I completely forgot that while I was getting my hair done today we had another massive thunderstorm. I missed it by about an hour and when i got home my yard was covered with hail. There was so much hail that it looked like it snowed on my yard. In fact, right next to my downspout it looked like a real snowdrift and not a pile of hail. It also must have only hit my house and parts of my neighbors cuz no one else looked like they got hit.

Strange.

Ok. I have my nondate-date for Friday night. I have my dress. I have my shoes. I have my necklaces. I got my eyebrows waxed. I got my hair trimmed and high/low-lighted. My backpack is packed. My purse is packed. My luggage is realistically overpacked. I have scoped out Philadelphia and found a couple of places I can walk to on Friday morning for sight-seeing. I'm about a mile from the Liberty Bell and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Liberty Bell is a must just to say I saw it, but I'm really looking forward to Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I'm not sure if I'll get to see Edgar Allen Poe's place but I'll see. Then I also have a couple of ideas for Saturday. There is the worlds oldest botanic garden and a super-cool water fountain.

I also plan on trying the Philadelphia style pretzels and one of the famous cheese steaks. The whole concept of cheese whiz on a meat sandwich intrigues me.

The only thing i haven't really been able to do is clean my house. Again. Two trips in a row without cleaning, i'm taunting fate. So I pre-apologize if my plane crashes and someone has to deal with my dirty house. *crosses fingers*

Was working in my back yard today when I felt a sharp pain on the back of my neck. Then i felt it again. By the time i got my hand to my neck to check it out the following stupid spider bit me two more times. I couldn't get a good picture of the sucker but i think it might be a yellow sac spider.
Nasty spider

Nasty spider again

I called ask a nurse and we confirmed it wasn't one or our poisonous spiders in Colorado. And I'm not having breathing problems or other severe symptoms so I am going to ice it and watch it. Pop some benedryl and ibuprofen as well. Currently I only have red streaking from the bite sites so let's hope that is as bad as it gets. Apaprently some of these bites can get nasty blisters - if it's a yellow sac spider that is.

red streaks

Here's hoping i don't wake up dead...

R.I.P. Kill Bill - David Carradine 1937-2009

As always: Hopeline is There

So it is almost official. I got another random box on my door from work. It was my award packed up tighter than my hardware and it has the right name on it. And the letter said I'd get to shake hands and take a picture with #31 on Fortune magazines list of 50 most powerful women.

I'm trying to figure out what I should be chanting in my head - don't trip, don't puke, don't let my hands be sweaty or don't have any food stuck in my braces...

i always forget how much of a workout you get doing yard work.

I mowed the lawn. This always kills my right arm for reasons unknown to me and takes twice as long as it should since I use a push-blade mower and have to do each strip twice.

Chopped down the jungle-cactus I had growing. I don't know what species of plant it was but the leaves were about as large as a baby elephant ear and had grown to hip high within a two week period. I was actually a little nervous when i was chopping it down, kinda like I knew it wanted to suck me in and eat me.

I then pulled all the weeds and thistles.

I yanked all the dry, dead vines from tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum as Kelly called them.

I then focused on the left hump of my back yard pulling 95% of the weeds out by the roots. My plan is to go and get some of the landscaping paper/plastic stuff and put down. Then cover the entire area with mulch. And toss in a couple of pretty flowering plants a couple of feet apart. The big picture goal is next year to plant strawberries there.

Next weekend I plan to take on the right hump of my back yard and do the same thing with the big picture goal being that I plant pepper plants and cucumbers there.

But right now I am sore and tired. My feet hurt. My arms feel like jelly. And I most certainly think that tomorrow every muscle on the back half of my entire body is going to be screaming. Oh. And I think I have a mild sunburn to boot.

So I had one of those small world encounters today on my business to Albuquerque.

The first one happened while i was waiting in the boarding area for boarding to begin. I noticed a guy standing across the way by the wall and he looked really familiar. I kept checking him out because I was fairly certain it was the guy I knew as Griff, his character in EQ2 and spent a lot of time chatting with him. I knew him through my friend Zag because at the time they were all roommates. Well I met him in real life at Zag's wedding and low and behold, he wasn't one of the kitty creatures but a very distinct looking latino gentleman with unique black framed glasses. I'm sure Gabby will remember who i'm talking about. But I couldn't be certain it was him and the only thing I really remember was Zag always talking about how he'd put on way too much cologne. So i decided that if i were to end up in line near him I'd ask if he was who i thought he was. The opportunity came right after I got seated in my aisle seat and he got stuck in the aisle while the peeps in the back of the plane took their sweet time loading their luggage into the impossibly small overhead compartments. So i made my move and touched his arm to get his attention, asked if his name was Griff and when he said yes while looking at me funny, asked if he new Zag. The lightbulbs then went on and I totally forgot to ask about his baby, who probably is a year old now.

The second small world was the guy who i was seated next to. When i first boarded I was nervous because he had the armrest up and was sitting in the typical male seated position with the knees far apart. Now, I'm no tiny girl and the only thing that keeps me in my seat and not in someone else's seat is that tiny, precious armrest. But i figured he was already half into my seat by choice that all boundary issues are tossed aside and maybe it would be an ok flight even though i was on the worlds smallest jet. I do have to describe him though because he also had a very unique look. I was thinking he was hispanic but after conversing a little I think he is actually native american. Only he had curly dark, salt-n-pepper hair that was jel'd firmly and he had one of those moustaches that could be very wide and full but for whatever reason he trimmed it half way down his lip so it looks like it is drawn on with a pencil up close. While neither of the above add to the small world story, it did stand out in my mind. So anywho we get to chattign and it turns out that he is in the electronics industry primarily focused on bringing techincal, skilled labor jobs to various tribes and reservations across the US. And one of this projects is with the Rosebud tribe in SD pairing up with the Electrical Engineering department at my undergrad school, SDSU. Furthermore he knew several of my favorite professors, including, Dr. Ropp, Galipaeu and Helder.

Another highlight from my trip today was when I went to pick up my rental car - there was a mess up with my profile again and my Preferred Membership bonus of having my car ready and waiting didn't happen. However, when I went in to ask the lady about my rental and she realized I was only renting it for half a day, she asked me if I'd be willing to take a Hummer at no extra charge. I asked her if she was serious cuz i normally get the compact to intermediate sized cars and when she said she was seriously I was like Hell Ya! She was excited because they were short vehicles and nobody wanted to take that off her hands. I was excited cuz I wanted to see what the hype was about. Win-win situation in my book.

Let me say, even though I got the baby Hummer - the H3, it still felt like I was driving a tank. I'm pretty sure I could never park it in the real world but I definitely could come out the winner in 97% of any crash I was in. Additionally, it sat and rode great. I was able to see out the rear view mirror without needing to hunch due to my top-longness. The seats were nice and wide with leather. I'm fairly certain I could still live out my lifelong dream of having 6 kids and them being their own self-sufficient hockey team because lord knows they would all fit in there. The only downside was I think it was some church group that rented the hummers in CO and drove them to NM cuz the only presaved radio stations were gospel channels and it took me forever to find decent music for my 10 minute commute.

But yes, when I finally reach the point of earning a ridiculous amount of money - that is my new vehicle of choice. Which will be nice because by the time I get to that kind of money, my Xterra will surely have died and need to be replaced with a vehicle that screams I have no self-esteem so I am compensating!

Which might i add one more tiny bit of rambling before I stop. I find it funny that when I was in Syracuse, NY in February in a snow storm Avis gave me a 2 door, rear wheel drive sports car. And today when I was in sunny, dry, springtime Albuquerque, NM - they gave me a tank. Err. I mean a Hummer.

yep. That's about it. off to bed now.