The END

So it was supposedly fixed yesterday. WRONG. It was communicating with the computer, but it was giving signals that were ALL over the place. The guy had to talk me through a million things to try over the phone before he decided he would just have to come over. So he came, and guess what? ONE SWITCH had been bumped. He had forgotten about it over the phone so he didn't have me check it.

So NOW it works and I am all caught up.

Because of this whole thing I have enough hours this week I could just not go to work and still get all my hours. But I can't just not go, so I'm going to go in, hurry, and get out and then have a slightly longer weekend. Yay!

Balancing things on Buster is fun. But it only works if he's completely tired out.I am apparently going to write in this thing more often now that I have Baby Lappie. It's just so much easier. And wouldn't you want to write if YOU could write on a pink lappie? I thought so.

Expensive Fix

Fixed! It took several hours and two techs, but it's fixed. There's a complicated computery-looking thing that interfaces the computer's operating system with the instrument's operating system. That's what broke. The tech guy thinks it got fried sometime during the storm this past weekend. They were really nice tech guys. They only charged us for two hours of labor and the part. It's an expensive part; it probably costs around $600.00. But it's fixed! So tomorrow I will have the samples from Friday, Tuesday, and today, and that will take a while, but it's FIXED.

Something that makes me happy:

Mim is making over her house, a little bit at a time. She just wants to add a splash of happy color here and there, and it's coming along nicely. This is the comforter set I gave her for Christmas:It's different tones of purple, and I got pink sheets to accent it. It's super soft and comfy too.

She painted her living room this color:I actually picked the color. We were looking to match her furniture and a painting she has that has all the colors of her furniture, plus some blues. This was perfect! When we bought the color we were so excited but when we actually started painting and seeing how blue it was we just got all giddy. It's a color that makes you feel relaxed and cheerful at the same time.

She hung the snowflakes I made her for Christmas years ago on the wall during this past holiday season and she's thinking of moving them to her room. They will look whimsical with the purple flowers on her bedspread. Her room will be a happy place!

Since I stayed an extra hour and a half yesterday and today, I can leave work at 2:00 tomorrow and Friday if I want. Or I can get overtime. Either way, I'm a winner.

Mercury is in Retrograde

So once again, you know that whenever I talk about work it's because something is broken...yeah. EVERYTHING is broken! Hooray!

I started everything up this morning as usual. I had an extra test to do (the same one I did Friday but I had to redo it because it failed and I had to verify, annoying) so after I turned on my furnace and the lamps I didn't go in there for a while. So later, when I came into my instrument room, I heard a scary, high-pitched whiny noise coming from the computer box. Also, it wouldn't respond to anything. I couldn't turn it off, I couldn't get the mouse or keyboard to respond...fun times. So I called the guy in charge of those sorts of things, but he didn't answer so I e-mailed him. He called Tim, and he was supposed to come over some time after noon. So, I had no idea how long it would be before I could get anything done, or even if it could be fixed.

So I decided to just chill out until 1:00, when I would be ready to do Mercury. So I got everything ready for that and went in and tried to get into the software that runs the instrument open. It opened and promptly informed me that it wasn't going to cooperate today, no way no how. I restarted and rebooted everything and its mom and it still refused to play ball.
So when Tim came over (1:30 p.m.) I had him look at both computers to see if the mercury was a problem with the computer. Tim's pretty sure it isn't the computer, so we were back at square one.

Tim was able to fix the furnace computer quickly (it needed new RAM...second time in two months...weird) and I tried to get everything up and running and it took me 45 MINUTES to get it started because it decided to throw a hissy fit. FINALLY it got going.

But mercury is still not up. My boss called the service people and they can't even come out until Thursday, so we can't release any product until we figure this out unless we decide to send the samples out and that will be expensive. So Thursday. The problem is, the instrument is like 30 years old and they don't make parts for it any more. The service guy said over the phone that he couldn't even believe it was still running. So, if it needs parts, we won't be able to get any. They looked into getting a new one for me though, and it's a nice one that will take solid sample (!) instead of having a two-day chemical prep for each sample. It's also sensitive to parts per trillion instead of parts per billion. NICE.

I guess we'll see what happens.

Poor Scottie isn't feeling well. He stayed home today and is all feverish and miserable. I hope I don't get whatever he has. I was sick last week. I think it was just allergies, but it was still miserable.

I finished the toe of Mim's second red sock. I am SO SLOW. I'm just bored.

I didn't get home until 6:00 today, which isn't so bad until you know I usually get home at 3. Boo.

Bunny Bunny Bunny

I went down to Mim's house for the Memorial Day weekend. I left Friday after work. I thought that since I get off work earlier than most people that I would miss traffic...yeah, no. It usually takes me about 80-90 minutes to get from my house to my mom's, but this time it took more than two hours...I know that's not really a long drive but I HATE driving so it seemed like FOREVER. So I got down there just in time for Mim to have to leave for work. Scott had spent time this past week getting Baby Lappie set up, but I hadn't organized any of my files or imported my music into media player, so Em and I sat up late talking while I put all my music in, which took FIVE HOURS because I am a music freak and have a zillion gigs. Before we did that, though, Em and Jorg and I went to the theater to see Night at the Museum 2 and it was really funny. We get in to see movies free because Mim works there, and we get free sodas too.

Anyway, Mim had to stay late, so we were all up way too late, and slept until 1:00 the next afternoon, which is amazing because my body is programmed to wake up before 8:00 no matter what. Weird.

Saturday Mim and I went grocery shopping at the new store in Salem, which she and Em say is really creepy for some reason, but I didn't sense anything. Anyway, we went home and made some yummy salad and then Mim had to go to work again. Boo. I took a nap and then when Mim got home (late again, some girl cut her hand and had to go to the ER and Mim had to fill in) we went out for giant salads at the truck stop in Payson (our favorite place for some reason...the service sucks but the food is ridiculously good somehow) and then we came home and watched the pink Pride and Prejudice (the one filmed in Provo) and of course it was hilarious.

Sunday, we slept in until noon (again, WEIRD) and did pretty much nothing all day. Mim had to go to a meeting, so I took a nap, and then we decided to go to bed at a reasonable time.

And then this morning I slept late again and I think I did more sleeping this weekend than I have in weeks, which is great because I'm almost always tired.

So that was my weekend.

Em got a new bunny named Desu:

I am DONE with the diet! Well, I can't eat carbs for another two weeks, but for all intents and purposes I'm done. I've lost 35-40 pounds, depending on the day (water weight changes with hormones, you know) and I feel so amazing.

So Much For The Rolls...

We came home to this:Jorg ate the insides out of all the rolls. He's very picky and doesn't like crust, which is fine, but now nobody gets to enjoy the rolls.

I can't have stupid rolls anyway. But I've lost 35-40 pounds, depending on the day. I have the three weeks now with no sugars or starches, and then I will try to lose a few more pounds over the next few months by exercise and portion control, plus some HUGE changes in eating habits.

I am finally taking charge of my health. AWESOME.

P.S. This is my first blog from Baby Lappie. I will get a picture of it soon and post. It's PINK!

Blue! Ice Cream! Not blue ice cream.

Last night we stayed up way too late, and then after we had stayed up way too late, we remembered that we were going to do my hair. We did, which resulted in being up really late, and we kinda got a second wind, and ended up in bed, side by side, with two laptops (also there are two computers in the basement plus another laptop, and also on the night stand next to Scott there was another small internet-PDA thingy, plus we had 3 cell phones and 3 or 4 mp3 devices...we may need an intervention, because we just ordered another laptop, for me, it's pink, I'm in heaven, the end.). Scott was YouTubing and I was reading on dooce.com because Heather is a freaking amazing GENIUS and I can't put it down.

Anyway, the other day we went to Wal-Mart, because it's got everything and we're simple folk, and we looked at the cameras just to see what they had, and there was a nice 10 megapixel with all these bells and whistles for $109.00. Magic! So we bought it, and someone (cough Scott cough) hasn't put it down since. Hence the YouTubing last night. He's made lots of videos, and we are now chronicling everything photographically because, well, because we can.

So, of course, we chronicled the dyeing of the hair.

This is me washing it out in the sink. Unfortunately, since we are new at owning a camera, we forgot the part where Scott had me bend over and put all my hair in my face, and he spent probably ten minutes trying to get every last blond hair away from the black hairs because of this whole OCD thing. We also forgot the part where he had put the dye in and he was trying to clip it up so it wouldn't stain my neck and everything else blue, and the clippie thing flew out of his slippery dye hands and landed in the toilet. So in lieu of a clippie thing we marched downstairs and put foil around it and then scrunched it up and then I held it there while Scott fished the clippie thing out of the toilet and cleaned it THOROUGHLY because eww, then clipped the foil to my head somehow, and at that point I was standing in the bathroom using the blow dryer to put heat on it and since I didn't want to stain any of my clothes I was just wearing a towel, which kept falling off, and eventually I got sick of putting it back on only to have it fall off two minutes later, so I gave up and just stood in the bathroom naked, with foil all over my head and a blowdryer. Magic.

So back to the rinsing out part. That was cake after the rest of the fiasco. Here it is after rinsing and before becoming a normal-looking human being again. In order to isolate the blonde streak in the back we had to put the rest of my hair out of the way and that meant in my forehead like some kind of a freak unicorn. And P.S. by this point I had put the towel back on, so this picture is not naked.
Here is the finished, dried result. I like it very much. It is more teal than blue, but that's ok. The neat thing is, it only shows when my hair is up, so if I need to look nice I can just leave my hair down. Now I was working on Mim's socks, or sock I should say since I suck and still haven't even finished the first one, and I was absolutely sick of it because if I hadn't needed to frog them fifteen hundred times I would have been done by now. So, I switched gears and began playing with my rose-colored cashmere blend laceweight yarn. I had made a scarf from it months ago and never posted a picture because I am lazy and forgetful, but anyway I wanted gloves to go with it, so I messed around and in two days (I forgot how much FASTER I crochet than knit)I had these. They are very delicate and beautiful, but just warm enough that I will not get hot and have to take them off, and then get cold and put them on again in an endless stupid cycle. I also decided to make them fingerless since I do everything with my hands and once again I hate having to take them off and put them on again to do something with my fingers, so voila!Now, our two year wedding anniversary is coming up on Monday, and we decided to celebrate this weekend since we don't have time to really do anything during the week. So Scott took the day off and I took half the day off and we planned to go to Maddox, which is this amazingly super awesome restaurant in Perry, which is like an hour and a half away from our house. So the plan was for me to come home early, change and shower so I not only looked like a person with normal clothes (as opposed to the giant tee shirts and nasty baggy jeans I wear to work because I don't like wearing a lab coat and also don't want to ruin any of my nice clothes) but I also wanted to smell like a normal person who didn't work in a place that smells like weird vitamins and acid. Then we were going to drive up there early so we could eat a bit earlier and beat the rush and still be able to get home in time and go to bed somewhat close to our normal time because we are OLD PEOPLE. Then Scott's work decided to explode and they needed him all day. We found that out on Thursday. Now, it wasn't in any way shape or form Scott's fault, but I still made him make it up to me by taking me out to dinner Thursday AND Friday night, and then Cold Stone after. So here, in all its glory, is the whole reason I am glad I have been married for two years: Ok, not the WHOLE reason. Not even close. Scott is amazing to me and to be with. I could never have asked for anything or anyone better ever. He understands me, knows how to deal with my disease, and makes me feel like a person, a person who is real and worth something. He tells me I am beautiful and means it, and somehow he knows when I need to hear it. He is adorable and accepting, kind, generous, loving, protective, selfless, and as devoted to me and our marriage as I am. Simply amazing.

The only thing left is to leave a picture of Buster, because he's so freaking adorable I can't help it. Why aren't you giving me people food? Don't you love me?

Yes, but not enough to clean up your diarrhea after I let you eat my anniversary ice cream. So GO AWAY and stop sniffing it. Go eat your own food, fatty.

Cute Couple Meme

This one's about me and Scott as a couple.

What are your middle names? Michele and Thompson

How long have you been together? Married two years on the 11th, dated/were engaged 15 months

How long did you know each other before you started dating? In person, just a few months I think. Online, a couple of years.

Who asked whom out? I think I did. I invited him to have dinner with me and my roomies so I think that counts.

How old are each of you? I'm 23, he's 24.

Whose siblings do you see the most? Mine. Em and Jorg live only an hour and a half away, which is closer than most of Scott's sibs.

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple? When I am moody!

Did you go to the same school? No

Are you from the same home town? No. Scott is from Bountiful and I am from all over, but considered Sioux Falls, SD home.

Who is smarter? Scott is much smarter when it comes to computers and mechanical things, and I'm the chemistry one who is also really smart with yarn.

Who is the most sensitive? We might be tied for that one.

Where do you eat out most as a couple? Used to be Olive Garden but I think we got sick of it or something. We like to hit up Noodles & Company and Burger King sometimes.

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple? Idaho.

Who has the craziest exes? I don't think I ever dated anyone crazy. Definitely made some bad choices, but no loonies. Scott dated a few weird ones though.

Who has the worst temper? ME ME ME. No good.

Who does the cooking? We don't do a lot of cooking. We like prepackaged food and sandwiches and stuff, which doesn't really count. Scott makes perfect french toast, though.

Who is more stubborn? Neither of us is stubborn.

Who hogs the bed? Me again. But not intentionally.

Who wakes up earlier? Me during the week, Scott on weekends.

Where was your first date? Kinda my apartment, although I'm not sure that was an actual date, so the next one was when we went and got hot chocolate and decided to be an exclusive couple.

Who is more jealous? Scott gets a little bit now and again, but barely.

How long did it take to get serious? Couple years, but once we met in person it was pretty much right away.

Who eats more? Right now, Scott, but only because I'm on this nutty diet.

Who does the laundry? Almost always Scott. He spoils me.

Who's better with the computer? Like I need to answer this one.

Who drives when you are together? Scott. I get frustrated easily with stupid people driving, and I don't like being frustrated, so he almost always drives.