I swear, I think our weekends are getting to be busier than our weekdays! ;P Friday was pretty hectic, and add the bad weather on top of that, it made for an interesting start to the weekend. Jessie’s karate test was Saturday — she’s now moved up from orange belt to a purple belt! Jim and I took pictures and filmed, so hopefully those will be up soon. We had a chance to talk to Jessie’s senseis for a bit, and both had nothing but good things to say about our little ray of sunshine. I noted that ever since beginning taking karate, she’s shown so much improvement … both in the dojo and outside of it!

Jessie left after the test with her mother. Jim and I went over to see my folks and saw my brother Jeremy and his wife Christy. They had Ryland with them, so I got to spend a little time with my favorite niece.

Isn’t she precious?

Stupidity knows no bounds

Today Jim and Jessie took me to brunch for Mother’s Day. I got a little aggravated earlier because I specifically told her mother that I was picking her up early and that we were going out to eat. Originally it was supposed to be breakfast … I pick Jessie up and find out that her mother had her EAT BREAKFAST right before I was to pick her up!

*beats head into wall repeatedly*

I swear, one of these days I’m bound to say something to this woman that I know I will regret, but that she also fully DESERVES.

So we waited a bit and went for ‘brunch’ … Jessie was hungry enough and Jim and I were starving! There was a slight ‘incident’ with a group that cut in line infront of us and another family. When I said something to one of the party members, she muttered something about us being ‘racists’ — the party members were black.

They moved on before I could say anything else, but I was fully ready to retort with, “It has nothing to do with race. The color of one’s skin does NOT exempt one from using common courtesy and manners!”

So I fumed a bit, but got over it. We were at Ryan’s and the food and service were great, which fully made up for the inconvenience before being seated. In their defense, it WAS packed, which made it a bit hard for the staff at the front to keep track of who should be where. However, that being said, I find it hard NOT to notice the general lack of manners by people I run across in public nowadays.

To most of these people, I am dying to say, “I *KNOW* your mother taught you better!”

A heart-felt and belated “Thanks!”

If all goes well, it looks like I’ll win this round in the Lunarpages’ WordPress theme design contest. I am completely overwhelmed by the response and surge in votes from family, friends, and extended community. I emailed a few close to me, and just about every one of them emailed their friends and family, and so on and so forth; and I posted on here and you each voted and responded in kind. (thank you!!) My Cotillion sisters rose to the occasion offering support and votes (thank you, girls! I love y’all!). Jim reached out to his guild and the guys have been very supportive with votes and feedback. (thank you!!) And last but certainly not least, the gargantuan legion of members over at the Soldiers’ Angels forums were a tremendous help in attaining and keeping the lead. (thank you very very much, Angels!!!)

This weekend flew by WAY too fast. Friday I had a killer headache, plus rain came in later that evening so we didn’t get to setup our booth until Saturday morning. This turned out to be a real blessing in disguise as the tents that WERE setup Friday night were blown everywhere and the ones still standing had a ton of water on/in them!

It didn’t take near as long as I thought to set everything up Saturday morning, but I printed too few Soldiers’ Angels info cards to hand out. I had plenty of fliers and a handful of people stopped to look at the binder of pictures and PR materials, but the cards went out the fastest and in greater numbers. I can understand why, they’re small and can easily fit in a pocket rather than having to fold up (the much larger fliers).

Jessie participated in the demonstration put on by her karate school. She looked very fierce and determined, and performed really well! Jim’s mother came up from Montgomery with our niece and nephews, so it was great seeing them. (hehe, the boys used Jim as exercise equipment, so that was pretty funny) I also got to meet and spend a little time with Elaine and her husband from Painted Personalities.

As I’m typing this post, the pictures of the Alabama A-Day Game and this weekend’s Magnolia Festival are being uploaded to my Zooomr account. They seemed to have been having problems earlier this morning, but everything looks pretty good now for the most part (outside of the few hiccups that I have had to re-upload).

I had chosen to work from home yesterday, and now I’m glad that I did. There were a few things around the house that *had* to be done, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself because I had gotten up in enough time to get an early start on things. At 7:30 I opened my work email and worked on a few things there. I made breakfast and piddled around in the kitchen a little bit and was feeling pretty good.

Then it hit me … the Mother of All Headaches.

About 10 I started feeling it, the crushing pain on the back of my neck and my temples. Then my eyes started throbbing. I thought, “No big deal, I’ll take an Axert and a hot shower and that’ll help.”

It only got worse from there.

I started feeling nauseous. I mean REALLY nauseous — we’re talking Lamaze-type breathing just to try to keep volatile projectile puking my insides out nausea.

It didn’t work.

I was unable to hold food down pretty much all day. I drank some juice. That didn’t work either. I had to ride out and pick up Jessie’s new glasses, so I did that and thought that picking up one of my favorite meals might help perk me up. I got home, took another Axert and a Sudafed, and sat my happy butt down to eat some Krystals chiks. (but I held off on the hotsauce this time, dont’chaknow!)

Bad idea … WTF was I thinking?!

I had about 2 fries and those “came back to visit.” By this point it’s 2:30, my head feels like it’s in the Vice Grips from Hell, my heart is racing wildly, I’m afraid to take anything else, and I’m calling my doctor’s office to see if she can work me in. The receptionist asked me if it was an emergency. I said, “Well, if she can’t see me soon, I’m going to the ER right now!” She put me on hold for a moment and asked me if I could come in at 3. Jessie’s school is a few minutes from my doctor’s office and I knew I could pick her up and swing by there.

I swear sometimes I think I need one of those medical alert bracelets or something when I have one of these “Uber Mega Headaches from Hades”!

Poor little Jessie, she is the absolute SWEETEST person on the face of this earth — when she wants to be. ;P And yesterday, she took one look at me and said, “You’re paler than you usually are. Are those my new glasses? Cool!”

LOL.

She patiently sat with me in the waiting room while I waited for my name to be called, and talked to me the whole time to keep my mind “off being sick.” (Isn’t that adorable?) I think she looked at nearly every magazine in the room and took care in pointing out everything to me. When I turned away from a food advertisement, she asked what was wrong. I explained that I was trying hard to concentrate on not throwing up, so food didn’t interest me right then. She’s quiet for a moment then says, “Oh. Well food interests me a LOT. I’m hungry!”

That’s my girl.

Jim had texted me to tell me he was leaving work and should he meet me there. I was told by one of the nurses that it would be best if someone came to pick me up when we were done, so I told him to “come on.” We had been called into a room and sat down with my doctor’s nurse. I explained what was going on and what all I had taken up to that point (and what I think came back up). Jim comes in right before the doctor shows up, so he gets to sit in there with us too. (much to Jessie’s delight!)

I explained to her what all happened and what I had taken. She takes my blood pressure and my pulse (by this time it was down closer to normal). She runs several tests and determines that it wasn’t flu or anything, just a really bad migraine.

I think I would have much rather had the flu by that point! ;P

She asks me if I want a shot to ease my pain and nausea. I agreed, and while they’re being prepared, we’re told that I’m not to drive for the rest of the day/night. Jim looks at me and asks about my car.

At that point, I was ready to give it away … gimme the damned shot!!

I told him that I would leave it there and pick it up the next day (today). He didn’t like that idea and voiced his concerns. The doctor looks at me and then at him and says, “She cannot drive if she gets this shot.”

I looked at Jim and said, “I am GETTING this shot!” We had to sign some sort of release form stating that he was driving me and would not let me drive yesterday or last night.

So I get a shot of Nubain for the migraine and a shot of Fenergan for the nausea. The migraine went away within an hour, but my nausea mostly subsided. It was never really gone until this morning when I got up.

I’m feeling much better today, but God help me, I don’t ever want to go through one that strong again!

I have lately taken it upon myself to do some SharePoint branding for one of our SharePoint servers here at work. I swear, I have spent the better part of 3 days just cleaning up HTML code alone! Unfortunately SharePoint uses a lot of attributes that are proprietary to Microsoft, so no chance of it ever validating any time soon.

Here are a few of the things I’ve learned recently:

• Link bars are pretty unforgiving if you screw with their code, better use the GUI in SharePoint Designer to make any changes.
• If the site might need to be updated regularly, the Content Editor Web Part is your friend! (i.e. pass it off to someone else to maintain!)
• It’s always a good idea to test out a template first for bugs first before letting anyone else know you’re almost done — or where it’s located.
• The command line is your friend! (Actually, I knew this already, but in-dept documentation for SP commands were a little scarce until I found this reference)
• If custom controls and/or code is just not possible within the SharePoint realm, the Page Viewer Web Part is your friend! (As much as I despise using frames of any kind, this wp has saved my tail a time or two!)
• Your site’s content could be the best thing since sliced bread or a splog’s “cheap hotel Las Vegas” surf cache. It doesn’t mean squat if your site design looks like ass. (In other words, never EVER use the default SharePoint templates!)

Hopefully I’ll have more to add to this list later. For now, my head is killing me but my bosses are very happy with what I’ve gotten done so far. I think I’m going to ask for permission to cut out a little early today … it is Valentine’s Day after all!

Yesterday, Jim and I spent a good part of the afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese — better known as “Hell on Earth for adults.” My nephew, David, was celebrating his 5th birthday. I managed to snap off a few shots with my cell, or rather I tried. (it’s hard to snap still shots of sugared up kids, LOL!)

Zooomr seems to be “mostly up” and I was able to upload them and create a photo set:

Isn’t Jessie charming?

Anyone who has ever visited one of these establishments can attest that it could be best summed up as “kiddie chaos.” It’s loud, there’s always bright/flashing lights, and add kids running wild all over the place: et voila, instant migraine! Ugh. So yeah, yesterday was hell. Honestly though, what really struck me most was not the aforementioned mayhem, it was the over all lack of manners and common courtesy that I observed. Not only did I witness children of all ages running amok as if they were raised by wolves, but also adults who behaved this way.

For example, Jessie came to me and told me that some kids pushed her away when she was trying to play one of the basketball games. I followed her to where she had been playing. There were two kids who were still playing (apparently using Jessie’s tokens). I asked one of them if that was their game (meaning did they put in tokens to play), he said he didn’t know he was just watching his sister. The game ended and they moved to the side. Jessie stepped up and put in a token and started to play. The little girl pushed her away and grabbed the basketball from her hands. I took it from her and told her that it was my daughter’s token and therefore it was her turn. She bared her teeth at me and made the meanest face she could and said, “Mine!” I told her “No. It’s our turn now.” Well, that girl SCREAMED her little head off, which of course caused her mother to come running. I explained what had happened and told her that her daughter was shoving my child and kept stealing her tokens and trying to take over her games. Her mother yelled at me saying that I had “no right” to deny her daughter to “do whatever she wants.” She had the gall to tell me that she didn’t believe me (or any of the other parents standing around who witnessed this!) and that I should be ashamed of myself for picking on her poor little girl, and causing her “grief and emotional trauma”.

Oh give me a fucking break. Do me a favor, lady. How about you teach your kids some manners and common courtesy?

I know I can’t be the only one who’s noticing this disturbing trend and is concerned by it. I was reading an article in the Selma Times-Journal Friday talking about children’s behavior and the increase in bad behavior seen in area schools:

Parents have a responsibility to teach their children to behave themselves from the moment those children are born. Children do not learn manners by osmosis, although little ones do imitate their parents or other adults they are around.

I think what worries me most is that the parents of these kids either don’t know or don’t care about the harm they are ultimately causing.