Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Whassup????

Nothing much, Buttercup, nothing much... No that's not true. Just doing my thang... It seems the week is just blah, but the weekends...busy, busy, busy!!! Last weekend I trekked up to OKC to see my sweetie, J, AND see Pat Benetar in concert. How cool! That was a great B-Day present. I loved it! What else did we do. Cruised around town looking at cars, played in the rain...well not really but did get a little wet. That's about it but it was just enough!

I headed back a tad bit early to make the evening church service. I thought I was going to be speaking about China but they changed it up on me. That's ok, I enjoyed listening to the others. Mary Beth called right as I got into town and asked to borrow my drill and she came by later with the DeeeJ. So cute!!! (DJ is MB's cute Pomeranian puff ball!!!)

Monday I was determined to hear back from a museum where I sent in an application for a position. Lo and behold, I got an interview. Yay! So while I was talking to my mom on the way home from work, I also checked my snail mail and lo and behold I got approved for an OK state job (a job I was told I wasn't qualified for). HA! So the next step for me for that job is to take a merit test...whatever that may be. So in a couple of weeks, please be praying for me. We shall see what happens with both these opportunities. I'm not too excited yet, but I don't want to be too pessimistic either. Guess what else was in my snail mail. Lo and behold my brother, Patrick, wrote me a letter! If you knew my brother, you know it was a miracle. I didn't even know he had my address. So sweet!!!

Other than that, nothing much else is going on. This weekend will be spent sleeping....a lot. Yay for Labor Day! Also, Mary Beth is getting married on Sunday, so kudos to her!!!

Buh dee Buh dee Buh dee...That's all folks...fer now.
Jessica

Monday, August 21, 2006

Ice Cream, Hair and Storms...

Where to start. I'm not sure, so I'll just tell you about my weekend. I decided to go home and see my family since I was missing them an awful lot. Friday I had a major event at the museum I was in charge of and that went off without a hitch AND we got out earlier than I expected so I got to leave early for home (around 3:30). That put me in Arkansas at 10:30. I hit 5 o'clock traffic in Dallas but there were no major wrecks so the traffic was steady but slow, which is fine with me. Now if we hadn't been moving...that's a different story...it drives me crazy, which is ironic because if traffic is at a dead stop, I can't drive anyway! HA!

ANYWAY! I arrived home and knew I was in Arkansas because the locusts where in full symphonic orchestra. I promptly went to bed. Slept good and got an early start. Mom and I went and dropped off some stuff at Salvation Army and then went to Sears to pick up a mini-fridge for her room at school.

Insert tangent here... When we went around the back of Sears to have the mini-fridge put in our car, I walked in with the reciept and looked around for a person. No one, except another customer. All of a sudden I hear: "Welcome to Sears merchandise pick up, please scan your reciept!" Hello? Who is that? Where are you? Oh! It's the computer talking to me. Cool. I walk over and scan the barcode printed on the reciept. Then a voice says: "Please observe the monitor overhead. It will indicate your wait time and who is taking care of your order." Sure enough I'm next "in line", Matt is picking up the order and the timer starts. Average wait time of 2 minutes and 47 seconds. Cool. I sit down and wait with the other person for her merchandise. Then I got to thinking. No wonder we have an employment problem. It cost too much to have people work for us. It's much easier to have a computer do it. It's so much more efficient! People cause too many problems and employers don't have the "time" to deal with it. Time is money and if you can cut out the middleman, then do it. What happened to the human touch? Remember service with a smile? Who does that anymore? You can upload your own pictures to your computer and then order the ones you want and have them mailed to you or print them out yourself. You can check your own groceries out, mail your own packages, check your credit card balance over the phone and online...We are sacrificing humans for a little speed. Have we gotten so cold? Is this the path we are headed for? Are we to be drones who eventually will not have to have any contact with another human being to get anything done? (We won't even have to touch each other to procreate...wait...we don't now!) It won't be the robots or machines that destroy us. It will be our independence from each other.

Back to my weekend...I helped Mom set up her classroom. She still isn't able to lift a lot of weight, so I did all the physical stuff like hanging the solar system and putting things on the top shelf, helping empty the catfish tank, etc... (she's a science teacher by the way...) After that we went over to Roger's who was cooking up some soup (cooking experiment with a pressure cooker and we were the guinea pigs). It was actually quite good. I showed off Hong Kong pictures. We had to go because Mandy and the girls were coming to play at 3:00. YAY!!! We played and I took pictures and all was right with the world. We ate a little BBQ and went up to Dickson street to the Headquarters house during the Civil War for a little bit of ice cream and cake. The annual Ice Cream Social was going on. Fun!!! Good ice cream...

After the girls were packed up in the van and Mom and I were dropped off at the house, I trekked over to Dad's and gave him and Alison a tour of Hong Kong and China until about 11:00pm. Went to sleep...got up and went to Sunday School with Dad and Alsion. Wow! Hadn't done that in awhile. It was good. Went back to Dad's and made a detour to visit Grandma. She's doing real well just doesn't get to get out much. She's on oxygen and it can be a hassle to get out of the house. She calls her oxygen tube her leash. HA HA, only my Grandma! Went back over to Dad's and ate lunch. Went back over to Mom's to finish up China pictures and then left around 3pm. I took a break in McAlester to visit with Jason's Mom at the Western Sizzlin. Good times! Got back on the road and bypassed several storms and made it to Waco at 11pm... WHEW!!! Talk about pressed for time. It was a very short weekend but I needed to go home. Someone told me every moment is precious...and he was right. Take time out and spend it with someone you love, even if it is calling them on the phone and talking to them for a few minutes...we need that human touch.

Oh! I didn't explain the hair reference in the title! Mom has hair! Not much, but enough to not have to wear a wig!! YAY!!!! I told her she would be the coolest teacher with the coolest hair (figuratively and literally).

Thursday, August 10, 2006

All Dogs Go To Heaven

Mom called last night and let me know she had to put down our cocker spaniel of 16 years, Oliver yesterday. I was soooo sorry she had to do that by herself. She's had so much to deal with lately, so we cried on the phone together. She had him creamated. He was old and deaf as a doornail and was having some respiratory problems. All dogs go to heaven, according to the movie of the same name. I don't know, but it'd be nice. We had some good memories of him. I nicknamed him Ollie, Aloe Vera and Chewbacca (man, he had a lot of fur). I'm gonna miss him. Rest in peace, Ollie.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Cruising at 55mph with bumps in the road...

Ok. So, I'm getting tired of being tired and coughing. Therefore, after the encouragment of several people, I went to the Dr. yesterday and I'm glad I did. He said if I let it get worse, it could develop into pneumonia. Great! Wonderful! What I've always wanted!! I got some anitbiotics @ $6/pill. Thank goodness I only needed five. Crazy how a pill can knock out almost pneumonia!

My father called to check on how I was doing and then I called Mom to tell her. She then proceeded to tell me she has lymphedema, which is is an abnormal buildup of fluid that causes swelling, most often in the arms or legs (in her case her left arm). The condition develops when lymph vessels or lymph nodes are missing, impaired, damaged, or removed. This is a direct cause of her surgery and her radiation. So that me feel wonderful knowing I'm here and have no time to take off to go help her. On the up side she said the doctor may cut her radiation treatments by a week. Yay! Just in time for school to start.

On an absolutely positively happy note, Jason came down for the weekend! Yay! It was very nice to see my sweetie and hang out. He gave me my b-day present, which were tickets to see Pat Benatar in concert! Invincible! (love that song). That's about it for this last week. Still trying to recover from China. Still seems surreal that I went (and back again). Keep checking out my China blog. I try to update it everyday with an entry and more pictures.

Later gaters...

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Rolling the eyes...

Ok. I have an irritance (is that a word?) that needs to be scratched. Everybody caught up on the latest news about Mel Gibson? Good. I hate Hollywood and the media. Why do we focus so much on them? Do you realize how many people act like Mel everyday who are not celebrities? Please. We flock to Hollywood and the media because we don't have to look at ourselves when we screw up. We can always criticize someone else who has screwed up royally, but don't show everybody what we've done ourselves...that would be invasion of our privacy! Don't pass judgement on public figures unless you're ready to pass judgement on yourself publically. I'm not excusing what celebrities do. They have consequences for their actions and so do we. We just don't have ours flaunted in everyone's face...well sometimes we do.

Along the same lines....it's sad to see how much money we contribute, i.e. magazines and TV shows, to pursuing those famous people...they're people too. We should be concentrating more on how we conduct ourselves rather than gossiping over the latest marriage of J-Lo. Is she called that anymore? What she doing now? Is she still married to Marc Antony? Whoops...got sidetracked a little.

I am totally guilty of looking at the entertainment section on the internet. I admit it, but cringe and reprimand myself too. There are more important matters at hand...aren't there?

Good luck Mel.

Check out my new blog....

I just started posting my journal about my trip to China on a new blog... check it out here.