Internet Safety

If you have children younger than 18 (especially teenagers) that surf the net, what safety measures do you discuss with them about who they might meet on the internet?

I ask because I have failed miserably in setting a good example.

During my absence from blog-update duties I jetted off to Niagara Falls to meet up with some internet friends. *gasp!* I KNOW!! Now in my defense I had already met 2 of these ladies in person on previous jet-set adventures. (I told you I have failed miserably) but the third gal was a first-time meet-and-greet experience.

And these ladies are crazy. But not that physcho crazy that you would need to be wary of. But how do you know ahead of time? Until you get there? Again, failing by example.

This is Patti. Well, this is ME and Patti. But you already know who I am.



She is the hostest with the mostest. And I mean that sincerely. This woman parties and gambles so much at the casino that she is a VIP. That sounds charming, doesn't it? My Canadian, gambling, partying internet friend. But she is wonderfully delightful in every sense and allowed the 3 of us to follow her around as VIP wannabes. To be quite frank she spoiled us rotten even after we invited ourselves to come visit her. Yeah. You read that right. We were not ASKED to come but just showed up anyway. Patti treated us like the royalty we pretend to be.

And speaking of pretending to be royal.....this is Gina.



Well, this is ME and Gina. I'm on the left. You probably knew that by now. This was my first time meeting Gina. She got us in to trouble constantly. In her defense I think we probably encouraged her behavior a bit but I think doing gymnastics moves in the VIP lounge was totally her.

And this person is responsible for my gambling losses at the roulette table.



This is Cassandra. That is NOT me on the left. I am still wondering why it was so important for that Moose to be anatomically correct. Especially with children running around everywhere....or with adults running around everywhere acting like children. What? Well yes I DO happen to have a picture of us together!



That's me on the left. Again. Must be some hidden compulsion I have.

Cassandra is from North Carolina and has a southern drawl to prove it. She's adorable, gracious and was kind enough to share snores with me. We laughed as we shared our nervousness that we WOULD be snoring (there was no doubt in either of our minds) so we made the perfect roommates. She loves Ice Wine. I mean really, REALLY loves her Ice Wine. So much so that she will beg random men in the hotel hallway to pop the very-stubborn-stuck cork in her Ice Wine bottle.



We do not know this man's name. Or where he was from. Or the name of his lady friend. But wasn't she nice to play along?

And what is a post about Niagara Falls without a picture of the Falls? Worthless, I say.



And Canada where Patti lives? I've never experienced Fall colors like this in my life.



We toured. We ate. We drank. We gambled. In fact, here is a picture of Cassandra and Patti with their winnings from the roulette table one night.



You will notice that I am not holding out my winnings for the picture. Because I didn't have any winnings. As a matter of fact, Patti was VERY excited to drag me over to a WIZARD OF OZ slot machine when we first got there. I'll talk about that in a separate post a little later. It IS worthy of its own post after all. It's WIZARD OF OZ, PEOPLE!

My trip was wonderful. It was a nice break from the normality of my feeble existence. I can't wait to meet up with these wonderful ladies again!

Oh how I love the Sweet Slumber

Look at me. Peaceful. Relaxed. Asleep. Then my dear husband decides he needs to snap this picture of me sleeping during the middle of the day. Not because I was being lazy but because I was in the middle of night shifts.

Oh, how I love to sleep when I'm on night shifts.



What's so special about this particular slumber that my husband decided was so important to capture for me on film? No doubt to be thrown in a scrapbook with some pretty papers and fancy doo-dads next to it?

Well, apparently I'm not the only one who enjoys the sweet slumber of a chilly fall afternoon.



And just so you know, there is one more animal UNDER the covers with me.

And just so you know, I sleep like this more often than not during the day. Because during the night I usually have a beast of the human proportions in there with me and he most certainly will not allow such behavior during HIS slumber.

Party pooper.

The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Da Feet

I made it. Well, WE made it. I can’t take credit for completing the entire marathon since 3 other guys helped. I finished my leg of the marathon with a better-than-anticipated time of about 1 hr. 15 minutes. I say “about” because I didn’t wear a watch. On purpose. I figured it would make me too nervous and I would have been glancing at it all the time.

Here is our team in all our glory POST race (l to r: Felix Gonzales, me, Larry Bellnap and Chris Bossard)



Yes. These men tower over me. Hence our team name “3 men and a baby”. It really IS because of my compared size and NOT because I whined the whole time training for this. Yeah. Really.

Here I am immediately after my finish, before I sat down on the grass and lost all ability to make the muscles in my legs work:



And here is Larry crossing the finish line with our official Team time. Not too shabby for our first time out! (Did I say “first” time? It must be the post-race fatigue, delirium and pain in my muscles sucking all reason out of my brain)



And I have to brag a bit about my daughter. Her first entry in any marathon and she ran a half marathon (that’s 13.1 miles) in 2:35:and some seconds. She was pretty pumped before the start of the race, even if she did have to get up at 5:45 a.m.



Here we are just after she finished….about 5 minutes behind me.



And here with are with our craaaaa-zy friend Karen who was our inspiration for all this insanity. Oh, she was an official pacer for runners and finished the entire marathon in 4:05:and some seconds.



Our team actually had a pretty good time. I will speak for all of them mainly because this is my blog and my reality, not theirs. Okay, I ASKED them all if it was as bad as they thought it would be. Chris was the only one who answered “yes” but he also ran the second-best time of our team so I think I can talk him in to running the relay again next year. Assuming our crew isn’t on shift for the Sacramento Cowtown Marathon next year, we will be there to beat our first-ever time. Because I CAN’T WAIT to experience this wonderful pain in my leg muscles that I am currently experiencing. Have I mentioned that? Yeah. And have I mentioned how wonderful it is to walk up and down the stairs in my house right now? Yeah. I’m a prisoner to my bedroom because I refuse to walk up and down the stairs. I came up here. I went down them. ONCE. Then came back up the stairs determined I would NOT walk DOWN them again. Down hurts, people.

And when we run next year, surely I can beat my personal best of 1:15:and some seconds. Well, it is my ONLY time ever so I’m pretty sure I can beat it.

I do have an entire year to train for it after all.

Tomorrow I run

I run not because I love it.

I run not because it is the only exercise I want to do.

I run not because I love to feel the wind in my hair. I mean, I would have to actually run fast enough for that to happen, right?

I run because I have this friend who is crazzzz-y (Karen...remember her? She's Olivia's mom). Karen ran a 100 mile endurance marathon over the summer and inspired me to run a 5k. A 5k...around 3 miles. Remember this number.

She found me the "perfect race" to start off with. The Sacramento Cowtown Marathon benefiting the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society. Great!! So I started training. Training with a calendar that had all kinds of workout requirements for each day. Some days were even indicated as "Rest Day." I loved those days. Karen actually created the training calendar for me and my daughter because the inspiration ran deep. My daughter is running a 1/2 marathon. That's a little over 13 miles. But she's 17 and in shape. I am not 17 nor am I in shape. I am middle-aged and hurting. And I don't run. I don't like it. I never have. Even when I was 17 and in shape. I sprinted around bases and up and down volleyball courts. I did not run up and down soccer fields or around tracks.

So I made the decision and walked in to work one night announcing that I was going to give this 5k thing a try. I looked at the website for the run and got a wild hair up you-know-where. "Hey, guys! They have relay teams that run, too. Which 3 of you are willing to step up and run a relay with me?" I quickly had 3 volunteers.

And my little 5k quickly turned in to 6.5 miles. More than double.

What is wrong with me?

So I've trained. I've crossed trained at the gym. I'm as ready as I'm going to be. It is, after all, tomorrow.

Send good thoughts. Light a candle. Pray for my right knee and left hip to behave and not crap out on me. (Funny I didn't have too many problems with those body parts until I started RUNNING.)

I'll post pictures and an update tomorrow night....assuming I'm not laying in an emergency room.

The glorious....the fabulous...the freakin' DMV

Is there a prerequiste to work at the DMV that you must have the distinct ability to care as little as possible about anything while balancing the skill to annoy and piss people off?

Tuesday morning I took my daughter to her SCHEDULED APPOINTMENT for her behind-the-wheel test. You know the test. The final step that you must take in order to gain the wonderful freedom of being a licensed driver. Well, as much freedom as a 17 yr. old newly licensed driver can have between the hours of 5:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. while never having any underage passengers with her unless one of her parents is in the car with all of them.

Freedom. *Snicker*

But back to that SCHEDULED APPOINTMENT. It was at 9:30 a.m. We arrived at 9:15. This ended up being a mighty good call on my part because as it turned out her driving instructor neglected to give her the all-important "pink slip" indicating she had completed 6 hours of behind-the-wheel instruction. All we had was the form from her final lesson that stated "lesson 3 of 3." Not good enough. She panicked. I remained calm in the eye of the storm. It's what I do. It's why I am employed where I am. I don't panic. I quickly assessed the situation, asked them if they would take a fax if we called the company. "Yes." So within 10 minutes they had their fax....just in time for the SCHEDULED APPOINTMENT of 9:30.

Here we are waiting for them to call her for her test.



You can see the anticipation and nervousness in her eyes as well as the sheer boredom of the excellent posture I have going on.

Here we are still waiting....AN HOUR AND 15 MINUTES after the SCHEDULED APPOINTMENT.



You can see how the anticipation and nervousness has been replaced with disgust and frustration as well as the attention I am now giving to every person walking up to that stupid counter wondering when in the world they are going to call my daughter up.

For anyone who has visited the CA DMV in the last two years you will automatically put the annoying voice to what we heard for over an hour:

"Now serving G42 at window number 6."
"Now serving A26 at window number 3."
"Now serving B4,237 at window number 8."

All I heard after 30 minutes was:

"STILL NOT SERVING ANYONE WITH A SCHEDULED APPOINTMENT."

As my daughter grew more and more frustrated, I told her this was actually part of the test. She glared at me as I continued. "They want to see how well you can get your wits about you and calm down before getting behnd the wheel of a car." She didn't buy it. Completely. But it did make her laugh.

I finally had to go up and question what the heck was going on. Or not going on in our case.

Now I have to back up just a little bit for a moment and tell you about the woman who was actually helping us at window number 2 when we initially came in to the DMB. (That is actually a typo that I decided to leave because it closely resembles the word DUMB and I find it relevant to the gov agency of which this post is dedicated.) I still haven't decided if the woman was new, not properly trained, or just missing a few links. Either way I discovered that it was her fault we sat there for so long. She neglected to let the woman giving tests that day know that the 9:30 SCHEDULED APPOINTMENT had arrived.

Hmmm. Guess she missed that lesson on day one of her new job.

So just 15 short minutes after inquiring as to why we were still sitting around, the lady called my daughter forward. And just 25 minutes later this picture was taken.



I'm sure you can come to your own conclusion about the outcome of her test.