I had forgotten how much I loved driving in the early hours …

I had to come in to work early this morning, so it was still twilight when I left my house. I stopped by Waffle House and snagged a quick bite to take with me and headed towards downtown. The sun was just coming up over Red Mountain, I had forgotten how pretty the city looked this early in the morning.

I hate rush hour traffic, I hate driving an hour each way to a job that stresses me out. I miss watching the sun rise on my way to work each morning. *sigh* I need a new job.

Anyways … I was talking to Jessie about Halloween coming up next month. She wants to be Harry Potter this year (she was Harry Potter year before last, lol). She wants me to be a witch “so we’ll match”, but I’m thinking of going as an Egyptian of some sort. There’s a diadem I’ve been drooling over, so I might snag it in the next coupla weeks and a black Cleopatra wig or something. I have plenty of other costume jewelry that I can wear, and a dress would be no problem. Now to stock up on makeup … woohoo!

Ivan who?

Well, we made it out ok. To be completely honest, I didn’t expect to have power throughout almost the entire storm, much less be sitting online writing posts on my favorite lists and forums. I have now experienced my first hurricane. I’m SO glad Hurricane Ivan is finally over because I have been a nervous wreck all week!

We have a little water damage and some trees down, but that’s it — we’re safe, have full utilities, cable, and internet access. The power and internet went down off and on all day, but besides the stress and worry we’ve had very little inconvenience.

Jessie was freaked out by the trees behind my house bending over backwards, and by the tornado warnings, but I tried to make it an otherwise fun time for her … she and I had art activities, watched movies/cartoons, and snacked out like couch potatoes. I had stocked up on emergency candles, oil for the lamps, batteries and food … so we’re ready for tornado season at least, hehe.

My parents didn’t fare quite so well, they are still without power and phone service, and BellSloth is now telling them that the earliest they can expect phones back on is October 16th. (Yikes!!!)

Jim went in to work for a short bit today, I stayed home and played hookey with Jessie. (And good thing too! It gave me time to work on some web design I’ve been itching to do.) In fact, I’m supposed to be making dinner right now. *g*

Something that I wish I had known about back when I was single and dating

Were these two sites: RejectionLine.com and PaperNapkin.net. I can’t remember how many times I gave out a bad phone number and/or email address because the person wouldn’t shut up.

A plethora of happenstances …

The news: The last few weeks have been really busy. The multimedia project at work has finally gone live and is doing rather well. I have spent a lot of time at work lately redocumenting various procedures and have been developing our technical support site. (God, I feel like I’m back at MACESS, LOL!)

My allergies have been acting up again, I’m thinking of going to see a different doctor. I don’t like the one I currently have. She always seems to me like she’s in a hurry to see me and get out. The first time I could understand, we all have days where we’re too busy for our own good … but this behavior has been consistent. She reminds me of a fastfood drive-thru attendant on speed. And I would prefer a doctor that will sit down and listen to my concerns. This doc is suggesting I have surgery to fix my chronic reflux problems, and a second opinion tells me that the problem may actually be my allergy/sinus problems. (Hence why I need a new doctor … )

Now for a bit of art: Last Saturday Jim’s mom and I attended Birmingham’s ArtWalk festival. There was an abundance of artists showing various forms of works, from paintings, sculptures of clay and metalworks, even some musicians sitting out playing. There were loads of people there (a list), the first of whom I saw was Tom Dameron with Lyda Rose Gallery. I knew Tom from a previous job, he was a customer of mine when I worked for CDO. A very nice guy, and a very talent artist!

It was really fun. I bought several sets of notecards and some glass frogs. It’s funny that a few of the artists I met and spoke with reminded me of me years ago. When I was in high school, I wanted nothing more than to be an artist. In fact, I was accepted to an art school in Chicago, but I made the mistake of letting my dad talk me out of it … he told me to “get a real job.”

Oh well, something tells me that I’m too conservative to be a “starving artist” anyways. There were a bunch of John Kerry supporters handing out stickers, buttons, fans, and other crap. Jim’s mother was with me, and she gladly scooped up anything they’d give her (she’s a Democrat). I politely declined, and after a bit of badgering I explained that I’m a Bush supporter, to which they joked with Jim’s mom to “work on” me … right, whatever. Anyways, nearly all of the artists there last weekend were sporting some kind of Kerry support apparatus.

And now the weather: Hurricane Ivan is upon us. As of 30 minutes ago, Interstate 65 from Montgomery southward has been closed in order to re-route the traffic flow. Traffic in general has been really heavy the last couple of days due to people evacuating/fleeing the southern regions of Alabama and Florida. It took us 2 hours to get home yesterday, and I’m dreading today’s trip home.

The hurricane is supposed to hit Mobile around lunchtime, and will reach Birmingham by about 1 a.m. tomorrow morning. We will spend tonight making sure we have plenty of supplies in the case of loss of utilities — water, food, batteries, candles/oil, etc.

This isn’t going to be fun …