YAY!!
RAIN! Tons and tons of RAIN!! I get to use my gorgeous Craig in the rain icon for the first time this year (I think)!!
Thursday was Sis's birthday. Since she had class, we just went to La Madeline, her choice, for lunch before she needed to get to class that evening, but otherwise didn't really do anything.
Friday, we planned to celebrate by heading over to the Houston Health Museum (they have exhibits about health, like giant walk-through bodies) and then seeing The Ides of March. I checked and the fee for the museum and get this: it's $8 per person plus $5 parking. I know! We decided that that was way more expensive than we were willing to pay, so we planned to just see the movie and then go somewhere to eat. The Ides of March was good! Very Clooney. It has that thing where it leaves it at the end where you KNOW what's going to happen but they don't actually SHOW you it happening. And, since George wrote it, he actually made himself the "bad" guy. I really liked it. There was a ridiculous kerfuffle between Mom and me that doesn't require rehashing. Suffice it to say that we were really REALLY not getting along.
Saturday was interesting. We had all discussed going down to Galveston and going to their big museum/aquarium thing, then the beach, and then to a seafood restaurant. After my fight with Mom, and the determination that all we were going to do would be the beach and dinner (which I didn't think was worth 3 hours round-trip in the car), I decided that it would be for the best that Mom and Sis go down together and enjoy the coast while I stayed home. So that's what we did. They left at noon while I was still in the glow of the first half of the UT/OU game which freed me up to yell as loudly at the TV as I wanted to. Mom and Sis don't think it makes sense for me to yell at the TV since I'm not actually at the game. I say it's cathartic. I watched, and I knitted, but by the middle of the 3rd quarter, I was positive that there was no recovery and things were just going to continue to go downhill for us and so I stopped watching. I rarely do that, but I was trying to have a lovely day of chillaxing and watching my team get beaten to a bloody pulp wasn't conducive to the chillax. (Basically, I knew in my heart of hearts that UT wasn't going to win the game, but I didn't think they'd lose THAT badly either.) After reading for a while, I headed out to buy a new pair of black pants and a new pair of black flats to wear to church when I am a lector again. (Though this time, with a better idea of what to do, and a small dose of beta blocker so I don't pass out from the anxiety and fall down the steep chancel stairs.) As I left Target pants and shoes in hand, it started to rain!! Once home, I then ordered Chinese, something I've been craving but unable to get for MONTHS. Beef Lo Mein and Chicken Fried Rice!! Woo! I enjoyed my wonderful food while watching movies on demand in the living room. The night's movies ended up both featuring guys who wear metal helmets. First, Thor. I knew it has the major possibility of being incredibly cheesy, but I was surprised. The cast surprised me - Idris Elba! - and the acting was much better than I thought, though Chris Hemsworth needs to work on it a little more. I wished it had had another 15 minutes to flesh out the relationship between Thor and Ann a little more. All in all, I'd give it one thumb up. Second movie: X-Men: First Class. OH YES. It was everything I wanted from this movie and more. There were so many little things that made me go "oooh, so THAT'S where that came from/why that's that way/why he's an ass/etc." And I think, after watching a bunch of episodes of Mad Men and now this that I have a crush on January Jones. I don't particularly like the way she talks, but she's really pretty. They finally came home at about 8:30 during another rain storm. I figured that it was a good thing I hadn't gone to Galveston because I realized I should go to church so I know how they've reworked how the lectors do their thing (we used to process in with the choir and priests, now we don't).
This morning I woke up at 8:30 when my alarm went off, and while I listened to the sound of the rain. I finally got up and headed downstairs. As I was coming down, I saw Linda the neighbor from HELL at our door, sticking a note to the glass. I froze. Like she was a tyrannosaurus, I seriously thought, "maybe if I don't move, she won't see me." After she knocked, rang the bell, knocked again and left, I waited until I saw her cross back into her yard (five minutes omg) before opening the door very quietly to take the note off the door. I thought, "Oh God, what have we done wrong NOW?" However, her note was asking Mom to take her blood pressure and she'd gone to the ER in the night. So I went in to wake Mom and give her the note. Stupid ethics making us both feel like we need to take care of this woman because she asked for our help. Mom proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes on the phone with her as she tried to find out from Linda what was actually the matter. As I grabbed my breakfast, she headed over next door (because there is no way on God's green earth Linda will set foot in our house. I mean, what if she's a vampire?) I was made-up, dressed and had done enough to my hair that it wouldn't look horrible before Mom got back. It turned out that Linda had felt "funny" last night and so her daughter had taken her to the ER after which she'd left AMA when the docs wanted to keep her a day for observation citing that it would be too expensive (even though she has both Medicare AND a supplemental policy from what Mom could gather). After a while, she started feeling "funny" again but didn't want to go back to the ER so she wrote a note and taped it to our door instead. Mom, being a great nurse, found out that Linda has a myriad of different things wrong, none of which were being tightly controlled by Linda, which meant that all of her problems were self-inflicted. The good news of all of this is that Linda is thinking of moving to Florida to be with her daughter, and is planning on "fixin' up" their house and then selling it soon!!! WE COULD BE RID OF HER SOON!! While we don't like her, I do think that I was supposed to wake up and see her leave the note on the door this morning.
As I was deciding whether or not to go to church, I checked the morning forecast of the weekend colleague of my favorite meteorologist. There was a front that moved across Texas last night and into today. This morning, it was raining up and down the I-35 corridor. The guy said that he didn't expect that line to hold up all the way to Houston and thus all of the rain we would see would be other showers moving south-to-north. Therefore I decided to go ahead and go since I figured that the light rain that was currently falling would be gone by the time I got back. Well, the guy was WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. That line did move due east. As I left church, it started raining. And raining. And RAINING. I ended up crawling home at about 40mph on all the highways. There was even a tractor trailer sliced open after it jackknifed off the side of the highway and got stuck under an on-ramp. I wish I'd gotten a picture, but it was raining and the rubber-neckers were out in full force. When I got home, I took off my shoes and rolled up my jeans before I got out of the car, because there was no way I was putting my brand new shoes in the ankle-deep puddle in the front yard. Now that I'm home, I can say RAIN! But, driving 30 miles in it, I was much more fist-shake than happy-dance. I'm hoping that the rain will wash out a bunch of the ragweed that has been making my life a sniffling, runny-nose, itchy-eyed mess the past few days.
Finally, I've been trying very hard not to be judgmental about the woman who was so obviously judgmental about me. She sat in the pew in front of me this morning and very obviously and purposefully avoided shaking my hand during the Peace. RUDE.
Thursday was Sis's birthday. Since she had class, we just went to La Madeline, her choice, for lunch before she needed to get to class that evening, but otherwise didn't really do anything.
Friday, we planned to celebrate by heading over to the Houston Health Museum (they have exhibits about health, like giant walk-through bodies) and then seeing The Ides of March. I checked and the fee for the museum and get this: it's $8 per person plus $5 parking. I know! We decided that that was way more expensive than we were willing to pay, so we planned to just see the movie and then go somewhere to eat. The Ides of March was good! Very Clooney. It has that thing where it leaves it at the end where you KNOW what's going to happen but they don't actually SHOW you it happening. And, since George wrote it, he actually made himself the "bad" guy. I really liked it. There was a ridiculous kerfuffle between Mom and me that doesn't require rehashing. Suffice it to say that we were really REALLY not getting along.
Saturday was interesting. We had all discussed going down to Galveston and going to their big museum/aquarium thing, then the beach, and then to a seafood restaurant. After my fight with Mom, and the determination that all we were going to do would be the beach and dinner (which I didn't think was worth 3 hours round-trip in the car), I decided that it would be for the best that Mom and Sis go down together and enjoy the coast while I stayed home. So that's what we did. They left at noon while I was still in the glow of the first half of the UT/OU game which freed me up to yell as loudly at the TV as I wanted to. Mom and Sis don't think it makes sense for me to yell at the TV since I'm not actually at the game. I say it's cathartic. I watched, and I knitted, but by the middle of the 3rd quarter, I was positive that there was no recovery and things were just going to continue to go downhill for us and so I stopped watching. I rarely do that, but I was trying to have a lovely day of chillaxing and watching my team get beaten to a bloody pulp wasn't conducive to the chillax. (Basically, I knew in my heart of hearts that UT wasn't going to win the game, but I didn't think they'd lose THAT badly either.) After reading for a while, I headed out to buy a new pair of black pants and a new pair of black flats to wear to church when I am a lector again. (Though this time, with a better idea of what to do, and a small dose of beta blocker so I don't pass out from the anxiety and fall down the steep chancel stairs.) As I left Target pants and shoes in hand, it started to rain!! Once home, I then ordered Chinese, something I've been craving but unable to get for MONTHS. Beef Lo Mein and Chicken Fried Rice!! Woo! I enjoyed my wonderful food while watching movies on demand in the living room. The night's movies ended up both featuring guys who wear metal helmets. First, Thor. I knew it has the major possibility of being incredibly cheesy, but I was surprised. The cast surprised me - Idris Elba! - and the acting was much better than I thought, though Chris Hemsworth needs to work on it a little more. I wished it had had another 15 minutes to flesh out the relationship between Thor and Ann a little more. All in all, I'd give it one thumb up. Second movie: X-Men: First Class. OH YES. It was everything I wanted from this movie and more. There were so many little things that made me go "oooh, so THAT'S where that came from/why that's that way/why he's an ass/etc." And I think, after watching a bunch of episodes of Mad Men and now this that I have a crush on January Jones. I don't particularly like the way she talks, but she's really pretty. They finally came home at about 8:30 during another rain storm. I figured that it was a good thing I hadn't gone to Galveston because I realized I should go to church so I know how they've reworked how the lectors do their thing (we used to process in with the choir and priests, now we don't).
This morning I woke up at 8:30 when my alarm went off, and while I listened to the sound of the rain. I finally got up and headed downstairs. As I was coming down, I saw Linda the neighbor from HELL at our door, sticking a note to the glass. I froze. Like she was a tyrannosaurus, I seriously thought, "maybe if I don't move, she won't see me." After she knocked, rang the bell, knocked again and left, I waited until I saw her cross back into her yard (five minutes omg) before opening the door very quietly to take the note off the door. I thought, "Oh God, what have we done wrong NOW?" However, her note was asking Mom to take her blood pressure and she'd gone to the ER in the night. So I went in to wake Mom and give her the note. Stupid ethics making us both feel like we need to take care of this woman because she asked for our help. Mom proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes on the phone with her as she tried to find out from Linda what was actually the matter. As I grabbed my breakfast, she headed over next door (because there is no way on God's green earth Linda will set foot in our house. I mean, what if she's a vampire?) I was made-up, dressed and had done enough to my hair that it wouldn't look horrible before Mom got back. It turned out that Linda had felt "funny" last night and so her daughter had taken her to the ER after which she'd left AMA when the docs wanted to keep her a day for observation citing that it would be too expensive (even though she has both Medicare AND a supplemental policy from what Mom could gather). After a while, she started feeling "funny" again but didn't want to go back to the ER so she wrote a note and taped it to our door instead. Mom, being a great nurse, found out that Linda has a myriad of different things wrong, none of which were being tightly controlled by Linda, which meant that all of her problems were self-inflicted. The good news of all of this is that Linda is thinking of moving to Florida to be with her daughter, and is planning on "fixin' up" their house and then selling it soon!!! WE COULD BE RID OF HER SOON!! While we don't like her, I do think that I was supposed to wake up and see her leave the note on the door this morning.
As I was deciding whether or not to go to church, I checked the morning forecast of the weekend colleague of my favorite meteorologist. There was a front that moved across Texas last night and into today. This morning, it was raining up and down the I-35 corridor. The guy said that he didn't expect that line to hold up all the way to Houston and thus all of the rain we would see would be other showers moving south-to-north. Therefore I decided to go ahead and go since I figured that the light rain that was currently falling would be gone by the time I got back. Well, the guy was WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. That line did move due east. As I left church, it started raining. And raining. And RAINING. I ended up crawling home at about 40mph on all the highways. There was even a tractor trailer sliced open after it jackknifed off the side of the highway and got stuck under an on-ramp. I wish I'd gotten a picture, but it was raining and the rubber-neckers were out in full force. When I got home, I took off my shoes and rolled up my jeans before I got out of the car, because there was no way I was putting my brand new shoes in the ankle-deep puddle in the front yard. Now that I'm home, I can say RAIN! But, driving 30 miles in it, I was much more fist-shake than happy-dance. I'm hoping that the rain will wash out a bunch of the ragweed that has been making my life a sniffling, runny-nose, itchy-eyed mess the past few days.
Finally, I've been trying very hard not to be judgmental about the woman who was so obviously judgmental about me. She sat in the pew in front of me this morning and very obviously and purposefully avoided shaking my hand during the Peace. RUDE.