Shower showers ** Looks like we MIGHT get lucky on the rain situation. The forecast for Saturday shows it cloudy and cool, with rain in the evening. The shower's at 2:00, so if we can get going and do games and stuff outside before it's late, we might luck out. Keep your fingers crossed!

BTW, why do you suppose Psycrone has been particularly weird to me today? I cut nearly a foot of hair off of my head, for crissakes, and she has literally not said ONE word to me today, not even hello. Weeeeeird. I guess I should be grateful. At least she's not lecturing me or pissing me off.
Posted 10:49 AM by Kerry O.

Wacko ** Is he? Hell, yes. I watched the Michael Jackson show last night, along with the rest of America, and I have some observations. Now, remember a couple of basic things before I start. First, I am not now, nor have I ever been a Michael Jackson fan. I do, however, think he has talent. I put him in the same bucket as Prince: immensely talented and immensely f---ed up. I just can't be a fan of someone that out of whack, sorry. Second, I'd read a lot about this interview show before I saw it, so I partly knew what I was walking into and expected it to be a certain way. Third, Joe is a consummate Devil's Advocate, as much as he will swear he's not.

That all said, I'd also like to add before beginning that Barbara Walters should have kept her big, ugly mouth shut. She's just bitter that she didn't get this interview. It's not her place to draw total conclusions on what's supposed to be a "news magazine" show before we even see it. Every time she was shown on-screen I wanted to reach through and smack her.

Okay... So. He's seriously a nut-job. He has absolutely no grasp on reality and no real concept of responsibility and accountability. Partly I believe that's because he is seriously mentally ill, stemming from the abuse in early life and from living in an utterly surreal world his entire life. And partly I think he wants it that way (though you could point to the same root causes for that). But, having said that, I do not think he is evil. Creepy, yes. Dangerous, no. Honestly, I am in the minority on this and I'm okay with that. I don't think he's molested anyone. I think he has this freaky obsession with wanting children to be happy, exclusively because he never was. He has warped his brain into believing that he can be happy now if they are. I genuinely think he wants children to feel loved and happy, and he thinks he has some weird gift of making them that way. No, he doesn't really, and yes, it's creepy watching him try to give joy to these children, all of whom have a much better grip on reality than he does. But I really believe he could never bring himself to hurt a child, other than being way too insistent on forcing some surreal happiness upon them, especially if they start figuring out it's kind of creepy. He said some really disturbing things, and hearing him talk about kids and his appearance, and watching him shop (Hello?!) all were nearly jaw-dropping. But these things were all disturbing in the way they paint someone as severely mentally ill. I think he is a sad, tragic person who is far beyond help. He would be homeless and feeding pigeons on a street corner, or worse yet, dead if he didn't have this sort of idiot-savant musical talent. That has been and will continue to be his saving grace. Whether or not he's worth a billion dollars (shut up, Barbara), he loves to perform just as much as he loves to see happy children. And I don't think he's "Dangerous" doing either.
Posted 9:13 AM by Kerry O.

Thank God for Fridays ** I came into today on a high from yesterday, and got some annoyingly bad professional news. Nothing serious, just a bad survey and I take these things very personally.

Anyway, it's gone. I chopped off my hair. ;-) Well, okay. MOST people would still say it's in the "long" category of hair. But I did cut off about 10.5 inches. I had to do a minimum of 10 inches to donate it to a children's charity, so I figured "What the heck?" She layered it in long layers (which move a lot - I'm not used to that), and dyed it all over a dark auburn (semi-permanent). I think we'll be a little more creative next time, maybe, but for now it's enough of a change. Joe liked it very much, but I'm sure my mother will have a heart attack. It's really not that dramatic, other than the length, so people have been positive but not shocked or even raving. Oh, well. I didn't have the heart to ask Joe to take a picture last night - he was frantically cleaning while I sat on the couch. So I will try to get one tonight, or else you'll all see it with the shower pictures after the weekend. :)
Posted 8:15 AM by Kerry O.

Horrific ** I think this would utterly destroy me. It's one thing to have the risk of something going wrong, or having a stillborn baby. But to have it shot in your pregnant stomach and born barely alive, only to die? From a freak incident? Ugh. It just makes me want to sob. And stay home and never go outside again.
Posted 3:17 PM by Kerry O.

By the way... ** Today's the day for my new 'do. Wish me luck! I'll make sure to post pictures tonight or tomorrow. Right now I'm off to hunt down some ice cream...
Posted 1:51 PM by Kerry O.

Showers of kindness ** I just got a surprise baby shower! My team threw a baby shower in lieu of the "Monthly Team Meeting" I thought we were having. It's funny; they tried to keep me back by saying I needed to wait for someone who had urgent questions. But she wasn't around, and I hate being late for meetings, so I zipped right on over. I beat a couple of my other teammates. :-) Oops! We had such a great time, and they got us such wonderful gifts. People can be really nice sometimes!!!
Posted 10:50 AM by Kerry O.

Ecologically irresponsible ** I think Mambas have to be THE most over-packaged product in the history of food.
Posted 8:12 AM by Kerry O.

New and improved ** Well, I'm in slightly better spirits today. Thank God! I did manage to get a normal amount of sleep for me. That means, I only got up twice to pee (one early in the night and one in pretty late morning - so I went pretty long between them!), and managed to fall back asleep fairly quickly after each. Boy, did I need that. Last night I was a nesting fiend. I cleaned and reorganized the entire kitchen after work, before my mom came over at 6:30. Then as she was leaving, Ember dropped by with some stuff for the shower Saturday and visited for a few minutes. It was so nice to see her, but I got sleepy really really fast.

Anyway, the kitchen looks great, and I feel much better about one more room! Joe also found out that he doesn't work (irrigation) again until next Friday! Woo Hoo! Of course, that's Valentine's Day and he'll work 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., which sucks. But I'd much rather he work Valentine's Day then on Friday, when the furniture comes, or on Saturday, when the couples shower is. That would have been a huge problem. Now everything is falling into place, just as it should.

And I'm committed to not let Psycrone get to me today. Fortunately, she'll be in a meeting from 8-11, and I'll be in the second half of that meeting from 12:30 - 3:30 (off-site), so I won't see her much. Oh, shucks.
Posted 7:29 AM by Kerry O.

Growing up ** You know you've entered a new phase in your life when you have to revise your Smarter Living email subscriptions to remove the Student discounted travel deals and add the cruises. Not that I'll be going on a cruise anytime soon, but a girl can dream!
Posted 12:40 PM by Kerry O.

Replacement People ** Very interesting column today.
Posted 10:49 AM by Kerry O.

Terrific Tuesday ** Or not. We'll see if I can turn it around with "the power of positive thinking" but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. Psycrone, or Cruella is in rare form. She's not going to make my last 12.5 days very friendly, I can see this now. Yesterday it was a guilt-trip comment about how inconvenient it is that I'll be out when she needs to take 2 family illness days the week after I leave. Today it's being super-anal about a file that she doesn't need to be super-anal about. And being pissy about it to boot.

Anyway... Our furniture is coming Friday. That's very good news. The next 2 weeks are so busy, I think my head is going to explode. Even work has meetings and reviews and forums scheduled from one end to another, starting today. Ugh. Never ends.

I chugged down a smoothie with 1000+% daily allowance of vitamin C. I hope it helps knock this crud I'm starting to feel out of me. I also didn't sleep worth crap last night. I think I got up to pee 5 times. And I pulled 3 different muscles. It's a joy to be me right now. Aren't you jealous?
Posted 8:34 AM by Kerry O.

Internet Relay Death ** Vedas died online as a crowd of virtual onlookers egged him to "eat more!"
Posted 2:43 PM by Kerry O.

Uh-oh ** My eyes are burning. I feel slightly warm. Damn, I'd better not be getting sick...
Posted 11:18 AM by Kerry O.

To infinity and beyond ** In our unyielding national quest for more, always more, sometimes we suffer tragic setbacks. Saturday was one of those. My thoughts are with the families of the astronauts, and my joy with their memories, as they died doing what they loved so much. May we all be so lucky.
Posted 9:25 AM by Kerry O.

Nesting? Or insanity? ** My husband has gone off the deep-end. And I fear he is dragging me right along with him. Then again, it's not like I wasn't halfway there by myself. He is a madman with all his cleaning, assembling, organizing, sorting, discarding, etc. We finally found bedroom curtains yesterday. Yay. So you just put curtains up, right? Oh, no. It turned into the grandaddy of all productions. Hours and hours later, the bedroom was completely turned inside-out, cleaned, sorted, organized, junk discarded, furniture polished and everything back or into its new position. It looks fabulous! Much better than it's ever looked, if you ask me. Although adjusting to the light-blocking (mostly) curtains was a real stretch last night, when we're used to the slightly light-leaking piece-of-crap miniblinds that are thankfully in the trash pile now. I actually had to crack one of the curtains to let a tiny bit of moonlight in so I could get comfortable. Besides, letting an almost-9-month pregnant woman sleep in a pitch-black room when she needs to get up at least twice per night to pee is a bad idea.

Anyway, I also went through the last of my mystery boxes in the office yesterday, and Joe reclaimed his closet in there and sorted/organized all of his clothes. I think he's probably going to go mad doing more stuff today. Crazy man. He nests more than me, and I'm getting pretty bad myself. Tonight for me, it's finishing the dishes, cleaning and sorting things throughout the kitchen and dining room and some more laundry. I might swing by the fabric store to look for swag material for the kitchen too, but we'll see how much energy I have for that later.

Oh, yeah. And we also made it to see Lord of the Rings: Two Towers too. Finally. WOW that's a long (and very good!) movie when you're in the middle of the aisle with a very pregnant woman's bladder. Ouchie. I managed to only go to the bathroom once mid-movie! Yay! Of course, if I'd been on the aisle, I probably still would've held it. At least until Aragorn wasn't in the current scene. Mmmmm, is he yummy.
Posted 9:08 AM by Kerry O.

Feels like rain ** Today will be a gorgeous 70 degrees, with a pretty stiff breeze/wind. But that breeze is the result of my endless whining about our weather. It is now supposed to drop down to the low 60's with rain by Saturday... the day of our shower. Much of which is outside. I actually don't mind a rainy baby shower day, except for the outside stuff. I know my step-sis will be really bummed if her games get changed. :-( Maybe we can play them in the carport.
Posted 7:28 AM by Kerry O.