OK now my husband got laid off from the St. Paul Companies.
The good news is that they'll continue to pay him for 4 months! Even after that 4 months, then he's elligible for unemployement benefits for a while.
The bad news is everyone knows no one hires much in December, so we're not really counting on him being able to do a decent job search until January.

Wednesday morning my husband drove our dog to a kennel in Lake Elmo.
Then my husband, 2 kids and I drove to Green Bay.
We arrived at about 4 pm, and drove straight to Bridal Beginnings so he could pick up the suit he was fitted for, about 2 months ago.
They spent about 20 minutes saying he was never fitted there, and that they'd have to start all over again, even though his sister's wedding was less than 3 days away. Then they decided, ho-hum, they found it after all.
We went to my in-laws' house.
My mother in law made a nice dinner. Then she gave everyone a nice piece of chocolate cake, and asked us to guess the secret ingredient. It was SAURKRAUT! I'm not joking. One of my least favorite things on earth. She baked big handfulls of saurkraut in to her cake batter, because she saw it in a recipe in a magazine! I almost choked.
Thursday was Thanksgiving day, so everything was closed. My kids watched cartoons and videos and I read part of the DiVinci Code. We had ham for Thanksgiving dinner. I often wish we could just have our own Thankgiving Dinner at our own home, but some day when my in laws aren't around I'll feel guilty for saying that.
Later that night, my mother in law, and my two sister in laws went to a hotel banquet room to decorate table tops with plastic leaves and tall glass vases, and to decorate the head table, gift table, and cake table, with a plastic leave garnish, stuck with pins and tape.
Friday the groom, my two sister in laws, my mother in law, and several other women in the wedding party went to a salon to stand in their underwear and get spray-painted "tan". I thought they all came back looking like pumpkins. My husband and I can't figure out what made them think that was a good idea.
Friday afternoon, we had to go to their church for the wedding rehersal. My sister in law and her fiance had called or house a few weeks ago to ask if I would prefer to lead the congregation in prayer, or to present Catholic communion to the priest, but I had to tell them I'm an athiest and shouldn't do either one. After that my sister in law and her fiance went to their own house, and the rest of us went back to my in-laws' house and thought up ways to get The Bride to change her mind, because her fiance is clearly a total con artist who can't keep a job, and has furnished several different dates and places of birth, when asked. It wasn't like waiting for a wedding, it felt more like a funeral to us.

Saturday we all dressed nice, my daughter and I wore dresses, she hated that way more than I did.
I was proud of my daughter and son, and their two little cousins, they stood at the entrance to the church sanctuary, and handed programs to people coming in, while I and my husband's brother's wife supervised. They were all very charming! My son wore black hush puppy shoes that my mother in law got him. He was very proud of them and kept calling them his "tapping shoes", as if they were for tap-dancing!

Busy Week.
Mon the 15 was my birthday, I turned 40.
Tues we found out the lazy, crappy company that owns my office sold our office to a spectacular-looking, excellent international company that acually maintains and upgrades its software products and encourages actual research and development...so I say the aquisition date on or around Jan 1 can't come soon enough for me.

But Thursay morning, my husband went to work and his managers took him aside and told him he is laid off!
He knew it was coming , because it had alread happened to so many others in his office. Luckily, his severance package was very generous if you ask me, so he can put a lot of time and thought into his next job.

Thursday afternoon I had both my kids' parent teacher conferences, and they both went great. My son's pre school just insisted that his behaviors were such a great concern, and he'd been asked to leave his previous day care due to his demanding behavior, so I almost started crying when his new Kindergarten teacher says he's been in her class for 3 months, and she hasn't seen anything unusual at all, and that he plays well with others, and she enjoys having him in her class. She is my new super hero! And my daughter's 5th grade conference went well , too. I'm glad we're having her tutored in math, because all her grades have improved, not just her math grades, she's paying more attention to detail and quality than she ever has in the past!

First Avenue Club in downtown Minneapolis opened again last night, under new management. I couldn't go, but I feel better just knowing that after two weeks of announcing it's closed, it was able to open again. First Avenue is the heart of the city of Minneapolis, if you ask me. I need it to be there, even if I'm rarely able to go.

My friend Debi is looking for work too so I forwarded her resume to my manager and another manager in our office. I'm skeptical, though. I keep trying to recommend another old friend with experience almost identical to the job I already have. Once he was passed over in favor of a guy who kept sleeping in the break room and not coming back from lunch. More recently he got passed over in favor of a guy who staggers in drunk and tells us all , loudly, he's going to break one of our rude client's "fucking legs." Thursday night I made my husband smell my hair and clothes when I got home, because I swore I could still smell him. So I guess I don't have a lot of faith in senior management's hiring judgement ability these days.

Yesterday was my birthday.
My co workers decorated my cube walls and desk , and hung streamers from the ceiling, and I go the "Oh No, the Big 40" sign that I've seen at so many other desks before mine. And a birthday card signed by everyone.

Last night my husband and kids and I went to Joe's Crab Shack. I'd always wanted to go there, and crab is something I can get homesick for , from growing up in Washington State. It was great, and the portion of crab was so much I boxed the rest and will have it again for dinner tonight! My husband got me a membership to Sons of Norway, and a subscription to the Utne Reader, one of my favorite magazines!

Today I came in to work and got a surprise email...our part of the company is being bought by another, larger, international company called Cerner! So far all the managers and administrators are really excited about it and have said no layoffs, and more flexability to maintain our own product without our former owner draining all our resources to support their ridicuous new radiology product, so I liked hearing that. So far it sounds like our company name will change, the benefits such as health insurance are about the same, and our daily life will stay the same.

I have to take my dog to get a distemper shot and a bordatella (sp?) shot tonight, so that late next week we can have her kennelled for 5 days while we go to Green Bay for Thanksgiving, and 2 days later, my husband's younger sister's wedding.

I signed up to be a Wednesday noon-time 'reading buddy' with a kid at my daughter's school. They were looking for volunteers.

I am going through a Norway phase right now. Eating Knakebrod and Flatbrod, I rememer eating them with my Norwegian grandma , now 20 years dead. Also eating lefse, although I was not introduced to lefse until later in life, for some reason grandma wasn't big on it. I remember eating them all when I visited a pen pal in Vagamo, Norway; and my relatives, my grandma's cousins, in Bergen Norway, the hometown of the Norwegian part of the family, also almost 20 years ago.

I'm trying to exercise more. I rode 30 minutes on the stationary bike downstairs, in the small basement gym of the office building where I work. Jogged once around the park by my house last night, but had to stop and catch my breath and stretch out more than once, because I'm so out of shape.

Marco remembered something I wrote , over a year ago, and attributed it to me, correctly , recently, in context of talking about something else. Freaky!