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.