I spent a great week off with my kids while my daughter's school was on spring vacation. We didn't have money to do much, but we hit a lot of libraries and the park when it was nice out, and one night we all went swimming at the Shorview Tropics Water park!
One day we packed bag lunches and brought my husband lunch at work & ate in his cafeteria with him.
Friday night husband and kids and I met at H&R block to get our taxes done (we're getting a refund!), then my car died on the way home! Second time in less than two weeks! I put last week's repair, I can't even rememer what it was, and this weeks new alternator on a credit card. I am so ashamed. I want to bury myself.
I found a copy of a book of "16-Magazine" history at one of the libraries, I love reading it so much, it is so funny to read old 16-Magazine articles, and read memories of former pop stars like Donny Osmond and the Bay City Rollers have to say about what it was like to be interviewed and featured in 16. I used to read 16, and their competitor, Tiger Beat, all the time!

Car died in the parking lot yesterday, when I was trying to leave.
Had to go back in my office to use the phone to:
Call my daughter's school's in-house day care & arrange for her after-school care.
Call my daughter's school's front office & ask them to direct her to the day care, rather than wait outside for me as usual.
Call Saturn to arrange to have my car brought in.
Call Saturn's desginated tow truck company to have them tow my car to Saturn.
Call my husband to arrange for him to leave work early & pick up both kids before 6 pm and bring them home
Ask a co worker for a ride home, myself.
Call my daughter at the after school day care just to make sure she made it. She was sobbing.

Last night, using my husband's car:
After dinner we all got in the car to drive husband to church class at 7:00.
Drive the kids and me to daughter's school for parent teacher conference.
Drive home for an hour.
Drive to church to pick up husband, got home around 10 pm.

This would all happen to me during a bus strike :(

Not to mention, this is going to cost me a fortune, just when I thought I was catching up!

On Ant Rap, we started a thread called Happiness Around the World, to balance out the other thread we have going called Depression Around the World. We had to put what makes us happy, I've posted to it twice, and here is what I put:

Post 1:
OK
I work 6 am - 3 pm which allows me to get a full time paycheck (such as it is) and still pick up my daughter as her school is getting out and take her home like an at-home parent (my husband takes her to school on his way to work)!
We drive separate cars, we used to not even have 1!
I get rave reviews at work, I must say so myself. And the call center I work for hasn't been outsourced to India...yet!
I can listen to what ever music I want on my radio/cd player at my desk, and have yet to get caught playing on the internet during the day as much as I do!
My 10 year old daughter does an exact perfect impersonation of Patrick the Starfish from Sponge Bob Square Pants, saying "May I take your hat sir?" like an idiot! It makes me laugh to hard I'm still laughing!
14,000 Hmong refugees in Thai camps are going to be elligible to immigrate to the US this summer, and most will probably come here to Minnesota, which make MN great, and on a purely selfish level, allows me to eat more Hmong food and hear more keej music!
It is almost spring and I won't have to wear a coat and boots out.
My daughters math-tutoring at Sylvan learning center is working! Her math skills are improving after 2 years of watching her suffer!
I get to chat to Ant fans all over the world, here and at only-lovers every day!
I still can't believe I got to see the year 2000!
I love tea, I'm going to make another cup right now!

Post 2:
In 1983 when I was 18 years old I got an amazing scholarship to attend a 4-year college, my dream come true. Strangely, it was in St. Paul Minnesota, a location I knew absolutely nothing about. I even had to pull out an atlas to figure out where it was. The college experience itself was amazing, very extreme, both good and bad, but I really was lucky to get it, especially because of its location.
As soon as I arrived, and the taxi was taking me from the airport to the school I looked out the window and thought My God, I've seen this place in my dreams! All those times growing up and feeling like I was in the wrong place...this looks exactly like what I was thinking of!
Its been 21 years now and I still haven't lost that feeling! The extreme sub zero cold and the 12+ inches of snow don't really happen enough days per year to be significant to me. Its a great place both to spend your money, restaurants, concerts etc...and a great place to be broke because there are so many parks and museums and recreational centers and libraries and other events for free. There are enough freaks here to keep me in company..athough I do find that they're harder to find as I get older. I can't bear to be away from Minneapolis and St. Paul for more than about 2 weeks at a time!
I am deeply proud to be able to claim past senators Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and Paul Wellstone as my political forbears in the Minnesota Democrats Farmers and Labor Party. Not to disagree with or offend anyone else's politics here, but that's just something that suits who I am so well, its really amazing to me.
Did I mention that I just really really like it here? And that my 'new' (5+ years now) house is walking distance from two lakes with public beaches (free!) , open all summer?
And every time I double-check with my 10 year old daughter to verify that she still likes her school, she insists that she wouldn't want to go anywhere else! I just NEED her to know that if she were ever unhappy in her school I would immediately find her a new one and transfer her, but she insists she loves her school, and she should know because she's been there for 5 years!

Sat here at my desk at work for 5 hours today. Got 2 phone calls from customers, both of which were systems-engineer related so they'll have to wait until Monday to get answers. Updated my on-going list of clients, for the depatment, to add some new clients, and upate the sales represetntative for all of them, as one sales rep has quit, and the clients were re-assigned to two new ones. I changed about 10 back up tapes and typed in about 10 end of day functions for about 10 databases, in preparation for this week end. Also searched for Chip Skylark jpegs so I could use one for my avatar on OnlyLoversLeft Alive. Chip Skylark is the dreamy cartoon pop star who appears on the cartoon The Fairly Odd Parents, and I've decided to devote my life to him.



Listened to Rollins Band's Get Some GO again 3 times, then top 40 radio for about the last 2 hours. All Evervesense all the time. Luckly I live Evervesence. And Brittany Spears' "Toxic", who ever mixed that was a genius! It would be better withoug her vocal.

Overheard on a cartoon my son was watching last night: An "Enemy" is just a "Friend" who doesn't like you and is mean to you all the time."

Hey, I wore an actual dress to work today, pumps tights everything. I look like a total girl, for a change!
Our "lent" challange at home is "no eating out." It might sound shallow, but as much as we rely on fast food like a crutch, every time we're too lazy to clean the kitchen, and/or cook oursleves, we take our kids out somewhere. And husband 'forgets' his lunch and eats out at work quite a lot. And we stop at them as an impulse when we're driving around on week ends, running errands, with our kids. It might be why we all get so crabby. Fast food is not healthy. And we know it adds up financially, monthly. So far its been a great idea. And I'm reading Fast Food Nation. It started out just being about the history of various early leaders in the fast food industry. Then it went on to include how fast food companies recruit new business owners, then manipulte them out of all their money, including charging big rent for the property the stores sit on. Now I'm at the part where it explains how the cheeply-created food contains edible perfumes developed in a lab. I'm a former Burger King employee myself, from when I was 19.

Sunday I went back to Sam's Club and re-applied to work week-ends there, in preparation for this summer, when we'll be paying for both our kids to attend day care full time.

Last week I called my boss, my boss's boss, and my boss's boss's boss in to a meeting with me to ask them to appeal the decision to hire strangers off the street, instead of restoring the two specific people we lost in the lay off. But I lost that one. The dilberts-speak they used to justify it was truely amazing though. I wish I'd had a tape recorder on! At least I know I tried though.

Yesterday afternoon I called a few companies I like, to ask them if they grant informational interviews, so I can look elsewhere. I'd just like to know more about them. Guidant said they don't grant informational interviews. Medtronic , I had to leave a voice mail and they never called me back. I might call Veritas this afternoon. I know I'm lucky to have a job at all in this economy, especially a technology job, the exact kind being exported overseas by so many other companies.

I put my yahoo IM on this morning. I've been leaving it off lately, because I got sick of being propositioned sexually, and getting all those messages from men in India and various places all over the Middle East, who beg me to arrange their immigration and/or get them a job in the US. I even put in my profile 'don't flirt with me, don't tell me to do your job search'. Well today I put it on and almost immediately got a message from a guy in Marocco, who very kindly allows me to chat in French with him, but he's very persistant that I should find him an American girlfriend to marry. Ho hum. More of the same.

Marco's message board at onlyloversleftalive.com keeps me sane.