Well, I guess I've officially reached "middle age" at 45. Some might say I reached it a few years ago, but I'm holding out for a longer life. I spotted a few gray hairs finally, so its time to start coloring. I'm not going to look any older than I am, and I'd prefer to look a bit younger, given that my hubby is several years behind me, and my kids aren't even in grade school yet. I haven't colored my hair since college, when I did the lightening thing to be a blonde. That was easy though, I just sprayed some stuff in my hair and used a blow drier. This time, will be a little more time intensive and messy, but will have more immediate results.
Time has really flown by. I still feel like a teenager (or at least college age) sometimes. I still love the music I listened to back then and like a decent amount of newer music. I'm not completely at the cutting edge of tech (I have a very simple cell phone and no ipod - although I do want to get one), but I'm not too far behind. I'm pretty internet savvy, on facebook, and keep up with on-line gaming. I'd be more up to date if I had more time. I've got a small/simple mp3 player, but just haven't had the time to download songs from CDs into it. I know I should just try and do a few a day, but even that much seems to take too much time.
I know its not going to get too much better either. Even once the kids are old enough to get themselves out of bed, dressed and breakfasted (hah, I know even teenagers have problems doing this), then I'll be shuttling them to afterschool/weekend programs, supervising/helping with homework, and attending school functions. And trying to do all that while still working full time, cooking meals (at least the kids can help with other chores), and trying to keep up with my own entertainment of on-line games and TV programs. Its times like these when I think about how lucky my mom was that her job as a teacher provided her with at least a bit more flexibility in having afterschool time available, not to mention summers off.
Maybe work will lighten up (yeah, unlikely too much), or maybe we'll eventually make enough money to hire some help (a bi-weekly maid would be nice). I know that in a couple of years, when some bills are paid off and the monthly daycare expenses stop (although at least part of that will go to other kid-care, at least during the summer), our finances will be better. And it will probably be nice to have one summer where the kids spend it with the French family.
But for now, everything keeps me quite busy. Definitely looking forward to the (hopefully) two week Christmas holiday with the French.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Driving Me Mad
There are days when I really miss driving in Los Angeles. Don't get me wrong, I will never miss sitting in 4+ lanes worth of traffic inching my way to the city, or to home. But at least Los Angeles was built as a 'driving/car' city, with the understanding and intent that people will use their car a lot and drive everywhere. As a result, freeways are numerous, with lots of exits, streets are wide and its easy to find an alternative route to where ever you are going, since most streets are designed in a grid pattern. One is usually never more than one short block away from an alternative route.
I have had so many instances where I'm driving in Philly (or the burbs really) and the road I'm on is suddenly closed, or jammed and I have to find an alternative route (because sitting in one lane traffic is almost worse than 4+ lanes). Because this area was not really built with cars in mind, or at least not beyond the idea that a family would never own more than 1 car, no matter how many adults over the age of 18 lived in the house, the roads are narrow, snake all over the place (i.e. no such thing as a grid pattern), and seem to rarely, if ever, have signs to tell you where you are, what road you are on and whether the road ahead of you is closing.
On our way to an anniversary dinner in the city, we got stuck in traffic on the one freeway into the city from our area because of a lane closure ahead (turning a 2 lane freeway into 1 lane). Since we knew side streets never went the direction they first appear to go in, and it is quite easy to get lost and completely turned around, we took the only sure route we knew, which forced us to backtrack quite some distance. We ended up 30 minutes late to our reservation, fortunately got seated (the restaurant made no promises), but of course, cost us more in babysitter time and our own frayed nerves.
Another time we missed the turnoff we meant to take to get to the Turnpike, but thought it was ok because there was another junction further ahead. Ok, a little bit out of our way, but not much. Well, turns out that while the road we were on did intersect with the Turnpike (actually merged in so once we got past a certain point we were forced to continue), but only in 2 of the 3 possible directions and naturally not the direction we needed. So now we had to go even further out of our way because exits are very few and far between on the Turnpike. Took us a good 30 minutes or so to get to the next exit, turned around and back to where we should have been in the first place. Good thing it wasn't any more, or we would have had problems getting dinner that night, we barely made it to the restaurant before it closed.
This morning I ended up getting sent on a huge detour (because of snakey roads) that took me an extra 30 minutes to get to my local train station because Penn Dot (or whoever) couldn't be bothered to post a sign to the tunnel in front of the train station parking lot warning people that the tunnel was going to be closed today. I'm sure they knew yesterday they'd be working there today, so why couldn't someone take a few minutes to post a sign at the train station? Come on, people need jobs. Pay someone mininum wage to go around posting signs of upcoming work. Think a little bit about the public. In fact, there were 5 construction-type people standing around talking and doing nothing when I finally got to the parking lot, pay one of them to actually do something maybe. Will the tunnel be closed again tomorrow? Who knows?
Driving and parking on my street is always a challenge because the street is so narrow and most of the families in our neighborhood own at least 2, if not more, cars, but the houses have shared driveways and at most one car garages. So usually a house can only have 1 car parked in their portion of the driveway (or 2 if the driveway is extended into the yard). That means a lot of cars are parked on our road, making it sometimes quite difficult to back my minivan out of the driveway, and one always has to pull over to let opposing vehicles by because there's not room for 2 cars to travel when there's also a parked car on the road.
So yeah, I sometimes really miss driving in LA.
I have had so many instances where I'm driving in Philly (or the burbs really) and the road I'm on is suddenly closed, or jammed and I have to find an alternative route (because sitting in one lane traffic is almost worse than 4+ lanes). Because this area was not really built with cars in mind, or at least not beyond the idea that a family would never own more than 1 car, no matter how many adults over the age of 18 lived in the house, the roads are narrow, snake all over the place (i.e. no such thing as a grid pattern), and seem to rarely, if ever, have signs to tell you where you are, what road you are on and whether the road ahead of you is closing.
On our way to an anniversary dinner in the city, we got stuck in traffic on the one freeway into the city from our area because of a lane closure ahead (turning a 2 lane freeway into 1 lane). Since we knew side streets never went the direction they first appear to go in, and it is quite easy to get lost and completely turned around, we took the only sure route we knew, which forced us to backtrack quite some distance. We ended up 30 minutes late to our reservation, fortunately got seated (the restaurant made no promises), but of course, cost us more in babysitter time and our own frayed nerves.
Another time we missed the turnoff we meant to take to get to the Turnpike, but thought it was ok because there was another junction further ahead. Ok, a little bit out of our way, but not much. Well, turns out that while the road we were on did intersect with the Turnpike (actually merged in so once we got past a certain point we were forced to continue), but only in 2 of the 3 possible directions and naturally not the direction we needed. So now we had to go even further out of our way because exits are very few and far between on the Turnpike. Took us a good 30 minutes or so to get to the next exit, turned around and back to where we should have been in the first place. Good thing it wasn't any more, or we would have had problems getting dinner that night, we barely made it to the restaurant before it closed.
This morning I ended up getting sent on a huge detour (because of snakey roads) that took me an extra 30 minutes to get to my local train station because Penn Dot (or whoever) couldn't be bothered to post a sign to the tunnel in front of the train station parking lot warning people that the tunnel was going to be closed today. I'm sure they knew yesterday they'd be working there today, so why couldn't someone take a few minutes to post a sign at the train station? Come on, people need jobs. Pay someone mininum wage to go around posting signs of upcoming work. Think a little bit about the public. In fact, there were 5 construction-type people standing around talking and doing nothing when I finally got to the parking lot, pay one of them to actually do something maybe. Will the tunnel be closed again tomorrow? Who knows?
Driving and parking on my street is always a challenge because the street is so narrow and most of the families in our neighborhood own at least 2, if not more, cars, but the houses have shared driveways and at most one car garages. So usually a house can only have 1 car parked in their portion of the driveway (or 2 if the driveway is extended into the yard). That means a lot of cars are parked on our road, making it sometimes quite difficult to back my minivan out of the driveway, and one always has to pull over to let opposing vehicles by because there's not room for 2 cars to travel when there's also a parked car on the road.
So yeah, I sometimes really miss driving in LA.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Summer's Over
Well, its the day after Labor Day, summer is officially over. My in-laws were in town for two weeks, so during that time, it was a mini-vacation for me too. I didn't have to get the kids up and ready for daycare, nor drop them off/pick them up. I think I cooked maybe twice during the entire time, we went out to eat a lot and my mother in law cooked a couple of times. We also went away for four days to VA, which was nice (although typically we had a few problems - nothing is ever easy), then had the 3 day weekend at the end. Overall, a very nice time. I can't wait for Christmas, when we'll hopefully visit with them for 2 weeks in France (finances permitting, the last time we checked airfare it was still close to $1,000 per person).
Even with the in-laws in town, I didn't seem to have much "down time." I worked a lot, trying to take advantage of no-daycare with some extra work hours. Several cases have kept me super busy and September promises to be about the same. Its a little extra tough sometimes because my boss has little "memory lapses" and doesn't always (ok, rarely ever) tells me when certain things come in the mail, so I find out very last minute and have to scramble to get some things out on time. His new secretary seems quite competent, but she doesn't yet know the cases well enough to know what I need to be told about and what I don't, so I still have to try and find out most things on my own.
It would help if my own secretary was a little more competent, it annoys me sometimes when I'm proof-reading a letter or memo and there are blanks in it that she could look up herself (since many times, I'm getting the information from the Complaint, discovery responses, or documents we've received). The other day she couldn't understand my dictating the address of where to send a document subpoena, she got the name, street address, state and zip code, but not the city. So she sends me an email (while I'm on vacation) asking me for the city. Um, excuse me, but you have the zip code, look it up on google! She speeds through things, then mentions that she's got nothing to do. I wish she'd take things a little slower, look things up more. Then she'd get it right and wouldn't have as much 'down time.' Hopefully this year, she'll show some improvement.
I can't believe my birthday is coming up so fast. Naturally, hubby askes what I want, or says just to buy something on my own. I know its typical husband behavior, but still, he knows what I want, MY DVD PLAYER ON MY COMPUTER TO WORK AGAIN!!!! Seriously, I don't need a gift, I want to watch my DVDs on my computer. Ok, maybe a new DVD too (like vol 4 of ST:TNG).
Another thing I'd love is a CD player for the mini-van. Either that or one of these days I need to learn how to program/download the little mp3 player I got (of course, that again may require that the DVD/CD rom drive on my computer function so I could actually transfer music). The only problem with downloading on the mp3 player is that it actually requires me to have time to sit and play/download the songs. Especially if I'm not doing an entire CD, but just certain songs. Gotta figure out how to do all that one of these days, and see if I can do that while using my headphones to listen to something else (like my EQ2 game chat). And gotta get new headphones for the mp3 player to use at other times (since the ones that came with the mp3 player and now being used on my work computer because some cleaning person stole the cheapo ones I was using at work).
Yup, going to be a busy month. Gotta catch up on what I missed in EQ2 (finish quests our friends did while we were off for 2 weeks, including likely getting level 80). New TV season starts soon, so gotta try to watch a couple more movies on the DVR to clear up space and make my list as to what gets DVR'd and what I will try and watch on the computer, so I don't miss anything. Gotta check whats available over the internet (not everything is) and watch the computer stuff first, since some networks only make an episode available for a limited time, 4 weeks maybe. Also have to try to limit the DVR to one show at a time in case hubby decides to watch something - naturally he always seems to do this on days/hours when I have 2 shows going, but not at other times.
Well, back to work.
Even with the in-laws in town, I didn't seem to have much "down time." I worked a lot, trying to take advantage of no-daycare with some extra work hours. Several cases have kept me super busy and September promises to be about the same. Its a little extra tough sometimes because my boss has little "memory lapses" and doesn't always (ok, rarely ever) tells me when certain things come in the mail, so I find out very last minute and have to scramble to get some things out on time. His new secretary seems quite competent, but she doesn't yet know the cases well enough to know what I need to be told about and what I don't, so I still have to try and find out most things on my own.
It would help if my own secretary was a little more competent, it annoys me sometimes when I'm proof-reading a letter or memo and there are blanks in it that she could look up herself (since many times, I'm getting the information from the Complaint, discovery responses, or documents we've received). The other day she couldn't understand my dictating the address of where to send a document subpoena, she got the name, street address, state and zip code, but not the city. So she sends me an email (while I'm on vacation) asking me for the city. Um, excuse me, but you have the zip code, look it up on google! She speeds through things, then mentions that she's got nothing to do. I wish she'd take things a little slower, look things up more. Then she'd get it right and wouldn't have as much 'down time.' Hopefully this year, she'll show some improvement.
I can't believe my birthday is coming up so fast. Naturally, hubby askes what I want, or says just to buy something on my own. I know its typical husband behavior, but still, he knows what I want, MY DVD PLAYER ON MY COMPUTER TO WORK AGAIN!!!! Seriously, I don't need a gift, I want to watch my DVDs on my computer. Ok, maybe a new DVD too (like vol 4 of ST:TNG).
Another thing I'd love is a CD player for the mini-van. Either that or one of these days I need to learn how to program/download the little mp3 player I got (of course, that again may require that the DVD/CD rom drive on my computer function so I could actually transfer music). The only problem with downloading on the mp3 player is that it actually requires me to have time to sit and play/download the songs. Especially if I'm not doing an entire CD, but just certain songs. Gotta figure out how to do all that one of these days, and see if I can do that while using my headphones to listen to something else (like my EQ2 game chat). And gotta get new headphones for the mp3 player to use at other times (since the ones that came with the mp3 player and now being used on my work computer because some cleaning person stole the cheapo ones I was using at work).
Yup, going to be a busy month. Gotta catch up on what I missed in EQ2 (finish quests our friends did while we were off for 2 weeks, including likely getting level 80). New TV season starts soon, so gotta try to watch a couple more movies on the DVR to clear up space and make my list as to what gets DVR'd and what I will try and watch on the computer, so I don't miss anything. Gotta check whats available over the internet (not everything is) and watch the computer stuff first, since some networks only make an episode available for a limited time, 4 weeks maybe. Also have to try to limit the DVR to one show at a time in case hubby decides to watch something - naturally he always seems to do this on days/hours when I have 2 shows going, but not at other times.
Well, back to work.
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