Heck yeah!

Look what I just got in the mail:

“Congratulations! You have been selected to receive two tickets to the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW event in Madison, WI, on Saturday, July 11, 2009 at the Alliant Energy Center.”

Whoo!

Yes, Neal and I ARE nerds, thank you very much. (Well, I’d say I’m about 1/2 geek and 1/2 nerd, while he’s 1/4 nerd and 3/4 geek.)

We’re also pretty darn excited because this is very near his paternal grandmother, which means we’ll get to see her again! We haven’t seen her in quite a while and have been trying to figure out how to get out there to see her, but this makes the decision easy. We can definitely take time to do both and give ourselves some extra time to spend with Grandma.

Yay!

Yay! Fresh food!

Our local farmers’ market is open once again, and this means that we can get fresh meat, veggies, and fruit as it comes in season. Oh, and cheese. We can’t forget the fresh cheeses. And maybe chocolates again this spring and fall (since it gets too hot and melts in the summer). I’m so excited to see what all there is to buy again. Yum…

Stigma

Someone I have regular (almost daily) contact with was recently admitted to the local psychiatric unit for a couple days. We weren’t sure if this person would be there two or three days, but we were glad this person was getting the help they needed.

Today, the person came back and was talking to me as we normally do when suddenly they asked, “Do you know where I was?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you think differently of me because of it?”

“Nope!” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Let me tell you something about me: My mom is bipolar. I grew up with this and with her being tight-lipped because of the stigma attached to mental illness. One day, she realized the stigma was stupid and she started talking about it. I started talking about it. I think that when a person realizes that they need to talk to someone for their mental health it’s just plain smart to do what you need to do to be healthy. I’ve lived with mental illness in my family almost my entire life, and the thing I’ve realized is this: People can be stupid. Those are the people you don’t listen to and the people that you don’t spend your brainpower worrying about.”

The person was silent for a while and then said they were off to their next stop.

There’s one thing I want everyone who’s dealt with mental illness (whether they have one or they have a loved one who does) to fully realize: You are you and you are loved. Sure, some people may feel awkward around you and may think ignorant thoughts about your illness, but if they make you feel bad about yourself? Then you don’t need them in your life.

Landlords can be evil

Or should I say that property management companies can be evil? Our apartment is owned by a similar company as this, and I’m sure ours would also be more than happy to go after a murdered person’s family for rent “owed” and an ETF for leaving the apartment early (even if the person was killed). Our management apparently was refusing to let a member of the military out of his contract when he was called to Iraq a few months ago (which, in case you’re wondering, isn’t legal).

After all our interaction with such companies, Neal and I are loathe to move into an apartment owned by these types of companies. Here’s hoping we like the house that we’ll soon be checking out to rent this summer: same price as this crappy apartment but we won’t have to deal with imbeciles who don’t know how to keep their TVs, music, and “visitors” at a respectable sound level AND we’ll be getting hardwood floors, a fireplace, and a one-car garage as part of the deal. No more idiots parking half in our space because they were too lazy to back out and actually park correctly.

Well, here’s hoping…

Whoa.

I’m just sitting here watching random people bake cakes on t.v. (it must be cake-baking day on PBS’s Create channel here), when I hear tires screeching. We hear this a lot since we live on a very busy intersection in town and never in the two years that we’ve lived here have we heard what sometimes comes after:

CRASH!

This time I did. In fact, I heard two metallic crashes, so I ran to the window and looked out. A huge fir tree stands on the corner of our building, so I could see nothing of the crash, but I inadvertently witnessed the “run” part of a hit-and-run accident. A smallish car with the passenger side front smashed all to hell squealed its tires again and peeled out, across three lanes of traffic, roaring off past our apartment and dropping pieces of itself here and there.

I rush into our office and tell Neal I’m going to make sure everyone’s okay (I know the person didn’t hit a tree from the sound), so we don shoes and jackets and head off down the hill of our driveway. About halfway down, I see a white SUV on its top in the parking lot of gas station on the corner and hear the sounds of sirens coming nearer. I’ll admit, this freaks me out, and I run the rest of the way down the hill and ask the first person I saw if everyone was okay. She was apparently the person on duty in the gas station, and she let me know everyone was fine. How, I don’t know, but I’m so glad.

The owner of the SUV (not the driver, however) came up to us and said, “That’s my car. He just called me and told me what happened!” He was amazed the side airbags didn’t deploy, but I was amazed that no one was hurt after looking at the SUV (seatbelts, seatbelts, seatbelts!) I overheard the driver talking to the cops: “The next thing I knew I was upside down in the car, hanging by the damn seatbelt.”

Another cop car drove up to the scene and almost immediately took off in the direction of the runaway driver (apparently a lady). It’ll be pretty easy to spot her with half of the front end of her car up about two extra feet in the air.

I hope they catch her, but if they do so tonight, my bet is that she’ll be completely drunk. What is wrong with people?

Why, people? Why?

I just don’t understand what people gain by being nasty and rude to people they don’t even know. Even more so, what gains do people get from being nasty and rude to people (behind their backs) that they don’t even see EVER? I guess I just don’t get why someone would say awful things about someone behind their back when they have no reason to ever interact with that person and have no clue what that person does at any minute of his/her life.

What’s the point?

Yes, it got back to me. The sad part? Your opinion means nothing to me, because I never see you and I don’t even know you!

Anyone have an explanation for this?

So a little over a year ago, my sister had our second niece. Shortly before, as is usual, someone threw a shower for my sister.

I live in Northern Minnesota; my sister lives in Central Illinois. Okay, that’s out of the way. My aunt-by-marriage (in the same area as the rest of my family) is the one who threw the shower for my sister, and I never received an invitation or any notice that it was going on. In fact, I heard of it the week before the event when I called my sister to check in on her pregnancy, and she asked me if I had received my invitation. Um, no. Even my sister didn’t know that my aunt hadn’t sent me an invitation. My aunt’s excuse was that she knew I wouldn’t be able to attend since I live so far away, so she didn’t want to waste the money on postage or a card.

Cue a couple days ago. I received an invitation to my 17-year-old cousin’s baby shower. There’s a LOT more to this story, but suffice it to say that it’s not a pretty tale at all. How, all of a sudden, do I rate an invitation to my aunt’s and uncle’s daughter’s shower, but I don’t rate an invitation to my own sister’s shower? They know and understand that I won’t be able to attend this one either.

I guess my gift is welcome at their shower, though. Or, at the very least, desired. In fact, they are registered at several places (and I do mean quite a few), and I am also welcome to buy cases of diapers and be entered into a raffle in addition to the gift I bring from one of those registries.

Too bad I’m not paying to ship something down there in this case, eh? I guess they wasted a card and postage on the woman who “won’t be able to make it down here anyway”…

This kind of thing riles me up. I abhor gift-wrangling in this manner.

Me?

I have a lot of real-life, long-term friends and family members who read this blog, and they’ll probably laugh when they hear this. My coworker and I were discussing the end-of-the-year stuff for school, and I was trying to get my head around what my job will be this time of year. My day-to-day job is pretty much the same, but I have many huge projects throughout the year, and no two projects are alike. Every couple of months, I like to meet with members of my “team” (the group of two administrators and two staff, one of whom is me, whose jobs kind of overlap in what our duties are) and find out what is coming up for me. I really like to be able to budget my time and know what is coming up, especially since I’ve never actually worked through this time period at work before. Everything is new and very rushed this time of year. I met with my administrator yesterday and wanted to meet with my counterpart staff member today to find out what kinds of things I needed to have on the horizon for the next couple months.

As we’re looking over the list of things I had written down yesterday, she shook her head and laughed. I looked up from my list and asked her what she was laughing about. “You’re so organized! It’s just amazing,” she said.

I looked down at my list, which was handwritten and had tons of notes in the margins and all around my main list (notes from her and others that I had already consulted about portions of the list that were in addition to what my administrator had discussed with me yesterday). It was NOT organized in the least. I looked around at my desk and laughed. “How can you look at this list and my desk and say that?” I asked.

She just shook her head again and said, “You are!”

For the record, I do NOT consider myself an organized person. One look around my living room will tell you this. After she left and my administrator came back for her meeting, I hijacked her time to go over portions of the list that I needed more of her input on. As I was leaving, I laughed and told her what my counterpart had said about my organizational skills.

“But you are, Jessica! I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t so organized. I am SO GLAD you’re organized out there, because it helps me be more organized,” my administrator said earnestly.

I just laughed again and said, “Don’t tell my husband that, or he’ll expected me to be organized at home. Or he’ll just laugh at you guys!”

Neal and I talked about it over dinner tonight, and he agreed that at work I am definitely an organized person. At home, neither one of us really are, although I do sometimes crave more order in our house. The past several months I’ve been on a “if we aren’t using it regularly, we don’t need it” kick, and I’ve been sorting things to give away. I am just feeling the need to declutter my life for some reason, partially because we are planning to move at the end of July again (to where? We don’t know yet.) and I don’t want to pack up things we’ve had for three years and haven’t really used all that much. Away went clothes and shoes and lamps and, well, just stuff.

I don’t know what’s causing this phase at home, but maybe it will lead us both into being more organized there, too. I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot, right?

Wherein our neighbors have really long legs

I’m pretty sure we have the same upstairs neighbors as this blogger. I’m not sure WHAT they do up there, but they must have the anvil-feet and the same bookcase trying to track them down and kill them. They also do the trust-myself fall backwards over and over at all times of the day and night. I’ve often thought that they have issues with tripping, stutter-stepping, and then falling over and over and over and over and over and…you get the idea, several times an hour. The hammering neighbor is the guy next door, whom I’ve already written about. “Oh, I’m just nailing a RUG TO THE FLOOR very early in the morning? Oh, what? You were sleeping early in the morning? Oh, well. I’m up and have things to do, which means I can do them at any time I’m awake. See how that works?” (I’ve often wondered how he’d like me to do things at 2:00 in the morning just because I’m up and have things to do, like hammer on the wall adjoining his bedroom, which technically is really a closet, but I could nail things into the closet, right?)

Anyway, how did our upstairs neighbors’ feet end up in New York anyway?

“People keep giving us stuff today!”

Today we decided to veg about a bit (since we haven’t had a free weekend day in a while) and then go to a movie that we’d been hoping to see for a while. We then decided to find a few new summery shirts for me (and a white button-down to go with my skirt for my employee/trustee dinner at a particular-dress-code dining establishment coming up this week) and afterwards go to Starbucks for Neal to do some work and for me to play with my DS.

After the movie we decided to stop off at Pizza Hut and grab something to eat. We decided to get the garlic cheesebread and a medium pepperoni pizza. As soon as we’d ordered, the waitress said, “Oh, do you want to do this? It’ll save you money,” and she pointed at a meal deal on the back of the menu that included the salad bar and a medium Lover’s Line pizza with two drinks. Neal and I decided we’d rather have the garlic cheese bread (I’ve had their salad bar a few times and it’s never gotten any better — and it wasn’t that good in the first place) and she offered to substitute the salad bar with a double batch of garlic bread. We debated it, since we didn’t want that much food, but we finally decided we could take half the meal home, especially since we were saving quite a bit with the deal (and even getting the double batch of garlic bread instead of the single and a Lover’s Line pizza instead of a single topping was still cheaper with this meal deal). We went with the Pepperoni Lovers, too.

When the garlic bread came, we realized that there wasn’t any marinara sauce with it. It has been a couple years since we’d orderd it, but I was positive it had come with it before. When the waitress came back with our drinks, I asked her for some sauce. She said, “Oh, it technically doesn’t come with the meal anymore and it costs a dollar, but I can get some for you for free.” I said that it’d be fine for us to pay for it, but we did not see it on the bill anyway when it came.

Throughout the meal, Neal and I kept returning to the fact that the waitress looked very familiar, but neither of us could place her, and we never did figure it out. I’m still not sure if we knew her, or if she looked like someone else or what. We were very surprised that she seemed to go out of her way to make sure we got a good deal and even gave us something for free, and we tipped generously (and in addition to the generous tip added the $1.00 she had saved us as well). I realize that what we would’ve tipped on that $1.00 wasn’t a significant amount really, but she still saved us money on the total bill (including the meal deal and the marinara), which really would have lowered her tip due to being a lower amount to base our percentage on. Yeah, it wasn’t a huge amount, but it was enough to make me appreciate her honesty and want to give her the total tip she would have had with the original amount and a bit more.

After looking for shirts (for the record, I still abhor shopping, especially clothes shopping), we ended up at Starbucks, mainly because they aren’t usually super busy on the weekends (but during the week? Hoo-boy…) and they also have these two super comfy chairs that I like to lounge in (well, just one of them. Neal sits in the other.) We both ordered our usual drinks and one of the works asked if we minded if she mopped near us — not if she mopped where we were (I even offered to lift my feet, and she said she didn’t want to disturb us), but if she could mop somewhere NEAR us. It was over an hour until closing, and she didn’t want us to think she was rushing us out the door. Okay, that’s fine. I go back to playing and Neal goes back to reading. A little bit later, she came up to us with two full-sized pastries (a lemon tart and a huge rice cereal treat) and said, “Would you two like some samples?” We, of course, agreed, and she said, “The owner is gone, so I get to decide on the size of the samples!” We all laughed, and Neal and I enjoyed the “samples.”

I told Neal we should run out and buy a lottery ticket and maybe visit a few other places tonight to see if other people will give us free stuff. I mean, we didn’t ask for anything free (or, really, anything other than some marinara that we would have paid for this once and then never got again once we knew), and I’m really not sure what was going on tonight.

I’m obviously not going to complain. I’m going to give kudos to those two places for making us feel special on a very unspecial day. It’s nice to get that feeling every once in a while these days, and it definitely doesn’t happen all that often. (And I won a free print from one of my favorite Etsy sellers who does freehand glass engraving, although she has recently switched over to sandblasting the designs on the glass pieces. She did tell me that she’d freehand any design I wanted in the future, if I let her know I wanted it hand-drawn and not sandblasted. More wonderful customer service, and she’s just a super nice person in general, which is why I also read her blog regularly.)

I don’t need people to give me free stuff for me to like the customer service, and just the little extra in telling us about deals and specials would be good enough for me. Tonight, several employees of different places went above and beyond their general call of duty for no apparent reason. It’s nice to see that this kind of thing can still happen even in these tough times. It reminds Neal and me that we need to be just as giving even when it hurts a little bit.