May!
Oh, LJ how I forget about you!
At work, I've been busy busy. One of my coworkers had a mild stroke, he's not even 50 years old and he at least seemed healthy (but apparently had very high blood pressure). He left to run an errand at lunch one day and didn't come back. Our manager sent an email to say he'd gone home sick for the day, and the next morning his wife called to say he had a stroke. He's OK, in rehab to get the use of his right hand and foot back, so he'll be out awhile. I offered to take on some of his work, and my manager gave me a very small portion of it. I doubted him at first thinking why burden everyone else, I can take on more! But today I started freaking out a little bit because I haven't been trained on this yet - my manager had to unexpectedly be out most of this week - and now I'm getting phone calls about stuff that is already behind. So I'm going to figure out what I can, it's just a different form of what I do everyday anyway. I like to be on top of my work and I feel like I'm scrambling.
Today the restaurant across the street from my office caught fire. This is the second time since I've worked here. Everyone gawked out the window to see the action. The biggest gawker of all is out on vacation this week, he gets up to look out the window if he even hears a fire truck, let alone seeing 4 or 5 across the street.
May is the MOTHER of all holiday and birthdays for Jason and I - three moms for Mother's Day, two mom's with birthdays, his brother and stepsis have birthdays, pretty much all in one week. So far we have mother's day covered.
Last weekend my mom came for a longer visit - thursday afternoon to Sunday. Thursday night we went to Anderson's Books in Naperville to see author Elizabeth Berg. She mainly writes about women in mid-life who have various family issues, that kind of thing. She read an excerpt of her new book and was generally very charming and funny. It made me want to read more of her books. I just read The Handmaid and the Carpenter, which is her take on the love story of Mary and Joseph from the Bible. It was interesting, obviously liberties were taken. Sometimes I felt like she put a little too much of our current worldview thinking into the story, subtly but it was there. Also, who on earth makes their 9 month pregnant wife make a 10 day long trip via donkey to register for the census - couldn't she have stayed home and he registered for her?!
Friday we went to the Merchandise Mart in Chicago for Artropolis and the international antique show. This is the type of antique show that is more like looking at a museum (I saw a bowl for $270,000!) I was a little bored but my mom loved it. Artropolis is all contemporary modern art, there was a TON of it, we walked around for at least 2 hours. That's what I loved. I saw some amazing work, it was fun and inspiring. Lots of war themed art, no surprise, and some abstract statement type of art that was just plain weird, which I also love because often it's so weird and can be debatable if it's art. I wrote down a few artist names, I don't have them with me, but I'll have to do a separate post about their art.
The other thing we did at the Merch Mart was see Martha Stewart's speaking event for the antique fair. It turns out it was a VIP event where your name had to be on a guest list, they told us we could wait for standing room once the registered guests checked in. Someone messed up pretty bad because a lot of people supposedly with reservations were not on the list, so they let us all in and we had good seats, too. She was witty and more interesting than I expected. She showed pictures of her past homes and how she started collecting antiques, and then talked about all of her branding. She doesn't look like someone who did time for crime, I'll say that!
Saturday we went to the flea market where I got my mom a garden thingy-do that pokes in the ground (and does nothing but look pretty), some miscellaneous items, a vintage looking map to frame. I paid $20 for 600-thread count sheets, I don't know how good they are since I've never seen that quality for that cheap ever, but they were the right color and I needed them!
At work, I've been busy busy. One of my coworkers had a mild stroke, he's not even 50 years old and he at least seemed healthy (but apparently had very high blood pressure). He left to run an errand at lunch one day and didn't come back. Our manager sent an email to say he'd gone home sick for the day, and the next morning his wife called to say he had a stroke. He's OK, in rehab to get the use of his right hand and foot back, so he'll be out awhile. I offered to take on some of his work, and my manager gave me a very small portion of it. I doubted him at first thinking why burden everyone else, I can take on more! But today I started freaking out a little bit because I haven't been trained on this yet - my manager had to unexpectedly be out most of this week - and now I'm getting phone calls about stuff that is already behind. So I'm going to figure out what I can, it's just a different form of what I do everyday anyway. I like to be on top of my work and I feel like I'm scrambling.
Today the restaurant across the street from my office caught fire. This is the second time since I've worked here. Everyone gawked out the window to see the action. The biggest gawker of all is out on vacation this week, he gets up to look out the window if he even hears a fire truck, let alone seeing 4 or 5 across the street.
May is the MOTHER of all holiday and birthdays for Jason and I - three moms for Mother's Day, two mom's with birthdays, his brother and stepsis have birthdays, pretty much all in one week. So far we have mother's day covered.
Last weekend my mom came for a longer visit - thursday afternoon to Sunday. Thursday night we went to Anderson's Books in Naperville to see author Elizabeth Berg. She mainly writes about women in mid-life who have various family issues, that kind of thing. She read an excerpt of her new book and was generally very charming and funny. It made me want to read more of her books. I just read The Handmaid and the Carpenter, which is her take on the love story of Mary and Joseph from the Bible. It was interesting, obviously liberties were taken. Sometimes I felt like she put a little too much of our current worldview thinking into the story, subtly but it was there. Also, who on earth makes their 9 month pregnant wife make a 10 day long trip via donkey to register for the census - couldn't she have stayed home and he registered for her?!
Friday we went to the Merchandise Mart in Chicago for Artropolis and the international antique show. This is the type of antique show that is more like looking at a museum (I saw a bowl for $270,000!) I was a little bored but my mom loved it. Artropolis is all contemporary modern art, there was a TON of it, we walked around for at least 2 hours. That's what I loved. I saw some amazing work, it was fun and inspiring. Lots of war themed art, no surprise, and some abstract statement type of art that was just plain weird, which I also love because often it's so weird and can be debatable if it's art. I wrote down a few artist names, I don't have them with me, but I'll have to do a separate post about their art.
The other thing we did at the Merch Mart was see Martha Stewart's speaking event for the antique fair. It turns out it was a VIP event where your name had to be on a guest list, they told us we could wait for standing room once the registered guests checked in. Someone messed up pretty bad because a lot of people supposedly with reservations were not on the list, so they let us all in and we had good seats, too. She was witty and more interesting than I expected. She showed pictures of her past homes and how she started collecting antiques, and then talked about all of her branding. She doesn't look like someone who did time for crime, I'll say that!
Saturday we went to the flea market where I got my mom a garden thingy-do that pokes in the ground (and does nothing but look pretty), some miscellaneous items, a vintage looking map to frame. I paid $20 for 600-thread count sheets, I don't know how good they are since I've never seen that quality for that cheap ever, but they were the right color and I needed them!