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Friday, November 24, 2006

Groan!

I'm awake. Not happy, but I am awake.

Am I up at this ridiculous hour to hit the mall? Nope. My beloved day job took two holidays away from me and one of them is the day after Thanksgiving. The other is New Year's Day. Let me tell you, I am far from thankful about this. The only bright spot--and I use this term lightly--is that no one except others in my union are going to be in so it will be nice and quiet. There are 3 of us on my floor. That doesn't mean they didn't take vacation time. I thought about it because I knew I wouldn't want to get up today, but I decided I might need to save this time off for later. You see, the beloved day job also stole a week of my vacation and I don't get it back for something like seven more years.

Yesterday was a nice day. I spent a few hours with my parents and then came back home. The weather was warm, in the 50s, and the sun was out. Maybe that's why the workmen were busy at the neighbor's house. They were there most of the day too putting down sand/rock or whatever needs to go underneath asphalt. They're widening their driveway to two cars. Anyway, I felt bad that they were working on Thanksgiving, but in MN, I guess you have to take the good weather when you can find it--especially at the end of November.

Last night, I saw a really cool commercial. It was for Puma and I guess that's more than half the battle since I've only seen this ad once, but I remember the product. This woman fights off ninja warriors. Great action and some fabulous fighting moves. I wanted to download it to watch again because some of that choreography would work wonderfully in my stories. I found the ads on their website, but the only choice offered for download was iPod format. My MP3 player is not from Apple because I got a lot more memory for a lot less money by going with another manufacturer. I downloaded it anyway in case the iPod format was something my computer would play, but alas, it isn't. All I received were error messages when I tried to open it.

While we were cooking Thanksgiving dinner (I made Stove Top Stuffing--about the extent of my culinary ability), there was a dog show on TV. I always cheer for the Husky, Malamute and German Shepherd dogs because I've had two Siberian Husky/German Shepherd crosses. The poor Huskies never seem to do well at these shows. :-( But they also advertised a dog show for all breeds, even mutts and my parents and I were laughing about entering Kody.

Kody was my last dog and the pet of my heart. She died years ago now, but we were imagining her at a dog show. Kody was terrified of other dogs because my brother's stupid poodles tormented her as a puppy. We'd go to obedience school and she'd hide behind my legs. When we did the sit and stay, she could hardly stand it and most times I didn't even make it across the room before she bolted for me. She was just so scared.

But Kody also had the Siberian Husky temperament, which meant she was independent and did what she wanted to do. Dog Whisperer would have had his hands full with her. :-) I like to believe I'd established myself as pack leader, but she didn't always care about that, and she found ways to covertly give her opinion of that. Or maybe it wasn't so covert. LOL.

I have to run. Traffic should be bad today because I have to go past the Mall of America to get to the evil day job.