sunny blizzard

~E~ As I was lounging on my sofa, having called in sick, I caught a commercial starring Gary Coleman espousing the joys of making ONE PHONE CALL and having cash DEPOSITED IMMEDIATELY into his checking account. Because, he goes on to say, no one else would loan him money!! Not even family!! (I'm really not sure I would say that to a national audience, but whatever) In the 1.2 seconds their required disclosures were on the screen, I swear I saw an APR of 99%. So of course I had to go to their website to see if that could possibly be true. Sadly, one cannot avail oneself of these services if one lives in Wisconsin, Iowa, Massachusetts or a few other states, but if you live in Utah you may have the pleasure of paying up to 151% interest . Damn, I'm moving! OK, snark aside, I feel for people who think this is a good option for them. There should be laws against this. No, I am not and never will be a libertarian.

~E~ I'm feeling very much appreciated lately. What with all the green card craziness, everyone at work is feeling sorry for us, and grateful, so they are showering us with compliments and gifts. One morning I came in to a small bag of white chocolate. Yesterday, someone brought me some embroidered cushion covers from India. Today, a guy brought in pork egg rolls and shrimp egg rolls that his wife had made and I tell ya-they were addictive! I shared them out with everyone and everyone raved, they were so delicious! AND they were served in these cool bamboo containers with lids. I certainly don't expect all this, as I'm just doing my job. However, it's honestly something I would do if I were in their position. I enjoy showing my thanks. It's always great to get that acknowledgment and I want to say thanks back but then you end up in this endless thank you loop. So I'll just send my appreciation out into the Universe and y'all can have some too.

~E~ Remember a post or two ago where I described the crazy overtime weekend trying to get green card applications in before the deadline? And how the government backed out and declared that they wouldn't accept any of the applications? Apparently there has been so much pressure from so many directions that they backed off from THAT decision and accepted everything they had received, and will accept all applications until August 17. GREAT news for all those folks! It makes more work for me, but I'd rather be busy than not. My team also received an award at our company-wide meeting for all of our hard work. We are now SUPASTAH s!! You may kiss my ring.

~E~ Swimming, movieing, ducking and shopping. I took a few days off (I'm certain work fell apart without me, I'll clean the place up tomorrow) so daughter and I could hang out. On one lovely sunny day we made the pilgrimage to the Wisconsin Dells. The highlight by far was the Wisconsin Ducks. If you do not know what these are, shame on you and get googling. I had actually grown up hearing about the "Wisconsin Ducks" and assuming it was just some stupid tourist thing, but Al assured us it was really quite fun. We purchased our tickets and went to stand in line, where we were accosted and forced to have our picture taken. I was a little confused at that, but shrugged and got in line for the Duck. Now, a Duck is a military vehicle that can be driven on land or water. It has two rows of bench seats and a canvas roof up top; daughter and I sat together with Al in front of us. The driver revved up the Duck (AH! Loud!) and drove off. He was full of somewhat interesting infor

~E~ Yes, my friends, it is spider season. My house is wrapped in spiderwebs. My pals the big fat creepy spiders have taken up residence under the eaves. I'm finding webs and daddy-long-leg type spiders in my house. All I can say is, UGH !! I wonder at the disgust and fear so many of us have towards spiders. For the most part, spiders do a good thing by eating the other insect pests that bug (haha. bug.) us. But still, ugh. I DON'T want them in my house but I haven't the courage to gently put them outside like some folks do. Killing them is horrid but I still find a way to do it. Squish. Then in the trash they go. I know that the ball is in my court when I see a spider. Once I yelled at Al, "SPIDER!!!" and he just walked away and said, 'sorry babe, you're on your own'. He hates them more than I do. It's ok, AL, I still like ya. One summer I found an odd little ball of -something- on my back step, just outside the door. I poked it with a stick and it

~E~ This is so much fun! Go to http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html to create your own avatar. Meet Esmerelda And meet Blue Girl:

~E~ My work involves dealing with immigration for folks who are here on work authorization. For the last 2 1/2 years, we have not been able to file green card applications for anyone due to government restrictions. In mid-May, the restrictions were lifted a bit and we were able to prepare quite a few applications for submission on June 1. We were busy. In mid-June, the new bulletin came out and suddenly EVERYONE was allowed to file for their green card, no restrictions at all, but word was it would be closed soon, possibly at the end of July. We came up with a plan, divvied up the tasks, decided how much we had to get done each day to complete 130 applications by July 31, and got to work. One big sticking point was that nothing could be sent in without a current medical exam and since the restrictions had been lifted, the clinics were packed and backed up. We got everything else ready so when we had the exams in hand we could stick them in the packet and send them off. We were on track

Yeah, I promised to start posting more and then I didn't. I do have a very good excuse though, things at work got more crazy than they've ever been and I put in 15 hours of overtime in 3 days. I'll spell it out in more detail later. Update #1: No more ticks. Update #2: The lovely lakes STINK and are a very interesting radioactive green.