Updates

Alrighty. Time for another update, this time, with pictures!

First off are some pictures of Aaron's Halloween costume, as a robot:





My folks came out this weekend for their first visit since they had helped us move out in the Fall of 2007. I had my camera with me everywhere we went, but there never seemed to be any photo opportunities, but I did manage to get a few at home. They were planning on coming out on Friday evening, but due to the blizzard that hit the Black Hills a few days prior, the roads in most of South Dakota were still closed, so they postponed their trip by one day, and stayed an extra day.

Dad and Odin spent most of the time tormenting each other. Sometimes I felt bad for Odin, but I stopped feeling bad for him once I realized that he just kept coming back for more, again and again.

We visited a natural history museum on the U of M campus on Sunday. We also went to a beer brewing supply store so Dad could pick up some stuff for his brewing at home. We ate a LOT! Some days, I felt like that was all we did. And drove around a lot, kind of giving my folks the tour of the city. On Monday we visited the Mall of America, my folks had never been there before. That was okay, and took up a lot of the morning and some of the afternoon. We managed to find a nice light jacket for Aaron for 75% off at Eddie Bauer, so that was pretty cool. On Tuesday, Aaron had to work, so we ran some errands, and Mom needed new windshield wipers for her car.








All in all, a good weekend, sad that it had to end, but dealing with the 3 day work week pretty well, haha.

Getting back to work sucked! It was like Monday, with three times the work load, voice messages, and emails. I had 20 new voicemails this morning, and 23 new emails. Holy crap. It took me past lunch time to return all the voicemails! I even explicitly said on my voice greeting that I would be gone on Monday and Tuesday, and back on Wednesday. Some people kept calling and calling and leaving message after message. "I've been trying to get a hold of you! Maybe you're on vacation?" Well, if you would take the time to listen to the message, maybe you would figure that out on your own. Sheesh.

Whew.

Winter's Coming

So back home (in Spearfish, my second home), they got a few feet of snow over the last couple of days, and roads have shut down, no traveling.  My folks were supposed to come out today to visit for a long weekend, but ended up having to postpone their trip by one day (hopefully only one day!), so we don't get to see them until tomorrow night.  Bummer.  But, that gives us extra time to get the apartment cleaned up!  Yay!

I'm so glad that we did not get the feet and feet of snow here!  To be perfectly honest, I am kind of scared of driving my new car in the snow.  I got it in the spring/summer, and I haven't driven a manual transmission in over 5 years.  I sometimes squeak the tires just driving on rain-slicked roads, going from a stop to a start.  I am just going to have to drive extra super careful right away until I get used to how it handles. 

I'm excited for my folks to come out!  This will be the first time they've visited us since they initially helped us move all of our stuff out here in the Uhaul and Dad's truck.  And it will be the first time I've gotten to see them since we went back home for a week in June.  I think we're going to do a tour of a beer brewery, find Dad some beer brewing supplies, go to the infamous Mall of America (on a weekday, NOT the weekend), maybe the Minnesota Zoo. 

Work is starting to get better.  The new guy started this Monday, but of course is still in training, and will be for an additional two weeks.  Once training is over, then he will get his own caseload.  My caseload was decreased a teeny bit when some of my groups were given to a co-worker, and it has helped out tremendously.  I'm still not caught up to where I want to be, but I feel like I can breathe again when I look at what work I have to do for the day.

Sorry about no pictures yet of the Halloween costumes.  I have a couple of Aaron's robot costume on my camera that I have yet to load onto the computer, as well as one picture of the two of us at my co-worker's party that she took.  Just need to get them on the computer so I can link them on here.  It's about 6am right now, and I was just quick posting before I had to start getting ready for work!

Have a great weekend!

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Halloween 2008

Whew, what a weekend (and it's not even 6am on Sunday).  On Friday, we got to dress up at work (as long as it was appropriate attire), and there was a costume contest, a candy game, and good times over all.  I went as a mad scientist, Dr. Horrible, from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog by Joss Whedon.  It wasn't a perfect likeness, so I mostly was just a mad scientist with a freeze ray gun, and fuzzy, purple hair.

One of my co-workers invited me to her Halloween party that was on Saturday night.  We had to find a costume for Aaron, which was proving to be hard, after visiting a few costume stores.  I just didn't like any of them, and neither did he.  Then on Thursday, he sends me a message while I'm at work that he wants to be a box-robot!  How fun!  I was still searching for stuff for my costume, so I went to one of our favorite little stores, Ax-Man.  It's a surplus store - everything that was ever in a junk drawer at home?  This is where it comes from.  I got boxes, reflectors, LED lights, mailbox flags with reflectors, and an old-style oven timer.  This was going to be so cool!

It took us most of the afternoon on Saturday to complete the costume.  A lot of the initial time was spent waiting for glue to dry.  It was a very intricate suit - with a speaker in the front for listening to music, two bottles on little shelves in the inside corners of the suit, hooked up to funnels on the outside for drinking - one for beer, one for liquor.  Straws attached to those so Aaron could drink without leaving the costume.  LED lights diffused by wax paper for eyes, and dryer tubing, that aluminum looking stuff, for his arms.  We plastered the whole thing in aluminum, and were set!

Odin had a blast the whole time, ever since I brought the boxes home on Thursday.  He would climb up them and in them, loved the LED lights and the noise of the aluminum foil when we were putting it all together.  We will definitely have to store the robot in the garage for next year, that way he doesn't destroy it (and I don't know where we'd keep it in the apartment, anyway!)

He was an instant hit at the party.  We explained it to a lot of people.  Most people wondered how he was going to pee, as we had not created any sort of hatch in the front or back.  The costume was like a little oven, so he ended up having to take it off several times throughout the night to cool down.  I only knew a couple of people at the party, my co-worker Lori, and her roommate whom I'd met a couple of times before.  Everyone else was new to us.

There were tons of people, good music, TONS of good food, tippy cup and beer pong to play down stairs, and just a good party atmosphere.  Until Aaron got pushed up the stairs by some drunk guy, and he's not sure exactly what happened, but I think the oven timer fell out of the front of the costume, and then broke.  He had to throw it away.  Then he came and told me about it, which sucked.  I'm sure the guy was probably drunk and did not mean to do so, but c'mon.  He's a giant box robot - he can't just hop up those steps real quick.  So, we hung around a bit longer, then said goodbye and headed home.  It was a lot of fun, up until the end.

Amazingly, we were home right around midnight, which isn't too terribly late.  I was, however, up at 6am today because I never sleep well after I've been drinking.  Oh well. 

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