I spent a good 45 minutes or so logging into the characters I actually play and spec'ing/glyphing them and visiting trainers to make sure they had learned all their available spells since some things had changed (my hunter too the longest as I had to spec all her pets again). By this time I was finally doing some leveling/questing on my rogue (which I hate that you have to spec into 1 tree first before you can put points in the other 2 as my rogue was always more of a hybrid as I had points in all 3 trees!) and I was watching a late night mini-marathon of Rock of Love season 1 on VH1.

By 1:30am I logged off and sat in bed watching more old Rock of Love episodes and started experiencing some pretty nasty heartburn. I took a few Tums but they didn't seem to help much - it still hurt pretty bad!

A little before 3am I laid down in an attempt to soothe my heartburn and soon fell asleep to Sex and the City reruns on TBS while waiting for hubby to get home from UPS.

I woke up at about 9am when hubby was leaving for work - he nudged me and kissed me goodbye like usual, letting me know he was leaving for Verizon. I got up moments later to relieve myself as my bladder kinda sucks due to Jay taking up space down there, lol... I went to climb back into bed for 30-45 more minutes of sleep but stupid Tiger snuck into the bedroom and wouldn't leave my feet alone under the covers.

I finally woke up for good around 945am and ate breakfast - a bowl of cottage cheese and some crackers with juice - while watching the end of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on TBS and I ended up kicking Tiger out of the bedroom so I could eat without her harassing me. After breakfast I did my normal morning routine - brush teeth, rid myself of stupid feminine facial hair, take a shower, do my skincare regime, get dressed, put on make-up - and set out for work around 11am.

The "low fuel" light came on in the rental the other morning when I went to work and since I'm unfamiliar with how long you can drive an Impala with the light on before it dies on you I decided I better stop by the gas station on my way to work. I didn't know what side the pump goes on though til I pulled up - of course it was on the opposite I had pulled up to the pump so I had to circle around the gas station to get it on the correct side.

I made it to work around 1130am, filled up my water bottle and got straight to work, showing my boss what I had done on some project she wanted me to start after she left on Tuesday. She also went over information for a brochure for some young golf prodigy in town she has connections to that she wanted me to put together. I put together our mailing for the day (where I look up potential stores, mail merge their info into a letter and envelope template in Word and print those out and stuff them in envelopes with a brochure and flyer for our business) and then I started work on that brochure for the young golf prodigy while I warmed up my lunch in the microwave (I've started bringing in those TV dinners you get at the store for like $1 or 10 for $10 at Kroger). After lunch I finished up on the brochure, with boss lady going over it. Both the guys left early and she was beginning to head out around 245pm and stopped to tell me the unfortunate news. I ended up leaving just after 3pm.

I got home a little after 330pm and went to the bathroom as soon as I got home. Then I called the lady at the bank again to see about us coming in next week to run hubby's credit report again and see where we're at, however she didn't answer so I left a message.

Around 4pm I started searching job listings online - first I searched HotJobs by Monster.com/Yahoo which our local newspaper uses for job listings as well. I found 2 possible jobs there and applied for them and did the questionnaire's that were required. Next I went to CareerBuilder's site, but they didn't have much of anything that looked legit. Then I went on Facebook's Marketplace and found a listing that I applied to and did the questionnaires for.

A little before 6pm I got a text from hubby asking if I wanted to just meet him at the hospital for our Childbirthing class or not - I told him I'd rather just ride together if we could, but I could meet him if that would work better. He let me know shortly after 6 he was on his way home and called when he was just a few minutes away so I could just him outside since we were cutting it kind of close.

We got to the hospital and found the classroom right on time. There's 2 other pregnant ladies in our class - a couple expecting twins next month that look to be close in age to hubby and I and then a slightly younger girl who was there with her mom and is expecting at the end of January. We went around and introduced ourselves and the RN flipped through a Powerpoint that had videos and audio clips included. We practiced a few relaxation and early contraction breathing exercises too and were out of there about 20-30 minutes early.

We came home and I made us dinner - chicken stuffing mixed with cream of chicken soup - while hubby sat and watched the end of the movie Hitch on TBS. We ate dinner and watched some Family Guy together and he fell asleep curled up next to me on the couch for a bit before I had to wake him up so he could go get ready for UPS. I also broke the news to him about my job situation (he reacted how I expected) and then he left shortly after for work.

I sat around and texted with a friend for a bit, and then with hubby once I knew he was at work. Then I got on the computer and started blogging for a bit.

And that's been 24hrs in my day.

Job woes (another blow)... things can't get much worse, right?

So today I had work, like I do most Tuesdays and Thursdays, however I got a bit of a surprise near the end of the day when the last of my bosses went to leave...

I was informed that a sale we had recently started was abruptly cut short and ended last week, leaving us with nothing for the rest of the year as we were planning on this sale carrying through the next 2 months at least.

What's this mean for me?

They have to cut my hours/days back - AGAIN - but to now 1 day a week, and they'll be paying me hourly at $12.50 an hour (so assuming I work at least 5 hours a day, that means I'll be making half of what I just previously was making).

Yeah, talk about sux0rz today...

My boss that told me felt really bad about it too (she kept saying how she hated having to do this and was nearly in tears), as she knows we're saving every penny we can with Jay on the way and then the car accident we had last week... I just hate the timing, although this time it wasn't really foreseen as it just happened last week.

I was dreading telling hubby as I knew he wouldn't take it well - with the car accident last week he's already been stressing about money - he just feels that it seems like we can't ever get ahead and when it seems like we might, something happens out of nowhere that throws us for a loop.

I mean, it's only $200 a month that we're losing here, but still... that's $200 we could use elsewhere.

And I know hubby hates working as much as he does.

As it is, with me being preggo right now, aside from whatever seasonal jobs are left at this point (most places I know were hiring for that last month and looking online, I could only find 3 places to apply to) no one is going to want to hire a clearly pregnant chick for anything more than seasonal - I wouldn't be able to get maternity leave either as I wouldn't be at the job long enough to qualify, so I would have to quit when I went into labor.

I'm once again, regretting ever taking this job and leaving the theater. If hadn't left, the way I was told management got shifted around last year, I would have gotten a pay raise and since by now I would have been there for over 4 years straight getting maternity leave wouldn't be an issue. I left because 1) it seemed everyone was putting pressure on me after college graduation to get a job within my field that utilized my art degree and background; 2) I moved back to my hometown 30 miles away from the theater once my apartment lease was up 6 months after graduation and the idea of driving 15-20 minutes to work instead of 45 was appealing; 3) The pay at the time was exactly the same however I would be working half as many hours and not spending as much money on gas every week (which that summer gas got up to $4.50/gal and I was having to fill up every 4 or 5 days).

If only I had a crystal ball... as I've mentioned numerous times before, I really enjoyed working at the theater - it was a fun, easy job that kept me busy with the only stresses being the occasional disgruntled customer or a technical issue with one of the projectors and having to wait on a tech to fix it. I loved the environment of interacting with people and I got along great with the other managers and pretty much all of the employees. I can't really say I've ever loved my current job... it's been pretty boring and somewhat slow ever since I started - not nearly as busy as I was lead to believe and rarely is there a lot of work for me to do.

I suggested once again we consider selling my car - I suggested it to him last time my hours got cut, but he pointed out that if one of us got a 2nd job, only having the 1 car could complicate things. This time though, I'm working 1 day a week - I could easily take him to work at Verizon in the morning and pick him up afterwords. It's not like I go out a lot on days I don't work and if I needed the car for some reason one day, I could just drop him off and pick him up again. Plus my mom lives about 10 minutes away so if an emergency came up I'm sure I could rely on her to help me out. Once Jay comes, I'm sure I'll be keeping busy at home with him anyway and if I need to get out, we can just go for walks with the stroller.

My car is pretty decent. It's a 2004 Chevy Aveo sedan with about 55,000 miles and gets really good highway mileage - it's a great commuter car! Also, it's a stick-shift too which is hard to find these days. The only setbacks are that it doesn't have A/C (although it can be easily installed if one wants to spend the money on it), power locks or power windows. We still owe about $3500 on the loan but I'm sure I could sell it for about $4000 to cover that any other expenses that go with selling a car. I pay $200 a month on it, plus car insurance and gas and then there's routine maintenance to pay for too so by selling the car, we'd be saving money on all that. My only confusion is how to transfer the title to the new owner, as I'd be taking the money from selling it to pay off the loan but I don't get the physical title until the loan is paid off since the company the loan is through has it.

Hubby still has to agree to it though (which right now he's leaning towards no, in the event that I find a better job after Jay is born).

What we *really* need is for UPS to start promoting people again so hubby can get his driver training in and get a full-time spot when one opens up - once he's full-time we'll be fine as his salary will be a lot more than it is now and he won't need the money from the job at Verizon so he can quit there and go back to working just the one job and anything I make will purely be extra income.

Another new addition to the family!

Yesturday, hubby's 2nd cousin's wife gave birth to a baby girl!

Eliana Joy was born on November 1, 2010 at 2pm weighing 7lbs, 7oz and 19 inches long!

Momma went in to get induced as baby was about a week late, but turns out they didn't need to as the contractions had gotten worse and so they just broke her water - she was only in labor for 5 and a half hours too!

Gotta admit, while I'm NOT hoping for the next few months to fly by (which I know they will due to the holidays - December always seems to fly by!), I am a bit jealous as I can't wait for Jay to be here in the flesh too!

Hopefully Eliana and Jay will get to play together someday!

30 Days of Me: Day 24 - The tragic recent ongoings at my college

 

Today's 30 Days of Me topic is another "Whatever tickles your fancy" post and over vacation I learned about another tragedy that happened at my former college and via my phone, stayed up on the details and breaks in the investigation as they occurred.

2 weekends ago (the weekend of October 15-17) was homecoming weekend down at good ol' NIU, however it was a bit overshadowed as news broke that weekend that a freshman art student - Antinette "Toni" Keller - was reported missing by friends that Friday evening. They said she was last seen Thursday afternoon, just past noon, walking with her art portfolio towards a park not too far from campus, just off of the downtown area of DeKalb, which many students frequented due to the close proximity of the downtown area to campus.

Following via the Facebook page that was created for her missing persons case, various groups on campus were going out regularly to help search for her and the local area police were using dogs to try and find/follow her scent, however they said the dogs seemed to lose her scent near I-88, leading some to believe maybe she hitchhiked a ride. There was also talk that maybe she hopped on a train to California as the park she was headed to had train tracks nearby that led out that way. It was also reported that some of her belongings, including her dorm key, had been found in the park.

The speculation went on for about a week until officials came forward with news that they found human remains in the park shortly after Toni was believed to have gone missing. Many people were wondering why they withheld that info for a good week or so, but turns out the remains had been burned and it took nearly a week for them to be able to confirm that they were in fact human!

Her case went from a missing person's investigation to a "death investigation."

While it hasn't been confirmed that the remains they found were hers, they did report finding more of her belongings near the burnt remains, so everyone's pretty sure they're hers, despite some still clinging to hope that she may still be alive.

Throughout this past week the officials and FBI have requested people come forward with any information they might have regarding her or the park the remains were found in and I guess they met with many people and scheduled follow-up interviews since they started the case. Soon after the press conference regarding finding the remains, her case was bumped up to a "homicide investigation."

The other day we learned they had a man in custody - a local resident known for frequenting the park who had missed showing up for his 2nd interview with the police. Turns out he stole his mother's car and fled to Mexico before the FBI found him in Louisana and then less than 24hrs later they were able to extradite him back up here to Illinois. They haven't released a lot of the details regarding why they're pretty sure he's the murderer as they don't want to compromise the case, but he is being charged with 5 counts of 1st degree murder, criminal sexual assault, and arson; his bail is $5M.

I hope they really got the right guy and it just really saddens me that something like this happened down there. They haven't revealed how he killed her (although they say there was no previous connection between them, calling her a victim of chance and opportunity), but it sounds like rape was involved and then to have been burned... I hope she was dead prior to him burning the body - could you imagine those being the last few moments of your life??

While DeKalb isn't the safest town (which really such a town doesn't exist), it's never been a real dangerous one either - when I was there the only problem we had early on was an issue with minor drunken stabbings happening on the weekend over near Greek Row and no one was seriously injured. While I was a little nervous leaving the theater at night and always had an employee escort with me as we walked to our cars right next to the exit, I never thought twice about walking across campus or in the area during the day. This happened in broad daylight on a Thursday afternoon! Being an art major, I walked plenty of times across campus to get from the dorms on one end to the art building clear on the other side of campus! It just really makes you stop and think about how it could happen to anyone and that you have to be careful even in the daytime now!

The campus has since taken increased security measures to make sure the students feel safe - they've extended the late-night ride service from 4pm-8am and have 24hr escorts available and they've made it so that in order to enter any residence hall, you need to actually live there so long are the days of having visitors over or friends stay with you in the dorms for the weekend - I'm curious how that affects the dining halls, as each resident hall has a different dining hall in it (and 2 of them are kinda crappy so everyone tended to walk over to one of the others for dinner).

It seems like NIU can't escape tragedy - first the Valentine's Day shooting in 2008 and now this grisly homicide. Aside from the campus, DeKalb is smaller community with the majority of the non-college residents being those that either commute into Chicago for work or are farmers. Homicide's just aren't common there like they are in larger cities.

Sorry for the grim post today, but I figured since it was a "whatever tickles your fancy" post I'd take this opportunity to post about what happened at my aluma mater as it's been on my mind this past week. And no, I didn't know her, however I went to the school there, only having graduated 3 years ago and lived down there for 6 years, having friends and former co-workers that still live down there too that I occasionally visit, and working at the theater I came in contact with a lot of people in the community on a daily/weekly basis so my heart goes out to my NIU Huskie family and the DeKalb community.

November Goals

Can you believe it's November 1st already!? The winter holidays are soon upon us and I'm sure they'll make these next 2 months fly by - before you know it, February will be here! Where did the year go?!

Time to take a moment and look back at the goals I made at the beginning of October, see how I did, and then make new goals for November!

1. Enjoy our trip to Dallas
As seen by my post the other day, I did enjoy our trip (minus the last 24hours of it), so I'd say this was a success!

2. Don't spend too much money on Jay
I'd like to say we did pretty good on this one - we bought him some Cowboys related items down in Dallas, but we had planned on doing that, and I don't think I've spent too much this past month on other cute things for him - I've been pretty good, if I may say so myself!

3. Eat a slice of pumpkin pie
I haven't officially had a piece of pie, although I have gotten the pumpkin pie Blizzard at Dairy Queen a few times this past month... I wouldn't call this one a complete bust, but I have yet to eat actual pie yet.

4. Finish Kyle XY
I did that! And posted my thoughts about the show too - kinda wish it had a 4th season like they were planning to tie everything up as it ended with some really major cliffhangers as they weren't planning on being canceled and figured they'd have a 4th season to wrap up some of the major stuff and maybe end it. For a teenage sci-fi drama though, it was pretty good!

5. Finish Lego Star Wars Wii
Nope, although I did finish Episode 4 and so I only have the last 2 to go (which is like 12 levels).

6. Finish 1 Book
Yep - I finished "A Touch of Dead: The Complete Sookie Stackhouse Stories" by Charlaine Harris. It's a book that compiles 5 Sookie short stories that take place throughout the series and it's a good way to fill your Sookie-verse fix while you wait for the next season of True Blood or for the next book to come out. I also started "World War Z" by Max Brooks too as I figured with Halloween this past weekend, it was an appropriate book to read!

7. Work on my cross-hatch project
No, I kinda forgot about this one... although I did finish the panels that go over my stove AND I put together a centerpiece (sort of) for our kitchen table!

I think 4/5 out of 7 aren't bad for last month!

Now, goals for November:

1. Finish Lego Star Wars Wii

2. Finish my book and start a new one

3. Enjoy Thanksgiving

4. Continue on the home-owning/house-hunting stuff

5. Eat some pumpkin pie!

6. Don't stress about money

7. Take stuff to goodwill (I have 2 bags I keep meaning to take)
8. Go see a movie in the theaters (we haven't in awhile!)
9. Find a winter coat that fits and a pair of boots I can wear (since I'm preggo and my normal winter coat doesn't zip over my belly and my only boots are heels).

Music Shuffle Monday 11.01.10

This week's Music Shuffle Monday is being brought to us via iTunes shuffle, as I accidently left the iPod in the glove compartment of our car that hit the deer last week, which is currently being worked on at a repair place 5 hours away in St. Louis.

1. "Hypure" by Static-X

This is off their latest album "Cult of Static" that came out last year, in which they deemed it was "for the fans" however Wayne Static got married either before or during the making of this album and well, 2 of the songs on it are named for his wife and she does vocals on one of the tracks to... This was a pretty good album though, as Static-X gets back to their heavy roots. To be honest though, there hasn't been a Static-X album that I haven't liked - while Shadowzone (their 3rd album) was probably the most different out of them all, even that was a good effort, despite the different direction they took with it.

2. "2000" by Captain Jack

I first learned of Captain Jack thanks to the DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) games and recently got some of his other songs that weren't featured in the games. This one has more of a "soul" feel to it though than a lot of his other tracks that I'm more familiar with. I was also saddened to learn that Mr. Captain Jack had passed away some years prior too! He definitely had some of the more memorable tracks on DDR!

3. "Take Me" by Papa Roach

This is off their 3rd CD, "Getting Away with Murder," which I was a bit indifferent about. The title track was pretty heavy and rockin' while a lot of the rest of the album wasn't nearly as heavy and seemed more "radio friendly". I hate when bands do that. It was still decent, but I haven't spent the money on another Papa Roach album since.

4. "Home" by Three Days Grace

Since we're using iTunes shuffle today, and our iTunes has tracks from both my and hubby's music collections, I'd have to say this is one of hubby's as I'm not big on Three Days Grace. They're okay, but a lot of their songs sound the same to me and they get overplayed on the radio.

5. "Bad Reputation" by Half-cocked

A cover of the original by Joan Jett, this is the version from the Shrek soundtrack so it's a tad bit more upbeat and spunky than the original. I first heard the original when it was the theme song for the short-lived TV show Freaks and Geeks and enjoyed it. I finally acquired a copy of it when my sister got the Shrek soundtrack and we put it on the computer.